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The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 by Various

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864




In style, Professor Tyndall's work is remarkably clear, spirited, and
vigorous, and many of its pages are eloquent with the beautiful
enthusiasm and poetic spirit of its author. These attractions, combined
with the comprehensiveness and unity of the discussion, the range and
authenticity of the facts, and the delicacy, originality, and vividness
of the experiments, render the work at once popular and profound. It is
s classic upon the subject of which it treats.


_My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field_. A Book for Boys. By
"CARLETON." Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

The literature of the war has already reached the dimensions of a
respectable library. The public mind at the instant of the outbreak felt
an assurance that it was to be one of the memorable epochs of mankind.
However blinded to the significance of the previous conflicts in the
forum and at the ballot-box, there was a sudden and universal instinct
that their armed culmination was a world-era. The event instantly
assumed its true grandeur.

The previous discussions seemed local and limited. They were squabbles,
we fancied, among ourselves, which did not touch the vitals of our
system, and in which the world without had neither lot nor interest.
Even when the fires of debate and division waxed hotter and hotter, and
began to break out in violent eruptions in Congress, Kansas, throughout
the South, and especially at Harper's Ferry, we still said, These are
political conflicts, mob-violences, raids, abnormal eccentricities,
which will pass quietly away, when the dynasty is changed, and the reins
of power are fairly grasped by the successful rival.

Europe sends her doctors to witness our dissolution. They go South and
see the mustering of arms and the intensity of purpose, and coming North
find the whole community at their usual pursuits and pleasures,
regarding the controversy as a mere political breeze, and the results in
which it is beginning to issue as but the waves that ever for a short
season roll fiercely after the storm.

This indifference was one of the best signs of our health. We felt such
confidence in ourselves, that we distrusted no future, however
cloud-cast. The Constitution, sold for a penny-ha'penny in New York,
suggested to the mildly sarcastic humor of Dr. Russell that it had
better be a little more valuable in tact, if not so cheap in form. He
did not see how the People were the rightful masters of the
Constitution, as Mr. Lincoln had said they were of Congress and the
Courts, and that they would take care of it and of themselves when the
hour really came.

We did not see it. Blindness in part had happened unto the whole nation.
The shot at Sumter cleft the burdened head of Jove. A Nation was born in
a day. It saw instantly the length and the breadth, the height and the
depth of the conflict. It was not a struggle about Slavery and
Abolitionism, about the white race and the black, about union and
disunion; but it was a war for the rights of man, here and everywhere,
to-day and forever. The "glittering generalities" of our Declaration and
Constitution suddenly blazed with light, while the dull particularities
of mere routine faded as a waning moon before the glowing sun. These
were lost in the fiery splendors of the grand principles in which alone
they live and move and have their being. They will reappear, meekly
shining in their humbler sphere, when the great light shall withdraw its
intenser rays, the object of their blazing being accomplished. The body
of the war is Union, its soul Democracy: union for the sake of
democracy, and democracy for the sake of the world. Abolitionism is
simply a stepping-stone to the perfection of the Idea in our society.

The instinct that apprehended the full significance of the struggle was
universal: Europe saw it in the same flash that revealed it to us. The
lightning of the opening gun, or ever its accompanying thunder could
follow, leaped, like the lightnings of the final judgment, in an instant
from west to east, and illumined the whole earth with its glare.

In such an awakening it was inevitable but that literature should share.
And biographies, histories, pictorials, and juveniles, in Europe and
America, testify to the general consciousness. Into this last-named
class the little book at the head of this notice modestly essays to
enter. Had it put on airs and spread itself out into the broad-margined
and large-lettered octavo, it might have stood in libraries as a worthy
compeer of the ablest chronicles. Such a presentation would not have
been beyond its desert, and would have been more consistent with the
author's type of mind. Yet his simplicity, fidelity, and
straightforwardness will make him a better guide to advanced youth than
the too prattling habits of mere child-writers. They ever incline to the
baby-talk style of composition,--"mumming," as the tavern-woman
proposed, the bread and milk which they set before their youthful
readers. "Carleton" ever treats his boy-readers as his intelligent
equals, and considers them capable of understanding the common language
of books and men. It is refreshing to read a book for boys that is not,
as most of this class are, while pretending to be juvenile, actually
senile.

