Chapter 22

Mr. Dicey clearly exhibits the bearing of the Rebellion upon the fate of the servile population of the South, and confesses that his deep sympathy with the Federal cause came from the conviction that the supremacy or overthrow of Slavery was intimately connected with the success or failure of Secession. In acknowledging the necessity that was upon loyal Americans of defending the fundamental law of their society, he is not disposed to adopt the lamentation of some of our foreign well-wishers who are troubled by the fear of a military despotism in the Free States. He has the sagacity to perceive that the genius and development of the graduates of Northern school-houses are totally opposed to a military rule. Mr. Dicey cordially recognizes the democratic idea which sanctifies our convulsion, and displays a careful observation in noting "the self-restraint, the moderation, and the patience of the American people in the conduct of the people's war." He is not over-disturbed because this same people loved law and order more than freedom itself, and with few murmurs committed high principles to the championship of whatever petty men happened to represent them. Indeed, one of the best sayings he reports is that of an old Polish exile, who congratulates himself that there will be no saviours of society, no fathers of their country, to be provided for when the war is over.

Throughout these two volumes British readers may discern something more than the barren facts of our struggle: they may catch glimpses of its energy and movement; they may see it as reflected from the most generous American minds. For it seems to have been Mr. Dicey's good fortune in this country to have gained admission to the society of men and women of high intelligence, in whom the religious sentiment was living and powerful; and he appears to estimate the full weight of testimony such persons offered in sending their loved ones to Virginia to fall beneath the rifle of some Southern boor. It is this silent public opinion of the North which our foreign critics have generally failed to comprehend. They have been so long accustomed to parody the rhetorical elation of our third-rate political speakers, and to represent this as a universal American characteristic, that they signally failed to estimate the genuine emotion with which it is never connected. When the cherished barbarism of slaveholders arose and threatened our Western civilization, those who most felt and have best wrought for their country were cautious in their speech. They knew that the principle underlying the struggle must submit itself to the checks and counter-checks of constitutional law. While the fire of liberty burned at the heart of citizens of abiding loyalty, it seemed best, that, like the Psalmist, they should hold their peace even from good words. Many thought it an act of necessary self-restraint to dwell only upon the Union as a symbol of that universal freedom which they felt the Union must finally represent. The dread of overleaping the restraints of law, which, perchance, has prolonged the conflict, has been most creditable to the genuine democracy we have represented. We are proud to remember many intelligent soldiers who used no language of passionate denunciation towards the guilty institution which called them to the field, yet who knew the end when they gave their lives to a cause utterly antagonistic to its despotic claims.

By the representations of Secessionists encountered in the Free States, as well as from disloyal newspapers which the "Lincoln despotism" never sought to suppress, Mr. Dicey was convinced that the sole purpose of the Rebellion was to get possession of the vast regions which lie west of the Mississippi, wherein to establish Slave States and Territories. "The North," he declares, "is fighting against, the South is fighting for, the power of extending slavery across the American continent; and if this was all that could be said, it is clear on which side must be the sympathies of any one who really and honestly believes that slavery is an evil and a sin." But it is not here that Mr. Dicey rests the case of the North as appealing to the Christian sentiment of the world. He shows that the inexorable logic of facts must work the overthrow of slavery where it now exists. The suppression of the slave-trade, the recognition of Hayti, abolition in the District of Columbia, and finally the Proclamation of January have one tendency and can have but one result. We state these views as one more confirmation of the fact, that, whether agreeable to us or not, the sympathies of liberal men in Europe are to be had on the sole ground that ours is an anti-slavery war.

Mr. Dicey's predilections lead him to make a generous, although discriminating, estimate of those men who, in time past, have endeavored to serve their country by leaving the level commonplaces of respectable citizenship. It is no slight praise to say that his chapter upon the New-England Abolitionists is clear and just. Their points of disagreement with the Republican party are stated with no common accuracy. Careful sentences give the precise position of Garrison and his adherents: the intrinsic essence of the movement of these reformers is divested of the subordinate and trivial facts so often put forward to misrepresent it. Although Mr. Dicey endeavors not to commit himself upon the vital differences in the agitation of anti-slavery sentiments by the Abolitionists and by the Republican party, it is very evident that he inclines to the belief that the former, in their advocacy of disunion, acted not from a perverse and fanatical philosophy, but from the logical compulsions of a critical understanding, stimulated by an intense conviction of the national sin.

We have dwelt thus upon Mr. Dicey's views of the war, and of the great moral question with which it is connected, because these portions of his volumes are most pertinent to us, as well as creditable to him. His sketches of public characters are good common-sense grasps at them, which generally get their externals, and occasionally something more. The description of the President is forcible, though a little too graphic for perfect courtesy. Caleb Cushing impresses the traveller as one of the ablest of our public men, and Wendell Phillips as by far the most eloquent speaker he ever heard. General Butler, however, is not to Mr. Dicey's taste. Indeed, he is hardly behind the "Saturday Review" in the terrible epithets he bestows upon the man who he acknowledges "was associated with the grandest triumph of the Federal arms, and by some means or other preserved New Orleans to the Union with but little cost of either men or money." It is rather late to renew discussion about the notorious order relating to the women of the subjected city. But Mr. Dicey chooses to express his belief in an infamous intention of General Butler at the time of its issue,--though he declares that "the strictest care was taken lest the order should be abused," and that the "Southern ladies [?] were grossly insulting in their behavior to the Union soldiers, using _language and gestures_ which, in a city occupied by troops of any other nation, would have subjected them, _without orders_, to the coarsest retaliation." To which we have only to reply, that General Butler may be a villain, but that he is certainly not a fool. Nobody doubts that he has military or civil aspirations for the future, and, for such ends, if for nothing else, wishes the approbation of his loyal countrymen. Now Mr. Dicey testifies to "the almost morbid sentiment of Americans in the Free States with regard to women": he tells us that "it renders them ridiculously susceptible to female influences"; also, that this same "sentiment" among us "protects women from the natural consequences of their own misconduct." These characteristics of his countrymen are just as familiar to General Butler as they are patent to Mr. Dicey; and we hold it to be simply incredible that one who is at least a very shrewd politician used language which _he intended_ should convey a meaning that must necessarily consign his future career to privacy and infamy. It is perhaps not wonderful that men who have deluged their country in blood, to propagate a system which consigns unborn millions to enforced harlotry, should put an evil interpretation upon the indignant stigma applied to _acts_ which, in civilized States, come from one class of women, and are designed for one purpose. Neither is it very astonishing that such persons as have been employed to pump the New-York sewers into the _cloaca maxima_ which sets towards us from Printing-House Square should share the sensitive chastity of the slave-masters whose work they are put to do. But it is passing strange that a gentleman so fair and reasonable as Mr. Dicey, one so appreciative of the moral tone which Northern society demands of its representatives, should join in an accusation whose absurdity is only lost in its infinite offence.

There are small inaccuracies, as well as occasional instances of carelessness or repetition, in these volumes, which, had circumstances allowed time for revision, might have been avoided. It would require the "Pathfinder" himself to discover "Fremont Street" in the city where we write; the "Courier" is _not_ "the most largely circulated of any Boston paper"; and our Ex-Mayor "Whiteman" requires no fanciful orthography to free his name from the obloquy of an over-devotion to the interests of colored citizens. These are local illustrations of mistakes which are excusable in view of the commendable expedition with which the work was issued,--for, in the late crisis of our affairs, an Englishman who had any good words to give us fulfilled the proverb by giving twice in giving quickly. But, whatever trifling details might be subjected to criticism, the total impression of what Mr. Dicey has written bears honorable testimony to the accuracy of his observation, as well as to his powers of comparison and judgment.

As has been already remarked, we cannot be blind to the fact that our only supporters in England are those men who recognize at the heart of our contest that genuine principle of Liberty which is not to be limited to caste or to race. And it is only by hastening to justify their confidence that we can win to our cause the great people they address. If we cannot gain the national sympathy of England, we must do without the true sympathy of any nation. It was, indeed, remarked by De Tocqueville, that, "in the eyes of the English, the cause which is most useful to England is always the cause of justice." But the rare insight of the philosopher assigns the phenomenon, not to a political Machiavelism, but to a "laudable desire to connect the actions of one's country with something more stable than interest." The English have a peculiar gift of fixing their whole attention upon certain traits or single circumstances which they desire to see. We doubt not that a portion of their sympathy with the energy and endurance of those in arms against their country is estimable according to its light. But as the dignity of our mission in this struggle becomes more and more apparent, the moral intelligence of England will be forced to unite itself with the Government of the United States. Let that day come when it will, posterity will remember its obligations to those Englishmen who did so much to avert the hideous calamity of a war between the two liberal powers of the world. And to us of this present generation it is grateful to know that our brave and generous young men have not died wholly unrecognized in the land of their ancestors. Mill, Ellison, Hughes,--what need to name the rest?--have stood up to report them and their cause aright to the unsatisfied: in which roll of the honorable and honored we are glad to write the name of Edward Dicey.

