Les Droits de Dieu et les Idees Modernes. Par l’Abbé François Chesnel, Vicaire-Général de Quimper. Poitiers et Paris: Henri Oudin. 1875.
Every age has its special errors and its special manifestations of the truth precisely opposite to those errors. The special errors of the present age may be well summed up under one formula, which we find on p. 335 of the Abbé Chesnel’s work bearing the title placed at the head of this notice: “The pretended incompetence of God and his representatives in the order of human things, whether scientific or social.” The system which springs from this fundamental notion has received the name of Liberalism. In contradiction to it, the authority of God and the church over those matters which are included in the order of human things, is the truth which in our day has been the special object of inculcation, definition, explanation, and defence on the part of the Catholic Church and her most enlightened advocates. A great number of the very finest productions of our contemporary Catholic writers in books, pamphlets, and periodicals, treat of themes and topics connected with this branch of the great controversy between Catholic truth and universal error. The volume just published by the Abbé Chesnel is particularly remarkable among these for simplicity, lucidity, and moderation in its statements, and for its adaptation to the understanding of the great mass of intelligent and educated readers, who are unable to profit by any treatises presupposing a great amount of knowledge and thought on abstruse matters. The form of dialogue helps the author and the reader very much in respect to the facility and simplicity of the work of giving and receiving elementary instruction on the subjects contained within the volume. The other topics besides the particular one we are about to mention are handled very much in the same manner by M. Chesnel as by other sound and able writers, and require no special remark. Thank God! our instructed American Catholics are not inclined to bury themselves in what the author happily styles “the fog of liberalism,” in so far as this confuses the view of the rights of the church and the Holy See in respect to the usurpations of the civil power and the rebellions of private judgment. We have turned with a more particular interest to that part of the volume which treats of the nature, origin, acquisition, and loss of sovereign rights by the possessors of political power in the state. This is one of the most difficult topics in the department of ethics, and one seldom handled, in our opinion, so well as by our author. To a certain extent sound Catholic writers agree, and the principles maintained are proved with ease to the satisfaction of right-minded students. That political power is from God, that human rights are from God, that an authority certainly legitimate cannot be resisted within its lawful domain without sin, are so many first principles universally accepted and easily proved. But when the sources and criteria of legitimacy are in question, there is far less agreement even among those who reject liberalism, and much less facility of laying down and proving propositions in a satisfactory manner. The ingenious and learned Dr. Laing, in his little book entitled Whence do Kings Derive the Right to Rule? in our opinion sustains most extravagant theories regarding the divine right of monarchs. On the other hand, we are not entirely satisfied with the reasonings of the very able and brilliant Dublin Reviewer on the principles of legitimacy. In fact, we have not seen the subject handled in a perfectly thorough and satisfactory manner by any author writing in the English language. M. Chesnel is not exhaustive, but, so far as his scope in writing permits him to develop his subject, he seems to us remarkably clear and judicious. The beginning of sovereignty he traces to the parental expanding into the patriarchal authority. Acquisition of lawful sovereignty he refers to inheritance, election, and just conquest. The rehabilitation of a sovereignty unjustly acquired he refers to the accession of the right of a nation to the possession of the goods which have become dependent on the peaceable maintenance of a de facto sovereignty, sanctioned by a common consent. The possessor who has been unjustly despoiled of his sovereignty de jure by one who has become sovereign de facto evidently loses his right as soon as it is transferred lawfully to this spoliator or his heirs in the manner indicated. The author, as we think unnecessarily, resorts to the supposition that he is supposed to cede it, because he cannot reasonably maintain it. He adds, however, that if he does not cede it he nevertheless loses it, which seems to us to make his cession or non-cession wholly irrelevant and without effect. It is lost by the prevalence of a higher right on the part of the nation. Nevertheless, we think that until a permanent and stable union of the welfare of the nation with the right of the new dynasty is effected, the former sovereign right may in certain cases remain in abeyance, and therefore revive again in the future. This appears to us to be exemplified in the case of the rights of Don Carlos to the throne of Spain, and of the Comte de Chambord to the throne of France. Strictly, in themselves, their rights have been in abeyance, and remain imperfect, until the national welfare, sustained by a sound and powerful part of the body politic, demands their restitution and actually effects the same. In such cases there is always more or less doubt about the real sense of the better and sounder part of the nation, and about the best settlement of conflicting claims for the common good. And hence it is that the best men may differ, and conscientiously espouse opposite sides, when a nation is in an unsettled and divided state respecting its sovereignty.
In respect to the relation of the state to the church, the author has some very just and sagacious remarks on the peculiar condition of things in our own republic, quite in accordance with the views which have been expressed by our soundest American Catholic writers. We conclude our criticism by quoting a few passages:
“The religious system existing in the United States does not resemble, either in its origin or in its applications, that which the liberal sect imposes on the Catholic peoples of Europe. The American population, the progeny of colonists driven from England by persecution, never possessed religious unity. When Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics, who had all fought in common for independence, assembled in Congress and formed their constitution, they recognized the variety of worships as an antecedent fact, and endeavored to accommodate themselves to it in the best way they could. No false political theory disturbed the good sense of these legislators. Governed by a necessity manifestly invincible, and which still continues, they secured to each worship a complete liberty; proclaimed that which is a just consequence from this principle: that the state should have only a very restricted agency—that is, no more than what is necessary for reconciling the liberty of each one with that of all others. In fact, when separated from the true church, the state is reduced to pure naturalism, and in this condition the action of the state, separated from the church, ought to be reduced to the minimum” (p. 179).
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. By Himself. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1875.
