And here let one word be said against the arguments of those well-meaning and patriotic men who attempt to prove that certain acts of the Government have been injudicious and unwise—such, for example, as the suspension of the habeas corpus, the alleged illegal arrests, and the emancipation policy. It is not the purpose of this paper to enter into additional argument to sustain this opinion or to disprove it. But in justice to the Government—simply because it is a Government—let it not be forgotten that when events heretofore unforeseen and unprepared for are throwing our vast nation into incalculable confusion, and when it becomes absolutely imperative that the head of the Government must act decisively and according to the promptness of his honest judgment, and when we know equally well that that judgment, be it what it may, cannot accord with the various and diverse opinions of all men, then it behooves his countrymen, if not to acquiesce in, to support whatever that honest judgment may decide to be best for the emergency. No doubt, errors have been made, but they are errors inconceivably less in their results than would be the unpardonable sin of the people, should they, because differing in opinion, weaken the hands and confuse the purposes of the powers that be. With secret and treacherous foes in our very midst, hidden behind the masks of a painted loyalty, the President, after deep and earnest consultation and reflection, deemed it his duty to authorize arrests under circumstances which he solemnly believed were the best adapted to arrest the evil, though, by so doing, many good and innocent men might temporarily suffer with the bad. So too with regard to the proclamation of freedom—be the step wise or unwise, and there is by no means a unity of sentiment on this head—the President conceived it to be the duty of his office—a duty which never entered into his plans or intentions until the war had increased to gigantic and threatening proportions—to level a blow at what he and millions of his countrymen believe to be the stronghold of the enemy, viz., that system of human servitude which nourished the body politic and social now standing in armed and fearful resistance to the Constitution and the laws. It matters not, so far as opinion goes, whether the step was wise or foolish, if the executive head deemed it wise. Nor was it a hasty or spasmodic movement on his part. Months were devoted to its consideration, and every argument was patiently and candidly listened to from all the representatives of political theory for and against. Even then no hasty step was taken; but, on the contrary, our deluded countrymen in arms against us were forewarned, and earnestly, respectfully advised and entreated to take that step in behalf of Union and peace, which would leave their institution as it had existed. Nay, more: terms whereby no personal inconvenience or pecuniary loss to them would be involved if they would but be simply loyal to the Government, were liberally offered them, with three months for their consideration. Let those of us who, notwithstanding these ameliorating circumstances, doubt the good policy of the act, remember that they of the South, our open foes, invited the measures. Their leaders acknowledged and their press boasted that the Southern army never could be overcome—if for no other reason, for this reason, that while the army of the North was composed of the bone and muscle of the great working classes, drawn away from the fields of labor and enterprise, which must necessarily, in their opinion, languish from this absence, the Confederate army was composed of 'citizens' and property owners (to wit, slaveholders), whose absence from their plantations in no way interfered with the growth of their cotton, sugar, corn, and rice, from which sources of wealth and nourishment they could continue to draw the sinews of war. They went farther than this, and acted upon their declaration by employing their surplus slave labor in the work of intrenching their fortifications, serving their army, and finally fighting in their army.
Upon this basis of slave labor they asserted their omnipotence in war and ability to continue the struggle without limit of time. The subsidized press of England supported this theory, and declared that with such advantages it was idle for the Federal Government to maintain a struggle in the face of such belligerent advantages! Then, and not till then, were the eyes of the President open to a fact which none but the political blind man could fail to observe, and then it was that not only the President, but a very large proportion of our countrymen, heretofore strictly conservative men, felt that the time had come when further forbearance would be suicidal. Although many doubted and still doubt if slavery was the cause of the rebellion, very many were forced to the conclusion that what our enemies themselves admitted to be the strength of the rebellion was indeed such, and that the time had arrived to avail themselves of that military necessity which authorizes the Government to adopt such measures as may be deemed the most fitting for crushing rebellion and restoring our constitutional liberty. Let us think, then, as we please upon the judiciousness of the proclamation—that it was uttered with forethought, calmness, and with a full sense of the responsibility of the President to his God and his country, none of us can deny. With this we should be satisfied. We have but one duty before us, then, as a government and a people—and that is, an earnest, devoted prosecution of this war for the integrity of our common country. In the untrammelled hands of that Government let us leave its prosecution. We have but one duty before us as individuals, and that is to support the existing Government with our individual might. Let the cry be loud and long, as, thank Heaven, it still is, 'On with the war,' not for war's sake, but for the sake of that peace, which only war, humanely and vigorously conducted, can achieve.
