Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 by Various

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'By tale?'

'No, for two hun'red and eighty pound.'

'Well, _I'll_ give you two dollars and a half by weight.'

'Can't take it, Cunnel; must get three dollar.'

'What, will you go sixty miles with this team, and waste five or six
days, for fifty cents on six barrels--three dollars?'

'Can't 'ford the time, Cunnel, but must git three dollar a barr'l.'

'That fellow is a specimen of our "natives,"' said the Colonel, as we
resumed our seats in the carriage. 'You'll see more of them before we
get back to the plantation.'

'He puts a young cow to a decidedly original use,' I remarked.

'Oh no, not original here; the ox and the cow with us are both used for
labor.'

'You don't mean to say that cows are generally worked here?'

'Of course I do. Our breeds are good for nothing as milkers, and we put
them to the next best use. I never have cow's milk on my plantation.'

'You don't! why, I could have sworn it was in my coffee this morning.'

'I wouldn't trust you to buy brandy for me, if your organs of taste are
not keener than that. It was goat's milk.'

'Then how do you get your butter?'

'From the North. I've had mine from my New York factors for over two
years.'

We soon arrived at Sandy the negro-hunter's, and halted to allow the
Colonel to inquire as to the health of his family of children and
dogs,--the latter the less numerous, but, if I might judge by
appearances, the more valued of the two.

* * * * *

SOUTHERN AIDS TO THE NORTH.

II.

If war did little else, it would have its value from the fact that it
acts so extensively as an institution for the dissemination of useful
knowledge. Every murmur of political dissension sends thousands to
consult the map, and repair their early neglect of geography. Perhaps if
atlases and ethnographical works were more studied we should have less
war. And it is by no means impossible that the mutual knowledge which
has been or is to be acquired by the people of the South and the North
during this present war will eventually aid materially in establishing a
firm bond of union.

That we have much to learn is shown in the firm faith with which so many
have listened to the threats of 'a united South.' Until recently the
fierce and furious assurances of the rebel press, that south of Mason
and Dixon's line all were wedded heart and soul to their cause, were
taken almost without a doubt. Who has forgotten the late doleful
convictions of the dough-faces that the South would hold together to the
last in spite of wind or weather, concluding invariably with the old
refrain,--'Suppose we conquer them--what then?' Had the country at large
known in detail, as it _should_ have known from a common-school
education, what the South _really_ is,--or from experience of life what
human nature really is,--it would never have believed that this boasted
unanimity was based on aught save ignorance or falsehood. The Southern
press itself, almost without an exception, betrays gross ignorance of
its own country, and is very superficial in its statistics, inclining
more than any other to warp facts and figures to suit preconceived
views. We, like it, have tacitly adopted the belief that south of a
certain line a certain climate invariably prevailed, and that under its
influences, from the Border to the Gulf of Mexico, there has been
developed a race essentially alike in all its characteristics. The
planter and the slave-owner, or the city merchant, has been the type
with which our writers have become familiar at the hotel and the
watering-place, or in the 'store,' and we have accepted them as speaking
for the South, quite forgetful that in America, as in other countries,
the real man of the middle class travels but little, and when he does,
is seldom to be found mingling in the 'higher circles.' Yet even this
Southern man of the middle class and of 'Alleghania,' when at the North
frequently affects a 'Southern' air, which is not more natural to him
than it is to the youthful scions of Philadelphia and New York, who,
when in Europe, so often talk pro-slavery and bowie knife, as though
they lived in the very heart of planterdom. But the truth is that when
we search the South out closely we find that in reality there is a very
great difference between its districts and their inhabitants, and, in
_fact_, as has been very truly said, 'not only is there no geographical
boundary between the free and slave States, but no moral and
intellectual boundary.'

In the great temperate region which, parting from either side of the
Alleghanies, extends from Virginia to Alabama, and is still continued in
the pleasant level of Texas, slavery has rolled away from either
mountain side like a flood, leaving it the home of a hardy population
which regards with jealousy and dislike both the wealthy planter and the
negro. James W. Taylor, in his valuable collection of facts, claims that
through the whole extent of the Southern Alleghania slavery has
relatively diminished since 1850, and that the forthcoming census tables
will establish the assertion. 'The superintendent of the census,' he
says, 'would furnish a document, valuable politically and for military
use, if he would anticipate the publication of this portion of his
voluminous budget.' If government, indeed, were to communicate to the
public what information it now holds, and has long held, relative to the
numbers and strength of the Union men of the South, an excitement of
amazement would thrill through the North. It was on the basis of this
knowledge that our great campaign was planned,--and it can not be denied
that thousands of stanch Union men were greatly astonished at the
revelations of sympathy which burst forth most unexpectedly in districts
where the stars and stripes have been planted. But the Cabinet 'knew
what it knew' on this subject. Much of its knowledge never can be
revealed, but enough will come to-night to show that in our darkest hour
we had an enormous mass of aid, little suspected by those weaker
brethren who stood aghast at the Southern bugbear, and who, falling
prostrate in nerveless terror at the windy spectre, quaked out repeated
assurances that _they_ had no intention of 'abolitionizing the war,' and
even earnestly begged and prayed that the emancipationists might all be
sent to Fort Warren,--so fearful were the poor cowards lest the united
South, in the final hour of victory, might include them in its catalogue
of the doomed. What would they say if they knew the number and power of
the ABOLITIONISTS OF THE SOUTH,--a body of no trifling significance,
whose fierce grasp will yet be felt on the throat of rebellion and of
slavery? It is grimly amusing to think of the aid which the South
counted on receiving from these Northern dough-faces,--little thinking
that within itself it contained a counter-revolutionary party, far more
dangerous than the Northern friends were helpful.

It should be borne in mind that where such an evil as slavery exists
there will be numbers of grave, sensible men, who, however quiet they
may keep, will have their own opinions as to the expediency of
maintaining it. The bigots of the South may rave of the beauty of 'the
institution,' and make many believe that they speak for the whole,--a
little scum when whipped covers the whole pail,--but beneath all lies a
steadily-increasing mass of practical men who would readily enough
manifest their opposition should opportunity favor free speech. Such
people, for instance, are not insensible to the enormously corrupting
influence of negroes on their children. Let the reader recall Olmsted's
experiences,--that, for example, where he speaks of three negro women
who had charge of half a dozen white girls of good family, 'from three
to fifteen years of age.'

Their language was loud and obscene, such as I never heard
before from any but the most depraved and beastly women of the
streets. Upon observing me they dropped their voices, but not
with any appearance of shame, and continued their altercation
until their mistresses entered. The white children, in the mean
time, had listened without any appearance of wonder or
annoyance. The moment the ladies opened the door, they became
silent.--_Cotton Kingdom_, vol. i. p. 222.

The Southern _Cultivator_ for June, 1855, speaks of many young men and
women who have 'made shipwreck of all their earthly hopes, and been led
to the fatal step by the seeds of corruption which in the days of
childhood and youth were sown in their hearts by the indelicate and
lascivious manners and conversation of their fathers' negroes.' If we
had no other fact or cause to cite, this almost unnamable one might
convince the reader that there must be a groundwork somewhere in the
South among good, moral, and decent people, for antipathy to
slavery,--human nature teaches us as much. And such people exist, not
only among the hardy inhabitants of the inland districts, who are not
enervated by wealth and 'exclusiveness,' but in planterdom itself.

There are few in the North who realize the number of persons in the
South who silently disapprove of slavery on sound grounds, such as I
have mentioned. Does it seem credible that nearly _ten millions_ of
people should socially sympathize with some three hundred thousand
slave-holders, who act with intolerable arrogance to all
non-slave-holders? 'Even in those regions where slavery is profitable,'
as a writer in the Boston _Transcript_ well expresses it, 'the poor
whites feel the slaveocracy as the most grinding of aristocracies.'

In those regions where it is not profitable, the population
regard it with a latent abhorrence, compared with which the
rhetorical and open invectives of Garrison and Phillips are
feeble and tame. Anybody who has read Olmsted's truthful
narrative of his experience in the slave States can not doubt
this fact. The hatred to slavery too often finds its expression
in an almost inhuman hatred of 'niggers,' whether slave or free,
but it is none the less significant of the feelings and opinions
of the white population.

