THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF THE WAR.
There are certain theories in regard to the causes of the present war, which are so generally accepted as to have fortified themselves strongly in the principle of 'magna est veritas et prevalebit.' Theories based, however, upon facts which have taken their rise long since the true causes of the war had begun to work, and which, consequently, mistaking the effect for the cause, are from their nature ephemeral, and farther from the truth than they were at their origin. Few thinkers have looked below the surface of the matter, and the majority of Christendom, ignoring any other past than the few brief years that have rolled over our national existence, forgetting that great causes oft-times smoulder unseen for centuries ere they burst forth in effects the more powerful from their long suppression, shaking the earth with the pent-up fury of ages—forgetting these things and arguing in the present instance from the few palpable facts found floating upon the surface of our society, by a tacit consent lay the burden of the war upon the present generation and its immediate predecessors. Herein lies the error which blinds the world as well to the warning of the past as to the momentous issue involved.
Where then shall we look for the cause of that antagonism in which North and South are arrayed—that bitter hostility setting brother against brother, and father against child, dividing into two separate portions a nation descended from the same stock, whose archives are one, all whose associations of a glorious past are the same, and which has hitherto swept swiftly on to unparalleled wealth and power, seemingly indissolubly united, and looking forward to the same glorious and ever-expanding future? Not to the errors in our political system, for no faults of government could, in a brief century, have produced such an upheaving of the foundations of society as we now behold—could have awakened such a thunder peal as is now causing the uttermost corners of the earth to tremble with dismay. Not to the institution of slavery, for however great a curse it maybe to our people and soil, however brutalizing in its tendencies, however unjust to the negro race, and opposed to all the principles of enlightenment and human progress—of whatever crimes it may have been guilty, this last and greatest of crimes cannot be laid at its door: for the bitterness of feeling between North and South existed long before the agitation of slavery was dreamed of, and the latter has only been seized upon as the ready means of accomplishing a greater design. Finally, not to any supposed desire in the Southern mind of establishing an independent empire of the South, whose people should be homogeneous, whose individual interests identical, and whose climate, productions, and institutions should move on in undisturbed harmony forever. For to this last a motive is wanting. Under no government that the world has ever known could the South have enjoyed so much freedom, such unexampled prosperity, such a rapid growth in wealth and power, in a word, so much real happiness—which is the sum of all earthly gifts—as under this which they are so earnestly endeavoring to tear down and blot from the face of the earth. Men's minds do not eagerly grasp and sternly pursue an abstract idea divorced from every consideration of self-interest, such as this would be. Even the greatest of moral principles are indebted to self-interest for their success, and without it the sublimest of creeds, the loftiest of principles would soon wither and die for lack of support. With every blessing that heart could wish in the present, and with no hope through change of bettering their condition in a practical point of view in the future, the idea of a great Southern empire, based upon such uncertain possibilities, would soon have disappeared from the Southern mind, even if it had ever existed.
Nay; the true cause is beneath and behind all these, taking its rise from the very foundations of English society in the dark ages, from the establishment of classes and distinctions of rank. In English history this principle reached its culmination in the wars of the Parliament, that great political tempest which changed the whole destiny and guided the future of that powerful nation, making it, as it is to-day, the dominant race of the old world. Its greatest development, however, was reserved for our day and our land. The England of the subsequent era was a new government, a new people. She reaped her harvest of good from her gigantic struggles, and so must we reap our harvest from ours. From the moment when the first settlers set foot upon our shores our inevitable destiny was foreshadowed; the seeds of the 'Great Rebellion' were even then deeply implanted, and all causes have since that day worked together for its fulfilment. We too must be purified by fire and sword; and may we not hope that our beloved country may emerge from the slaughter, the ruin, and the conflagration, more prosperous, more powerful than ever before, and casting off the slough of impurity that has for long years been hardening upon her, renovated and redeemed by the struggle, sweep majestically on to a purer and nobler destiny than even our past has given promise of, and attain a loftier position than any nation on earth has yet acquired?
The intimate relation of the feudal ages, between baron and retainer, established at first upon principles of individual safety and the public weal, soon degenerated into that of noble and serf. That which at first was but an honorable distinction between knight service on the one hand, and protection and patronage on the other, became, in the course of time, the baser relation of haughty assumption and oppression on the one hand, and the most abject servitude on the other. Descended from the same stern Saxon stock, separated only by purely artificial barriers, by the fortuitous circumstance of birth, the sturdy peasant could ill brook the tyranny of the privileged class—those 'lords rich in some dozen paltry villages.' That stern independence which has ever been the prominent characteristic of the Saxon mind, revolted at the palpable injustice of the relation of lord and serf. The aristocracy, on the contrary, fortified in their arrogance, at a later day, by the irruption of the Norman nobility, with their French ideas and customs, so far from yielding to the signs of the times and the light of dawning civilization, refused to give up one tittle of their assumed prerogatives, and became even more exacting in their demands, more lofty in their supposed superiority. Thus was engendered between the two classes a bitterness of feeling, a spirit of antagonism, that has never yet disappeared. Patiently did the peasant bide his time, and only when the tyranny became utterly unendurable did the movement commence which has swept downward to our time, reiving away one by one the miscalled privileges of the favored class, bringing, year by year, the condition of the laborer nearer to the true balance of society.
