II.—THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.
Who, in ascending the Hudson River, has not watched for the first glimpse of the Catskills, and followed with delight their gradual development of peak and clove, until, near Hudson, they stood fully revealed, flooded with sunshine, flecked with shadows, or crowned by storm-laden clouds?
This region is noteworthy, not alone from its beauty and incalculable utility, but also from the associations clustering around it through the pen of poets and writers of romance, the brush of the artist, and the memories of thousands of tourists, who have found health and strength for both body and mind upon its craggy heights or beside its numberless wild and beautiful mountain torrents. It comprises the whole of Greene County, a portion of Delaware, and the neighboring borders of Ulster, Schoharie, and Albany. It truly deserves the appellation of 'many fountained,' giving rise to great rivers, such as the Delaware, and one of the main branches of the Susquehanna, and to manifold smaller watercourses, as the Schoharie, Catskill, and Esopus. Unlike the Highlands of Northern New Jersey and Southern New York, and the region of the Adirondacs, its lakes are few and very small. The best known are the twin lakes near the Mountain House, and Shue's Lake, not far from the summit of Overlook Mountain. These are all at a height, approximately, of two thousand feet above the river, and add greatly to the variety and interest of the landscape in their vicinity.
Names among these hills are a commodity so scarce that their paucity presents a serious obstacle to intelligible description. Round Tops and High Peaks are innumerable. We hope, when Professor Guyot completes his cursory survey of heights, made eighteen months ago, he will strive to do as in North Carolina, and supply the deficiency. Nomenclature is a difficult matter, and requires a poet, a poetic man of science, or the imaginative intuitions of a primitive people.
The main range of the Catskills finds its southerly corner in Overlook Mountain, not far from Woodstock, and about seven miles (more or less) west of the Hudson. One ridge extends northerly (a little east, parallel with the river) from twelve to fourteen miles, and then, at the North Mountain, making an obtuse angle, turns to the northwest, and passes through Windham into Schoharie County: the other ridge, starting from Overlook, runs in a westerly direction along the southern border of Greene County, and finally in Delaware sinks into broken hill ranges of less elevation. The space intermediate between these two main ridges is at first narrow, but gradually widens as they diverge from the starting point; its interior (northwesterly) slope is drained by the Schoharie (a branch of the Mohawk) and its tributaries, the East, the West, and Batavia Kills. Singular gaps or cloves intersect the range, affording easy communication with the lowlands bordering its base. Each clove has its own stream, and in the main ones on the river front are found the countless and beautiful waterfalls which constitute the chief characteristic of Catskill scenery. The more primitive rocks of the Highlands, the Adirondacs, and the White Mountains do not offer such numerous and picturesque sheets of falling water as the red sandstone of the Catskills.
Starting from Overlook Mountain, whence the view is said to be magnificent, and proceeding northward, we first reach the Plattekill Clove, up whose steep and wooded cleft winds a wild road, chiefly used for quarrying purposes, and down whose abrupt declivity the Plattekill leaps from crag to crag in a series of fine falls and cascades. The quantity of water during the summer months, except after considerable rain, is small, but the rock formations are very interesting, reminding the traveller of wild passes in the Tyrol. This is perhaps the grandest of all the Catskill clefts, but human ingenuity has here afforded no aid to the sightseer, and strong heads and agile limbs are needed for the enjoyment of its hidden beauties.
The mountain to the north of the Plattekill Clove has two crests, known as High Peak and Round Top. It was long thought to be the loftiest summit of the Catskills, but must now yield to the Windham High Peak or Black Head, 3,926 feet high, and perhaps to other elevations in the same range. Professor Guyot gives its height at 3,684 feet, and that of the Mountain House as 2,245 feet. This mountain has frequently been ascended, although there is no regular path leading to the summit, but the thick growth of wood on the top greatly hinders the satisfactoriness of the view. Between Round Top and the nearest mountain to the north lies the Kauterskill Clove, known preëminently as The Clove, the home of artists and the theme of poets. Its springs are drained by the Kauterskill Creek, a branch of the Catskill, and it is one of the loveliest spots in America. The road through this clove is one of the main arteries to the back mountain country, and, from the summit of the clove, near Haines's sawmill, winds for about three miles to the base, by the side of streams offering fifteen fine falls and cascades in a distance of five miles, and between steep and wooded mountain slopes or rocky crags lifted high in air, now swelling out into the sunlight, and anon curving back into amphitheatres of shadow. The main Kauterskill flows from the twin lakes already mentioned, and just below the Laurel House falls over a precipice of 175 feet, which, with another dash of 80 feet, makes the entire depth of the stream's first grand plunge into the wild ravine 255 feet. A short distance below is the Bastion Fall, and, immediately following, the Terrace Cascade, the united height of the two being certainly not less than 100 feet. These four fine falls are found in an easy walk of three quarters of a mile leading down the ravine from the Laurel House to the Clove road.
The Little Kauterskill flows into the main stream at a short distance below the bridge where the Clove road first crosses that torrent. The ravine through which it flows is incomparably beautiful, with the grand plunge (Haines's Fall or Fawn's Leap) at the head, and the seven graceful cascades, all visible from one projecting table rock, soon after following. Below the above-mentioned bridge are the Dog Fall, the cascade at Moore's Bridge, and the Dog Hole, with its steep cliffs and foaming rapids. At the mouth of the Clove is Palensville, a little manufacturing village, where town-wearied denizens find fresh air and pleasant walks and drives during the summer months. To our taste, however, the summer climate at the various sojourning places, about two thousand feet above the sea level, is far preferable to that at the base of the mountain.
Rising to the north of the Clove is the South Mountain, from whose beetling crags are obtained some of the finest views offered by the Catskills; then follows the Pine Orchard, where are the well-known Mountain House, the twin lakes, and the Laurel House at the head of the Kauterskill Falls; and finally, the North Mountain, which looks down upon a graceful spur to the east, Kiskatom Round Top, and then sweeps away to the northwest. Beyond the North Mountain is a considerable depression, down which passes an execrable road, leading from East Jewett, within the mountain range, to Cairo, at its foot. Finally, we reach Windham High Peak,[1] and the fine road crossing the mountains from Catskill to Delhi, and passing through Windham and Prattsville.