As I write, every fresh thunder of war and crash of victory is followed
by murmurs of amazement at the enthusiastic receptions which the Union
forces meet in most unexpected strongholds of the enemy, in the very
heart of slavedom. Yet it was _known_ months ago, and prophesied, with
the illustration of undeniable facts, that this counter-revolutionary
element existed. One single truth was forgotten,--that these Southern
friends of the Union, even while avowing that slavery must be supported,
had no love of it in their hearts. Emancipation has been sedulously set
aside under pretence of conciliating them; but it was needless,--'old
custom' had made them cautious, and mindful of 'expediency;' but the
mass of them hate 'the institution.' It is for the traitorous Northern
_dough-faces_, and the paltry handful of secessionists, 'on a thin slip
of land on the Atlantic,' that slavery is, at present, cherished. The
great area of the South is free from it,--and ever will be.

It has frequently been insisted on that the mere _geographical_
obstacles to disunion are such as to render the cause of slavery
hopeless in the long run. Yet to this most powerful Southern aid to the
North, men seem to have been strangely blind during the days of doubt
which so long afflicted us. These obstacles are, briefly, the enormous
growing power of the West, and its inevitable outlet, the Mississippi
river. 'For it is the mighty and free _West_ which will always hang like
a lowering thunder-cloud over them.'[N] On this subject I quote at
length from an article, in the Danville (Ky.) _Review_, by the Rev. R.
J. Breckenridge, D.D.:--

Whoever will look at a map of the United States, will observe
that Louisiana lies on both sides of the Mississippi river, and
that the States of Arkansas and Mississippi lie on the right and
left banks of this great stream--eight hundred miles of whose
lower course is thus controlled by these three States, unitedly
inhabited by hardly as many white people as inhabit the city of
New York. Observe, then, the country drained by this river and
its affluents, commencing with Missouri on its west bank and
Kentucky on its east bank. There are nine or ten powerful
States, large portions of three or four others, several large
Territories--in all, a country as large as all Europe, as fine
as any under the sun, already holding many more people than all
the revolted States, and powerful regions of the earth. Does any
one suppose that these powerful States--this great and energetic
population--will ever make a peace that will put the lower
course of this single and mighty national outlet to the sea in
the hands of a foreign government far weaker than themselves? If
there is any such person he knows little of the past history of
mankind, and will perhaps excuse us for reminding him that the
people of Kentucky, before they were constituted a State, gave
formal notice to the federal government, when Gen. Washington
was President, that if the United States did not require
Louisiana they would themselves conquer it. The mouths of the
Mississippi belong, by the gift of God, to the inhabitants of
its great valley. Nothing but irresistible force can disinherit
them.

Try another territorial aspect of the case. There is a bed of
mountains abutting on the left bank of the Ohio, which covers
all Western Virginia, and all Eastern Kentucky, to the width,
from east to west, in those two States, of three or four hundred
miles. These mountains, stretching south-westwardly, pass
entirely through Tennessee, cover the back parts of North
Carolina and Georgia, heavily invade the northern part of
Alabama, and make a figure even in the back parts of South
Carolina and the eastern parts of Mississippi, having a course
of perhaps seven or eight hundred miles, and running far south
of the northern limit of profitable cotton culture. It is a
region of 300,000 square miles, trenching upon eight or nine
slave States, though nearly destitute of slaves itself;
trenching upon at least five cotton States, though raising no
cotton itself. The western part of Maryland and two-thirds of
Pennsylvania are embraced in the north-eastern continuation of
this remarkable region. Can anything that passes under the name
of statesmanship be more preposterous than the notion of
permanent peace on this continent, founded on the abnegation of
a common and paramount government, and the idea of the
supercilious domination of the cotton interest and the
slave-trade over such a mountain empire, so located and so
peopled?

As a further proof of the utter impossibility of peace except
under a common government, and at once an illustration of the
import of what has just been stated, and the suggestion of a new
and insuperable difficulty, let it be remembered that this great
mountain region, throughout its general course, is more loyal to
the Union than any other portion of the slave States. It is the
mountain counties of Maryland that have held treason in check in
that State; it is forty mountain counties in Western Virginia
that have laid the foundation of a new and loyal commonwealth;
it is the mountain counties of Kentucky that first and most
eagerly took up arms for the Union; it is the mountain region of
Tennessee that alone, in that dishonored State, furnished
martyrs to the sacred cause of freedom; it is the mountain
people of Alabama that boldly stood out against the Confederate
government till their own leaders deserted and betrayed them.

It is not a strong point, but it is worth noting, that even in South
Carolina there is an Alleghanian area of 4,074 square miles, equal to
the State of Connecticut, in which the diminished proportion of slaves,
with other local causes, are sufficient to indicate the Union feeling
which indeed struggles there in secret. These counties are:--

FREE. SLAVE.
Spartanburgh, 18,311 8,039
Greenville, 13,370 6,691
Anderson, 13,867 7,514
Pickens, 13,105 3,679

Slavery is here large, as compared to the other counties of
'Alleghania,' but the great proportion of free inhabitants, as
contrasted with the districts near the Atlantic, makes it worth citing.
In accordance with a request, I give from Jas. W. Taylor's collection,
illustrating this subject, the table of population in East Tennessee:--

The following table, from the census of 1850, presents the slave
and cotton statistics of this district, in their relation to the
free population:

COUNTIES. FREE. SLAVE. COTTON,
400 lb. bales.
Johnson, 3,485 206 0
Carter, 5,911 353 0
Washington, 12,671 930 0
Sullivan, 10,603 1,004 153
Hancock, 5,447 202 2
Hawkins, 11,567 1,690 0
Greene, 16,526 1,093 0
Cocke, 7,501 719 3
Sevier, 6,450 403 0
Jefferson, 11,458 1,628 0
Granger, 11,170 1,035 1
Knox, 16,385 2,193 0
Union, new county,
Claiborne, 8,610 660 0
Anderson, 6,391 503 0
Campbell, 5,651 318 1
Scott, 1,808 37 0
Morgan, 3,301 101 9
Cumberland, new county,
Roane, 10,525 1,544 121
Blount, 11,213 1,084 6
Munroe, 10,623 1,188 0
McMinn, 12,286 1,568 2,821
Polk, 5,884 400 29
Bradley, 11,478 744 1,600
Meigs, 4,480 395 2
Hamilton, 9,216 672 0
Rhea, 3,951 436 0
Bledsoe, 5,036 827 0
Sequatche, new county,
Van Buren, 2,481 175 2
Grundy, 2,522 236 24
Marion, 5,718 551 24,413
Franklin, 10,085 3,623 637
Lincoln, 17,802 5,621 2,576

The geographical order of the foregoing list of counties is from
the extreme north-east--Johnson--south-west to Lincoln, on the
Alabama line. I have included a tier of counties the west, which
embrace the summits and western slopes of the Cumberland Hills,
regarding their physical and political features as more
identified with East than Middle Tennessee. Such are Lincoln,
Franklin, Grundy, Van Buren, Cumberland, Morgan and Scott
counties.

I estimate the area of this district as about 17,175 square
miles, an extent of territory exceeding the aggregate of the
following States:

Massachusetts, 7,800 square miles.
Connecticut, 4,674 square miles.
Rhode Island, l,306 square miles.
------
13,180 square miles.

Yet it is not many months since even this Tennessee region, it was
generally feared, would be false to the Union, on account of its
attachment to slavery.

The reader who has studied the facts which I have cited, indicating the
existence of a powerful Union party at the South (and the facts are few
and weak compared to the vast mass which exist, and which are known to
government), may judge for himself whether that party is Union _in spite
of pro-slavery principles_, as so many would have us believe. Let him
see where these Union men are found, where they have come forth with the
greatest enthusiasm, and _then_ say that he believes they are friends to
slavery. Let him bear in mind the hundreds of thousands of acres, the
vast tracts, equal in extent to whole Northern States, in the South,
which are unfitted for slave labor, and reflect whether the inhabitants
of these cool, temperate regions are not as conscious of their
inadaptability to slave labor as he is himself; and whether _they_ are
so much attached to the institution which fosters the Satanic pride,
panders to the passions, and corrupts the children of the planter of the
low country.