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_Hospital Transports_. A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862. Compiled and published at the Request of the Sanitary Commission. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

If pure benevolence was ever organized and utilized into beneficence, the name of the institution is the Sanitary Commission. It is a standing answer to Samson's riddle, "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." Out of the very depths of the agony of this cruel and bloody war springs this beautiful system, built of the noblest and divinest attributes of the human soul. Amidst all the heroism of daring and enduring which this war has developed, amidst all the magnanimity of which it has shown the race capable, the daring, the endurance, and the greatness of soul which have been discovered among the men and women who have given their lives to this work shine as brightly as any on the battle-field,--in some respects even more brightly. They have not the bray of trumpets nor the clash of swords to rouse enthusiasm, nor will the land ever resound with their victories. Theirs is the dark and painful side, the menial and hidden side, but made light and lovely by the spirit that shines in and through it all. Glimpses of this agency are familiar to our people; but not till the history of its inception, progress, and results is calmly and adequately written out and spread before the public will any idea be formed of the magnitude and importance of the work which it has done. Nor even then. Never, till every soldier whose last moments it has soothed, till every soldier whose flickering life it has gently steadied into continuance, whose waning reason it has softly lulled into quiet, whose chilled blood it has warmed into healthful play, whose failing frame it has nourished into strength, whose fainting heart it has comforted with sympathy,--never, until every full soul has poured out its story of gratitude and thanksgiving, will the record be complete; but long before that time, ever since the moment that its helping hand was first held forth, comes the Blessed Voice, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

An institution asking of Government only permission to live and opportunity to work, planting itself firmly and squarely on the generosity of the people, subsisting solely by their free-will offerings, it is a noble monument of the intelligence, the munificence, and the efficiency of a free people, and of the alacrity with which it responds when the right chord is rightly touched. It is, however, not unnatural that doubts should exist as to the success of a plan so far-reaching in its aims and hitherto so untried. Stories have been circulated of a mercenary disposition of its stores and trickery among its officers. Where these stories have found considerable credence, they have been tracked to their source and triumphantly refuted; but it would indeed be hardly less than miraculous, if an institution ramifying so widely, with agents so numerous, and resources so extensive, should have no knaves among its servants, and no waste in its circulation. The wonder is, that more leakage has not been proved than has ever been suspected. All that is necessary to remove floating doubts, to convince all heads of the wisdom which projected this Commission, and to warm all hearts up to its continued and sufficient support, is a knowledge of what it has done, is doing, and purposes to do. This information the Commission has, at different times, and by piecemeal, furnished: necessarily by piecemeal, since, as this book justly remarks, the immense mass of details which a circumstantial account of its operations in field and hospital must involve would prove nearly as laborious in the reading as in the performance. In this little volume we have, photographed, a single phase of its operations. It consists simply of extracts from letters and reports. There is no attempt at completeness or dramatic arrangement; yet the most elaborate grouping would probably fail to present one-half as accurately a picture of the work and its ways as these unpretending fragments. It delights us to see the--we can hardly say cheerful, as that savors too much of the "self-sacrifice" which benevolence sometimes tarnishes by talking about--but, rather, the gay, lively, merry manner in which the most balky matters are taken hold of. Men and women seem to have gone into the service with good-will and hearty love and buoyant spirits. It refreshes and strengthens us like a tonic to read of their taking the wounded, festering, filthy, miserable men, washing and dressing them, pouring in lemonade and beef-tea, and putting them abed and asleep. There is not a word about "devotion" or "ministering angels," (we could wish there were not quite so much about "ladies,") but honest, refined, energetic, able women, with quick brains and quick hands, now bathing a poor crazy head with ice-water, to be rewarded with one grateful smile from the parting soul,--now standing in the way of a procession of the slightly wounded, to pour a little brandy down their throats, or put an orange into their hands, just to keep them up till they reach food and rest,--now running up the river in a steam-tug, scrambling eggs in a wash-basin over a spirit-lamp as they go,--now groping their way, at all hours of the night, through torrents of rain, into dreadful places crammed with sick and dying men, "calling back to life those in despair from utter exhaustion, or again and again catching for mother or wife the last faint whispers of the dying,"--now leaving their compliments to serve a disappointed colonel instead of his dinner, which they had nipped in the bud by dragging away the stove with its four fascinating and not-to-be-withstood pot-holes;--and let the sutler's name be wreathed with laurel who not only permitted this, but offered his cart and mule to drag the stove to the boat, and would take no pay!

The blessings of thousands who were ready to perish, and of tens of thousands who love their country and their kind, rest upon those who originated, and those who sustain, this noble work. Let the people's heart never faint and its hand never weary; but let it, of its abundance, give to this Commission full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, that, wherever the red trail of war is seen, its divine footsteps may follow,--that, wherever the red hand of war is lifted to wound, its white hand may be lifted to heal,--that its work may never cease until it is assumed by a great Christian Government, or until peace once more reigns throughout the land. And even then, gratitude for its service, and joy in its glory, shall never die out of the hearts of the American people.

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_The History of the Supernatural, in all Ages and Nations, and in all Churches, Christian and Pagan, demonstrating a Universal Faith_. By WILLIAM HOWITT. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

There has been a great change of late years in connection with the science of Pneumatology and with the manner of treating it. There was a revolution of opinion on this subject in the middle of the last century; there is a counter-revolution to-day.

The superstitions and credulities of the Middle Ages eventuated, during the course of the eighteenth century, in the Encyclopædism of French philosophy. The grounds upon which the Church based her doctrine of the supernatural were fiercely attacked. The proofs brought forward to prove the insufficiency of such grounds were assumed to prove more than lack of logic in the Church; they were taken as proofs, that, in the nature of things, there is no evidence for the supernatural, in any sense of the term; in other words, that there is no knowledge within the reach of mortals, except that which relates to the physical,--to this earth, as the only phase of existence,--to the vital body, as the all of the human being. Emotional and intellectual phenomena were but results of material organization, as heat is the result of combustion: they exhibited themselves so long as vitality continued; they disappeared when death supervened, as the warmth from a fire dies out with the cessation of combustion. No hypothetical soul was needed to account for the thousand phenomena of thought or of sensation. Pneumatology was no science, but the mere fancy of an excited imagination.

Not to the literature and the social life of France alone was this materialistic influence confined. The mind of Germany, of England, and, more or less, of the rest of Europe, and of America, was pervaded by it. The tendency, all over the civilized world, was towards unbelief, not merely in miracles, but in all things spiritual. Science, with her strict tests and her severe inductions, lent her aid in the same direction.

It does not seem to have occurred to the philosophers of the Encyclopædian school that a doctrine is not necessarily false because an insufficient argument is brought forward to prove it. It does not appear to have occurred to skeptical physicists that there may be laws of Nature regulating ultramundane phenomena, as fixed, as invariable, as those which decide the succession of geological phenomena and the products of chemical combinations.

Here is a theory which is worth considering. May it not be that God adapts the proofs of that which it is important that man should know to the intellectual progress of mankind? Is it certain that the same evidence which sufficed for the foundation of religious faith five hundred years ago will suffice equally well to-day? Truths are eternal; laws of Nature vary not. But of the world's thoughts there is a childhood, a youth, a manhood; and there may be various classes of arguments suited to various stages of progress.

Again, assuming that the materialist takes a contracted view of the economy of human life, ignoring every portion of it except its present phase, (that phase being but the preparation for another and a higher,) may it not be, that, as the world advances, men may gradually be permitted, occasionally and to a limited extent, to become aware of influences exerted from a more advanced phase of existence over this? May it not be that the links connecting the two phases of existence are gradually to become more numerous and apparent?

Such are the general views which William Howitt's work is intended to illustrate and enforce. He selects, as a title-page motto, an axiom from Butler's "Analogy,"--"There are two courses of Nature: the ordinary and the extraordinary." By the supernatural he does not mean phenomena out of the course of Nature, but such comparatively rare phenomena as are governed by laws with which we are unacquainted, and as are, therefore, to us something extraordinary, something to be wondered at,--miracles.

The author travels over a vast extent of ground,--more, we think, than can be properly explored in the compass of two duodecimo volumes. All ages, all countries, all faiths, furnish their quota towards his collection. It is curious, interesting, suggestive, rather than conclusive. It exhibits more industry than logic. It consists rather of abundant materials for others to use, than of materials worked up by the collector. It gives evidence of learning, research, and a comprehensive study of the subject. It is a _thesaurus_ of pneumatological knowledge, collected with German assiduity. It will set many to thinking, though it may convince but few, except of the one truth, that the faith in the supernatural has been a universal faith, pervading all nations, persisting through all ages.

The number of those who take an interest in the subject treated of in Mr. Howitt's book, and who believe that great truths underlie popular superstitions, increases day by day; and the work will probably have a wide circulation.