Virginia, which began by volunteering as peacemaker in our civil troubles, seems likely to end by being their battleground; as Mr. Pickwick, interfering between the belligerent rival editors, only brought upon his own head the united concussion of their carpet-bags. And as Dickens declares that the warriors engaged far more eagerly in that mimic strife, on discovering that all blows were to be received by deputy, so there is evidently an increased willingness to deal hard knocks on both sides, in the present case, so long as it is clear that only Virginia will take them. Maryland, under protection of our army, adroitly contrives to shift the scene of action farther South. The Gulf States, with profuse courtesies for the Old Dominion, consent to shift it farther North. The Southern Confederacy has talked about paying Richmond the "compliment" of selecting it for the seat of government;—as if a bully, about to be lynched in his own house by the crowd, should compliment his next-door neighbor by climbing in at his window. It is very pleasant to have a hospitable friend; but it is counting on his hospitality rather too strongly, when you make choice of his apartments to be tarred and feathered in.
Thus fades the fancy of an "independent neutrality" for the Old Dominion. It ought to fade;—for neutrality is a crime, where one's mother's life is at stake; and the Border theory of independence only reminds one of Pitt's definition of an independent statesman, "a statesman not to be depended on". How sad has been the decline of Virginia! How strange, that in 1790, of the ten American post-offices yielding more than a thousand dollars annually, that stately old commonwealth held five! Now "a poverty-stricken State", by confession of her own newspapers,—beleaguered, blockaded,—with no imports but hungry and moneyless soldiers, and no exports save fugitives of all colors,—what has she to hope from the present warfare? Elsewhere riches have wings; in Virginia they are yet more transitory, having legs. Two hundred million dollars' worth of her property has become unsalable, if not worthless, within two months. She has but two great staples: tobacco to send North, and slaves to send South. The slaves at present go only to the wrong point of the compass, at rates remunerative to themselves alone; and the tobacco-trade, for this season, will not even end in smoke.
But that which is now the condition of Virginia must ultimately be the condition of the other seceding States. The tide of Secession has already turned, and such tides never turn twice. The conspirators in Maryland and Missouri had but one opportunity, and it was lost; with it also went the whole cause of the Secessionists. For one week the North shuddered, knowing the defenceless condition of Washington. Now no Northern man shudders, except those whose Southern female cousins have not yet found a refuge with the household gods of the eminent Senator from Texas.
The man who ever doubted that the first gun fired by the insurgents would instantly unite the nation against them knew as little of the American people as if he were editor of the London "Times." There is no chemical solvent like gunpowder. Even the Mexican War, utterly opposed to the moral convictions of the majority of Northern men, swept them away in such a current that the very party which opposed it could find no path to the Presidency but for its chief hero. Had the present outbreak occurred far less favorably than it has, had the discretion of President Lincoln been much less, or that of Mr. Davis much greater, still the unanimity would have been merely a question of time, and the danger of Washington would have reconciled all minor feuds. The Democratic party would inevitably have embraced the war, when once declared; Douglas would have made speeches for it, Buchanan subscribed money for it, and Butler joined in it; Bennett would still have floated triumphant on the tide of zeal, and Caleb Cushing still have offered to the Government his cavalry company of one. It is a grace not given to any American party, to stand out long against the enthusiasm of a war.
No doubt the Secession leaders have treated us very handsomely, as to amount of provocation. It is rare that any great contest begins by a blow so unequivocal as the bombardment of Fort Sumter; and rare in recent days for any set of belligerents to risk the ignominy of privateering. But, after all, it is the startling social theories announced by the new "government" which form the chief strength of its enemies. Either slavery is essential to a community, or it must be fatal to it,—there is no middle ground; and the Secessionists have taken one horn of the dilemma with so delightful a frankness as to leave us no possible escape from taking the other. Never, in modern days, has there been a conflict in which the contending principles were so clearly antagonistic. The most bigoted royal house in Europe never dreamed of throwing down the gauntlet for the actual ownership of man by man. Even Russia never fought for serfdom, and Austria has only enslaved nations, not individuals. In civil wars, especially, all historic divergences have been trivial compared to ours, so far as concerned the avowed principles of strife. In the French wars of the Fronde, the only available motto for anybody was the Tout arrive en France, "Anything may happen in France," which gayly recognized the absurd chaos of the conflict. In the English civil wars, the contending factions first disagreed upon a shade more or less of royal prerogative, and it took years to stereotype the hostility into the solid forms with which we now associate it. Even at the end of that contest, no one had ventured to claim such a freedom as our Declaration of Independence asserts, on the one side,—nor to recognize the possibility of such a barbarism as Jefferson Davis glorifies, on the other. The more strongly the Secessionists state their cause, the more glaringly it is seen to differ from any cause for which any sane person has taken up arms since the Roman servile wars. Their leaders may be exhibiting very sublime qualities; all we can say is, as Richardson said of Fielding's heroes, that their virtues are the vices of a decent man.