Since writing the above, the long-expected declaration of President
LINCOLN has appeared in favor of adopting a plan which may lead to the
gradual abolishment of slavery. He proposes that the United States shall
cooeperate with such slave States as may desire Emancipation, by giving
such pecuniary aid as may compensate for any losses incurred. No
interference with State rights or claims to rights in the question is
intended.

It is evident that this message is directed entirely to the
strengthening and building up of the Union party of the South, and has
been based quite as much on their demands and on a knowledge of their
needs, as on any Northern pressure. And it will have a sure effect. It
will bring to life, if realized, those seeds of counter-revolution which
so abundantly exist in the South. The growth may be slow, but it will be
certain. So long as the certainty exists that compensation _may_ be
obtained, there will be a party who will long for it; and where there is
a will there is a way. The executive has finally _officially_ recognized
the truth of the theory of Emancipation, and thereby entitled itself to
the honor of having taken the greatest forward step in the glorious path
of Freedom ever made even in our history.

* * * * *

THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS.

NO. I.

In addressing you for the first time, you will perhaps expect me to give
some account of myself and my ancestry, as did the illustrious
_Spectator_.

My remote ancestors are Irish. From them I inherited enthusiasm, a
gun-powder temper, a propensity to blunder, and a name--Molly O'Molly.
The origin of this name I have in vain endeavored to trace in history,
perhaps because it belonged to a very old family, one of the
_prehistorics_. As such it might have been that of a demigod, or,
according to the development theory, of a _demi-man_. Or it might have
been that of an old Irish gentleman, _gentle_ in truth;--in the
formative stage of society it is the monster that leaves traces of
himself, as in an old geologic period the huge reptile left his tracks
in the plastic earth, which afterward hardened into rock.

Then, too, I have searched in vain for anything like it in ancient Irish
poetry, thinking that my progenitor's name might have been therein
embalmed. 'The stony science'--mind you--reveals to us the former
existence of the huge reptile, the fragmentary, mighty mastodon, and,
imperfect, the mail-clad fish. But, wonder of wonders, we find the whole
_insect_ preserved in that fossil gum amber. And even so in verse,
characters are preserved for all time, that could not make their mark in
history, and that had none of the elements of an earthly immortality.
Did I wish immortality I would choose a poet for my friend;--an _In
Memoriam_ is worth all the records of the dry chronicler.

But, it is not with the root of the family tree that you have to do, but
with the twig Myself.

As for my physique,--I am not like the scripture personage who beheld
his face in a glass, and straightway forgot what manner of man he was. I
have, on the contrary, a very distinct recollection of my face; suffice
it to say, that, had I Rafaelle's pencil, I would not, like him, employ
it on my own portrait.

And my life--the circumstances which have influenced, or rather created
its currents, have been trifling; not that it has had no powerful
currents; it is said that the equilibrium of the whole ocean could be
destroyed by a single mollusk or coralline,--but my life has been an
uneventful one. I never met with an adventure, never even had a
hair-breadth escape,--yes, I did, too, have one hair-breadth escape. I
once just grazed matrimony. The truth is, I fell in love, and was
sinking with Falstaff's 'alacrity,' when I was fished out; but somehow I
slipt off the hook--fortunately, however, was left on shore. By the way,
the best way to get out of love is to be drawn out by the matrimonial
hook. One of Holmes' characters wished to change a vowel of the verb _to
love_, and conjugate it--I have forgotten how far. Where two set out to
conjugate together the verb to love in the first person plural, it is
well if they do not, before the honey-moon is over, get to the
present-perfect, indicative. Alas! I have thus far, in the first person
singular, conjugated too many verbs, among them _to enjoy_. As for _to
be_, I have come to the balancing in my mind of the question that so
perplexed Hamlet--'To be, or not to be.' For, with all the natural
cheerfulness of my disposition, I can not help sometimes looking on the
dark side of life. But there is no use in setting down my gloomy
reflections,--all have them. We are all surrounded by an atmosphere of
misery, pressing on us fifteen pounds to the square inch, so evenly and
constantly that we know not its fearful weight. To change the figure.
Have you ever thought how much misery one life _can_ hold in solution?
Each year, as it flows into it, adds to it a heaviness, a weight of woe,
as the rivers add salts to the ocean. I do not refer to the most
unhappy, but to all. Some one says,--

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