On the southern side of the range, west of Overlook, are two wild and beautiful clefts, the one known as the Stony Clove, and the other as West Kill or Bushnell Clove. The first begins as a narrow gorge with lofty hemlock and moss-clad mountain sides, and gradually opens out, at Phœnicia, upon the hills of Ulster and Esopus Creek. It is watered by a trout stream, and its few but cosey farm cottages offer shelter sufficient for amateur fishermen and artists, bewitched by its fairy recesses and fine forest growth. In the narrow portion of this clove are ice caves, where ice may be found at all seasons of the year, and whence issue cooling winds appreciable in the warmest summer days.
The West Kill, or Bushnell Clove, is said to be still finer and more alpine than the Stony Clove. The last-mentioned gap and that of the Plattekill join the main or Kauterskill Clove between Tannersville and Hunter, while the Bushnell Clove does not intersect the valley of the Schoharie until the West Kill flows into that stream near the charming village of Lexington, six miles south, a little west of Prattsville.
These geographical details may seem uninteresting, but if the writer had possessed them eight years ago, when first making the near acquaintance of the Catskills, many a mystification might have been avoided, and many a pleasant excursion, now only known to the fancy, have been found practicable. One great attraction of the Catskills is, that the greater number of the spots chiefly interesting are within walking or driving distance from the chief points of sojourn. Visitors in general confine themselves to the Mountain House and its immediate vicinity, and hence see but little of the beauties hidden among the cliffs and ravines of the inner peaks. The view from the Mountain House plateau is extensive, but tame and monotonous in character; the horizon is not interesting, and the cloud scenery is far more impressive than that of the land beneath. The views from the very easily ascended North or South Mountains, where, in addition to the river valley, the eye embraces the lakes, the opening of the Clove, and the distant mountains toward Lexington, are far superior. Clum's Hill, a terraced eminence, visible from many points among the Catskills, and the Parker Mountain, east of Tannersville, both offer peculiar and interesting prospects; but the king of views is that obtained from the cliffs of the South Mountain overhanging the Clove. This vista has furnished sketches for two remarkable pictures painted by that rare artist and genuine son of Helios, S. R. Gifford. Looking toward the west is the rolling plateau of the Clove, with the far-away mountains beyond Hunter, the Parker and North Mountains, the openings to the Stony and Plattekill Cloves, Clum's Hill, and the silver thread of Haines's Fall. At the foot of the cliffs, more than a thousand feet below, lie Brockett's (classic ground for artists), the Clove road, Moore's Bridge, the Dog Fall, and the brawling Kauterskill. Directly opposite stands the wooded crest of Round Top. The entire mountain side is visible, and the cleft is so narrow that the trees can almost be counted as they rise one above another to a height of 2,500 feet above the roaring stream, which here receives two slender cascades that have threaded their way through the tangled forest. Toward the east, the river is visible, and the sloping mountain declivities frame a lovely picture of lowland country and far-away Connecticut or Massachusetts hills. The effects of light and shadow are such as we have never seen surpassed. This earth there seems made of gold or crimson lights, of gray seas of mist, or of every imaginable combination of beautiful hues.
These cliffs are reached by a charming walk through a beech wood, and are distant about a mile from the Laurel House. A longer and still somewhat rough path was opened thither last summer from the Mountain House. But we should never end were we to characterize all the beautiful spots, the entrancing walks and drives to be found amid these cool and healthful slopes and plateaus. A difference of at least ten degrees is felt between the mountain resorts and the villages on the river bank, and the air is inexpressibly fresh and invigorating.
These mountains have also a very interesting flora. The oak, beech, birch, chestnut, hickory, maple, ash, hemlock—pines, black, white, and yellow—spruces, fir, and balsam, are among the most widely spread trees; and of fruits, the blackberry, gooseberry, raspberry, whortleberry or blueberry, and strawberry, grow in profusion and of fine flavor. Violets, anemones, liverworts, the fairy bells of the Linnea Borealis, the fragrant stars of the Mitchella or partridge berry, the trailing arbutus, Houstonia, the laurel, honeysuckle, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, bottle gentian, white and blue, purple orchids, willow herb, golden rod, immortelles, asters in every variety, St. John's wort, wild turnip, Solomon's seals, wild lilies of the vale, fire lilies, Indian pipe, with other flowers, ground pines, and varieties of moss and ferns innumerable, border the winding woodpaths and secluded roads. There are many regions in America more grand than that of the Catskills, but none, we think, more easily and gratefully compensatory to a careful survey.
Within Gethsemane's Garden kneeling,
Bends the Lord His sacred head,
His soul, each human sorrow feeling,
Quivers with keen shafts, sin-sped,
Every human misery knows,
Bears the burden of our woes.
Perchance not men alone His sinking,
Bleeding heart to weep is fain,
But poor dumb creatures sees He drinking
Deep the bitter cup of pain,
Hears the wailing, anguished cry,
Hears but curse and blow reply!
THE ISSUES OF THE WAR.
The life of the soldier is one of constant anxiety and suspense. He never knows with any certainty to-day what he shall have to do to-morrow. Upon seemingly the greatest calm may suddenly burst the most terrific storm. There is little incentive to thought, except of that practical kind which directs the activities of the soldier's perilous life. Here we are, thousands of us, an acting mass rather than an assemblage of thinking individuals. Indeed, it is not strictly military to think; implicit and unquestioning obedience is the law. When the order was finally given on Monday night (September 21st) for the whole army to fell back on Chattanooga, the writer remarked:
'Well, if we shall not have to go any farther—if we can hold Chattanooga, we are not defeated;—it is even a victory, and we have won Chattanooga at the battle of Chickamauga.'
'We want none of your speculations,' retorted our Prussian commander; 'it is a soldier's business to obey, and not to think.'
