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The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 by Various

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863




In reviewing these three sources of power, I know not which is most
complete. Either would be ample alone; but the three together are three
times ample. Thus, out of this triple fountain, or, if you please, by
this triple cord, do I vindicate the power of Congress over the vacated
Rebel States.

But there are yet other words of the Constitution which cannot be
forgotten: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union."
Assuming that the Rebel States are no longer _de facto_ States of this
Union, but that the territory occupied by them is within the
jurisdiction of Congress, then these words become completely applicable.
It will be for Congress, in such way as it shall think best, to regulate
the return of these States to the Union, whether in time or manner. No
special form is prescribed. But the vital act must proceed from
Congress. And here again is another testimony to that Congressional
power which, under the Constitution, will restore the Republic.


UNANSWERABLE REASONS FOR CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENTS

Against this power I have heard no argument which can be called an
argument. There are objections founded chiefly in the baneful pretension
of State Rights; but these objections are animated by prejudice rather
than reason. Assuming the impeccability of the States, and openly
declaring that states, like kings, can do no wrong, while, like kings,
they wear the "round and top of sovereignty," politicians treat them
with most mistaken forbearance and tenderness, as if these Rebel
corporations could be dandled into loyalty. At every suggestion of rigor
State Rights are invoked, and we are vehemently told not to destroy the
States, when all that Congress proposes is simply to recognize the
actual condition of the States and to undertake their temporary
government, by providing for the condition of political syncope into
which they have fallen, and, during this interval, to substitute its own
constitutional powers for the unconstitutional powers of the Rebellion.
Of course, therefore, Congress will blot no star from the flag, nor will
it obliterate any State liabilities. But it will seek, according to its
duty, in the best way, to maintain the great and real sovereignty of the
Union, by upholding the flag unsullied, and by enforcing everywhere
within its jurisdiction the supreme law of the Constitution.

At the close of an argument already too long drawn out, I shall not stop
to array the considerations of reason and expediency in behalf of this
jurisdiction; nor shall I dwell on the inevitable influence that it must
exercise over Slavery, which is the motive of the Rebellion. To my mind
nothing can be clearer, as a proposition of constitutional law, than
that everywhere within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National
Government Slavery is impossible. The argument is as brief as it is
unanswerable. Slavery is so odious that it can exist only by virtue of
positive law, plain and unequivocal; but no such words can be found in
the Constitution. Therefore Slavery is impossible within the exclusive
jurisdiction of the National Government. For many years I have had this
conviction, and have constantly maintained it. I am glad to believe that
it is implied, if not expressed, in the Chicago Platform. Mr. Chase,
among our public men, is known to accept it sincerely. Thus Slavery in
the Territories is unconstitutional; but if the Rebel territory falls
under the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government, then
Slavery will be impossible there. In a legal and constitutional sense,
it will die at once. The air will be too pure for a slave. I cannot
doubt that this great triumph has been already won. The moment that the
States fell, Slavery fell also; so that, even without any Proclamation
of the President, Slavery had ceased to have a legal and constitutional
existence in every Rebel State.

But even if we hesitate to accept this important conclusion, which
treats Slavery within Rebel States as already dead in law and
Constitution, it cannot be doubted, that, by the extension of the
Congressional jurisdiction over the Rebel States, many difficulties will
be removed. Holding every acre of soil and every inhabitant of these
states within its jurisdiction, Congress can easily do, by proper
legislation, whatever may be needful within Rebel limits in order to
assure freedom and to save society. The soil may be divided among
patriot soldiers, poor-whites, and freedmen. But above all things, the
inhabitants may be saved from harm. Those citizens in the Rebel States,
who, throughout the darkness of the Rebellion, have kept there faith,
will be protected, and the freedmen will be rescued from the hands that
threaten to cast them back into Slavery.

But this jurisdiction, which is so completely practical, is grandly
conservative also. Had it been early recognized that Slavery depends
exclusively upon the local government, and that it falls with that
government, who can doubt that every Rebel movement would have been
checked? Tennessee and Virginia would never have stirred; Maryland and
Kentucky would never have thought of stirring. There would have been no
talk of neutrality between the Constitution and the Rebellion, and every
Border State would have been fixed in its loyalty. Let it be established
in advance, as an inseparable incident to every Act of Secession, that
it is not only impotent against the Constitution of the United States,
but that, on its occurrence, both soil and inhabitants will lapse
beneath the jurisdiction of Congress, and no State will ever again
pretend to secede. The word "territory," according to an old and quaint
etymology, is said to come from _terreo_, to terrify, because it was a
bulwark against the enemy. A scholiast tells us, "_Territorium est
quicquid hostis terrendi causa constitutum_," "A territory is something
constituted in order to terrify the enemy." But I know of no way in
which our Rebel enemy would have been more terrified than by being told
that his course would inevitably precipitate him into a territorial
condition. Let this principle be adopted now, and it will contribute
essentially to that consolidation of the Union which was so near the
heart of Washington.

The necessity of this principle is apparent as a restraint upon the
lawless vindictiveness and inhumanity of the Rebel States, whether
against Union men or against freedmen. Union men in Virginia already
tremble at the thought of being delivered over to a State government
wielded by original Rebels pretending to be patriots. But the freedmen,
who have only recently gained their birthright, are justified in a
keener anxiety, lest it should be lost as soon as won. Mr. Saulsbury, a
Senator from Delaware, with most instructive frankness, has announced,
in public debate, what the restored State governments will do. Assuming
that the local governments will be preserved, he predicts that in 1870
there will be more slaves in the United States than there were in 1860,
and then unfolds the reason as follows,--all of which will be found in
the "Congressional Globe"[29]:--

"By your acts you attempt to free the slaves. You will not have them
among you. You leave them where they are. Then what is to be the
result?--I presume that local State governments will be preserved. If
they are, if the people have a right to make their own laws, and to
govern themselves, they will not only reenslave every person that you
attempt to set free, but they will reenslave the whole race."

Nor has the horrid menace of reenslavement proceeded from the Senator
from Delaware alone. It has been uttered even by Mr. Willey, the mild
Senator from Virginia, speaking in the name of State Rights. Newspapers
have taken up and repeated the revolting strain. That is to say, no
matter what may be done for Emancipation, whether by Proclamation of the
President, or by Congress even, the State, on resuming its place in the
Union, will, in the exercise of its sovereign power, reenslave every
colored person within its jurisdiction; and this is the menace from
Delaware, and even from regenerated Western Virginia! I am obliged to
Senators for their frankness. If I needed any additional motive for the
urgency with which I assert the power of Congress, I should find it in
the pretensions thus savagely proclaimed. In the name of Heaven, let us
spare no effort to save the country from this shame, and an oppressed
people from this additional outrage!

"Once free, always free." This is a rule of law, and an instinct of
humanity. It is a self-evident axiom, which only tyrants and
slave-traders have denied. The brutal pretension thus flamingly
advanced, to reenslave those who have been set free, puts us all on our
guard. There must be no chance or loop-hole for such an intolerable,
Heaven-defying iniquity. Alas! there have been crimes in human history;
but I know of none blacker than this. There have been acts of baseness;
but I know of none more utterly vile. Against the possibility of such a
sacrifice we must take a bond which cannot be set aside,--and this can
be found only in the powers of Congress.

Congress has already done much. Besides its noble Act of Emancipation,
it has provided that every person guilty of treason, or of inciting or
assisting the Rebellion, "shall be disqualified to hold any office under
the United States." And by another act, it has provided that every
person elected or appointed to any office of honor or profit under the
Government of the United States shall, before entering upon its duties,
_take an oath_ "that he has not voluntarily borne arms against the
United States, or given aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to
persons engaged in armed hostility thereto, or sought or accepted or
attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under any
authority, or pretended authority, in hostility to the United
States."[30] This oath will be a bar against the return to _National
office_ of any who have taken part with the Rebels. It shuts out in
advance the whole criminal gang. But these same persons, rejected by the
National Government, are left free to hold office in the States. And
here is another motive to further action by Congress. The oath, is well
as far as it goes; more must be done in the same spirit.