This book marks an epoch in the literary history of the war. Ten years of reconstruction and of political spoil-gathering, of slow and still incomplete recuperation at the South, and of reluctant, painful subsidence to the moderate profits and the quiet of peace at the North, had dulled the excitement attending the events of the war, had corrected many prejudices, had taken off many of the prominent actors of both sides of the contest, and had added to the literary public many men and women who were children when Sherman “marched to the sea.” And now comes one of the great conquerors of the Rebellion, and tells almost every word that an honorable man would dare to tell of all that he knows about the soldiers and the generals, the fighting and the plotting, of the war, and with infinite frankness—not stopping with facts, and dates, and figures, but detailing his remembrance of conversations, frankly offering his opinion of motives and his judgment of character, as well adverse as favorable—as readily giving names of those deserving blame as of those worthy of praise. No wonder, therefore, that these Memoirs have set the whole country to thinking about the war, and all the newspapers to discussing it. We have already had scores of explanations and defences of those attacked, or of friends in their behalf, and we are promised the Memoirs, Recollections, and Narratives of many of the more prominent generals; so that we shall shortly be supplied with testimony as to all the events of the late war, given by the actors themselves or by eye-witnesses.
The first six chapters are occupied with General Sherman’s life from the beginning of the Mexican war till the outbreak of the civil war. They are intensely interesting. Many of those who afterwards became leaders of great armies are introduced to the reader as simple captains or lieutenants in the old army. Little incidents illustrative of their characters are continually related, and the writer’s own impressions, with his unflinching candor, continually offered, every page glowing with good-humor and sparkling with entertaining anecdotes. The domestic archives of more than one household of Lancaster, Ohio, must have been well ransacked to get the letters written home by the young artillery lieutenant, in order to secure such exactness in date, and place, and conversation. One learns from these chapters about all that was done in California during the Mexican war, and who did it; graphic descriptions of many of the natural wonders of that country, and a very interesting account of the early gold excitement. Gen. Sherman was on the staff of Col. Mason, commanding United States forces in California, when gold was found in Sutter’s mill-race; was present when Sutter’s messenger showed it to Col. Mason and asked for a patent to the land; went to Sutter’s place, and saw the first miners at work there; wrote (August 17, 1848) the official despatch of Col. Mason to the Adjutant-General which gave the world the first authentic information that gold could be had in California for the digging.
After peace was concluded with Mexico, the author of the Memoirs returned to the States; but soon resigned his commission, went back to California, and opened a banking office in San Francisco—a branch of a well-known house in St. Louis. His statement of the events of the year 1856 in San Francisco is most interesting, throwing much light on the history of the famous Vigilance Committee. He was Militia General at the time, and, in conjunction with the Governor, treated with the leaders of the Committee, whom he undertakes to convict of falsehood, positively asserting that, had Gen. Wool given him the arms, he was prepared to fight the Vigilantes with militia, and would have suppressed them. Hard times induced him shortly after to wind up his banking business and return to the States, and in the autumn of 1860, after trying and giving up various undertakings, he had organized and was president of a flourishing military school, under the patronage of the State of Louisiana. When that State seceded, Sherman at once resigned and went North, and when war broke out was commissioned colonel in the regular army, rising gradually in rank till finally half the army and country was subject to his command.
Now begins his story of the war. To the most timid civilian there is an intense fascination in that war—a deep interest in every true narrative of it. Gen. Sherman takes us through some of its most exciting scenes, and so frankly and so familiarly that you feel as if you were some invited stranger, sharing his mess, discussing his plans, participating in his hopes and fears, and rejoicing with him in his nearly uniform success. His first battle was Bull Run, in which he commanded a brigade. Shortly after this he was transferred to the West, where he remained until in the winter of 1864-5, when, having fought and conquered his way from Chattanooga to Atlanta, then through Georgia and South Carolina, he found himself in North Carolina, in command of a large army, and upon the communications of Richmond. The General’s narrative of these four years is intensely interesting. Every description of battle or march is intelligible and vivid, every statement of plans is clear. The battle of Shiloh is wonderfully well described; so are the battles which were fought around Atlanta. The same may be said of the storming of Fort McAllister—one of the most gallant deeds of the war. Thousands of ex-soldiers will fight their battles over again with this book—will lose themselves in the great mass of the army—will struggle once more against that sickening sensation which their sense of honor overcame as the first bullet whistled by, the first pale, senseless form was borne to the rear on the bloody stretcher—will tingle again in every nerve at the first sight of the Southerners—will feel the sudden thrill of the fearful excitement of the rush, or of the stubborn defence, or the ecstasy of victory. Many a one will once more feel the terrible fatigue of the march, the pangs of hunger and thirst, the weariness of sleepless nights on picket, the tedious, painful weeks spent in hospital. And every soldier will once more feel sad as he reads of the places and scenes of the death of his comrades, and will repeat for the thousandth time that it was always the best men who were killed.
The charges of cruelty and barbarity made during and after the war against Gen. Sherman are indignantly denied. The depopulation of the town of Atlanta is justified in so far as the General clearly shows the purity of his motives and can cite the approval of both the civil and military authorities; yet the ugly fact remains that it was done not for the instant safety of his army or the immediate injury of the enemy’s, but thousands of women and children were driven among strangers and their homes abandoned to the chances of a civil war to secure a temporary convenience. As to the unauthorized foraging of the troops generally, the General condemned and often reproved and condemned it; though his correspondence shows a secret satisfaction at the devastation committed in South Carolina, except where it might result in permanent injury to private property. His defence against Secretary Stanton’s charges of usurping civil powers in treating with Gen. Jos. Johnston is simply complete. Gen. Sherman here had the honor to be the first after the war to suffer abuse and persecution because a kind heart and chivalrous sympathy with a gallant and beaten foe roused the hatred and fear of a class of politicians as malicious and vindictive as they were ambitious.