CHAPTER I
RECONSTRUCTION AND AFTER
The war was over, but three great questions remained to be settled. How were the people of the South to be regarded? How was the Union to be reconstructed? What was to be done with the three millions of negroes who had been given their freedom? These were the questions which came before the Thirty-Ninth Congress.
TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS
O people-chosen! are ye not
Likewise the chosen of the Lord,
To do His will and speak His word?
From the loud thunder-storm of war
Not man alone hath called ye forth,
But He, the God of all the earth!
The torch of vengeance in your hands
He quenches; unto Him belongs
The solemn recompense of wrongs.
Enough of blood the land has seen,
And not by cell or gallows-stair
Shall ye the way of God prepare.
Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep
Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees,
Nor palter with unworthy pleas.
Above your voices sounds the wail
Of starving men; we shut in vain
Our eyes to [Pillow's ghastly stain].
What words can drown that bitter cry?
What tears wash out the stain of death?
What oaths confirm your broken faith?
From you alone the guaranty
Of union, freedom, peace, we claim;
We urge no conqueror's terms of shame.
Alas! no victor's pride is ours;
We bend above our triumphs won
Like David o'er his rebel son.
Be men, not beggars. Cancel all
By one brave, generous action: trust
Your better instincts, and be just!
Make all men peers before the law,
Take hands from off the negro's throat,
Give black and white an equal vote.
Keep all your forfeit lives and lands,
But give the common law's redress
To labor's utter nakedness.
Revive the old heroic will;
Be in the right as brave and strong
As ye have proved yourselves in wrong.
Defeat shall then be victory,
Your loss the wealth of full amends,
And hate be love, and foes be friends.
Then buried be the dreadful past,
Its common slain be mourned, and let
All memories soften to regret.
Then shall the Union's mother-heart
Her lost and wandering ones recall,
Forgiving and restoring all,—
And Freedom break her marble trance
Above the Capitolian dome,
Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home!
John Greenleaf Whittier.
Few men could have been worse fitted for the delicate task of reconstruction than Andrew Johnson. But even his policy, narrow as it was, was not narrow enough to suit the radical Republicans in Congress.
"[MR. JOHNSON'S POLICY OF RECONSTRUCTION]"
SOME COMMENT FROM THE BOYS IN BLUE
"His policy," do you say?
By heaven, who says so lies in his throat!
'Twas our policy, boys, from our muster-day,
Through skirmish and bivouac, march and fray—
"His policy," do you say?
"His policy"—do but note!
'Tis a pitiful falsehood for you to say.
Did he bid all the stars in our banner float?
Was it he shouted Union from every throat
Through the long war's weary day?
"His policy"—how does it hap?
Has the old word "Union" no meaning, pray?
What meant the "U. S." upon every cap—
Upon every button, belt, and strap?
'Twas our policy all the way.
"His policy?" That may do
For a silly and empty political brag;
But 'twas held by every Boy in Blue
When he lifted his right hand, stanch and true,
And swore to sustain the flag.
We are with him none the less—
He works for the same great end we sought;
We feel for the South in its deep distress,
And to get the old Union restored we press—
'Twas for this we enlisted and fought.
Be it his or whose it may,
'Tis the policy, boys, that we avow;
There were noble hearts in the ranks of gray
As they proved on many a bloody day,
And we would not oppress them now.
"Let us all forgive and forget:"
It was thus Grant spoke to General Lee,
When, with wounds still raw and bayonets wet,
The chiefs of the two great armies met
Beneath the old apple-tree.
Charles Graham Halpine.
The leader of this coterie was Thaddeus Stevens. He declared the South was in a state of anarchy, demanded that it be placed under military rule and that suffrage be extended to the negroes. In February, 1868, he introduced a resolution that "Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors in office," but at the trial which followed the proceedings were shown to have been actuated by partisan bitterness and the President was acquitted. The verdict was a heavy blow to Stevens. He had burned himself out and died in August.
THADDEUS STEVENS
DIED AUG. 11, 1868
An eye with the piercing eagle's fire,
Not the look of the gentle dove;
Not his the form that men admire,
Nor the face that tender women love.
Working first for his daily bread
With the humblest toilers of the earth;
Never walking with free, proud tread—
[Crippled and halting from his birth].
Wearing outside a thorny suit
Of sharp, sarcastic, stinging power;
Sweet at the core as sweetest fruit,
Or inmost heart of fragrant flower.
Fierce and trenchant, the haughty foe
Felt his words like a sword of flame;
But to the humble, poor, and low
Soft as a woman's his accents came.
Not his the closest, tenderest friend—
No children blessed his lonely way;
But down in his heart until the end
The tender dream of his boyhood lay.
His mother's faith he held not fast;
But he loved her living, mourned her dead,
And he kept her memory to the last
As green as the sod above her bed.
He held as sacred in his home
Whatever things she wrought or planned,
And never suffered change to come
To the work of her "industrious hand."
For her who pillowed first his head
He heaped with a wealth of flowers the grave,
While he chose to sleep in an unmarked bed,
By his Master's humblest poor—the slave!
Suppose he swerved from the straightest course—
That the things he should not do he did—
That he hid from the eyes of mortals, close,
Such sins as you and I have hid?
Or suppose him worse than you; what then?
Judge not, lest you be judged for sin!
One said who knew the hearts of men:
Who loveth much shall a pardon win.
The Prince of Glory for sinners bled;
His soul was bought with a royal price;
And his beautified feet on flowers may tread
To-day with his Lord in Paradise.
Phœbe Cary.
The South's condition meanwhile was pitiful indeed. Negroes, led by "carpet-baggers" from the North, secured the ascendancy in state government. Millions of dollars were wasted or stolen, and it looked for a time as though a great section of the country was doomed to negro domination.
SOUTH CAROLINA TO THE STATES OF THE NORTH
ESPECIALLY TO THOSE THAT FORMED A PART OF THE ORIGINAL THIRTEEN
I lift these hands with iron fetters banded:
Beneath the scornful sunlight and cold stars
I rear my once imperial forehead branded
By alien shame's immedicable scars;
Like some pale captive, shunned by all the nations,
I crouch unpitied, quivering and apart—
Laden with countless woes and desolations,
The life-blood freezing round a broken heart!
About my feet, splashed red with blood of slaughters,
My children gathering in wild, mournful throngs,
Despairing sons, frail infants, stricken daughters,
Rehearse the awful burden of their wrongs;
Vain is their cry, and worse than vain their pleading:
I turn from stormy breasts, from yearning eyes,
To mark where Freedom's outraged form receding,
Wanes in chill shadow down the midnight skies!
I wooed her once in wild tempestuous places,
The purple vintage of my soul outpoured,
To win and keep her unrestrained embraces,
What time the olive-crown o'ertopped the sword;
Oh! northmen, with your gallant heroes blending,
Mine, in old years, for this sweet goddess died;
But now—ah! shame, all other shame transcending!
Your pitiless hands have torn her from my side.
What! 'tis a tyrant-party's treacherous action—
Your hand is clean, your conscience clear, ye sigh;
Ay! but ere now your sires had throttled faction,
Or, pealed o'er half the world their battle-cry;
Its voice outrung from solemn mountain-passes
Swept by wild storm-winds of the Atlantic strand,
To where the swart Sierras' sullen grasses
Droop in low languors of the sunset-land!
Never, since earthly States began their story,
Hath any suffered, bided, borne like me:
At last, recalling all mine ancient glory,
I vowed my fettered Commonwealth to free:
Even at the thought, beside the prostrate column
Of chartered rights, which blasted lay and dim—
Uprose my noblest son with purpose solemn,
While, host on host, his brethren followed him:
Wrong, grasped by truth, arraigned by law (whose sober
Majestic mandates rule o'er change and time)—
Smit by the ballot, like some flushed October,
Reeled in the Autumn rankness of his crime;
Struck, tortured, pierced—but not a blow returning.
The steadfast phalanx of my honored braves
Planted their bloodless flag where sunrise burning,
Flashed a new splendor o'er our martyrs' graves!
What then? Oh, sister States! what welcome omen
Of love and concord crossed our brightening blue,
The foes we vanquished, are they not your foemen,
Our laws upheld, your sacred safeguards, too?
Yet scarce had victory crowned our grand endeavor,
And peace crept out from shadowy glooms remote—
Than—as if bared to blast all hope forever,
Your tyrant's sword shone glittering at my throat!
Once more my bursting chains were reunited,
Once more barbarian plaudits wildly rung
O'er the last promise of deliverance blighted,
The prostrate purpose and the palsied tongue:
Ah! faithless sisters, 'neath my swift undoing,
Peers the black presage of your wrath to come;
Above your heads are signal clouds of ruin,
Whose lightnings flash, whose thunders are not dumb!
There towers a judgment-seat beyond our seeing;
There lives a Judge, whom none can bribe or blind;
Before whose dread decree, your spirit fleeing,
May reap the whirlwind, having sown the wind:
I, in that day of justice, fierce and torrid,
When blood—your blood—outpours like poisoned wine,
Pointing to these chained limbs, this blasted forehead,
May mock your ruin, as ye mocked at mine!
Paul Hamilton Hayne.
But the white people of the South rallied at last, asserted their supremacy, and seized the reins of government. The famous Ku-Klux Klan was organized and spread terror among the negroes, by its sure and swift administration of punishment—just and unjust.
KU-KLUX
We have sent him seeds of the melon's core,
And nailed a warning upon his door;
By the Ku-Klux laws we can do no more.
Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack,
The roof of his low-porched house looms black,
Not a line of light at the doorsill's crack.
Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
The clouds blow heavy towards the moon.
The edge of the storm will reach it soon.
The killdee cries and the lonesome loon.
The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare
Than the lightning makes with his angled flare,
When the Ku-Klux verdict is given there.
In the pause of the thunder rolling low,
A rifle's answer—who shall know
From the wind's fierce hurl and the rain's black blow?
Only the signature written grim
At the end of the message brought to him,—
A hempen rope and a twisted limb.
So arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
Madison Cawein.
The North kept its hands off and permitted the South to work out its own destiny—which it did blindly and blunderingly enough. Yet bravely, too; for it had only ashes to build from. But from the ashes a new land arose, and a better one.
THE REAR GUARD
The guns are hushed. On every field once flowing
With war's red flood May's breath of peace is shed,
And, spring's young grass and gracious flowers are growing
Above the dead.
Ye gray old men whom we this day are greeting,
Honor to you, honor and love and trust!
Brave to the brave. Your soldier hands are meeting
Across their dust.
Bravely they fought who charged when flags were flying
In cannon's crash, in screech and scream of shell;
Bravely they fell, who lay alone and dying
In battle's hell.
Honor to them! Far graves to-day are flinging
Up through the soil peace-blooms to meet the sun,
And daisied heads to summer winds are singing
Their long "well done."
Our vanguard, they. They went with hot blood flushing
At battle's din, at joy of bugle's call.
They fell with smiles, the flood of young life gushing,
Full brave the fall!
But braver ye who, when the war was ended,
And bugle's call and wave of flag were done,
Could come back home, so long left undefended.
Your cause unwon,
And twist the useless sword to hook of reaping,
Rebuild the homes, set back the empty chair
And brave a land where waste and want were keeping
Guard everywhere.
All this you did, your courage strong upon you,
And out of ashes, wreck, a new land rose,
Through years of war no braver battle won you,
'Gainst fiercer foes.
And now to-day a prospered land is cheering
And lifting up her voice in lusty pride
For you gray men, who fought and wrought, not fearing
Battle's red tide.
Our rear guard, ye whose step is slowing, slowing,
Whose ranks, earth-thinned, are filling otherwhere,
Who wore the gray—the gray, alas! still showing
On bleaching hair.
For forty years you've watched this land grow stronger,
For forty years you've been its bulwark, stay;
Tarry awhile; pause yet a little longer
Upon the way.
And set our feet where there may be no turning,
And set our faces straight on duty's track,
Where there may be for stray, strange goods no yearning
Nor looking back.
And when for you the last tattoo has sounded,
And on death's silent field you've pitched your tent,
When, bowed through tears, the arc of life has rounded
To full content,
We that are left will count it guerdon royal,
Our heritage no years can take away,
That we were born of those, unflinching, loyal,
Who wore the gray.
Irene Fowler Brown.
The bitterness which the great struggle had engendered gradually gave place to a kindlier feeling. As early as 1867, the women of Columbus, Miss., decorated alike the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers, an action which was the first of many such.
[1867]
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray.
These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the laurel, the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for the friend and the foe:
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Broidered with gold, the Blue,
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Wet with the rain, the Blue,
Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done,
In the storm of the years that are fading
No braver battle was won:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war-cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.
Francis Miles Finch.
When the South was swept by yellow fever a few years later, the North rushed to its relief in a way which showed how completely old animosities had been forgotten.
THE STRICKEN SOUTH TO THE NORTH
When ruthful time the South's memorial places—
Her heroes' graves—had wreathed in grass and flowers;
When Peace ethereal, crowned by all her graces,
Returned to make more bright the summer hours;
When doubtful hearts revived, and hopes grew stronger;
When old sore-cankering wounds that pierced and stung,
Throbbed with their first, mad, feverous pain no longer,
While the fair future spake with flattering tongue;
When once, once more she felt her pulses beating
To rhythms of healthful joy and brave desire;
Lo! round her doomed horizon darkly meeting,
A pall of blood-red vapors veined with fire!
Oh! ghastly portent of fast-coming sorrows!
Of doom that blasts the blood and blights the breath,
Robs youth and manhood of all golden morrows—
And life's clear goblet brims with wine of death!—
Oh! swift fulfilment of this portent dreary!
Oh! nightmare rule of ruin, racked by fears,
Heartbroken wail, and solemn miserere,
Imperious anguish, and soul-melting tears!
Oh! faith, thrust downward from celestial splendors,
Oh! love grief-bound, with palely-murmurous mouth!
Oh! agonized by life's supreme surrenders—
Behold her now—the scourged and suffering South!
No balm in Gilead? nay, but while her forehead,
Pallid and drooping, lies in foulest dust,
There steals across the desolate spaces torrid,
A voice of manful cheer and heavenly trust,
A hand redeeming breaks the frozen starkness
Of palsied nerve, and dull, despondent brain;
Rolls back the curtain of malignant darkness,
And shows the eternal blue of heaven again—
Revealing there, o'er worlds convulsed and shaken,
That face whose mystic tenderness enticed
To hope new-born earth's lost bereaved, forsaken!
Ah! still beyond the tempest smiles the Christ!
Whose voice? Whose hand? Oh, thanks divinest Master,
Thanks for those grand emotions which impart
Grace to the North to feel the South's disaster,
The South to bow with touched and cordial heart!
Now, now at last the links which war had broken
Are welded fast, at mercy's charmed commands;
Now, now at last the magic words are spoken
Which blend in one two long-divided lands!
O North! you came with warrior strife and clangor;
You left our South one gory burial ground;
But love, more potent than your haughtiest anger,
Subdues the souls which hate could only wound!
Paul Hamilton Hayne.
On July 29, 1866, the first submarine cable was completed between Ireland and Newfoundland, the enterprise having been undertaken and carried through by Cyrus West Field.
[July 29, 1866]
Come, listen all unto my song;
It is no silly fable;
'Tis all about the mighty cord
They call the Atlantic Cable.
Bold Cyrus Field he said, says he,
"I have a pretty notion
That I can run a telegraph
Across the Atlantic Ocean."
Then all the people laughed, and said
They'd like to see him do it;
He might get half-seas over, but
He never could go through it.
To carry out his foolish plan
He never would be able;
He might as well go hang himself
With his Atlantic Cable.
But Cyrus was a valiant man,
A fellow of decision;
And heeded not their mocking words,
Their laughter and derision.
Twice did his bravest efforts fail,
And yet his mind was stable;
He wa'n't the man to break his heart
Because he broke his cable.
"Once more, my gallant boys!" he cried;
"Three times!—you know the fable
(I'll make it thirty," muttered he,
"But I will lay the cable!").
Once more they tried,—hurrah! hurrah!
What means this great commotion?
The Lord be praised! the cable's laid
Across the Atlantic Ocean!
Loud ring the bells,—for, flashing through
Six hundred leagues of water,
Old Mother England's benison
Salutes her eldest daughter!
O'er all the land the tidings speed,
And soon, in every nation,
They'll hear about the cable with
Profoundest admiration!
Now, long live President and Queen;
And long live gallant Cyrus;
And may his courage, faith, and zeal
With emulation fire us;
And may we honor evermore
The manly, bold, and stable;
And tell our sons, to make them brave,
How Cyrus laid the cable!
John Godfrey Saxe.
THE CABLE HYMN
[O lonely bay of Trinity],
O dreary shores, give ear!
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea
The voice of God to hear!
From world to world His couriers fly,
Thought-winged and shod with fire;
The angel of His stormy sky
Rides down the sunken wire.
What saith the herald of the Lord?
"The world's long strife is done;
Close wedded by that mystic cord,
Its continents are one.
"And one in heart, as one in blood,
Shall all her peoples be;
The hands of human brotherhood
Are clasped beneath the sea.
"Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain
And Asian mountains borne,
The vigor of the Northern brain
Shall nerve the world outworn.
"From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
Shall thrill the magic thread;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead."
Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
From answering beach to beach;
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
And melt the chains of each!
Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tamed and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,
Thy errands to and fro.
Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
Beneath the deep so far,
The bridal robe of earth's accord,
The funeral shroud of war!
For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall
Space mocked and time outrun;
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one!
The poles unite, the zones agree,
The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee
The Christ is whispering, Peace!
John Greenleaf Whittier.
The most notable accomplishment of Johnson's administration was the purchase from Russia in 1867 of the territory of Alaska. The price paid was $7,200,000, and the cession was formally made on June 20.
AN ARCTIC VISION
[June 20, 1867]
Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
Where by day they track the ermine,
And by night another vermin,—
Segment of the frigid zone,
Where the temperature alone
Warms on St. Elias' cone;
Polar dock, where Nature slips
From the ways her icy ships;
Land of fox and deer and sable,
Shore end of our western cable,—
Let the news that flying goes
Thrill through all your Arctic floes,
And reverberate the boast
From the cliffs off Beechey's coast,
Till the tidings, circling round
Every bay of Norton Sound,
Throw the vocal tide-wave back
To the isles of Kodiac.
Let the stately Polar bears
Waltz around the pole in pairs,
And the walrus, in his glee,
Bare his tusk of ivory;
While the bold sea-unicorn
Calmly takes an extra horn;
All ye Polar skies, reveal your
Very rarest of parhelia;
Trip it, all ye merry dancers,
In the airiest of "Lancers";
Slide, ye solemn glaciers, slide,
One inch farther to the tide,
Nor in rash precipitation
Upset Tyndall's calculation.
Know you not what fate awaits you,
Or to whom the future mates you?
All ye icebergs make salaam,—
You belong to Uncle Sam!
On the spot where Eugene Sue
Led his wretched Wandering Jew,
Stands a form whose features strike
Russ and Esquimaux alike.
He it is whom Skalds of old
In their Runic rhymes foretold;
Lean of flank and lank of jaw,
See the real Northern Thor!
See the awful Yankee leering
Just across the Straits of Behring;
On the drifted snow, too plain,
Sinks his fresh tobacco stain,
Just beside the deep inden-
Tation of his Number 10.
Leaning on his icy hammer
Stands the hero of this drama,
And above the wild-duck's clamor,
In his own peculiar grammar,
With its linguistic disguises,
Lo, the Arctic prologue rises:
"Wall, I reckon 'tain't so bad,
Seein' ez 'twas all they had;
True, the Springs are rather late
And early Falls predominate;
But the ice crop's pretty sure,
And the air is kind o' pure;
'Tain't so very mean a trade,
When the land is all surveyed.
There's a right smart chance for fur-chase
All along this recent purchase,
And, unless the stories fail,
Every fish from cod to whale;
Rocks, too; mebbe quartz; let's see,—
'Twould be strange if there should be,—
Seems I've heerd such stories told;
Eh!—why, bless us,—yes, it's gold!"
While the blows are falling thick
From his California pick,
You may recognize the Thor
Of the vision that I saw,—
Freed from legendary glamour,
See the real magician's hammer.
Bret Harte.
ALASKA
Ice built, ice bound, and ice bounded,
Such cold seas of silence! such room!
Such snow-light, such sea-light, confounded
With thunders that smite like a doom!
Such grandeur! such glory! such gloom!
Hear that boom! Hear that deep distant boom
Of an avalanche hurled
Down this unfinished world!
Ice seas! and ice summits! ice spaces
In splendor of white, as God's throne!
Ice worlds to the pole! and ice places
Untracked, and unnamed, and unknown!
Hear that boom! Hear the grinding, the groan
Of the ice-gods in pain! Hear the moan
Of yon ice mountain hurled
Down this unfinished world.
Joaquin Miller.
Friday, September 24, 1869, witnessed one of the greatest panics ever known in the United States, when Jay Gould and a few associates managed to drive the price of gold up to 162½.
ISRAEL FREYER'S BID FOR GOLD
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1869
Zounds! how the price went flashing through
Wall Street, William, Broad Street, New!
All the specie in all the land
Held in one Ring by a giant hand—
For millions more it was ready to pay,
And throttle the Street on hangman's-day.
Up from the Gold Pit's nether hell,
While the innocent fountain rose and fell,
Loud and higher the bidding rose,
And the bulls, triumphant, faced their foes.
It seemed as if Satan himself were in it:
Lifting it—one per cent a minute—
Through the bellowing broker, there amid,
Who made the terrible, final bid!
High over all, and ever higher,
Was heard the voice of Israel Freyer,—
A doleful knell in the storm-swept mart,—
"Five millions more! and for any part
I'll give One Hundred and Sixty!"
Israel Freyer—the Government Jew—
Good as the best—soaked through and through
With credit gained in the year he sold
Our Treasury's precious hoard of gold;
Now through his thankless mouth rings out
The leaguers' last and cruellest shout!
Pity the shorts? Not they, indeed,
While a single rival's left to bleed!
Down come dealers in silks and hides,
Crowding the Gold Room's rounded sides,
Jostling, trampling each other's feet,
Uttering groans in the outer street;
Watching, with upturned faces pale,
The scurrying index mark its tale;
Hearing the bid of Israel Freyer,—
That ominous voice, would it never tire?
"Five millions more!—for any part
(If it breaks your firm, if it cracks your heart),
I'll give One Hundred and Sixty!"
One Hundred and Sixty! Can't be true!
What will the bears-at-forty do?
How will the merchants pay their dues?
How will the country stand the news?
What'll the banks—but listen! hold!
In screwing upward the price of gold
To that dangerous, last, particular peg,
They have killed their Goose with the Golden Egg!
Just there the metal came pouring out,
All ways at once, like a water-spout,
Or a rushing, gushing, yellow flood,
That drenched the bulls wherever they stood!
[Small need to open the Washington main],
Their coffer-dams were burst with the strain!
It came by runners, it came by wire,
To answer the bid of Israel Freyer,
It poured in millions from every side,
And almost strangled him as he cried,—
"I'll give One Hundred and Sixty!"
Like Vulcan after Jupiter's kick,
Or the aphoristical Rocket's stick,
Down, down, down, the premium fell,
Faster than this rude rhyme can tell!
Thirty per cent the index slid,
Yet Freyer still kept making his bid,—
"One Hundred and Sixty for any part!"
—The sudden ruin had crazed his heart,
Shattered his senses, cracked his brain,
And left him crying again and again,—
Still making his bid at the market's top
(Like the Dutchman's leg that never could stop),
"One Hundred and Sixty—Five Millions more!"
Till they dragged him, howling, off the floor.
The very last words that seller and buyer
Heard from the mouth of Israel Freyer—
A cry to remember long as they live—
Were, "I'll take Five Millions more! I'll give—
I'll give One Hundred and Sixty!"
Suppose (to avoid the appearance of evil)
There's such a thing as a Personal Devil,
It would seem that his Highness here got hold,
For once, of a bellowing Bull in Gold!
Whether bull or bear, it wouldn't much matter
Should Israel Freyer keep up his clatter
On earth or under it (as, they say,
He is doomed) till the general Judgment Day,
When the Clerk, as he cites him to answer for 't,
Shall bid him keep silence in that Court!
But it matters most, as it seems to me,
That my countrymen, great and strong and free,
So marvel at fellows who seem to win,
That if even a Clown can only begin
By stealing a railroad, and use its purse
For cornering stocks and gold, or—worse—
For buying a Judge and Legislature,
And sinking still lower poor human nature,
The gaping public, whatever befall,
Will swallow him, tandem, harlots, and all!
While our rich men drivel and stand amazed
At the dust and pother his gang have raised,
And make us remember a nursery tale
Of the four-and-twenty who feared one snail.
What's bred in the bone will breed, you know;
Clowns and their trainers, high and low,
Will cut such capers, long as they dare,
While honest Poverty says its prayer.
But tell me what prayer or fast can save
Some hoary candidate for the grave,
The market's wrinkled Giant Despair,
Muttering, brooding, scheming there,—
Founding a college or building a church
Lest Heaven should leave him in the lurch!
Better come out in the rival way,
Issue your scrip in open day,
And pour your wealth in the grimy fist
Of some gross-mouthed, gambling pugilist;
Leave toil and poverty where they lie,
Pass thinkers, workers, artists, by,
Your pot-house fag from his counters bring
And make him into a Railway King!
Between such Gentiles and such Jews
Little enough one finds to choose:
Either the other will buy and use,
Eat the meat and throw him the bone,
And leave him to stand the brunt alone.
—Let the tempest come, that's gathering near,
And give us a better atmosphere!
Edmund Clarence Stedman.
On October 8 and 9, 1871, Chicago, which had grown to be the greatest city in the West, was almost entirely destroyed by fire. An area of three and a half square miles was burned over; two hundred people were killed and a hundred thousand rendered homeless.
CHICAGO
[October 8-10, 1871]
Men said at vespers: "All is well!"
In one wild night the city fell;
Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain
Before the fiery hurricane.
On threescore spires had sunset shone,
Where ghastly sunrise looked on none.
Men clasped each other's hands, and said:
"The City of the West is dead!"
Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat,
The fiends of fire from street to street,
Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare,
The dumb defiance of despair.
A sudden impulse thrilled each wire
That signalled round that sea of fire;
Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came;
In tears of pity died the flame!
From East, from West, from South and North,
The messages of hope shot forth,
And, underneath the severing wave,
The world, full-handed, reached to save.
Fair seemed the old; but fairer still
The new, the dreary void shall fill
With dearer homes than those o'erthrown,
For love shall lay each corner-stone.
Rise, stricken city! from thee throw
The ashen sackcloth of thy woe;
And build, as to Amphion's strain,
To songs of cheer thy walls again!
How shrivelled in thy hot distress
The primal sin of selfishness!
How instant rose, to take thy part,
The angel in the human heart!
Ah! not in vain the flames that tossed
Above thy dreadful holocaust;
The Christ again has preached through thee
The Gospel of Humanity!
Then lift once more thy towers on high,
And fret with spires the western sky,
To tell that God is yet with us,
And love is still miraculous!
John Greenleaf Whittier.
CHICAGO
Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone,
On the charred fragments of her shattered throne
Lies she who stood but yesterday alone.
Queen of the West! by some enchanter taught
To lift the glory of Aladdin's court,
Then lose the spell that all that wonder wrought.
Like her own prairies by some chance seed sown,
Like her own prairies in one brief day grown,
Like her own prairies in one fierce night mown.