The work opens with the story of the causes of the war, in which the
author gives the old and new counterblasters a quid, or, as they will
doubtless prefer to call it, a crumb of comfort. He traces the origin of
the war, not to Slavery, but to Tobacco. The demand for the new drug was
general throughout Europe. Virginia was the main source of supply. The
vagabondish farmers would not labor. Negroes arrive, and European
appetite creates American Slavery. Two hundred years after, the
descendants of these slaveholders fancy that a like European demand for
another plant will insure this Slavery a national sovereignty. Tobacco
thus verifies Charles Lamb's unwilling execration. It is not Bacchus's
only, but Slavery's "black servant, negro fine," and belongs, after all,
to that Africa which he says "breeds no such prodigious poison." The
Union lovers of "the Great Plant" may be called to decide between their
country and their cigar. Will patriotism or the pipe then prevail? We
tremble for our country in that conflict of duty and desire. It is odd
that the two favorite plants of the South should thus be charged with
our war. These innocent leaves and blossoms, babes in the wood, are made
the bearers of our iniquities. Cotton and Tobacco are the white and
black representatives of the vegetable races. Perhaps some fanciful
theorist may show from this fact, that not only all the human races, but
those of the lower kingdoms, are involved in this struggle, and, as in
the greater warfare of Earth and Time, so in this, its condensed type,
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in common with its head and
master.

The anti-tobacco doctrine of the opening chapter gives place to a clear
statement of the gathering and organizing of the great army; which is
followed by descriptions of the Battles of Bull Run, Fort Henry, Fort
Donelson, Shiloh, the Siege of Island No. 10, and the capture of
Memphis. The narratives are illustrated with diagrams which set the
movements of the contending forces clearly before the eye. No
description of the first great battle of the war is superior to that
here given. It is a photographic view of the field and the combatants.
We see where the Rebels posted their divisions, how our forces were
stationed, how we attempted to outflank them, how they left their
original positions to protect the assailed outpost, how the battle raged
and was decided around that point, and how a single mistake caused our
first repulse, and, for lack of subsequent generalship, produced the
shameful and disastrous rout. Russell's description is far less clear
and concise. "Carleton" confirms McDowell's military scholarship, but
not his generalship. It is one thing to set squadrons in the field, it
is another to be equal to all the emergencies of the strife. He traces
our defeat to a single mistake, not alone nor chiefly to the arrival of
reinforcements. He puts it thus. Two regiments, the Second and Eighth
South Carolina, get in the rear of Griffin's and Rickett's batteries.
Griffin sees them, and turns his guns upon them. Major Barry declares
they are his supporters. Griffin says they are Rebels. The Major
persists in his opinion, and the Captain yields. The guns are turned
back, the South-Carolinians leap upon the batteries, and the panic
begins.

The book is especially valuable as it describes from personal
observation the first battles of General Grant. It has no better
war-pictures than the taking of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh
or Pittsburg Landing. These were the beginnings of Grant's reputation.
In them are seen the elements of his character, writ larger in the more
renowned deeds of Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They are strangely alike.
In both he is surprised by the enemy at daybreak, and while his soldiers
are asleep. In both he is at first driven from his camp, losing largely
of men and guns. In both, after a repulse so severe that the Rebel
generals fancy the day is theirs, and while their men give themselves up
to the spoiling of his tents, Grant, abating no jot of heart or hope,
rearranges his broken columns, and plants his guns in new positions, in
both cases on a hill rising from a ravine, whose opposite summit is
crowned with the Rebel artillery. In each case the Rebels cross the
ravine and attempt to scale the hill, and in each case are repulsed with
horrible slaughter. The parallel stops not here. Grant in both battles,
as soon as he has stayed the advance of the enemy, assumes the
offensive. The bugles sound the charge, and the Rebels are driven back
through our despoiled camp, and within their own intrenchments. These
first-fruits of the great general of the war show the difference between
him and the long-time pet of the nation, McClellan. The latter could not
move an inch without supplies as numerous and superfluous as those of a
summer sauntering lady at a watering-place. Grant does not wait for
Foote's gunboats to cooeperate at Donelson, but begins the fight the
instant he reaches the fort. When the boats are disabled and retire, he
does not wait for them to refit and return; nor when the enemy fails to
rout him, does he rest on his well-earned laurels till reinforcements
arrive, but turns upon them instantly and drives them with headlong fury
from their spoils and defences. There is no Antietam or Williamshurg
procrastinating. That very afternoon his exhausted troops storm the
fort, and the night beholds him the master of the outer works, and with
his guns raking the innermost fortifications. This heroic treatment of
the disease of Rebellion, with all its loss, results in far less
fatality than the rose-water generalship of the Peninsula, as the
statistics of the Eastern and Western armies will show.

