Meanwhile what shall we do with the root of bitterness, the real cause of antagonism? That will do for itself. We probably cannot do much to help or hinder now. The negro and the white man will remain on the old ground, but new relations must be established between them. What those shall be will depend on many yet undeveloped contingencies. But—when we reconstruct, it will be with a North stronger than ever before and a government too strong for rebellion ever to touch it again. Under a free government of majorities, such as ours, rebellion is simply the resistance of a minority. Secession has been acted out to the bitter end on a small scale ere now in this country. Daniel Shays tried it in Massachusetts; Thomas Wilson Dorr tried it in Rhode Island. When they had tried it sufficiently, they gave in. We remember the Dorr War, and how bitterly the "Algerines," as they were called, were reviled. We doubt if a remnant of that hostility could be dug up anywhere between Beavertail Light and Woonsocket Falls. We have no doubt that men who then were on the point of fighting with each other fought side by side under Sprague, and fought all the better for having once before faced the possibilities of real war. When the minority are satisfied that they must give in, they do give in.
We do not purpose to debate now the question of the mode of reconstruction. When the seceded States return, though they come back to the old Constitution, they will come under circumstances demanding new conditions. The wisdom of legislation will be needed to establish as rapidly as possible pacification. What the circumstances will be none can now say. But we are better satisfied than ever of the impracticability of permanent secession. The American Revolution is not a parallel case. The only parallel in history that we can now recall is the one we have used so freely in this article. It is one in which the parallel fails chiefly in presenting stronger grounds for a permanent disruption. Scotland struggled against a geographical necessity. She did so under the influence of far more powerful motives than now exist at the South. She had far less binding ties than now are still living between us and our revolted States. A geographical necessity as vast and potent now links the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. The struggle is a more gigantic one, and in its fierce convulsions men's minds may well lose their present balance, and men's hearts their calm courage.
But everlasting laws are not to be put aside. The tornadoes which sweep the tropic seas seem for a time to reverse the course of Nature. The waters become turbid with the sands of the ocean's bed. The air strikes and smites down with a solid force. The heaviest stones and beams of massy buildings fly like feathers on the blast. Vessels are found far up on the land, with the torn stumps of trees driven through their planking. Life and property are buried in utter ruin. But the storm passes, the sunshine comes back into the darkened skies, and the blue waves sparkle within their ancient limits. The awful tempest passes away into history,—for it is God, and not man, who measures the waters in the hollow of His hand, and sends forth and restrains the breath of the blasting of His displeasure.
* * * * *
PANIC TERROR.
In those long-gone days when the gods of Olympus were in all their glory, and when those gods were in the habit of disturbing the domestic peace of worthy men, there was born unto an Arcadian nymph a son, for whom no proper father could be found. The father was Mercury, who was a Dieu à bonnes fortunes, and he did not, like some Christian gentlemen in similar circumstances, altogether neglect his boy; for (so goes the story) the child was "such a fright" that his mother was shocked and his nurse ran away (Richard III. did not make a worse first appearance); whereupon Mercury seized him, and bore him to Olympus, where he showed him, with paternal partiality, to all the gods, who were so pleased with the little monster that they named him Pan, as evidence that they were All delighted with his charming ugliness,—they being, it should seem, as fond of hideous pets as if they had been mere mortals, and endowed with a liberal share of humanity's bad taste. There are other accounts of the birth of Pan, one of which is, that he was the child of Penelope, born while she was waiting for the return of the crafty Ulysses, and that his fathers were all the aspirants to her favor,—a piece of scandal to be rejected, as reflecting very severely upon the reputation of a lady who is mostly regarded as having been a very model of chastity. It would have astonished the gods, who were so joyous over the consequence of their associate's irregularities, had they been told that their pet was destined to outlast them all, and to affect human affairs, by his action, long after their sway should be over. Jupiter has been dethroned for ages, and exists only in marble or bronze; and Apollo, and Mercury, and Bacchus, and all the rest of the old deities, are but names, or the shadows of names; but Pan is as active to-day as he was, when, nearly four-and-twenty centuries ago, he asked the worship of the Athenians, and intimated that he might be useful to them in return,—which intimation he probably made good but a little later on the immortal field of Marathon. For not only was Pan the god of shepherds, and the protector of bees, and the patron of sportsmen, but to him were attributed those terrors which have decided the event of many battles. He is generally identified with the Faunus of the Latins, and a new interest in the Fauni has been created by the genius of Hawthorne. If it be true that the popular idea of Satan is derived from Pan, we have another evidence therein of the breadth as well as the length of his dominion over human affairs; for Satan, judging from men's conduct, was never more active, more successful, and more grimly joyous than he is in this year of grace (and disgrace) one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one. "The harmless Faun," says Bulwer Lytton, "has been the figuration of the most implacable of fiends." Satan and Pan ought to be one, if we regard the kind of work in which the latter has lately been engaged. The former's sympathies are undoubtedly with the Secessionists, and to his active aid we must attribute their successes, both as thieves and as soldiers.
The number of instances of panic terror in armies is enormous. Panics have taken place in all armies, from that brief campaign in which Abram smote the hosts of the plundering kings, hard by Damascus, to that briefer campaign in which General McDowell did not smite the Secessionists, hard by Washington. The Athenians religiously believed that Pan aided them at Marathon; and it would go far to account for the defeat of the vast Oriental host, in that action, by a handful of Greeks, if we could believe that that host became panic-stricken. At Plataea, the allies of the Persians fell into a panic as soon as the Persians were beaten, and fled without striking a blow. At the Battle of Amphipolis, in the Peloponnesian War, and which was so fatal to the Athenians, the Athenian left wing and centre fled in a panic, without making any resistance. The Battle of Pydna, which placed the Macedonian monarchy in the hands of the Romans, was decided by a panic befalling the Macedonian cavalry after the phalanx had been broken. At Leuctra and at Mantinea, battles so fatal to the Spartan supremacy in Greece, the defeated armies suffered from panics. The decision at Pharsalia was in some measure owing to a panic occurring among the Pompeian cavalry; and at Thapsus, the panic terror that came upon the Pompeians gave to Caesar so easy a victory that it cost him only fifty men, while the other side were not only broken, but butchered. At Munda, the last and most desperate of Caesar's battles, and in which he came very nearly losing all that he had previously gained, a panic occurred in his army, from the effects of which it recovered through admiration of its leader's splendid personal example. The defeat of the Romans at Carrhae by the Parthians was followed by a panic, against the effects of which not even the discipline of the legions was a preventive. At the first Battle of Philippi, the young Octavius came near being killed or captured, in consequence of the success of Brutus's attack, which had the effect of throwing his men into utter confusion, so that they fled in dismay. What a change would have taken place in the ocean-stream of history, had the future Augustus been slain or taken by the Republicans on that field on which the Roman Republic fell forever! But the success of Antonius over Cassius more than compensated for the failure of Octavius, and prepared the way for the close of "the world's debate" at Actium. Actium, by the way, was one of the few sea-fights which have had their decision through the occurrence of panics, water not being so favorable to flight as land. Whether the flight of Cleopatra was the result of terror, or followed from preconcerted action, is still a question for discussion; and one would not readily believe that the most gallant and manly of all the Roman leaders—one of the very few of his race who were capable of generous actions—was also capable of plotting deliberately to abandon his followers, when the chances of battle had not been tried. Whether that memorable flight was planned or not, the imitation of it by Antonius created a panic in at least a portion of his fleet; and the victory of the hard-minded Octavius over the "soft triumvir"—he was "soft" in every sense on that day—was the speedy consequence of the strangest exhibition of cowardice ever made by a brave man.
In modern wars, panics have been as common as ever they were in the contests of antiquity. No people has been exempt from them. It has pleased the English critics on our defeat at Bull Run to speak with much bitterness of the panic that occurred to the Union army on that field, and in some instances to employ language that would leave the impression that never before did it happen to an army to suffer from panic terror. No reflecting American ought to object to severe foreign criticism on our recent military history; for through such criticism, perhaps, our faults may be amended, and so our cause finally be vindicated. The spectacle of soldiers running from a field of battle is a tempting one to the enemies of the country to whom such soldiers may belong, and few critics are able to speak of it in any other than a contemptuous tone. Would Americans have spoken with more justice of Englishmen than Englishmen have spoken of Americans, had the English army failed at the Alma through a panic, as our army failed at Bull Run? Not they! The bitter comments of our countrymen on the inefficiency of the British forces in the Crimea, and the general American tendency to attribute the successes of the Allies in the Russian War to the French, to the Sardinians, or to the Turks,—to anybody and everybody but to the English, who really were the principal actors in it,—are in evidence that we are drinking from a bitter cup the contents of which were brewed by ourselves. It is wicked and it is foolish to accuse our armies of cowardice and inefficiency because they have met with some painful reverses; but the sin and the folly of foreigners in this respect are no greater than the sin and the folly that have characterized most American criticism on the recent military history of England.
The most important fruitful battle mentioned in British history, next to that of Hastings, is the Battle of Bannockburn, the event of which secured the independence and nationality of Scotland, with all the consequences thereof; and that event was the effect of a panic. The day was with Bruce and his brave army; but it was by no means certain that their success would be of that decisive character which endures forever, until the English host became panic-stricken. Brilliant deeds had been done by the Scotch, who had been successful in all their undertakings, when Bruce brought up his reserve, which forced even the bravest of his opponents either to retreat or to think of it; but their retreat might have been conducted with order, and the English army have been saved from utter destruction and for future work, had it not been for the occurrence of one of those events, in which the elements of tragedy and of farce are combined, by which the destinies of nations are often decided, in spite of "the wisdom of the wise and the valor of the brave." The followers of the Scottish camp, anxious to see how the day went, or to obtain a share of the expected spoil, at that moment appeared upon the ridge of an eminence, known as the Gillies' Hill, behind their countrymen's line of battle, displaying horse-cloths and similar articles for ensigns of war. The struggling English, believing that they saw a new Scottish army rising as it were from the earth, were struck with panic, and broke and fled; and all that followed was mere butchery, though perfectly in accordance with the stern laws of the field. The English army was routed even more completely than was the French army, five centuries later, at Waterloo. Scott, with his usual skill, has made use of this incident in "The Lord of the Isles," but he ascribes to patriotic feeling what had a less lofty origin, which was an exercise of his license as a poet.[A]
[Footnote A: An incident closely resembling that which created the English panic at Bannockburn happened, with the same results, in one of the battles won by the Swiss over their invaders; but we cannot call to mind the name of the action in which it occurred.]