Concord Fight. By S. R. Bartlett. Second edition. Concord: Albert Tracy. Boston: Crosby, Nichols & Co. 1862.
A poem of thirty-two pages, devoted to setting forth the incidents of Concord and Lexington fights, in the Revolutionary days, and therefore very appropriate to our own time. The 'plan' is excellent; the incidents well devised, while many little lyrical touches here and there are truly admirable. For instance, 'The White Cockade.'
'Firm hearts and true, strong bands to do,
For liberty;
The fierce old strain rings once again:
'Come death or victory!'
'The lips that woke the dawning note
Are passed away;
But the echoes of the 'White Cockade'
Ring round our hills to-day.'
Long may they ring, and long may the descendants of the men of '76 prove that they still hear in spirit 'the dawning notes.'
EDITOR'S TABLE
The English journals and statesmen, in their excessive anxiety to regulate every thing for the world in general and for America in particular, quite lose sight of the fact, that before interfering in a neighbor's affairs, it is best to know what the state of affairs may really be. Of late, we have seen these makers of public opinion making mischief through gross ignorance, to a degree well-nigh unparalleled in history. On the strength of flying rumors, unfinished events imperfectly reported, and through Secession slanders, their great leaders, both representative and editorial, have ventured to spread before the masses statements which must unavoidably tend to greatly exasperate and alienate the people of our respective nations. They are blindly running up scores of hatred, which at some day may call for fearful settlement. Their influence is very great on the rank-loving multitude in their own country—a multitude which, after all, is, in the majority, more miserable and nearly as ignorant as that of any realm in Europe, or even the East, for there are fewer paupers in Turkey or Syria than in wealthy England. Yet, quite unheeding this, they continue to express sympathy for the South, declare with Brougham that the bubble of Democracy has at length burst, and chuckle over every Northern defeat. All of which shall be duly remembered.
The grossest error into which these men have fallen, is that of continually regarding our war not as a struggle between two great principles, or as an unavoidable necessity, but simply as a strife between two factions. Nearly every London editorial which we have seen for weeks proves this. 'What will the North gain if it conquers the South? What will the South make? What are WE to benefit by a victory of either?' It is perfectly natural, however, for a monarchy, virtually without 'politics,' devoid of great progressive ideas, and smothered by 'loyalty' and faith in an aristocracy, to see, as men did in the middle ages, nothing but a dispute of rival forces in every battle. It is 'Brown vs. Brown' to them, and nothing more. With the exception of Bright and his friends, no one in England seems to comprehend that our North has in itself the vital, progressive energy which must give it victory—the same spirit which enables English civilization to gain on the Hindoo or the New-Zealander—the spirit of science and intelligence, which conquers ignorance.
The fact that English statesmen can talk so calmly of the possibilities of Southern victory, and weigh with such equanimity the claims of the combatants, simply proves their ignorance of the real condition of the United States. And they are indeed very ignorant of us. Perhaps ignorance and thoughtlessness were never more decidedly manifested than in Brougham's late rhodomontade on the failure of Democracy in this country. For, in fact, there is not difference enough between the representative power of England and that of America to make a question. Between Commons and our House of Representatives—the most influential legislative bodies—there is no such great difference. English writers have asserted that our government is actually the strongest monarchy of the two, because our President possesses far greater power of patronage and personal influence than the Queen. The real difference is not between the forms of government, but between the innate flunkeyism of the Briton and the independence of the American. If we had the British government in every detail, and if John Bull were to adopt our system, the countries would stand where they were, and each gradually 'reform' itself, according to its ideas of reform, back into the old routine. The Englishman, needing 'my Lord' and 'Her Gracious Majesty,' and as unable to live without his golden calves of 'superiors' as bees are to exist without a queen, would soon create them; while the American blood, sprung from the republican Puritan, and developed into strength on a continent, would very soon, after a nine days' féte to his new fétish, kick it over, and instituting caucuses and primary ward-meetings, or 'town-meetings,' (a ceremony which no European in existence, save the Russian, is capable of properly managing,) would soon have all back again in the old road.
Democracy among the 'Yankees' as well as all North-Americans who are free from a servile respect for simple rank and money, is something very different from that mere form which Brougham, and with him nearly all Europe, believe it to be. We are not Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or Orientals, to quietly sit down under any kind of government which chance may impose, and exclaim: 'It is fate.' Democracy with us is not the mere form which they imagine. It is, like the English government, like the German, like the Pachalik of the Oriental, something as much a part of us as our national physiognomy. A very great proportion of the Englishmen who come here, remain flunkeys to the end—an American, other than a soul-diseased disciple of Richmond sociology, or some weak brother or sister dazed by court ball-tickets—quite as generally remain a despiser of men who acknowledge other men as their betters by mere birth. A love of freedom is in our blood, in our life, in our habits. We are fond, it is true, of temporarily lionizing great people, but we soon reduce them to our own level. America has shaken down more eminencies into notorieties than any other country in the world—it is a severe and terrible ordeal for great foreigners. Our eagerness to behold them is simply a keen curiosity and a natural love of amusement which is soon appeased. An American would crowd foremost to see Queen Victoria for the first time in his life—the second opportunity would be neglected. But the London shop-keeper who has seen that lady perhaps hundreds of times, still rushes out in wild haste, with eyes wide open, to behold her when she drives past. 'They can never get enough of it.' As one of their own writers has observed, a London tradesman may have been swindled a hundred times by real or sham noblemen, and yet no sooner does some flaunting cheat with the air noble enter his shop, than the cockney bows low and implores patronage with a cringing zeal only equaled by his 'uppishness' to humbler customers.