She lifts her voice, and in her pleading call
We hear the cry of Macedon to Paul,
The cry for help that makes her kin to all.
But haply with wan fingers may she feel
The silver cup hid in the proffered meal,
The gifts her kinship and our loves reveal.
Bret Harte.
The whole country rallied to the aid of the stricken city. An Aid and Relief Society was at once formed, and within a month had received subscriptions aggregating three and a half millions.
CHICAGO
Gaunt in the midst of the prairie,
She who was once so fair;
Charred and rent are her garments,
Heavy and dark like cerements;
Silent, but round her the air
Plaintively wails, "Miserere!"
Proud like a beautiful maiden,
Art-like from forehead to feet,
Was she till pressed like a leman
Close to the breast of the demon,
Lusting for one so sweet,
So were her shoulders laden.
Friends she had, rich in her treasures:
Shall the old taunt be true,—
Fallen, they turn their cold faces,
Seeking new wealth-gilded places,
Saying we never knew
Aught of her smiles or her pleasures?
Silent she stands on the prairie,
Wrapped in her fire-scathed sheet:
Around her, thank God, is the Nation,
Weeping for her desolation,
Pouring its gold at her feet,
Answering her "Miserere!"
John Boyle O'Reilly.
Only second to the Chicago fire in destructiveness was that which visited Boston in the following year. It started on Saturday evening, November 9, 1872, and sixty-five acres were laid waste before it was controlled.
BOSTON
[November 9, 1872]
O broad-breasted Queen among Nations!
O Mother, so strong in thy youth!
Has the Lord looked upon thee in ire,
And willed thou be chastened by fire,
Without any ruth?
Has the Merciful tired of His mercy,
And turned from thy sinning in wrath,
That the world with raised hand sees and pities
Thy desolate daughters, thy cities,
Despoiled on their path?
One year since thy youngest was stricken:
Thy eldest lies stricken to-day.
Ah! God, was Thy wrath without pity,
To tear the strong heart from our city,
And cast it away?
O Father! forgive us our doubting;
The stain from our weak souls efface;
Thou rebukest, we know, but to chasten,
Thy hand has but fallen to hasten
Return to Thy grace.
Let us rise purified from our ashes
As sinners have risen who grieved;
Let us show that twice-sent desolation
On every true heart in the nation
Has conquest achieved.
John Boyle O'Reilly.
The district burned contained the finest business blocks in the city, and the loss was estimated at $80,000,000. For a time, it seemed that the famous "Old South" would be destroyed.
THE CHURCH OF THE REVOLUTION
"The Old South stands."
Loud through the still November air
The clang and clash of fire-bells broke;
From street to street, from square to square,
Rolled sheets of flame and clouds of smoke.
The marble structures reeled and fell,
The iron pillars bowed like lead;
But one lone spire rang on its bell
Above the flames. Men passed, and said,
"The Old South stands!"
The gold moon, 'gainst a copper sky,
Hung like a portent in the air,
The midnight came, the wind rose high,
And men stood speechless in despair.
But, as the marble columns broke,
And wider grew the chasm red,—
A seething gulf of flame and smoke,—
The firemen marked the spire and said,
"The Old South stands!"
Beyond the harbor, calm and fair,
The sun came up through bars of gold,
Then faded in a wannish glare,
As flame and smoke still upward rolled.
The princely structures, crowned with art,
Where Commerce laid her treasures bare;
The haunts of trade, the common mart,
All vanished in the withering air,—
"The Old South stands!"
"The Old South must be levelled soon
To check the flames and save the street;
Bring fuse and powder." But at noon
The ancient fane still stood complete.
The mitred flame had lipped the spire,
The smoke its blackness o'er it cast;
Then, hero-like, men fought the fire,
And from each lip the watchword passed,—
"The Old South stands!"
All night the red sea round it rolled,
And o'er it fell the fiery rain:
And, as each hour the old clock told,
Men said, "'Twill never strike again!"
But still the dial-plate at morn
Was crimsoned in the rising light.
Long may it redden with the dawn,
And mark the shading hours of night!
Long may it stand!
Long may it stand! where help was sought
In weak and dark and doubtful days:
Where freedom's lessons first were taught,
And prayers of faith were turned to praise;
Where burned the first Shekinah's flame
In God's new temples of the free;
Long may it stand, in freedom's name,
Like Israel's pillar by the sea!
Long may it stand!
Hezekiah Butterworth.
The nation rushed to Boston's aid just as it had done to Chicago's, and the city soon rose from her ashes greater than ever.
AFTER THE FIRE
While far along the eastern sky
I saw the flags of Havoc fly,
As if his forces would assault
The sovereign of the starry vault
And hurl Him back the burning rain
That seared the cities of the plain,
I read as on a crimson page
The words of Israel's sceptred sage:—
For riches make them wings, and they
Do as an eagle fly away.