But, it is hardly natural for an American soldier to execute a movement without inquiring the wherefore. And if we are marched over mountains, and down the Lookout at Alpine Pass, within a few miles of Rome; and then marched back again, up the perilous steep, and northward to Stevens's Gap, and down again;—why, even common soldiers, without the evidence of brains which there is, or ought to be, in shoulder straps, inquire of each other for the strategic value there may be in all this marching and countermarching, and find it hard to believe that it was all provided for in the original programme.
But in a still higher sense is the American soldier given to thinking. He is quite likely to have an opinion as to the origin and cause of the war—as to the issues involved therein, and the results which it is likely to bring about. There is, moreover, a multiplicity of views, and not the unanimity of dulness.
The causes, the issues, the results of the war—momentous themes! and likely to be thoroughly canvassed by those whom they so vitally concern—the American citizen and our citizen soldiery.
The causes, issues, and results of the war are so intimately related that we can scarcely think of one without also thinking of the others. The causes are more especially a thing of the past—they already belong to history: the results belong more particularly to the future; the issues pertain to the present. It is these with which we have more immediately to do, and which it behooves us, as intelligent actors in the great drama, to understand. We should not be indifferent to results, and we are not; but if there are real issues of right and wrong involved in the contest, and we are in the right, we may rest assured that the results of a successful prosecution of the war will be worthy of all our sacrifices, and honorable to us as a people and nation.
In the midst of a beleaguered camp, with no notes of former reading, or books of reference, it is a poor place for the elaboration of one's ideas;—the writer, nevertheless, proposes to make a brief inquiry into the issues involved in this terrible war.
The fact exists that there is a war between the North and South, brought about, as we believe, by unwarranted and aggressive acts of the Slave Power. This slave oligarchy of the South either had, or affected to have, a profound contempt for what they supposed was the want of spirit in the Northern people. It was a current swagger that we should barely furnish them with an opportunity to show their superior military prowess. 'This war shall be waged on Northern soil,' they said. Events have shown that they miscalculated; but the raids of Jackson, Lee, Morgan & Co. show how great their will has been to carry out their threats of invasion. When the rebel guns opened upon Sumter, there was no alternative left us but fight now, or soon. Had we hesitated and compromised then, the arrogant spirit of the insurgents would have been still further flattered and puffed up, and their contempt for the submissive North made genuine, whatever it may have been before. A compromise then would have made no lasting peace; the South would soon have become tired of being merely 'let alone;' her exactions and aggressions would have become more and more insolent and intolerable, till warlike resistance or ignoble submission and slavery would have been our only alternative. This war is, therefore, on our part and in one sense, a war in self-defence; and this may be regarded as one of its issues.
Every loyal soldier is fighting for the security of our Northern homes; and the issue resolves itself into this: The resistance of invasion; the vindication of our manliness as a people; the protection of our own firesides—else be overrun, outraged, desolated, enslaved by the minions of a Southern oligarchy, which indulges the insane conceit that it is born to rule.
Unfortunately for our country, it embraces two distinct forms of society, of dissimilar, if not of antagonistic character. It is a heritage from our ancestors; but none the less an evil for its prestige from the sanctities of time; and we are now reaping its bitter fruits in the manifold and hideous forms of a great civil war. Taking human nature as it is, there appears to be no escape from this cruel ordeal. We of the North claim that we have transcended that type of society whose vital and informing element is chattel slavery. There is natural and irrepressible antagonism between the two forms of society; they cannot subsist in peace and good feeling by the side of each other, and still less under the same Government. Conflict was inevitable, and it came.
At this stage of the war and of elucidation respecting its cause and origin, this may be only commonplace, yet necessary to fulness of statement.
Slavery felt the necessity of efforts to save herself from impending ruin; she became taunting and aggressive in her manners and acts, and resorted at length to violence, reminding one of the oft-repeated proverb, 'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' History has no readings for the comfort of slavery. There is a progress in human affairs, and the tide of that progress is against her. Threatening attitudes and impetuous dashes do not appear to come with salvation; and the promise—of glory for freedom, and doom for her—now is that, as a turbulent and rebellious power, she will be completely overthrown; a sudden and deserved judgment, the legitimate consequence of her own violence and desperation.
This struggle between a progressive and triumphant civilization, on the one hand, and a crude, unprogressive, and waning one on the other—if civilization it can be called—is another of the issues of this war. It is but the ultimate, the closing catastrophe of the 'irrepressible conflict.'
Involved in this feature of the war, there is much beside the naked issue of freedom and slavery.
Slavery has no respect for the affections, as is evinced by the mercilessness with which she sunders every family tie. The refining culture of growth in civilization demands respect for the domestic loves, even of an inferior race. Where chattel slavery exists, labor is not held in honor, and just in proportion to the depth to which one class sinks by industrial oppression, does the other sink through enervating indolence and exhausting indulgence. Where there is chattel slavery, there cannot be free speech: the utterance of truth may indeed be incendiary, and the rickety, combustible institution standing out of its time, must needs protect itself. There must not be free education or free inquiry. It would never do to teach the slaves; and it is likewise the interest of this form of society to retain the lower strata of the nominally free population in ignorance equally dense and impenetrable. A cringing servility must be generated and maintained on the one side, and a haughty and exacting superciliousness on the other.
All these may be regarded as constituting minor issues, which are dependent for their vitality on that which is greater; and when the fate of the issue between chattel slavery and its antagonist shall have been determined, there will be no further trouble with the collaterals. When the main trunk is torn up by the root, the branches will all die.
But while the issue between slavery and freedom thus comprehends within itself a class of issues which are subordinate, may there not be a still greater issue which dwarfs that of slavery and freedom into a secondary, and comprehends within itself this and other issues of equal magnitude and importance?
Our Government has never given out that its object in the prosecution of the war is the extinction of slavery. It claims to have adopted emancipation only as a war measure; the great purpose of the war being avowedly the recovery of Governmental possessions and the restoration of the Union. Many moralists, failing, as we believe, to see the real significance of the idea of political unity, have looked upon the proposed object of the Government as a low and unworthy one; but have, nevertheless, rejoiced that the hand of Providence is in the work, and overruling it to bring out of these meaner aims a great and noble result.