Fling personal ambition and individual aggrandizement to the winds. Let political preferment and partisan proclivities bide their time, and as a united and one-minded people, devote heart and mind, strength and money, to the prosecution of the campaign, without considering what may be its duration, and without fear of circumstance or expenditure. If it be necessary, let the public debt be increased until it reaches and exceeds the public liabilities of the most indebted Government of Europe. We and our descendants will cheerfully pay the interest on that expenditure which purchased so great a blessing as national endurability. Meanwhile, with unity, forbearance, perseverance, and the silent administration of the ballot box, we will, as a people, maintain, notwithstanding that a portion of the land we hold dear stands severed from us by hatred and prejudice, the prosperity which we still claim, and the renown which was once accorded to us. By so doing, and by so doing only, shall our former grandeur come back to us—though its garments be stained with blood. A grandeur which, without hyperbole, it may be said, will outstrip the glory which, as a young and sanguine people, we have ever claimed for our country. The reason for so believing is the simple and undeniable fact that out of the saddening humiliation and devastation of this civil war has arisen the better knowledge of the wonderful resources, abilities, and determined spirit of the American people. We see—both combatants—that we are giants fighting, and not quarrelling pigmies, as the foreign enemies of us both have vainly attempted to prove. We see, both combatants, how vast and important to each is the territory we are struggling for, how inseparable to our united interests are the sources of wealth imbedded in our rocks, underlying our soil, and growing in its beneficent bosom. We see, both combatants, how strong is the commerce of the East to supply, like a diligent handmaiden, the wants of every section; how bountiful are the plantations of the South and the granaries of the West to keep the world united to us in the strong bonds of commercial and friendly intercourse; how absolutely necessary to the prosperity of both are the deep and wide-flowing rivers which run, like silver bands of peace, through the length and breadth of a land whose vast privileges we have been too blind to appreciate, and in that blindness would destroy. Above all, we are beginning to see that like two mighty champions fighting for the belt of superiority, we can neither of us achieve that individual advantage which can utterly and forever place the other beyond the ability of again accepting the gauntlet of defiance, and that our true and lasting glory can alone proceed from a determination to shake hands in peace, and, as united champions, defying no longer each other, defy the world. Nor would the South in consenting to a reunion now find humiliation or dishonor. She has proved herself a noble foe—quick in expedient, firm in determination, valorous in war. We know each other the better for the contest; we shall, when peace returns, respect each other the more; and although the cost of that peace, whenever it comes, will be the sacrifice of many local prejudices and sectional privileges, what, oh, what are such sacrifices to the inestimable blessings of national salvation?
THE COMPLAINING BORE.
About the most disagreeable people one meets with in life are those who make a business of complaining. They ask for sympathy when they merit censure. There is no excuse for man or woman making known their private griefs except to intimate friends or those who stand in the nearest relation to them. I have no patience with the man who wishes to catch the public ear with the sound of his repining. Be it that he complain of the world generally, or specify the particular occasion of his dumpishness, he is in either aspect equally contemptible. What a serio-comic spectacle a man presents who imagines that everybody is in a leagued conspiracy against him to disappoint his hopes and thwart his plans for success! He thinks he is kept from rising by some untoward fate that is bent on crushing him into the ground, feels that he is the victim of persecution, the sport of angry gods. Not having the spirit of a martyr, he frets and fumes about his condition, and finds a selfish relief in counting over his grievances in the presence of all who are good-natured enough to listen. Such a fellow is a social nuisance—away with him! The fact usually is that the world has more reason to complain of him than he of the world. For instance, I know a man who has become misanthropic, but who should hate himself instead of the whole race.
Mr. Jordan Algrieve has become disgusted with life, and confesses than his experiment with existence has thus far proved a failure. He has combated with the world, and the world has proved too much for him, and he acknowledges the defeat. Mr. Algrieve is on the shady side of fifty, and his hair getting to be of an iron gray. His features are prominent, with a face wrinkled and shrivelled by discontent and acidity of temper. His tall figure is bent, not so much by cares and weight of years, as in a kind of typical submission to the stern decree of an evil destiny.
Strange to say, he is well educated, and graduated with honor at one of our Eastern colleges. With a knowledge of this fact, it is pitiable to see him standing at the corner of the street in his busy town in a suit of seedy black and a shockingly bad hat, chafing his hands together and pretending to wait for somebody who never comes.
Poor Algrieve, he is a man under the table, and he knows it. He has tried to be somebody in his way, but has failed sadly in all his efforts. It is said that Algrieve always had a constitutional aversion to legitimate and continued labor, but has a passion for making strikes and securing positions that afford liberal pay for little work.
Thinking a profession too monotonous and plodding, he never took the trouble to acquire one. As to honest manual toil, that was an expedient he never so much as dreamed of. In early life he was so unfortunate as to secure an appointment to a clerkship in the Assembly, and after that he haunted the State Legislature for five or six winters in hot pursuit of another place, but his claims failing to be recognized, he relapsed into the natural belief that his party was in league to proscribe him. After making a large number of political ventures of a more ambitious order, and with the same mortifying results, he abandoned that field and took to speculation in patent rights. He vended a wonderful churn-dash, circulated a marvellous flatiron, and expatiated through the country on the latest improvement in the line of a washing machine. But these operations somehow afforded him but transient relief, and left him always involved still more largely in debt. At different times in his life he had also been a horse dealer, a dry-goods merchant, a saloon keeper, the proprietor of a tenpin alley, and managed to grow poorer in all these various occupations. The last I saw of him he was reduced to peddling books in a small way, carrying his whole stock in a new market basket. He was very importunate in his appeals to customers to purchase, putting it upon the ground that he had been unfortunate and had a claim to their charity. I happened to see him in the office of the popular hotel in Podgeville, when he was more than usually clamorous for patronage. He accosted nearly every man in the room with a dull, uninteresting volume in his hand, and for which he asked a respectable price. At last he set down his basket, and commenced a kind of snivelling harangue to his little audience. Mr. Algrieve opened by saying: