It is not recorded whether the proverbial English army in Flanders lied as terribly as they swore; the genius of the nation did not take that direction. But if they did, they have now met their match in audacity of falsehood. Captain Bobadil in the play, who submitted a plan of killing off an army of forty thousand men by the prowess of twenty, each man to do his twenty per diem in successive single combats, might have raised his proposed score of heroes among any handful of Secessionists. There seems to be no one to stop these prodigious fellows as a party of Buford's men were once checked by their commander, in the writer's hearing, on their way down the Missouri River, in 1856. "Boys," quoth the contemptuous official, "you had better shut up. Whenever we came in sight of the enemy, you always took a vote whether to fight or run, and you always voted to run." Then the astounding tales they have told respecting our people, down to the last infamous fabrication of "Booty and Beauty," as the supposed war-cry for the placid Pennsylvanians! Booty, forsooth! In the words of the "Richmond Whig," "there is more rich spoil within a square mile of New York and Philadelphia than can be found in the whole of the poverty-stricken State of Virginia"; and the imaginary war-cry suggests Wilkes's joke about the immense plunder carried off by some freebooter from the complete pillage of seven Scotch isles: he reëmbarked with three-and-sixpence.
It might not be wise to claim that the probable lease of life for our soldiers is any longer than for the Secessionists, but it certainly looks as if ours would have the credit of dying more modestly. Indeed, the men of the Free States, as was the wont of their ancestors, have made up their minds to this fight with a slow reluctance which would have been almost provoking but for the astonishing promptness which marked their action when once begun. It is interesting to notice how clearly the future is sometimes foreseen by foreigners, while still veiled from the persons most concerned. Thus, twelve years before the Battle of Bunker's Hill, the Duc de Choiseul predicted and prepared for the separation of the American colonies from England. One month after that, the Continental Congress still clung to the belief that they should escape a division. And so, some seven years ago, the veteran French advocate Guépin, in a most able essay suggested by the "Burns affair" in Boston, prophesied civil war in America within ten years. "Une grande lutte s'apprête donc," he wrote; "A great contest is at hand."
Thus things looked to foreigners, both in 1775 and in 1854, while in both cases our people were yielding only step by step to the inevitable current which swept events along. It is the penalty of caution, that it sometimes appears, even to itself, like irresolution, or timidity. Not a foolish charge has been brought against Northern energy in this contest, that was not urged equally in the time of the Revolution. The royal troops thought Massachusetts as easy to subdue as the South Carolinians affect to think, and expressed it in almost the same language:—"Whenever it comes to blows, he that can run the fastest will think himself best off." The revolutionists admitted that "the people abroad have too generally got the idea that the Americans are all cowards and poltroons." A single regiment, it was generally asserted, could march triumphant through New England. The people took no pains to deny it. The guard in Boston captured thirteen thousand cartridges at a stroke. The people did not prevent it. A citizen was tarred and feathered in the streets by the royal soldiery, while the band played "Yankee Doodle." The people did not interfere. "John Adams writes, there is a great spirit in the Congress, and that we must furnish ourselves with artillery and arms and ammunition, but avoid war, if possible,—if possible." At last, one day, these deliberate people finally made up their minds that it was time to rise,—and when they rose, everything else fell. In less than a year afterwards, Boston being finally evacuated, one of General Howe's mortified officers wrote home to England, in words which might form a Complete Letter-Writer for every army-officer who has turned traitor, from Beauregard downward,—"Bad times, my dear friend. The displeasure I feel in the small share I have in our present insignificancy is so great, that I do not know the thing so desperate I would not undertake, in order to change our situation."
It is fortunate that the impending general contest has also been recently preceded by a local one, which, though waged under circumstances far less favorable to the North, yet afforded important hints by its results. It was worth all the cost of Kansas to have the lesson she taught, in passing through her ordeal. It was not the Emigrant Aid Society which gave peace at last to her borders, nor was it her shifting panorama of evanescent governors; it was the sheer physical superiority of her Free-State emigrants, after they took up arms. Kansas afforded the important discovery, as some Southern officers once naïvely owned at Lecompton, that "Yankees would fight." Patient to the verge of humiliation, the settlers rose at last only to achieve a victory so absurdly rapid that it was almost a new disappointment; the contest was not so much a series of battles as a succession of steeplechases, of efforts to get within shot,—Missouri, Virginia, and South Carolina invariably disappearing over one prairie-swell, precisely as the Sharp's rifles of the emigrants appeared on the verge of the next. The slaveholders had immense advantages: many of the settlers were in league with them to drive out the remainder; they had the General Government always aiding them, more or less openly, with money, arms, provisions, horses, men, and leaders; they had always the Missouri border to retreat upon, and the Missouri River to blockade. Yet they failed so miserably, that every Kansas boy at last had his story to tell of the company of ruffians whom he had set scampering by the casual hint that Brown or Lane was lurking in the bushes. The terror became such a superstition, that the largest army which ever entered Kansas—three thousand men, by the admission of both sides—turned back before a redoubt at Lawrence garrisoned by only two hundred, and retreated over the border without risking an engagement.
It is idle to say that these wore not fair specimens of Southern companies. They were composed of precisely the same material as the flower of the Secession army,—if flower it have. They were members of the first families, planters' sons and embryo Wigfalls. South Carolina sent them forth, like the present troops, with toasts and boasts and everything but money. They had officers of some repute; and they had enthusiasm with no limit except the supply of whiskey. Slavery was divine, and Colonel Buford was its prophet. The city of Atchison was before the dose of 1857 to be made the capital of a Southern republic. Kansas was to be conquered: "We will make her a Slave State, or form a chain of locked arms and hearts together, and die in the attempt." Yet in the end there were no chains, either of flesh or iron,—no chains, and little dying, but very liberal running away. Thus ended the war in Kansas. It seems impossible that Slavery should not make in this case a rather better fight, where all is at stake. But it is well to remember that no Border Ruffian of Secession can now threaten more loudly, swear more fiercely, or retreat more rapidly, than his predecessors did then.
One does not hear much lately of that pleasant fiction, so abundant a year or two ago, that North and South really only needed to visit each other and become better acquainted. How cordially these endearing words sounded, to be sure, from the lips of Southern gentlemen, as they sat at Northern banquets and partook unreluctantly of Northern wine! Can those be the gay cavaliers who are now uplifting their war-whoops with such a modest grace at Richmond and Montgomery? Can the privations of the camp so instantaneously dethrone Bacchus and set up Mars? It is to be regretted; they appeared more creditably in their cups, and one would gladly appeal from Philip sober to Philip drunk. Intimate intercourse has lost its charm. New York merchants more than ever desire an increased acquaintance with the coffers of their repudiating debtors; but so far as the knowledge of their peculiar moral traits is concerned, enough is as good as a feast. No Abolitionist has ever dared to pillory the slave-propagandists so conspicuously as they are doing it for themselves every day. Sumner's "Barbarism of Slavery" seemed tolerably graphic in its time, but how tamely it reads beside the "New Orleans Delta"!
A Scotchman once asked Dr. Johnson what opinion he would form of
Scotland from what strangers had said of it.
"Sir," said the Doctor, "I should think it a region of the earth to be avoided, so far as convenient."
"But how," persisted the patriot, "if you listened to what its natives say of it?"
"Then, Sir," roared Old Obstinacy, "I should avoid it altogether."