It may be well to recollect in this connection that it is not always when great moral ends are the real aim and purpose of a movement that the greatest good has been accomplished. The greatest moral results have often followed when the movement proposed no moral end whatever; while efforts having a direct moral aim have resulted in signal failure, and sometimes in disaster even to the very end proposed. Well-meant efforts to save the heathen in a spiritual way have sometimes resulted in their physical destruction, through the stealthy obtrusion of the pests of civilization.
It is by no means as yet a settled question that emancipation will enhance the happiness of our negro population, or that it may not be the beginning of a series of disasters to the race which will eventuate in its extinction on this continent. The settlement of the slave question may be the beginning of the negro question; and the end of one difficulty the beginning of another.
It may be that sympathy for the negro is seeking to put in train a series of changes which would terribly revulse those same sympathies, if the end could be seen from the beginning. Yet these sympathies, even if mistaken in their direct object, may be working to a great and desirable end, which they do not as yet recognize. The Crusaders aimed at what they considered a good, but, failing in that, accomplished a real good of which they had no conception. They did not make themselves permanent masters of the Holy Land, but through their intercourse with each other and with the more cultivated people of the East, they nourished the germs of a forthcoming civilization in the West.
In the natural history of the world we discover that certain tribes of sentient beings prey upon certain other tribes; and this seems, on a cursory view, to be very shocking to the finer sensibilities of our nature; yet it is an arrangement which results in a larger amount of sentient enjoyment than could otherwise obtain among these lower denizens of our inexplicable world. The most vigorous—that which embodies within itself the greatest and the most various elements of vitality and power—the most vigorous, I say, prevails; and if the negro race of our continent should begin to wane and finally go as the 'poor Indian' has done—a fate which I do not here predict for him—the field thus vacated will not be lost, but occupied at once, and in time to its fullest extent, by a race of greater capabilities for culture, progress, and enjoyment. The physical world has attained to its present advanced geological condition through much of violence and pain; the same is true in a moral sense of mankind at large; and there may be still quite a great deal of this same career to run.
Sympathy of itself is blind, and may 'kill with kindness.' It has often done so. But it is a noble emotion: let it play its role, since, in the working out of destiny, 'the will may be taken for the deed,' and a good accomplished which was not intended or foreseen.
Governments may not be greatly at fault for not proposing 'high moral aims.' We need only recall the names of Watt, Fulton, Stevenson, Morse, and others of that class, to perceive that great moral changes are brought about when no moral purpose is intended. It is not affirmed that these benefactors of mankind never thought of the moral consequences which their purely physical labors would produce, but only that the moral consequences were not the incentive to the mechanical achievement. The genius of invention had to work out its legitimate results through the innate force of its own peculiar constitution. The impetus was that of essential genius, not of moral calculation.
The same thing is true of the cultivation of science for its own sake. The stargazer with his telescope, the chemist with crucible and retort, the physiologist with his chemical and optical aids, the purely scientific thinker—all who prosecute science for the love of it—have wrought out results which are breaking as light of the clear morning sun upon the history of nations, thus enabling us to avail ourselves of the past in order to comprehend the status of the present and the possibilities of the future.
Great social and political results have thus been attained without consciously intending them, or seeing how they were to be brought about. Our Government, without professing great moral purposes, may yet accomplish more in that direction, and this, too, by the relentless and bloody hand of war, than has ever been the result of purely moral design by the most approved moral means, on the part of any combination of mankind. It may be a crisis in history, and the ushering in of a new era.
Our Government proposes to recover lost possessions, and restore the integrity of the Union. Wherefore? Ours is the most beneficent Government upon the earth, blessing the most human beings, and it should be sustained. The whole nation has contributed to the acquisition of Southern territory, and it is not meet that the Northern people should surrender their interest in the same. The Mississippi River belongs as naturally to the great West as to the South, and it should be under the control of the same sovereign power, to be used for the good of one great people. There is no natural division line between the North and South, and it would be fatal to the future peace and prosperity of this continent to attempt to make one.
These are some of the reasons ordinarily given for the prosecution of this war—for our great effort to reëstablish the Union. They are practical, readily comprehended, and to urge them is well—enough, really, for present practical purposes; but may there not be in the idea of political unity a meaning—a philosophical significance, if you please, which these practical and obvious considerations do not reveal?
It is the confirmed conviction of the Northern people, with certain unnatural exceptions, that it is our true policy to maintain the integrity of the Union at any cost, however great; the people of the South evidently take a different view of it; the political thinkers of Europe appear to be divided in their sympathies between the North and South.
An article appears in a British quarterly to prove that it is the fate of great empires to fall to pieces; and that China, Turkey, Russia, and the United States show signs of approaching dissolution. It is observed that French writers of authority in the Government have issued pamphlets to prove that the peace and stability of nations require the dismemberment of the United States. The 'fire eaters' of the South are not the only people who would like to see the United States in fragments. We have such even in the North; and in Europe, especially near the thrones, 'their name is legion.'
The thinking world has not yet settled into the conviction that a great continental policy, preserving internal peace, and enduring for an indefinite period into the far-off future, is a possible thing. The fate of nations and empires, as revealed in history, is apparently against such an idea. Many empires have already appeared, risen to power, fallen into decay, and become dismembered, having run their course and disappeared. May it not be so with our own great confederacy of States? The authority against a great, practical, enduring political unity is respectable. May we not be fighting for an illusion? What guarantee have we in history, science, and common sense, that our Federal Union will not crumble as the empires of the past have done, and as the political prophets of Europe, casting the horoscope of nations in the shadows of their own political fragmentarism, have predicted for us? Even should the rebels South be chastised, and the Union restored for the present, have we solid reasons for believing in the permanency of our institutions? What is the warrant for our faith that American destiny comprehends the principle of American unity?
