For this broad statement there is no evidence. The first break came in 1848 and it was due to rivalries in the Democratic Party. If the "Biglow Papers" played any part it was too unimportant to produce an appreciable result. They were treated as a fortunate jeu d'esprit that everybody enjoyed, but the Democratic Party did not change its policy nor did it lose adherents. The Mexican War was prosecuted and bigotry political and religious continued to flourish. They may have contributed though, insensibly, to a public opinion that became formidable in the end but the effect was not as perceptible as was the effect of Garrison's legend that slavery was a covenant with hell and a league with death, which had its place at the head of the Liberator through successive years. Nor do I believe that "it revolutionized the tone of Northern society." Indeed, there is a "tone" of Northern society that has not been revolutionized to this day. The South is still the land of gentle birth. The slave-holder still lives as a man of breeding and the owner of estates. The negro is still of an inferior caste and in some circles the days of slavery were the great days of the Republic. When the "Biglow Papers" appeared Mr. Lowell had not achieved distinction. Society did not know him to follow him. It cared nothing for what he thought, and it was only amused by what he said. The Lowell of 1840 was not the Lowell of 1890. Nor can any series of statements be more untruthful and absurd than the statements of the writer that "thenceforth it became creditable to advocate abolition in drawing rooms, and to preach it from fashionable city pulpits to congregations paying fancy prices for their pews. In the workshops, the barrooms and other popular resorts the laugh was turned against the slave-owners; the ground was prepared for the popular enthusiasm which recruited the armies that exhausted the South, and Lowell must share with Lincoln and Grant the glory of the crowning victories."
If any work of romance contains more fiction in the same space, it is my fortune not to have seen that work. The circulation of the Boston Courier in which the papers were printed was very limited. It did not go into barrooms nor into workshops. It was read chiefly by the converted and semi-converted abolitionists. As to fashionable pulpits thenceforth preaching abolition it is to be said that there was only one leading pulpit, Theodore Parker's pulpit, in which abolitionism was tolerated until years after the appearance of the "Biglow Papers." As to society, it is to be said that in the Fifties Charles Sumner, a Senator, was ostracized for his opinions upon slavery.
It is nearer the truth to say that what passes for society in New
England never tolerated abolitionists nor encouraged abolitionism.
The one writing which in an historical point of view contributed most largely to recruit the armies of the Republic during the Rebellion was Webster's speech in reply to Hayne. The closing paragraph of the speech was in the schoolbooks of the free States, and it had been declaimed from many a schoolhouse stage.
Lowell deserves credit for what he did. He chose his place early and firmly on the anti-slavery side, but it is absurd and false to say that thenceforward and therefor abolitionism became popular and abolitionists the sought for or the accepted by society. Mr. Lowell was the son of a Boston Unitarian clergyman. In the Forties he had not gained standing ground for himself, to omit all thought of his ability to carry an unpopular cause.
Indeed, up to the time of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise the whole array of anti-slavery writers and speakers had not accomplished the results which the reviewer attributes to the "Biglow Papers."
Indeed, should there be a signal reform in the fashion and cost of ladies' dresses it might with equal propriety be attributed to Butler's poem "Nothing to Wear."
GENERAL GARFIELD AND GENERAL ROSECRANS
The statement is revived that General Garfield, when chief of the staff of General Rosecrans in the campaign which ended at Chickamauga was false to Rosecrans. The allegation and the fact are that he wrote to Mr. Chase, then in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, that Rosecrans was incompetent to the command. Garfield's statements, as I recall the letters, were free from malice and the professional and ethical question is, "Was Garfield justified as a citizen and soldier, in giving his opinion to the Administration?" His view of Rosecrans was confirmed by events, and it may be assumed that the opinion was free from any improper influence when the letters were written. On this assured basis of facts I cannot doubt that Garfield did only what was his duty. Neither the President nor the War Department could obtain specific knowledge of the officers in command except through associates and subordinates unless they trusted to newspapers and casual visitors to the army. The struggle was a desperate one and the volunteer army was composed of men who were citizens before they were soldiers and they remained citizens when they became soldiers. Garfield was of the citizen soldiery and to him and to the country the etiquette of the army and the etiquette of society were subordinate to the fortunes of the nation. Of General Rosecrans' unfitness for any important command there can be no doubt. After the disaster of Chickamauga, Rosecrans was relieved and General Thomas was put in command and General Grant was ordered to the field. He met Rosecrans at Nashville where they had an interview. From General Grant I received the statement that Rosecrans had sound views as to the means of relieving the army; "And," said General Grant, "my wonder was that he had not put them in execution."
This one fact expresses enough of the weak side of Rosecrans as a military leader to warrant the opinion given to Chase by Garfield, and that opinion having been formed upon a knowledge of facts and of Rosecrans as a military man and not from prejudice or rivalry, Garfield should be honored for his course, rather than condemned.