But enough. The case is clear. Behold the Rebel States in arms against
that paternal government to which, as the supreme condition of their
constitutional existence, they owe duty and love; and behold all
legitimate powers, executive, legislative, and judicial, in these
States, abandoned and vacated. _It only remains that Congress should
enter and assume the proper jurisdiction._ If we are not ready to
exclaim with Burke, speaking of Revolutionary France, "It is but an
empty space on the political map," we may at least adopt the response
hurled back by Mirabeau, that this empty space is a volcano red with
flames and overflowing with lava-floods. But whether we deal with it as
"empty space" or as "volcano," the jurisdiction, civil and military,
centres in Congress, to be employed for the happiness, welfare, and
renown of the American people,--changing Slavery into Freedom, and
present chaos into a Cosmos of perpetual beauty and power.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.


_The Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus._ Translated by
GEORGE LONG. London: Bell & Daldy.

Dulness is usually reckoned the prescriptive right of kings; at least,
they are supposed to be officially incapable of literary eminence. And
yet it is a curious fact, that, of those idiomatic works which
literature will not "let die," of those marked productions which survive
by their individuality, three, at least, bear the impress of royal
names.

Devotion has found, in the contributions of three thousand years, no
utterance so fit as the lyrics of a Hebrew king; satiety has breathed no
sigh so profound as "The Words of the Preacher, the Son of David, King
of Jerusalem"[31]; and the wisdom of the Stoics has no worthier exponent
than the meditations of a sovereign who ruled the greatest empire known
to history, and glorified it with his own imperial spirit,--the noblest
that ever bore the burden of state.

Our third example, unlike the other two, has not been adopted by
ecclesiastical authority, and is not incorporated in any Vulgate of
sacred lore; but its place in the canon of philosophy has long been
established, and is often confirmed by fresh recognition. A new
translation of this celebrated work, of which several versions already
existed, has just been given to the English public by Mr. George Long, a
well-known scholar and critic, with the title above named. We should
have preferred the old title, "Meditations," so long endeared; but we
are none the less grateful to Mr. Long for this needful service, for
which no ordinary qualifications were required, and which has never
before been performed by such competent hands.

Gibbon has said, that, "if a man were called to fix the period in the
history of the world during which the condition of the human race was
most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which
elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." This
period comprises, together with the four concluding years of the first
century of the Christian era, four-fifths of the second. The last of
these fifths, deducting one year, (A.D. 161-180,) was occupied by the
supreme rule of Annios Verus, better known by his assumed name of Marcus
AElius Aurelius Antoninus, fifteenth emperor of the Romans, nephew and
successor of another Antoninus, whose virtues, and especially his
grateful remembrance of his predecessor and benefactor, procured him the
_agnomen_ of "Pius." In a line of sovereigns which numbers a larger
proportion of wise and good men than most dynasties, perhaps than any
other, M. Antoninus ranks first, so far as those qualities are
concerned. A man of singular and sublime virtue, whose imperial station,
so trying to human character, but served to render more conspicuous his
rare and transcendent excellence. With an empire such as never before or
since the Augustan dynasty has fallen to the lot of an individual, lord
of the civilized earth, he lived simply and abstemiously as the poorest
citizen in his dominions, frugal with unlimited means, humble with
unlimited sway. Not a Christian by profession, in piety toward God and
charity toward man he was yet a better Christian in fact than any of the
Christian emperors who succeeded him. He governed his life by the Stoic
discipline, the most hardy, in its practical requirements, of ancient
systems, so rigorous in its ethic that Josephus is proud to claim an
affinity with it for the "straitest" of the Jewish sects, and so pure in
its spirit that St. Jerome ranks its best-known writer as a
Christian,--a philosophy which taught men to consider virtue as the only
good, vice as the only evil, all external things as indifferent. "His
life," says Gibbon, "was the noblest commentary on the precepts of Zeno.
He was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just
and beneficent to all mankind. He regretted that Avidius Cassius, who
had excited a rebellion in Syria, had by a voluntary death deprived him
of the pleasure of converting an enemy into a friend. War he detested as
the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when the necessity of a
just defence called upon him to take up arms, he readily exposed his
person to eight winter campaigns on the frozen banks of the Danube, the
severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness of his constitution.
His memory was revered by a grateful posterity, and above a century
after his death there were many who preserved the image of Marcus
Antoninus among their household gods."

The learned Casaubon, after placing him above Solomon, "as being lord
and master of more great kingdoms than Solomon was of towns," speaks of
him as a man "who, for goodness and wisdom, was had by all men during
his life in such honor and reputation as never man was either before him
or after him." "There hath ever been store enough of men," he says,
"that could speak well and give good instructions, but great want of
them that could or so much as endeavored to do as they spake or taught
others to do. Be it therefore spoken to the immortal praise and
commendation of Antoninus, that as he did write so he did live. Never
did writers so conspire to give all possible testimony of goodness,
uprightness, innocence, as they have done to commend this one. They
commend him, not as the best prince only, but absolutely as the best man
and best philosopher that ever lived."

Merivale, who concludes with the reign of M. Antoninus his "History of
the Romans under the Empire," adds his testimony to that of the cloud of
witnesses who have trumpeted the great _Imperator's_ praise. "Of all the
Caesars whose names are enshrined in the page of history, or whose
features are preserved to us in the repositories of art, one alone seems
still to haunt the Eternal City in the place and the posture most
familiar to him in life. In the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius,
which crowns the platform of the Campidoglio, Imperial Rome lives
again.... In this figure we behold an emperor, of all the line the
noblest and the dearest, such as he actually appeared; we realize in one
august exemplar the character and image of the rulers of the world. We
stand here face to face with a representative of the Scipios and Caesars,
the heroes of Tacitus and Livy. Our other Romans are effigies of the
closet and the museum; this alone is a man of the streets, the forum,
and the capitol. Such special prominence is well reserved, amid the
wreck of ages, for him whom historians combine to honor as the worthiest
of the Roman people."

Mr. Long, in his biographical introduction, examines at length the
evidence for Marcus's alleged persecution of the Christians. Lardner,
and other writers in the Christian ecclesiastical interest, assuming the
fact, denounce it as a blot on the Emperor's fame. The translator
devotes more space to the consideration of this matter than, perhaps, in
the judgment of the historical critic at this day, it will seem to
deserve. That Christians, in the time of M. Antoninus, in Asia Minor and
in Gaul, suffered torture and death on account of their faith, admits of
no reasonable doubt. That Marcus authorized these persecutions, in any
sense implying the responsibility of an original decision, does not
appear. The imperial power, it must be remembered, was not absolute, but
constitutionally defined. The Augusti, for the most part, were but the
executors of existing laws. The punishment of Christians, who refused to
sacrifice, and persisted in contravening the religion of the State, was
one of those laws. In some places, especially at Lyons and Vienne, the
Christians were the victims of popular riots; but where they suffered by
legal authority, in the name of the imperial government, it was under
the well-known law of Trajan, a law which had been sixty years in
operation when Marcus came upon the throne. The only blame that can be
imputed to him in this relation (if blame it be) is that of failing to
discern and acknowledge the divine authority of the new religion which
was silently undermining the old Roman world. But no one who puts
himself in the Emperor's time and place will think the worse of him for
not adopting a view of this subject which educated and serious minds
were precisely the least likely to adopt. To such, Christianity
presented itself simply as a novelty opposed to religion and threatening
the State. The case of Justin may be cited as an instance of a
thoughtful and philosophic mind embracing Christianity in spite of the
strong presumption against it in minds of that class. But, not to speak
of the very wide difference between the steady, conservative Roman and
the volatile Greek, all the life-circumstances of Justin, a Palestinian
by birth, favored his adoption of the Christian faith; everything in the
life of Antoninus tended in the opposite direction. Justin embraced the
religion first on its philosophic side, where Antoninus was especially
fortified against it, having early come to an understanding with himself
on the deepest questions of the soul. His decisions on these questions
did not differ materially from those of the Gospel; they might, unknown
to himself, have been modified by a subtile atmospheric influence
derived from that source and acting on a nature so receptive of its
spirit. But the very fact, that he had in a measure anticipated the
teachings of the Gospel, precluded the chance of his being surprised
into acquiescence with the new religion by its moral beauty, if brought
fairly before him, which perhaps it never was; for it does not appear
that he read the Christian apologies framed in his day. What was best in
Christianity, as a system of doctrine,--its ethical precepts,--he had
already embraced; its substance he possessed; its external form he knew
only as opposition to institutions which he was bound by all the
sanctities of his office, by all the dignity of a Roman patrician, and
by all the currents of his life, to uphold. For the rest, the relation
of a mind like his to polytheism could be nothing more than the formal
acceptance of its symbols in the interest of piety, implying no
intellectual enslavement to its myths and traditions.

De Quincey calls attention to one merit of Antoninus, which, he says,
has been "utterly unnoticed hitherto by historians, but which will
hereafter obtain a conspicuous place in any perfect record of the steps
by which civilization has advanced and human nature been exalted. It is
this: Marcus Aurelius was the first great military leader who allowed
rights indefeasible, rights uncancelled by misfortune in the field, to
the prisoner of war. Others had been merciful and variously indulgent,
upon their own discretion, and upon a random impulse, to some, or
possibly to all of their prisoners; ... but Marcus Aurelius first
resolutely maintained that certain indestructible rights adhered to
every soldier simply as a man, which rights capture by the sword, or any
other accident of war, could do nothing to shake or diminish.... Here is
an immortal act of goodness built upon an immortal basis; for so long as
armies congregate and the sword is the arbiter of international
quarrels, so long will it deserve to be had in remembrance that the
first man who set limits to the empire of wrong, and first translated
within the jurisdiction of man's moral nature that state of war which
had heretofore been consigned by principle no less than by practice to
anarchy, animal violence, and brute force, was also the first
philosopher who sat upon a throne. In this, and in his universal spirit
of forgiveness, we cannot but acknowledge a Christian by
anticipation.... And when we view him from this distant age, as heading
that shining array, the Howards and the Wilberforces, who have since
then, in a practical sense, hearkened to the sighs of 'all prisoners and
captives,' we are ready to suppose him addressed by the great Founder of
Christianity in the words of Scripture, 'Thou art not far from the
kingdom of God.'"[32]

Born to be a thinker rather than an actor, by nature framed for the life
of a recluse, by temperament inclined to private study and
contemplation, this best of emperors and of men by Providential destiny
was doomed to spend the greater part of his days in the tumult of
affairs, and, like a true Roman, died at last a soldier's death in his
camp on the banks of the Danube, where, in after years, another line of
"Roman Emperors," the sovereigns of the "Holy Roman Empire of Germany,"
had their seat. For more than a century after his death, and so long as
Rome retained a remnant of her old vitality, a grateful people adored
him as a saint, and he who "had no bust, picture, or statue of Marcus in
his house was looked upon as a profane and irreligious man." To this
day, beside the equestrian statue named by Merivale, in the heart of
modern Rome, a few steps from her principal thronged thoroughfare, a
column which time has spared still commemorates the last of the Romans.
The Emperor's statue which once surmounted it was destroyed, and
centuries after the statue of St. Paul exalted to the vacant place, as
if to show that the "height of Rome" is not quite the perfection of all
humanity, and that even the purest of ancient philosophies is incomplete
without the supplement of a more humane and universal wisdom.

Mr. Long's preliminary dissertation on "The Philosophy of Antoninus" is
thorough and satisfactory, so far as that specific subject is concerned,
but presents a very inadequate view of the Stoic philosophy in general,
and strikes us as unjust in its incidental disparaging notice (in a
footnote) of Seneca, who, after all, will ever be regarded as the
greatest literary product of that school.

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