People contract habits of thought in a great measure from the nature of the institutions which surround them. Europe could think nothing but feudalism at one time; she had no conception of religion outside the Church of Rome. The Turk thinks by the standard of political absolutism and the Moslem faith. The reflections of every people are cast in the national mould; it is so the world over, and has been so in all times. Europe, or at least a very influential portion thereof, thinks that the 'balance of power' system will yet be inaugurated among the family of nations yet to spring up on this continent. Her people think balance of power, and the London Times and like organs of the existing polity write balance of power for our edification, and for the future of America. They cannot conceive that there is any other way to get along for any considerable length of time. In like manner is it concluded—keeping up the old trains of thought—that if nations once fell into fragments when shaken, they will do just so again.
Now, perhaps we have contracted habits of thought from the character of our country and her institutions, and are deceiving ourselves with hopes which have no real foundation. These, we believe, are considerations which have engaged the attention of every reflecting man; and it behooves us, as intelligent Americans and members of a young nation of hitherto unexampled prosperity and promise, to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in us.
There are changes and crises in the course and destiny of political systems. The conditions of one period of time are different from the conditions of another period. Different conditions necessitate different political systems. Feudalism did not last always; European diplomacy is only three hundred years old. If Europe, out of her peculiar situation, originated the doctrine of balance of power, thus innovating upon the past, may not we, owing to the novelty of our situation, originate a continental system which will endure to the remotest periods of time, or so long as political systems shall have place on the earth?
One empire may fall into fragments to-day; while another may not only not suffer dissolution, but really grow stronger, and appropriate, in a most legitimate manner, parts of the dismembered empire.
We must allow, not only for the difference of conditions with reference to time, but, also, for the different situations at the same time of different political structures. To assume, because nations have been ground to atoms, or have fallen to pieces of their own weight, that therefore Russia and the United States are about to go in the same way, is a species of reasoning which is hardly warranted by scientific methods. It may be that the empire of Great Britain is itself doomed to dissolution at no very distant day; but it does not follow that the United States are, therefore, liable to the same fate, now or ever. So far from this, it is possible, if not highly probable, that as the remote provinces of the British empire shall fall away, the central political system of this continent may very naturally absorb at least one of the fragments, and thereby become stronger as a Government, and more potent for good to the people of an entire world.
There are laws of dissolution, and laws of segregation and combination in the political as in the natural world. Great Britain may fall into fragments because her geographical and political conditions render her amenable to the laws of dissolution; while the United States may go on enlarging their boundaries and becoming more stable and powerful from the fact that their political status and local surroundings render them the legitimate subject of the laws of political growth and geographical enlargement. The British possessions are geographically too remote; they may not be united together by the necessary bonds of political union. The weakness of Great Britain may now be what the weakness of the Spanish empire once was. Her geography is against her. The day is gradually passing away when arbitrary power may hold distant regions in subjection to a central despotism; the day is at hand which demands that the bonds of union shall be natural and just, not arbitrary—bonds which forever assert their own inherent power to unite and grow stronger, not weaker, with the inevitable changes constantly being wrought out by the busy hand of time.
Man's social and political life depends much on the physical conditions by which he is surrounded. We have only to instance a mountain and valley population. The former is isolated and out of the way, and the people simple, uncouth, and uncultivated—contented, it is true, but, nevertheless, enjoying but little of the abundance and variety in which people of culture luxuriate. The valley population have a city, villages, rich lands, trade, and commerce; they are wealthy, cultivated, and realize far more the legitimate fruition of our entire nature.
Even missionaries, whose prejudices may be presumed to have been in favor of purely moral means, tell us that that heathen can only be permanently Christianized through changes in their physical conditions which commerce alone can bring about.
Physical conditions affect the destiny of nations, and go far to determine the extent and character of political organizations. It makes a great difference whether a country has or has not the means of ready communication and transportation from one section to another. While the great body of Europe was comparatively uncultivated, with only the natural channels of commerce, and these unimproved, there could be little communication between the different sections of country; and Europe had no political or social unity. The people of the entire continent were in a fragmentary and disorganized mass, comparatively isolated, and independent of each other. The jurisdictions of the great barons and of the cities became at length united into kingdoms. The increase of commerce brought these kingdoms into relations with each other, and diplomacy grew out of national necessities. As the countries improved and the facilities and occasions for intercommunication and commerce increased, the principle of political unity must needs comprehend a wider range. At first, it took in only the component parts of kingdoms, and then the kingdoms in the form of great national leagues of more or less permanence. This form of political unity may be very imperfect, but it is nevertheless unity consummated in the best possible manner which the system of separate thrones would permit. Changes in the conditions and relations of peoples render changes in their political forms an absolute necessity. The facilities for education, intercommunication, travel, and commerce, are the great unitizers of peoples and nations.
A great, overgrown empire, which has been built up by arbitrary power, may fall to pieces, because it is not bound together by the ligaments which an ubiquitous commerce affords. Another, because thus interlaced and woven together, cannot be sundered. The dependence of part on part and the facilities of transportation from one section to another, render such an empire a really vital organism, which cannot be divided without destroying the whole; but since nations, as individuals, are tenacious of life, the whole cannot be destroyed, and the empire cannot be divided. There is no place for division, and none can be made. This principle, we believe, applies to our own country.
Lines for the transmission of intelligence, the highways of travel, the channels of intercommunication and commerce—these connect remote sections with each other, and, in connection with the specialization of industry, cause them to become mutually dependent, and thus form a web of unity knitting the many into one. The Mississippi River has been characterized by some one as a great original Unionist. It is so.
The channels and highways of commerce are of two kinds: natural and artificial. The natural are the seas, lakes, rivers; and these only become the means of political union according to the extent of the use which is made of them. The improvement of harbors and of rivers, and the modern revolutions in the art of navigation, have greatly increased their power to make one section necessary to another, and bind people to people. Were not steam applied to locomotion, the great rivers of North America would afford far less of promise for American unity than they now do.