We are now going through not merely the severest, but the only danger which has ever seriously clouded our horizon. The perils which harass other nations are mostly traditional for us. Apart from slavery, democratic government is long since un fait accompli, a fixed fact, and the Anglo-American race can no more revert in the direction of monarchy than of the Saurian epoch. Our geographical position frees us from foreign disturbance, and there is no really formidable internal trouble, slavery alone excepted. Let us come out of this conflict victorious in the field, escaping also the more serious danger of conquering ourselves by compromise, and the case of free government is settled past cavil. History may put up her spy-glass, like Wellington at Waterloo, saying, "The field is won. Let the whole line advance."
There has been a foolish suspicion that the North was strong in diplomacy and weak in war. The contrary is the case. We are proving ourselves formidable enough in war to cover our shortcomings in diplomacy. How narrowly we escaped demoralizing ourselves, at the last moment before Congress adjourned, by some concession which would have destroyed our consistency without strengthening our position! If we could even now bind our generals to imitate our Cabinet in its admirable and novel policy of silence,—to eschew pen and ink as carefully as if they were in training for the Presidency! The country is safe so long as they shut their mouths and open their batteries.
The ordeal by battle is a stern test of the solid power of a nation. There must always be some great quality to produce great military superiority,—skill, or daring, or endurance, or numbers, or wealth, or all together. Except the first two, neither of these special qualifications has been even claimed by the Secessionists; and these two have been taken for granted with such superfluous boastfulness as to yield strong internal evidence against the claim. Certainly their general strategy, up to this moment, has yielded not a single evidence of far-sighted judgment or conscious power, while it has shown decided glimpses of weakness and indecision. Indeed, how can an army like theirs be strong? Its members mostly unaccustomed to steady exertion or precise organization; without mechanic skill or invention; without cash or credit; fettered in their movements by the limited rolling stock of their scanty railways; tethered to their own homes by the fear of insurrection;—what element of solid strength have they, to set against these things? In the present state of the world, strong in peace is strong in war. In modern times an army of heroes is useless without facilities for arming, transporting, and feeding it, to say nothing of the more ignoble circumstance of pay. Considerations of simple political economy render it almost impossible for a slaveholding army to be strong collectively, nor do the habits of Southern life usually fit its members to be strong singly.
In remembering the Battle of New Orleans, we forget that the Southwest was then a region of hardy pioneers, such as are now rather to be sought for in Kansas and California. The famous Tennessee riflemen of that day were not necessarily slaveholders, and their legitimate descendants are yet to be found among the brave men who rally round the nearest approach to Andrew Jackson whom the State now boasts,—a tolerable fac-simile both as to character and etymology,—Andrew Johnson. There is no need of disparaging the personal courage of any man, and the Southern army has some good officers,—too good, probably, in spite of themselves, to bring to bear their clearest judgment and their best energies in striking down the flag they have all sworn to die for. They have eminent foreign advisers also, or one at least; for Mr. W.H. Russell, self-appointed plenipotentiary near the Court of St. Jefferson, is said to have lent the aid of his valuable military experience to that commanding officer so appropriately named Captain Bragg. But, Bragg or no brag, it is almost a moral impossibility that a slaveholding army should be strong.
The Secessionists have suggested to us a fatal argument. "The superior race must control the inferior." Very well; if they insist on invoking the ordeal by battle to decide which is the superior, let it be so. It will be found that they have made the common mistake of confounding barbarism with strength. Because the Southern masses are as ignorant of letters and of arts as the Scottish Highlanders, they infer themselves to be as warlike. But even the brave and hardy Highlanders proved powerless against the imperfect military resources of England, a century ago, and it is not easy to see why those who now parody them should fare better. The absence of the alphabet does not necessarily prove the presence of strength, nor is the ignorance of all useful arts the best preparation for the elaborate warfare of modern times. The nation is grown well weary of this sham "chivalry," that would sell Bayard or Du Gueselin at auction, if it could be shown that the mother of either had a drop of marketable blood in her veins. It had always been charitably fancied that in South Carolina at least there was some remnant of more knightly honor, until a kind Providence sent Preston S. Brooks to dispel the illusion. It may be possible that even a brave man, in some moment of insane inconsistency, may commit some act which is the consummation of all cowardice; but it is utterly and absolutely impossible that any brave community should approve it. Time has long since carried the perpetrator of that dastardly outrage to a higher tribunal, but nothing can ever redeem the State of his birth from the crowning shame of its indorsement.