The verses “To Lamartine,” also, which appeared in August, illustrate the appeal which French idealism made to Lowell’s mind. It is not surprising that the year 1848, which seemed at the time to witness the lifting of the lid from the Republican pot which was at the boiling point, should not only have quickened the pulse of lovers of freedom in America, but should have given generous-minded men here a twinge of envy as they contrasted the sanguine expectancy of Europe with what they saw of the seared conscience of America; and in the papers just quoted Lowell turns fiercely upon the public expressions of sympathy with the ruling powers of Europe. It was a natural transition from these reflections on the movements in France to ask bitterly in his next editorial article, “Shall we ever be Republicans?” In this he speculates on the extraordinary lack of agreement in the United States between names and things, and finds slavery the opiate which has made men’s minds drowsy.
“The truth is,” he declares, “that we have never been more than nominal republicans. We have never got over a certain shamefacedness at the disrespectability of our position. We feel as if when we espoused Liberty we had contracted a mésalliance. The criticism of the traveller who looks at us from a monarchical point of view exasperates us. Instead of minding our own business we have been pitifully anxious as to what would be thought of us in Europe. We have had Europe in our minds fifty times, where we have had God and conscience once. Our literature has endeavored to convince Europeans that we are as like them as circumstances would admit. The men who have the highest and boldest bearing among us are the slaveholders. We are anxious to be acknowledged as one of the great Powers of Christendom, forgetful that all the fleets and navies in the world are weak in comparison with one sentence in the Declaration of Independence. When every other argument in favor of our infamous Mexican war has been exhausted, there was this still left—that it would make us more respected abroad. We are as afraid of our own principles as a raw recruit of his musket. As far as the outward machinery of our government is concerned, we are democratic only in our predilection for little men.
“When will men learn that the only true conservatism lies in growth and progress, that whatever has ceased growing has begun to die? It is not the conservative, but the retarding element which resides in the pocket. It is droll to witness the fate of this conservatism when the ship of any state goes to pieces. It lashes itself firmly to the ponderous anchor it has provided for such an emergency, cuts all loose, and—goes to the bottom. There are a great many things to be done in this country, but the first is the abolition of slavery. If it were not so arrant a sin as it is, we should abolish it (if for no other reason) that it accustoms our public men to being cowards. We are astonished, under the present system, when a Northern representative gets so far as to surmise that his soul is his own, and make a hero of him forthwith. But we shall never have that inward fortunateness without which all outward prosperity is a cheat and delusion, till we have torn up this deadly upas, no matter with what dear and sacred things its pestilential roots may be entwined.”
Lowell had said to Briggs that he was not at one with the Abolitionists who favored disunion, and with that sanity of political judgment which made it impossible for him to be a revolutionist even in theory, he saw not in politics and political institutions that finality which rests in an organic national life. Thus he never could be a blind partisan, and he was quick to see the shams and concealments which were hidden in the conventions of political terms. A clever English publicist once said that the Constitution forms a sort of false bottom to American political thinking, and Lowell, who was as ardent and sensitive an American as ever lived, played most amusingly in one of the earliest of these newspaper articles with the conceit of “The Sacred Parasol.” He told Gay afterward that he wished he had put his paper into rhyme. If he had, he would doubtless have caught and held more attention by such a satire. Citing the marvellous incident reported by Father John de Peano Carpini of the people in the land of Kergis, who dwelt under ground because they could not endure the horrible noise made by the sun when it rose, he applied the parable to American politics, only it is the mode of thought that is subterranean, not the habit of living. “As we manage everything by Conventions, we get together and resolve that the sun has not risen, and so settle the matter, as far as we are concerned, definitively. Meanwhile, the sun of a new political truth got quietly above the horizon in our Declaration of Independence. Watchers upon the mountain tops had caught sight of a ray now and then before, but this was the first time that the heavenly lightbringer had gained an objective existence in the eyes of an entire people.” This was all very well, until the light began to penetrate dark places which it was for the interest of certain people to keep dark. “Fears in regard to heliolites became now very common, and a parasol of some kind was found necessary as a protection against this celestial bombardment. A stout machine of parchment was accordingly constructed, and, under the respectable name of a Constitution, was interposed wherever there seemed to be danger from the hostile incursions of Light. Whenever this is spread, a dim twilight, more perplexing than absolute darkness, reigns everywhere beneath its shadow.... It is amazing what importance anything, however simple, gains by being elevated into a symbol. Mahomet’s green breeches were doubtless in themselves common things enough and would perhaps have found an indifferent market in Brattle or Chatham Street. They might have hung stretched upon a pole at the door of one of those second-hand repositories without ever finding a customer or exciting any feeling but of wonder at the uncouthness of their cut. But lengthen the pole a little, and so raise the cast-off garment into a banner or symbol, and it becomes at once full of inspiration, and perhaps makes a Western General Taylor of the very tailor who cut and stitched it and had tossed it over carelessly a hundred times.... In the same way this contrivance of ours, though the work of our own hands, has acquired a superstitious potency in our eyes. The vitality of the state has been transferred from the citizens to this. Were a sacrilegious assault made upon it, our whole body politic would collapse at once. Gradually men are beginning to believe that, like the famous ancile at Rome, it fell down from heaven, and it is possible that it may have been brought thence by a distinguished personage who once made the descent. Meanwhile our Goddess of Liberty is never allowed to go abroad without the holy parasol over her head to prevent her from being tanned, since any darkening of complexion might be productive of serious inconvenience in the neighborhood of the Capitol.” With this grave banter Lowell goes on to instance cases where the Sacred Parasol has caused a shifting of relations in the twilight created by it, and warns people of the danger they would be in if exposed to the direct rays of the Sun of Righteousness.