Since whatever facilitates communication and transportation makes one class of people dependent on another, through the mutual exchange of social opportunity and of industrial productions, and binds them more firmly together; hence, also, the political and social values of the artificial channels of commercial intercourse. Wagon roads, canals, railroads, telegraphs, are all so many political unitizers; but the railroad, with its accompaniment, the telegraph, may be regarded as the chief of all.
Let us notice for a moment the political value of our rivers, with the improved navigation of the same, and of our railroads, in the suppression of the existing rebellion.
Had there been no navigable rivers and no railroads uniting the North and South, the chances for the local division of our country would be far greater than they are under existing circumstances. The South would have been comparatively isolated from the North, and our armies could not have reached her territory with the facility they now do. Prolonged for years, as the war must have been under such circumstances, the North would have grown weary of prosecuting it; the chances for intervention would have been greater, and the establishment of a Southern nation by no means an impossible thing.
With facilities for penetrating the country, it may be easier to reduce a dozen rebel States than one quarter of the territory if held by uncivilized Indians. We were longer subjugating the Seminole Indians than we are likely to be in putting down the rebellion. The facilities of transportation in the one case, and their absence in the other, make part of the difference. Besides, these same facilities and their accompaniments render Southern society a really vital and sensitive thing, so that a wound in some vital part, as Vicksburg or Chattanooga, is felt to the remotest ends of Secessia. It will not require extermination of all the members; a few mere such wounds, and the rebellious creature will have to yield.
The Tennessee River enabled us to drive the enemy out of Western Tennessee and Northern Mississippi and Alabama. By means of the Mississippi River we have cut away a considerable limb of the 'confederacy,' and we believe it can never be restored. Nashville has become a depot of supplies for the army of the Cumberland, because of the Cumberland River and the railroad to the Ohio River.
When we advanced from Murfreesboro', on the 24th of June last, the rains fell almost incessantly, and the roads became at length really impassable. We were at Tullahoma and beyond it, on short rations. Had there been no means of transportation other than the army wagon and the common road, it is doubtful whether, under the circumstances, General Rosecrans could have held his advanced position so easily won. When some of the teams could not draw empty wagons back to Murfreesboro', it is not likely that such means of transportation would have been sufficient for the subsistence of our army in and around Tullahoma. But in less than ten days the joyful whistle of the locomotive was heard, and the army was soon abundantly supplied.
Take our present situation. Had there been no railroad from Nashville to the Tennessee River, the campaign of last fall could not have been undertaken with any prospect of success. But allow that it had been undertaken, and the result of the battle of Chickamauga what it was: could our army have terminated its retreat at Chattanooga, and held this important military position? By no means: it would have recrossed the mountains, a broken, discouraged, and almost demoralized host. The trains have run almost constantly from Nashville to Stevenson and Bridgeport, and the army has been on half rations for nearly two months. If wagons could not bring supplies fifty miles, much less one hundred and fifty. And now (November 15th) that the distance for teams has, for some days, been reduced to six or seven miles, we are still very short of supplies.
Let the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad receive due credit for the part it has played in promoting the success of the campaign and 'saving the Army of the Cumberland.' Railroads and all other channels of commerce contribute most efficiently to the success of the great effort of our Government to restore the integrity of the Union: let them receive due credit, and be rightly remembered when the great conflict is ended.
These facts may serve to suggest the value of the various commercial facilities as means of political unitization. A country without the means of travel and transportation may readily separate into independent fragments whenever any arbitrary institution, as that of slavery, develops antagonism between different geographical sections; and in that case the arbitrary institution would triumph, and civilization would be thrown backward. But in a country which speaks the same language, and is checkered all over by the pathways of commercial and social intercourse—since there is no place for division except by the rupture of innumerable ligaments—the integrity of its oneness will maintain itself; and if necessary to this end, the arbitrary institution, or cause of attempted rupture, whatever It may be, will be swept out of existence.
The vindication of national unity is the great issue; the abasement of slavery a subordinate one.
Here, then, may we perceive some reasons why our labor and sacrifice for the restoration of the Union are not given in vain; that we are not struggling to sustain a structure which will be liable at any time to pass into the history of the 'fall of empires.' We have the encouragement of new conditions—of conditions which give a warrant, wherever they obtain, for the permanence of political unity. Subdue the present rebellion, reinstate the Union, multiply the facilities for social intercourse and the mutual exchange of products, especially railroads, wherever there is sufficient promise of a need; and our country, thus knit together and united, has nothing to fear from the madness of local factions. Permeate the body politic in all its members by the nerves, veins, and arteries of a vital circulation, and it becomes an organized unity which is not susceptible of division into upper or lower, right or left, except by the destruction of the entire organism.
But admitting that continental unity is to obtain some day, still the question as to whether now is or is not the time for it to assume a more distinct form, brings us by a rational necessity to a brief notice of the influence of European diplomacy and the contingency of foreign intervention.
It is very clear that the 'balance of power' system of Europe, and the continental system which this war is waged on our part to sustain, are very unlike, if not antagonistic systems. The tone, all through the war, of a large portion of the British daily press, and of much of her weightier literature; the intrigues of Napoleon and the outspeaking of his minions, together with the measures which have been clandestinely taken by persons of power and influence to advance the interests of secession, show that there are influential classes in Western Europe, allied by interest to her fragmentary political organizations, who would gladly see the United States broken to pieces under the shock of rebellion. Their sympathies have been with the rebellion all through the war; and that they have not interfered more actively than they have, is not to be attributed to their sincere love for justice and neutrality, but to their own weakness—to the complicated nature of their own diplomacy, and its critical status just now, when there is danger of bursting volcanoes in their own midst.
It is a law of history that any political system of some degree of prevalence seeks to extend itself; indeed, this is a law of all movement, whether physical, chemical, social, or political. There is a political leaven which permeates the whole mass, and brings it into the same condition. It resulted once in the general prevalence of feudalism; it afterward touched the cities of civilizing Europe, and they became independent, and leagued together for a common purpose. It operated again, and governments of organized and more orderly character came into existence all over what was once feudal Europe. The prevailing system, or that which is animated by the strongest and most active principle, necessitates whatever is unlike it to become of the same character with itself, even though it might seem like the surrender of the better for the worse. This is very aptly shown by the fact that under feudalism allodial titles were voluntarily surrendered for feudal ones. This system subordinated even the church.
The question is legitimate: Have we nothing to fear from the leaven of political fragmentarism in Europe? Is there not vitality enough in the little-monarchy and balance-of-power system of Middle and Western Europe to extend its influence into this country, contributing effectually to the overthrow of American unity; and, by the operation of this political 'induction,' making the political system of America like the political system of Europe? Or, has the time come for the more permanent inauguration of the policy of continental unity—a system of very different genius from that which prevails in the former centres of civilization? We believe that there are the most rational grounds for encouragement.
Political fragmentarism is comparatively a primitive condition. Europe has bean growing out of it for hundreds of years. The grasp of political unity has gradually taken hold of the nations, and brought them organization and order out of isolation and anarchy. Even European diplomacy is an expression of the unitizing tendency, since it seeks to bind the nations together in leagues, making them as completely a unit as may be consistent with the pride and interests of separate and distinct sovereignties. Unitization is therefore in the line of political development; it has gained strength with the march of civilization and the growth of intelligence and freedom among the people. Our struggle, therefore, would seem to be a spontaneous uprising of the people for the security of a cardinal principle—a great torrent of human movement, surging forward with the stream of political development. History is, in its deepest heart, upon the side of unity, and ours is a sure faith that victory will crown our efforts.
We are led further to hope that the time has come for unity, by the fact that the European system has not as yet felt itself strong enough to meddle in any direct manner in our affairs to the detriment of our cause.
The fact that the political system of Europe is at present so completely busied with its own complications, together with the fact that our own country is so intersected by the natural and artificial channels of commerce and general intercourse, and by the interrelation and overlapping of interests, that there is no definite line for a fracture to be found, while, at the same time, our armies can readily penetrate into the enemy's country, and advance their base of supplies by means of the great thoroughfares of trade; these are sources of encouragement, and give us good reason to believe that the time has indeed come for the ushering in of a new political era by the successful vindication of American unity.
We repeat, this is the great issue of the war. Slavery has only sprung upon us; and if slavery stands in the way of national unity and political harmony, unity and harmony can only be secured by subordinating the power of slavery.
As to the importance and full significance of the principle of political unity, it is not proposed to enter into a detailed discussion here; the theme is too vast. A few suggestions must suffice in this connection.
One of the consequences of the want of political unity is national dissensions and frequent wars, by which the resources of nations are drained, property destroyed, countries devastated, the arm of industry weakened, commerce crippled, and progress in the means of civilization generally retarded. Political unity would do away with national quarrels, so disastrous to human well-being; while the emulation of states and sections will furnish all the incentive that is necessary to urge a people on to honorable achievements.
It does not promise well for the pacific character of unity, that we have a great civil war; but wherefore? An antiquated and misplaced institution—a relic of a more primitive and barbarous form of society—has led to the development of antagonism between two local divisions of our country. The war grew out of this antagonism: destroy the cause of sectional misunderstanding, and this cause of war will never more give us trouble.
But a difficulty is suggested: Our people will never become alike, never a homogeneous people; the differences of country and climate will forever prevent this. Very good; we don't want sameness throughout the society of a great empire. This is a distinctly marked feature of primitive society. The more unlike as to industrial pursuits, the more variety in the tastes and wants of the people of different sections, the more dependent may these different sections become upon each other; and with facilities for intercourse, the more intimately do they become related. Unity develops itself through the specialization of parts and functions. This specializing process, as in the gradual formation of the vital organs in fetal development, is the very creation of unlikeness; and unity is the mutual dependence and necessary coöperation of these dissimilar organs. The more diversity the more complete the unity. It is antagonism—a very different thing—that does the mischief. It is not desirable that a people should be homogeneous; that would be a falling back into barbarous conditions. Unity demands that the people shall be heterogeneous and diversified, with heterogeneous and diversified occupations, tastes, and habits; and then, with proper facilities for mental intercommunication, travel, and transportation, they become a coöperative and coalescent people. It is coalescence we want, and not homogeneity.
If such be the conditions of unity, then surely it is not to be feared, because New England manufactures, the Middle States mine, the Western States farm, and the Southern States plant, that, therefore, they must needs be under separate and distinct governments. This very dissimilarity of soil, climate, occupation, and production enables the sections to contribute to each other's welfare, and is a condition of their unity. The heart, liver, lungs, stomach, brain, and nerves cannot dispense with each other in the vital economy; it is the very dependence of one special part upon another through the channels of circulation, that renders the superior animal organism so completely a unit. It cannot be repeated too often that it is not sameness of function, but heterogeneity of function, that unity requires. Hence, through the specialization of industries—one kind of manufactures here, and another there; mining in one locality, and farming in another; the growing of a certain product in one section, and the growing of a different product in a different section—all these, together with, the increasing facilities for correspondence and transportation, are preparing society for larger, more complete, and inevitable unity.
There need be no fear of confirmed hostility of feeling between the North and South when the war is over, should it end in the reëstablishment of the Union. Southern journalists say:
'If the North is successful in its mad scheme of conquest, we shall look upon ourselves as a subjugated people, and there never can be cordial union between the people of the two sections.'
