But nations are not always wise, and war often becomes a necessity. When, then, the necessity arises, it should be met manfully. The question once deliberately decided that peace is no longer consistent with national honor or national safety, the dread alternative must be accepted with all its hazards and all its horrors. To organize only in anticipation of certain and speedy success, to despise and underrate the enemy, to inquire with how small an army and how limited an expenditure the war can be carried on, is as unstatesmanlike as it is in flat defiance of all historical teaching. But if we carry our folly still farther in the same direction,—if we fail to take into grave account the most obvious and inevitable incidents of actual warfare,—if in our overweening confidence we neglect discipline, underrate the prime importance of promptness and decision in action, certainty and celerity in movement, and energy and activity in pursuit,—if, in a word, we expect that the defences of the enemy are to fall into our hands by means as unwarlike as those that decided the fate of Jericho, or dream that because our cause is just every precedent in history and every principle in human nature will be overruled in our favor,—then we deserve to be outgeneralled, and are fortunate, if we escape final and disastrous defeat.
Now has not this been precisely our cardinal and capital error, and are we not to-day suffering its natural consequences? To the blind and unreasoning confidence with which we began this war has succeeded a reaction running into the very opposite extreme. We are given over to a despondency quite as unwarrantable as the extravagance of our early hopes. We demanded and expected impossibilities. Forgetting that the age of miracles has passed, many are now bitterly complaining that nothing has been accomplished, and predicting that all future efforts will terminate in similar failure. Two years have not elapsed since the first gun was fired at Fort Sumter; and yet we are amazed and mortified that our forces have not overrun the whole South, that victory has not crowned our arms in every battle, and that our flag does not float triumphant over every acre of every State once called Confederate. Whether this most desirable result could have been accomplished, if this or that policy had been adopted at the outset, is one of those problems that will never be solved; nor is the inquiry at present pertinent or profitable. Let us rather ask whether, in view of the means actually employed, our discontent with the existing condition of affairs is not unmanly and unreasonable. We are to measure results, not by the efforts that we ought to have put forth, nor by those which we should put forth, if, with our dear-bought experience, we were called upon once more to undertake such a gigantic enterprise. We must recall the aspect of affairs when we first embarked on this perilous sea. We must remember how ignorant we were of all the danger before us, how imperfect was the chart by which our course was to be determined, how many shoals and sunken rocks and crosscurrents we were to encounter, as yet unknown to any pilot on board our noble ship of state, how little we knew of navigation in such angry waters, under so stormy a sky.
Turn back the pages of history for two short years, and dwell a moment on the picture presented to our eyes. A nation, enjoying to the utmost the substantial benefits belonging to fifty years of profound peace and unexampled prosperity, enervated by those habits of luxury which wealth easily accumulated always fosters, with a standing army hardly large enough to protect our Western frontier from the incursions of hostile Indians, and a navy ludicrously small in proportion to the extent of our sea-coast and the value of our commerce, is suddenly plunged into a war covering such an extent of territory and calling for such an array of power by sea and land as to dwarf into insignificance all modern wars, hardly excepting the military operations of Napoleon I.
And it must be remembered that education and habit had trained us to an implicit reliance on the sufficiency of our laws and the competency of our Constitution to meet and decide every issue that could possibly be presented. We could conceive of no public wrongs which could not be redressed by an appeal to the ballot-box, and of no private injuries for which our statutes did not provide a suitable remedy.
We were not only a law-abiding, but a peace-loving people. The report of the revolver was not heard in our streets, nor was the glitter of the bowie-knife seen in our bar-rooms. We deprecated mob-violence, and disliked the summary proceedings of Judge Lynch. We took no pains to conceal our horror of unnecessary bloodshed, and shared the views of civilized Christendom about duelling. Now and then, to be sure, a Southerner in one of his sportive moods would stab an inattentive waiter in some Northern hotel, or a chivalrous son of South Carolina, elegantly idling away a few years in a New-England university, would shoot some base-born tutor, or, as an episode in Congressional proceedings, the member from Arkansas would threaten to pull the nose, spit in the face, and gouge out the eyes of the (profane participled) sneaking Yankee,—meaning thereby a quiet, inoffensive member from Massachusetts. But these incidents of Southern civilization were not frequent enough to become fashionable. We still clung to our plebeian prejudices against lawless violence, and persisted in believing that a swaggering bully could not be an ornament to cultivated and refined society. In fact, some excellent individuals at the North went so far as to seek to disseminate these old-fashioned notions among their Southern brethren, and made annual subscriptions to what was known (alas, that we must use the historic tense!) as the "Southern Aid Society," having for its praiseworthy object the support of ministers who should preach the gospel to our ardent and impulsive neighbors. What a sad and significant commentary is it upon the ingratitude of depraved human nature, that the condescending clergyman who whilom consented to collect the offerings of these discriminating philanthropists is now a chaplain in the Confederate army, and is invoking the most signal judgments of Heaven upon his former friends and fellow-laborers!
This, then, was our condition, and these were our habits, when we were rudely awakened from our dreams of peace by the roar of cannon and the clash of arms. What wonder that the startling summons found us all unready for such a crisis? What wonder that our early preparations to confront the issue thus forced upon us without note of warning were hasty, incomplete, and quite inadequate to the emergency? Is it discreditable to us that we were slow to appreciate the bitterness and intensity of that hatred, which, long smouldering under the surface of Southern society, burst forth at once into a wide-spread conflagration, severing like flax all the ties of kindred, and all the bonds of individual friendship and national intercourse which had united us for half a century? Here was a section of our Union which had always enjoyed equal rights with us under the Constitution, and had known the Government only by its blessings,—nay, more, had actually, by the confession of its own statesmen, controlled the internal administration and dictated the foreign policy of the country since the adoption of the Constitution; which had no substantial grievance to complain of, and no fanciful injury which could not be readily redressed by legal and constitutional methods. Are we to be blamed because we could not easily bring ourselves to believe that an integral part of our nation, with such a history, could, under a pretence so bald as to insult the common sense of Christendom, rush headlong into a war which must close all its avenues of commerce, paralyze all its industry, threaten the existence of its cherished and peculiar institution,—in a word, whether successful or unsuccessful, inevitably result in its political suicide? At this very moment, accustomed as we have been for many sad and weary months to the daily development of Southern folly and madness, it is difficult, when we withdraw our minds from the present, to realize that the whole war is not a hideous nightmare.
In view of all this, I ask, is it strange that we did not at once comprehend all our danger, and did not enter the field with all our forces,—determined to fight with desperate energy until every trace of rebellion was crushed out? If, disturbed at midnight by footsteps in your chamber, you start up from sound slumber to see a truculent-looking vagabond prowling about your room with a lighted candle, do you not at once spring to your feet, collar the intruder, and shout lustily for help, if he prove too strong for you? Prompt and vigorous action in such a case is simply the impulse of instinct. But how if you recognize in the untimely visitor a member of your own household? Will you seize and overpower him without asking a single question, or waiting for a word of explanation? Will you not pause for some overt act of hostility, some convincing proof of a fell purpose? Suppose it transpire that he really means mischief, and you lose an important advantage by your delay to strike. You may regret the result; but does it in the least tend to show that you were cowardly or careless? Now was not this our exact dilemma? Although the origin of the war and the circumstances attendant upon its commencement are a thrice-told tale, are we not in danger of overlooking their bearing upon all our subsequent action? And shall we not act wisely, if we recur to them again and again, during this momentous contest?
But, asks a timid Conservative,—from whose patient button the fingers of an ardent apostle of peace have recently and most reluctantly parted,—has not this war been shamefully mismanaged by the Administration? have not contractors grown rich while soldiers have suffered? have not incompetent generals been unjustly advanced, and skilful commanders been summarily shelved? have we gained any advantages at all commensurate with our loss of blood and our expenditure of money? would not a cessation of hostilities on any terms be better than such a war as we are now waging? If we might venture to suggest a word of caution to our desponding friend, before attempting a reply to his broadside of questions, we would say: Beware how you indulge in too much conversation with a certain class of our citizens, whose hearty loyalty has been more than doubted, and whose conversion to the beauties of peace and the horrors of war is so sudden as to be very suspicious. Examine their antecedents, and you will find, that, when "border ruffians" in Kansas threatened with fire and sword the inoffensive emigrants from New England, these gentlemen saw nothing unusual in such proceedings, and answered all remonstrances with ridicule. Put them to the question to-day, and it will appear, that, from the very beginning of the struggle, all their sympathies have been with the South. They will tell you that Northern Abolitionists are alone responsible for the war; that the secession of the Southern States may have been unwise, but was not unreasonable; that they have always condemned coercion and advocated compromise; and that there is no safe and satisfactory way out of our existing difficulties but—peace. What do they mean by peace? Such peace as the highwayman, armed to the teeth, offers to the belated traveller! Such peace as Benedict Arnold sought to negotiate with the English general! They know that the South will accept no terms but the acknowledgment of her independence, or the abject and unconditional submission of the Free States. They reject the first alternative, because they dare not go before the North on such an issue. Disguise it as they may, they are willing to adopt the second. The party to which, without an exception, these men belong, is powerless without the cooperation of the South, and would consider no sacrifice of principle too great, and no humiliation of the North too degrading, if it promised the restoration of their political supremacy. Avoid all such men. Distrust their advice. That way dishonor lies, and national disgrace. If you are not "armed so strong in honesty" as to be proof against such treasonable talk, you will soon be aware of a softening of your backbone, and a lamentable loss of earnest, active patriotism. Take counsel rather of your own common sense. Looking at the question in its narrowest and most selfish bearings, you know that we can neither recede nor stand still. Submission Is slavery. Disunion paves the way for endless secession, and eternal warfare between rising and rival republics.
But there are other symptoms of disloyalty besides this persistent demand for peace. There are indications of a desire to array sections of the North against each other, and—Heaven save the mark!—by the very politicians who have been most bitter in their denunciation of "geographical parties." Here comes a little Western lawyer, with unlimited resources of slang and slender capital of ideas, barely redeemed from being an absolute blackguard by the humanizing influences of a New England college, but showing fewer and fewer symptoms of civilization as he forgets the lessons of his collegiate life; and he delights an audience of New York "roughs," adopted citizens of Celtic extraction, and lager-loving Germans, (do not cocks always crow longest and loudest on a dung-hill?) by the novel information, that "Puritanism is a reptile" and the cause of all our troubles, and that we shall never fulfil our national destiny until Puritanism has been crushed. Let us not elevate this nauseating nonsense into importance by attempting a reply. Such men must be left to follow out their inevitable instincts. They are not worth the trouble necessary to civilize them. Mr. Rarey succeeded in taming a zebra from the London Zoölogical Gardens; but a single lesson could not permanently reclaim the beast, and it soon relapsed into its native and normal ferocity. One experiment sufficed to show the power of the artist; no possible increase of value in the educated animal would have justified a prolonged and perfect training.
You ask if we have gained any advantages commensurate with our efforts, or with the high-sounding phrase of our declared purpose. Let us look at this a moment. Suppose we begin with a glance at the other side of the picture. Has all the boasting, have all the promises, been on the Federal side? Did we hear nothing of the Confederate flag floating over Faneuil Hall?—nothing of Washington falling into the hands of the enemy?—nothing of a festive winter in Philadelphia and a general distribution of spoils in New York?—nothing of foreign intervention?—nothing of the cowardice of Northern Mudsills and the omnipotence of King Cotton? Decidedly, the Rebels began with a sufficiently startling programme. Let us see how far they have carried it out. As they were clearly the assailants, we have an undoubted right to ask what they have accomplished aggressively. We say, then, that, excepting in the case of one brief raid, the soil of a single Free State has never been polluted by the hostile tread of an invading force; that every battle-field has been within the limits of States claimed as Confederate; that, while the war has desolated whole States represented in the Confederate Congress, not an acre north of Mason and Dixon's line has suffered from the ravages of the Rebel armies. Was ever another scorpion more completely surrounded and shut in by a cordon of fire?