O vision of that sleepless night,
What hue shall paint the mocking light
That burned and stained the orient skies
Where peaceful morning loves to rise,
As if the sun had lost his way
And dawned to make a second day,—
Above how red with fiery glow,
How dark to those it woke below!
On roof and wall, on dome and spire,
Flashed the false jewels of the fire;
Girt with her belt of glittering panes,
And crowned with starry-gleaming vanes,
Our northern queen in glory shone
With new-born splendors not her own,
And stood, transfigured in our eyes,
A victim decked for sacrifice!
The cloud still hovers overhead,
And still the midnight sky is red;
As the lost wanderer strays alone
To seek the place he called his own,
His devious footprints sadly tell
How changed the pathways known so well;
The scene, how new! The tale, how old
Ere yet the ashes have grown cold!
Again I read the words that came
Writ in the rubric of the flame:
Howe'er we trust to mortal things,
Each hath its pair of folded wings;
Though long their terrors rest unspread
Their fatal plumes are never shed;
At last, at last, they stretch in flight,
And blot the day and blast the night!
Hope, only Hope, of all that clings
Around us, never spreads her wings;
Love, though he break his earthly chain,
Still whispers he will come again;
But Faith that soars to seek the sky
Shall teach our half-fledged souls to fly,
And find, beyond the smoke and flame,
The cloudless azure whence they came!
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
On May 16, 1874, the bursting of a reservoir dam at Williamsburg, Mass., caused a disastrous flood, costing one hundred and forty lives and the loss of $1,500,000 in property. The loss of life would have been far greater but for the heroism of a milkman named Collins Graves, who rode forward in front of the flood, giving warning.
THE RIDE OF COLLINS GRAVES
[May 16, 1874]
No song of a soldier riding down
To the raging fight from Winchester town;
No song of a time that shook the earth
With the nations' throe at a nation's birth;
But the song of a brave man, free from fear
As Sheridan's self or Paul Revere;
Who risked what they risked, free from strife
And its promise of glorious pay,—his life!
The peaceful valley has waked and stirred,
And the answering echoes of life are heard;
The dew still clings to the trees and grass,
And the early toilers smiling pass,
As they glance aside at the white-walled homes,
Or up the valley, where merrily comes
The brook that sparkles in diamond rills
As the sun comes over the Hampshire hills.
What was it passed like an ominous breath—
Like a shiver of fear, or a touch of death?
What was it? The valley is peaceful still,
And the leaves are afire on top of the hill;
It was not a sound, nor a thing of sense,—
But a pain, like the pang of the short suspense
That thrills the being of those who see
At their feet the gulf of Eternity.
The air of the valley has felt the chill;
The workers pause at the door of the mill;
The housewife, keen to the shivering air,
Arrests her foot on the cottage stair,
Instinctive taught by the mother-love,
And thinks of the sleeping ones above.
Why start the listeners? Why does the course
Of the mill-stream widen? Is it a horse—
"Hark to the sound of the hoofs!" they say—
That gallops so wildly Williamsburg way?
God! what was that, like a human shriek
From the winding valley? Will nobody speak?
Will nobody answer those women who cry
As the awful warnings thunder by?
Whence come they? Listen! and now they hear
The sound of the galloping horse-hoofs near;
They watch the trend of the vale, and see
The rider who thunders so menacingly,
With waving arms and warning scream
To the home-filled banks of the valley stream.
He draws no rein, but he shakes the street
With a shout and the ring of the galloping feet,
And this the cry he flings to the wind,—
"To the hills for your lives! The flood is behind!"
He cries and is gone, but they know the worst,—
The breast of the Williamsburg dam has burst!
The basin that nourished their happy homes
Is changed to a demon. It comes! it comes!
A monster in aspect, with shaggy front
Of shattered dwellings to take the brunt
Of the homes they shatter;—white-maned and hoarse,
The merciless Terror fills the course
Of the narrow valley, and rushing raves,
With death on the first of its hissing waves,
Till cottage and street and crowded mill
Are crumbled and crushed.
But onward still,
In front of the roaring flood, is heard
The galloping horse and the warning word.
Thank God! the brave man's life is spared!
From Williamsburg town he nobly dared
To race with the flood, and take the road
In front of the terrible swath it mowed.
For miles it thundered and crashed behind,
But he looked ahead with a steadfast mind:
"They must be warned!" was all he said,
As away on his terrible ride he sped.
When heroes are called for, bring the crown
To this Yankee rider; send him down
On the stream of time with the Curtius old;
His deed, as the Roman's, was brave and bold;
And the tale can as noble a thrill awake,
For he offered his life for the people's sake!
John Boyle O'Reilly.