Nonsense. With the coming of peace, there will also come a very different spirit over the dream of the entire South. The great mass of her people have been cruelly duped, and not less cruelly coerced; and once the war is over, these people will become undeceived, and at once relieved from the gyves of a remorseless conscription. There will be a violent reaction in Southern sentiment, and a storm of indignation will be hurled against the instigators of rebellion for all the torture and agony and ruin they have brought to the millions of a once happy nation. The war for the Union will yet find an altar in every Southern home; it will become as truly appreciated there as here; the Southern people will one day glory as greatly in its magnificent results. There will be no longer a few thousand aristocrats, calling themselves 'the South,' and teaching hatred to freedom and progress. This class will be shorn of power and influence, as one of the consequences of the war; and being no longer competent for good or mischief, they may, indeed, nurse their gloom, and torture their lives to the bitter end with the wail, 'We are a subjugated people.' But it will be the wail of selfishness for the sceptre which has departed forever from their hands. There is nothing to fear from these. Very soon after the Government shall have vindicated its competence and extended its jurisdiction over the rebel States, will the most influential and active of their people range themselves on the side of the 'powers that be'—such is the charm of power, the magic of interest, the welcome of peace. All the antagonism generated and cherished by slavery will have totally disappeared; and the South will soon be on the side of all freedom. There will be cordial coöperation under free labor and free trade, between her people and our people; and though diversified as to occupations, habits, and tastes, they will constitute essentially one great political brotherhood.
When slavery, the cause of the present unhappy strife, is extinguished, our country has little to fear, except, perhaps, from the Rocky Mountains, which interpose so formidable a barrier between the Atlantic and Pacific States of our great Federal Union. This mountain barrier and the great distance by water may one day afford an occasion for the encouragement of ambitious men to repeat the experiment of secession. The antidote to this possible evil is the reduction of the most formidable features of the barrier, and the shortening of the forbidding interval. Span the mountains and intervening valleys with railroads and lines of telegraph, and every wire and rail assumes the dignity of a social and political power in the bonds of an indissoluble unity.
If there be so little to create apprehension for the future, may we not rationally hope that the diminution of war, if not its ultimate extinction, is one of the promises of political unity?
Great, strong, noble men—those who are great and noble in all the elements of their nature—such are never pugilists, and never fight: it is those of distorted and defective development—those who have not completeness and integrality within themselves, that are turbulent and break the peace.
Another value of comprehensive unity is that only in great coöperative combinations of mankind can the individual man find the fullest expression for all the faculties of his nature. There is no unity proper—no organization—in savage society; and life there is very simple, with little variety of expression and little enjoyment. As man becomes cultivated his wants increase, and he becomes a more social being. His happiness becomes more and more dependent on others; hence arise societies and organizations of various kinds. The more cultivated any people and the more diversified their wants, the more various do their relations become, and the more extensive their combinations. This is given merely as a fact of history. The truly philosophic eye, we believe, cannot be long in discerning that these larger combinations and more comprehensive unities are only a necessary outgrowth of an improving civilization, and indispensable to the fullest measure of happiness; since in them only can the life of a cultured people find the means of its best expression. The growth of unity, as revealed in history, is not an arbitrary thing incident to a chance concurrence of causes, but naturally growing out of the needs of a steady progress in the education and freedom of the people.
To say that it is through great social and political institutions that the individual finds the most ample means for the culture and satisfaction of the faculties and wants of his nature, is but another way of saying that it is through such institutions that he finds the widest range for individual liberty. A very little observation of history will show that as political unity has enlarged and political organization become more distinctly marked, the radii of individual freedom have at the same time swept a wider field.
Despotism curtails enterprise, and prevents the specialization of parts and functions as the genuine condition of unity. The free play of intelligence and interest is necessary to develop the diversity upon which unity depends. Let the bare statement suffice. It must come to every careful observer and clear thinker with the authority of a self-evident proposition. Unity and individual freedom are necessary to each other; they act and react, and one implies the other. They go hand in hand; and national unity cannot be violated and broken, without, at the same time, necessitating despotism, and curtailing the individual in the exercise of his legitimate rights. Unity and liberty are mutually dependent and forever inseparable. Hence the inestimable value of unity, the leading issue of the war.
The issues of the war might be symbolized by the picture of a great river; the smaller branches forming still larger ones, and these putting into the main stream—unity—itself, as it descends, widening into the great ocean of the future.
These issues might, also, be exhibited in a kind of formula. The following is no doubt very imperfect, but it may be somewhat suggestive. The first includes the second, the second the third:
| I. | Political unity vs. secession: |
| { A progressive civilization vs. a stagnant one; | |
| { A republican form of government vs. an aristocratic one; | |
| II. | { Personal freedom vs. chattel slavery; |
| { General peace vs. diplomatic intrigue and war; | |
| { An enlarged individual freedom vs. espionage, censure, and restriction: | |
| { Common schools and general intelligence vs. partial culture and general ignorance; | |
| { Free inquiry vs. conventional stultification; | |
| { Free speech and a free press vs. the surveillance of a mercenary police; | |
| { The political equality of classes vs. the inequality of | |
| { ruling, servile, and disfranchised classes; | |
| { Respect for the affections vs. disregard for ties of home and family; | |
| { Wages labor vs. compulsory labor; | |
| III. | { The dignity of labor vs. the opprobrium and servility of labor; |
| { A healthy industrial activity vs. indolence and crushing toil; | |
| { The continual specialization of industry vs. industrial sameness; | |
| { Incentives to invention and improvement vs. mechanical inactivity; | |
| { A constantly renewed soil vs. an exhausted one; | |
| { A great navy and flourishing commerce vs. general commercial apathy; | |
| { Great industrial prosperity vs. industrial stagnation; | |
| { Greater variety and versatility in life vs. a narrow and bigoted uniformity. | |
As I close the preparation of this article for the press (November 26th), it becomes positively known that General Bragg is in full retreat. This is a great victory, and splendidly won. There has been no 'straggling to the rear,' no faltering, no serious reverse; the entire three days' conflict, from first to last, has gone right on. A noble victory, and worthy of a noble cause! Soldiers from every great section of the Union—from every State almost—have stood by the side of each other in the perilous conflict. Many have fallen a sacrifice to their country's great cause, unity. Let homage and gratitude from the deep-stirred heart of the nation be theirs; may they long be remembered; and may those who survive, long live to enjoy the fruits of their victory!
The South could ill afford to lose such a battle, here and now. Not long can she hold out in her unnatural struggle against destiny. The tide of a progressive civilization will roll over her, though for a time it must needs be crimsoned with the blood of martyrs.