The article shows the kind of reënforcement which Lowell brought to the anti-slavery camp. Edmund Quincy had something of the same wit and irony, but he had also a greater love of detail and busied himself over current incidents with the eagerness of a political detective, running down fugitives from divine justice with an ardor which was always heightened by the complexities of the case. Lowell, though he did not neglect to use incidents for the illustration of his argument, never got far away from the elemental principles for which his wit and sense of justice and love of freedom stood. He played with his subject often, but it was the play of a cat with his captive—one stroke of the paw, when the time came, and the mouse was dead.
Meanwhile the little band of the faithful, for whom the Anti-Slavery Standard was a weekly rally, read with delight the incisive editorial articles, and though they were not always supplied with downright arguments from this source, they had, what they scarcely got otherwise in the midst of their tremendous seriousness, the opportunity to rub their hands with glee over a telling rapier thrust, and also to have their horizon suddenly enlarged by the historical and literary comparisons which were swept into range by this active-minded scout.
The grim earnest in which Mr. Gay was working, in preparing for this weekly bombardment, left him little leisure for sitting down and admiring the mechanism of his guns, and Lowell in his retirement at Elmwood was more or less conscious of a certain doubt whether he was not firing blank cartridges. “You see,” he wrote, “that I have fallen into the fault which I told you I should be in danger of, viz., dealing too much in generalities. The truth is, I see so few papers except what are on our side that I cannot write a controversial article. I intend to review Webster’s speech and to write an article on the Presidential nomination. Perhaps they will be more to the purpose. Meanwhile, how can you expect a man to work with any spirit if he never hears of his employer? Why don’t you write me and say frankly how you are satisfied or dissatisfied, and what you want?” Gay wrote later: “You may be sure I shall write you fast enough when you write what you ought not; until I do you may be sure that I—so far as that is of any consequence—am pleased. I hear your articles spoken of highly from all quarters, and have heard only one criticism from one or two persons,—that they seemed to be written rather hastily. But that I believe is the way you write everything. It is a bad way to get into, though, and newspaper writing is a great temptation to it.”
The political doctrines which Lowell advocated were naturally not those of expediency, but of downright frankness and honesty. It is true that he and his associates had the great advantage, in proclaiming principles, of being quite unable to carry them out successfully at the polls. Such a position reënforces candor. Just as the Gold Democrats in the political contest of 1896 could draw up the most admirable platform that has been seen for many years, since they were out in the open, and were neither on the defensive nor preparing to carry their candidates into office, so the Abolitionists in 1848 felt under no obligation to support either Taylor or Cass, and could speak their minds freely concerning both. But Lowell, in the article which he wrote on “The Nominations for the Presidency,” characteristically struck that note of independence in politics which was a cardinal point in his political creed and was to be exemplified forcibly his life through, both in speech and conduct. In this he was not illustrating a principle which he maintained, so much as he was living a natural life. Independence was a fundamental note in his nature.
“The word NO,” he wrote, “is the shibboleth of politicians. There is some malformation or deficiency in their vocal organs which either prevents their uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in the expectation of it, is wholly incompetent to this perplexing monosyllable. One might imagine that America had been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African animals, the Aye Ayes. As Pius Ninth has not yet lost his popularity in this country by issuing a bull against slavery, our youth, who are always ready to hurrah for anything, might be practised in the formation of the refractory negative by being encouraged to shout Viva Pio Nono.[60]
“If present indications are to be relied upon, no very general defection from the ranks of either party will result from the nominations. Politicians, who have so long been accustomed to weigh the expediency of any measure by its chance of success, are unable to perceive that there is a kind of victory in simple resistance. It is a great deal to conquer only the habit of slavish obedience to party. The great obstacle is the reluctance of politicians to assume moral rather than political grounds.”[61]