This indifference was one of the best signs of our health. We felt such confidence in ourselves, that we distrusted no future, however cloud-cast. The Constitution, sold for a penny-ha'penny in New York, suggested to the mildly sarcastic humor of Dr. Russell that it had better be a little more valuable in tact, if not so cheap in form. He did not see how the People were the rightful masters of the Constitution, as Mr. Lincoln had said they were of Congress and the Courts, and that they would take care of it and of themselves when the hour really came.
We did not see it. Blindness in part had happened unto the whole nation. The shot at Sumter cleft the burdened head of Jove. A Nation was born in a day. It saw instantly the length and the breadth, the height and the depth of the conflict. It was not a struggle about Slavery and Abolitionism, about the white race and the black, about union and disunion; but it was a war for the rights of man, here and everywhere, to-day and forever. The "glittering generalities" of our Declaration and Constitution suddenly blazed with light, while the dull particularities of mere routine faded as a waning moon before the glowing sun. These were lost in the fiery splendors of the grand principles in which alone they live and move and have their being. They will reappear, meekly shining in their humbler sphere, when the great light shall withdraw its intenser rays, the object of their blazing being accomplished. The body of the war is Union, its soul Democracy: union for the sake of democracy, and democracy for the sake of the world. Abolitionism is simply a stepping-stone to the perfection of the Idea in our society.
The instinct that apprehended the full significance of the struggle was universal: Europe saw it in the same flash that revealed it to us. The lightning of the opening gun, or ever its accompanying thunder could follow, leaped, like the lightnings of the final judgment, in an instant from west to east, and illumined the whole earth with its glare.
In such an awakening it was inevitable but that literature should share. And biographies, histories, pictorials, and juveniles, in Europe and America, testify to the general consciousness. Into this last-named class the little book at the head of this notice modestly essays to enter. Had it put on airs and spread itself out into the broad-margined and large-lettered octavo, it might have stood in libraries as a worthy compeer of the ablest chronicles. Such a presentation would not have been beyond its desert, and would have been more consistent with the author's type of mind. Yet his simplicity, fidelity, and straightforwardness will make him a better guide to advanced youth than the too prattling habits of mere child-writers. They ever incline to the baby-talk style of composition,—"mumming," as the tavern-woman proposed, the bread and milk which they set before their youthful readers. "Carleton" ever treats his boy-readers as his intelligent equals, and considers them capable of understanding the common language of books and men. It is refreshing to read a book for boys that is not, as most of this class are, while pretending to be juvenile, actually senile.
The work opens with the story of the causes of the war, in which the author gives the old and new counterblasters a quid, or, as they will doubtless prefer to call it, a crumb of comfort. He traces the origin of the war, not to Slavery, but to Tobacco. The demand for the new drug was general throughout Europe. Virginia was the main source of supply. The vagabondish farmers would not labor. Negroes arrive, and European appetite creates American Slavery. Two hundred years after, the descendants of these slaveholders fancy that a like European demand for another plant will insure this Slavery a national sovereignty. Tobacco thus verifies Charles Lamb's unwilling execration. It is not Bacchus's only, but Slavery's "black servant, negro fine," and belongs, after all, to that Africa which he says "breeds no such prodigious poison." The Union lovers of "the Great Plant" may be called to decide between their country and their cigar. Will patriotism or the pipe then prevail? We tremble for our country in that conflict of duty and desire. It is odd that the two favorite plants of the South should thus be charged with our war. These innocent leaves and blossoms, babes in the wood, are made the bearers of our iniquities. Cotton and Tobacco are the white and black representatives of the vegetable races. Perhaps some fanciful theorist may show from this fact, that not only all the human races, but those of the lower kingdoms, are involved in this struggle, and, as in the greater warfare of Earth and Time, so in this, its condensed type, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in common with its head and master.
The anti-tobacco doctrine of the opening chapter gives place to a clear statement of the gathering and organizing of the great army; which is followed by descriptions of the Battles of Bull Run, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the Siege of Island No. 10, and the capture of Memphis. The narratives are illustrated with diagrams which set the movements of the contending forces clearly before the eye. No description of the first great battle of the war is superior to that here given. It is a photographic view of the field and the combatants. We see where the Rebels posted their divisions, how our forces were stationed, how we attempted to outflank them, how they left their original positions to protect the assailed outpost, how the battle raged and was decided around that point, and how a single mistake caused our first repulse, and, for lack of subsequent generalship, produced the shameful and disastrous rout. Russell's description is far less clear and concise. "Carleton" confirms McDowell's military scholarship, but not his generalship. It is one thing to set squadrons in the field, it is another to be equal to all the emergencies of the strife. He traces our defeat to a single mistake, not alone nor chiefly to the arrival of reinforcements. He puts it thus. Two regiments, the Second and Eighth South Carolina, get in the rear of Griffin's and Rickett's batteries. Griffin sees them, and turns his guns upon them. Major Barry declares they are his supporters. Griffin says they are Rebels. The Major persists in his opinion, and the Captain yields. The guns are turned back, the South-Carolinians leap upon the batteries, and the panic begins.
The book is especially valuable as it describes from personal observation the first battles of General Grant. It has no better war-pictures than the taking of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing. These were the beginnings of Grant's reputation. In them are seen the elements of his character, writ larger in the more renowned deeds of Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They are strangely alike. In both he is surprised by the enemy at daybreak, and while his soldiers are asleep. In both he is at first driven from his camp, losing largely of men and guns. In both, after a repulse so severe that the Rebel generals fancy the day is theirs, and while their men give themselves up to the spoiling of his tents, Grant, abating no jot of heart or hope, rearranges his broken columns, and plants his guns in new positions, in both cases on a hill rising from a ravine, whose opposite summit is crowned with the Rebel artillery. In each case the Rebels cross the ravine and attempt to scale the hill, and in each case are repulsed with horrible slaughter. The parallel stops not here. Grant in both battles, as soon as he has stayed the advance of the enemy, assumes the offensive. The bugles sound the charge, and the Rebels are driven back through our despoiled camp, and within their own intrenchments. These first-fruits of the great general of the war show the difference between him and the long-time pet of the nation, McClellan. The latter could not move an inch without supplies as numerous and superfluous as those of a summer sauntering lady at a watering-place. Grant does not wait for Foote's gunboats to coöperate at Donelson, but begins the fight the instant he reaches the fort. When the boats are disabled and retire, he does not wait for them to refit and return; nor when the enemy fails to rout him, does he rest on his well-earned laurels till reinforcements arrive, but turns upon them instantly and drives them with headlong fury from their spoils and defences. There is no Antietam or Williamshurg procrastinating. That very afternoon his exhausted troops storm the fort, and the night beholds him the master of the outer works, and with his guns raking the innermost fortifications. This heroic treatment of the disease of Rebellion, with all its loss, results in far less fatality than the rose-water generalship of the Peninsula, as the statistics of the Eastern and Western armies will show.
The peculiar qualities of General Grant, as seen in these battles, are coolness, readiness, and confidence. He is not embarrassed by reverses. He seems the rather to court them. He prefers to take arms against a sea of troubles. He thinks little of rations, ambulances, Sanitary, and, we fear, Christian Commissions, but much of victory. These creature and spiritual comforts are all well enough in their place, but they do not take batteries and redoubts. McClellan is the pet of his soldiers, Grant the pride of his. McClellan cares for their bodies, Grant for their fame. McClellan kills by kindness, Grant by courage.
This battle-book for boys will hold no unimportant place in the war-library of the times. Its style is usually as limpid as the camp-brooks by which much of it was written. In the heat of the contest it becomes a succession of short, sharp sentences, as if the musketry rang in the writer's brain and moulded and winged his thoughts. It is calm in the midst of its intensity, and thus happily illustrates by its popularity that self-control of the nation so well expressed by Hawthorne,—that our movements are as cool and collected, if as noisy, as that of a thousand gentlemen in a hall quietly rising at the same moment from their chairs. The battle-grounds of Vicksburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, all of which he saw, or by subsequent study of the field has made his own, and descriptions of which are promised in a companion-volume, will find no truer nor worthier chronicler.
A Compendious History of English Literature, and of the English Language, from the Norman Conquest. With Numerous Specimens. By GEORGE L. CRAIK, LL.D., Professor of History and of English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner.