THE IDEAL AND THE REAL
This ideal element so predominates, in consequence of over or false culture; by the reading of a spurious literature, which dwells in the regions of fiction and romance, to the proportionate neglect of the stirring incidents of our time, which actually go to make up true history—which seem marvellous enough of themselves, without the necessity of invention, or the aid of artificial novelties, except for mere embellishment.
It would seem that the rise and progress of this Republic; the spread of our ocean commerce; the building of a thousand cities; the rush of the world to our shores; the peopling of our boundless plains; the rapid birth of new States into our Union; the triumph of our arms; our repeated accessions of territory; our maritime and commercial superiority; our foreign discoveries; our inventions in mechanism; our discoveries in science; the use of steam, and electricity; our statesmanship, and foreign diplomacy; a thousand miraculous incidents of individual enterprise and success; the discovery of gold, of silver, and iron; our internal improvements and meliorations; our national prestige; and finally, our greatness and glory as a nation,—ought to suffice for any reasonable conception of the marvellous, as they outstrip the more ignoble creations of fancy, and absolutely invade the former domain of fiction and romance. Hence the seeming puerility of fiction when contrasted with these more wondrous phenomena of fact. The substitution of fiction for fact is, therefore, unnecessary and absurd, as it defeats the very purpose intended, by its own inferiority. Its chief effect, then, is but to mislead the mind.
Let us, then, control the imagination; discard the ideal in practical affairs, hold it in its sphere, and adopt the real, in order that by the exercise of right reason we may be enabled to consider the present subject as it is, and not as it would be when weighed in the scale of the ideal; for in this way, and this alone, can we come to just conclusions, and our labors result in practical benefit to those most concerned in the premises. In the spirit of truth, of candor, of sober reality, let us, therefore, approach the subject of American Slavery.