The peculiar qualities of General Grant, as seen in these battles, are
coolness, readiness, and confidence. He is not embarrassed by reverses.
He seems the rather to court them. He prefers to take arms against a sea
of troubles. He thinks little of rations, ambulances, Sanitary, and, we
fear, Christian Commissions, but much of victory. These creature and
spiritual comforts are all well enough in their place, but they do not
take batteries and redoubts. McClellan is the pet of his soldiers, Grant
the pride of his. McClellan cares for their bodies, Grant for their
fame. McClellan kills by kindness, Grant by courage.

This battle-book for boys will hold no unimportant place in the
war-library of the times. Its style is usually as limpid as the
camp-brooks by which much of it was written. In the heat of the contest
it becomes a succession of short, sharp sentences, as if the musketry
rang in the writer's brain and moulded and winged his thoughts. It is
calm in the midst of its intensity, and thus happily illustrates by its
popularity that self-control of the nation so well expressed by
Hawthorne,--that our movements are as cool and collected, if as noisy,
as that of a thousand gentlemen in a hall quietly rising at the same
moment from their chairs. The battle-grounds of Vicksburg,
Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, all of which he saw, or by
subsequent study of the field has made his own, and descriptions of
which are promised in a companion-volume, will find no truer nor
worthier chronicler.


_A Compendious History of English Literature, and of the English
Language, from the Norman Conquest. With Numerous Specimens._ By GEORGE
L. CRAIK, LL.D., Professor of History and of English Literature in
Queen's College, Belfast. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner.

This is a thorough and an exhaustive work, having for its subject that
which must be of perpetual and increasing interest to all those
colonists who, in different parts of the world, are founding nations
which shall inherit the imperial language, and therefore will be
entitled to claim a share in the literary glories of the mother-land.
Professor Craik is favorably known as the author of works that depend
chiefly upon industry for their worth; and this elaborate production
must add to the esteem in which his learned labors have long been held
in many quarters. He has left no portion of his subject untouched, but
affords to his readers a full and lucid account of every part of it,
according to the materials that are at the command of scholars. If
defective on any points, it is owing to the want of authorities. His
survey of English literature includes not only all writers of the first
class, but all who can be regarded as of any considerable distinction;
and he has noticed many names which have no pretension to be considered
as even of second-rate importance, but concerning which general readers
may be curious, though their curiosity may not carry them so far as to
induce them to hunt up their works. A book of reference, such as this
book must be to most of those who shall use it, is bound to make mention
of writers whose names are of rare occurrence, but who had their parts,
though they may have been insignificant ones, in building up their
country's literature. Of the great writers, Professor Craik devotes but
little space to Shakspeare and Milton, because their works are in
everybody's hands; while from Chaucer and Spenser, Swift and Burke,
ample specimens are given, the author assuming that their writings are
but little read. Indeed, he declares that the great poets and other
writers even of the last generation have already faded from the view of
the most numerous class of the educated and reading public,--and that
scarcely anything is generally read except the publications of the day.
He correctly remarks that no true cultivation can be acquired by reading
nothing but the current literature. This, he says, "is the extreme case
of that entire ignorance of history, or of what had been done in the
world before we ourselves came into it, which has been affirmed, not
with more point than truth, to leave a person always a child." No doubt;
but we think the learned Professor overrates the extent of that neglect
of the literature of the past of which he complains,--for the editions
of the works of writers long dead, published in the last twenty years,
are numerous, and we know that books are not printed for people who do
not care for them. The number of readers of contemporary works is small,
if we compare those readers with the population of any given country;
but there are more readers now than could be found in any other age, not
only of the books of the day, but of the books of the past.

This work combines the history of English Literature with the history of
the English Language. The author's scheme of the course is, as described
by himself, extremely simple, and rests, not upon arbitrary, but upon
natural or real distinctions, giving us the only view of the subject
that can claim to be regarded as of a scientific character. This part of
his work will be found very valuable, as it popularizes a subject which
has few attractions for most readers.

The volumes are printed with great beauty, and do credit to the
Riverside Press, from which they come.


_The Foederalist_: A Collection of Essays, written in Favor of the New
Constitution, as agreed upon by the Foederal Convention, September 17,
1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction
and Notes, by HENRY DAWSON. In Two Volumes. Volume I. 8vo. New York:
Charles Scribner.

This volume contains the entire text of "The Federalist," with the notes
appended by the authors to their productions, preceded by an historical
and bibliographical Introduction, and an analytical Table of Contents;
in the second volume will appear the Notes prepared by Mr. Dawson, which
will embrace the more important of the alterations and corruptions of
the text, manuscript notes which have been found on the margins and
blank leaves of copies formerly owned by eminent statesmen, and other
illustrative matter, such as the author justly supposes will be useful
to those who may examine the text of the work, together with a complete
and carefully prepared Index. Mr. Dawson has devoted himself to the
preparation of this edition of "The Federalist," and labored diligently
to make it perfect, generally with success; but he is in error when he
says, in the Introduction, that there does not appear to be a copy of
the first edition of the work in any public library in Boston. There are
two copies of it in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum, both of which
we have seen. This mistake is an unhappy one, as it tends to shake our
faith in the accuracy of the editor's researches. Of "The Foederalist"
itself it is not necessary to say more than that it has the position of
an American classic, and that the political principles which it
advocates are of peculiar importance at this time, when the loyal
portion of the American people are engaged in a terrible struggle to
maintain the existence of that government which Hamilton and Madison
labored so diligently and successfully to establish. Mr. Dawson's
edition is one of rare excellence in everything that relates to
externals, and in this respect is beyond rivalry. An edition of "The
Foederalist," edited by John C. Hamilton, Esq., son of General
Hamilton, is announced to appear, and will undoubtedly be welcomed
warmly by all who feel an interest in the fame of the chief author of
the work, the man, next to Washington, to whom we are most indebted for
the establishment of our constitutional system of government.

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FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: There are three accounts as to the time of the birth of
"St. Arnaud, formerly Leroy." That which makes him oldest represents him
as being fifty-eight at the Battle of the Alma. The second makes him
fifty-six, and the third fifty-three. In either case he was not a young
man; but, though suffering from mortal illness, he showed no want of
vigor on almost every occasion when its display was required.]

[Footnote B: The advocates of youth in generals have never, that we are
aware, claimed Hamilcar Barcas as one of the illustrations of their
argument; yet he must have been a very young man when he began his
extraordinary career, if, as has been stated on good authority, he was
not beyond the middle age when he lost his life in battle. He was a
great man, perhaps even as great a man as his son Hannibal, who did but
carry out his father's designs.]

[Footnote C: At Fontenoy the Duke of Cumberland was but half the age of
the Comte de Saxe. In that battle an English soldier was taken prisoner,
after fighting with heroic bravery. A French officer complimented him,
saying, that, if there had been fifty thousand men like him on the other
side, the victory would have been theirs. "No," said the Englishman, "it
was not the fifty thousand brave men who were wanting, but a Marshal
Saxe." Cumberland was ever unlucky, save at Culloden. Saxe was old
beyond his years, being one of the fastest of the fast men of his time,
as became the son of Augustus the Strong and Aurora von Koenigsmark.]

[Footnote D: Henry V. was present, as Prince of Wales, at the Battle of
Shrewsbury, before he was sixteen; and there is some reason for
supposing that he commanded the royal forces in the Battle of Grosmont,
fought and won in his eighteenth year. He was but twenty-eight at
Agincourt. Splendid as was his military career, it was all over before
he had reached to thirty-six years. The Black Prince was but sixteen at
Crecy, and in his twenty-seventh year at Poitiers. Edward IV. was not
nineteen when he won the great Battle of Towton, and that was not his
first battle and victory. He was always successful. Richard III., as
Duke of Gloucester, was not nineteen when he showed himself to be an
able soldier, at Barnet; and he proved his generalship on other fields.
William I., Henry I., Stephen, Henry II., Richard I., Edward I., Edward
III., Henry IV., and William III. were all distinguished soldiers. The
last English sovereign who took part in a battle was George II., at
Dettingen.]

[Footnote E: See _Norfolk County Records_, 1657; _New England Historical
and Genealogical Register_, No. II. p. 192. The moral lapse of the first
minister of Hampton at the age of fourscore is referred to in the third
number of the same periodical. Goody Cole, the Hampton witch, was twice
imprisoned for the alleged practice of her arts.]

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