This antagonism reached its height in the Cromwellian era, and the men of those times stand forth upon the page of history as the exponents of the great principles of civil freedom. The strength of the Cromwellian party lay in the fact that it was composed almost entirely of the laboring and the middle classes, the bone and sinew of the land. Then for the first time in English history the world saw the plebeian pitted against the aristocrat, and the strife which ensued involved not so much the question of kingly prerogative and the 'divine right' of monarchs, as the pent-up feuds of ages—feuds arising from the most flagrant injustice and wrong on the one hand and forced submission on the other. This of itself was enough to lend to the contest a character of ferocity which well might make civilization turn pale. But even this bitterness was slight compared with that engendered by the religious element of the war. The history of the world has shown no wars so cruel and bloody, no crimes so heinous, no hatred so deep seated and abiding as those produced by religious differences. Strange that it should be so! Strange that the sacred cause whose province is to develop the purest and holiest emotions of the soul, should call forth and develop the fiercest, the darkest, and most unrelenting passions of the human heart! Yet so it proved in this instance. Their fierce, fanatical enthusiasm was a powerful element of strength to the Roundheads, which was lacking to the effeminate, corrupt, and godless Cavaliers. With such an auxiliary the struggle could not be doubtful; religious fanaticism carried the day.
In the years succeeding the Restoration, the evil effects of this religious antagonism were modified by mutual concessions, and in time almost disappeared under the impartial administration of a government founded upon a firmer basis than ever before, and more consonant to Saxon ideas of justice and social equality. But with us of America there was no such modification, for from the midst of this time of war and tumult, of savage hatred and unrelenting persecution, American society sprang. Our country was settled by representatives of these two extremes of English society, and in their choice of abode the hand of Providence is distinctly seen laying the foundations of our struggle of to-day, which is to prove the refining fire, the purification and regeneration of our race. Had the Cavaliers landed upon the shores of New England, the bracing winds of that northern clime, the rugged and intractable nature of the soil, the constant presence of dangers from the fiercer Indian tribes of the north, and the absolute necessity of severe and incessant toil to support existence, would have awakened and developed in them those manly qualities which for centuries had lain dormant in their souls—would have imparted new strength to their frames, new vigor and energy to their modes of thought; their indolence and effeminacy would soon have passed away, and they would have constantly approached, instead of departing from the true Puritan type. While, on the other hand, the stern, rough, almost savage peculiarities of the Puritan would in like manner have been modified by the genial influences of a southern sun and a teeming soil, and while the severe training and rough experiences of centuries, as well as their peculiar mental constitution, would have prevented their entirely lapsing into the indolence and effeminacy of the Cavalier, the whole race would nevertheless have undergone a softening change, bringing them in their turn nearer the type of their old antagonists; and thus each succeeding year would have seen these two extremes of social life drawing nearer and nearer together, and at last blending in dull, contented, plodding harmony. And the result would doubtless have been the degeneration of the entire race, and our fate that of the Spanish American colonies.
But this did not suit the designs of Providence. It was His purpose that there should be here those manifold social and political conflicts which are the life of a great nation—which are, indeed, the motive power to the wheels of human progress. A great problem in human destiny was here to be wrought out; a powerful nation was to arise, bearing within itself the elements of its own continual purification. The Cavalier landed upon the shores of Virginia, and spread his settlements southward. The influence of climate upon both the physical and mental constitution of man is well known. The enervating climate of the 'sunny South,' the soil fruitful beyond a parallel, pouring forth its products almost spontaneously, and, above all, the 'peculiar institution,' which released the planter from the necessity of toil, all tended to aggravate the peculiarities of mind and body which the settlers inherited from their ancestors; and the result has been a race which, while it presents here and there an example of brilliant, meteoric genius, is, in the main, both intellectually and physically inferior to the hardy denizens of the North and West. The same influences have fostered the aristocratic notions of the early settlers of the Southern States. With every element of a monarchy in their midst, the Gulf States have long been anything but a republic. De Bow, when, a few years since, he broached in his Review the idea, and prophesied the establishment of a monarch in our midst, was but giving expression to a feeling which had long been dominant in the Southern heart. All their institutions, associations, and reminiscences have tended steadily to this result, and in the event of the success of the rebellion, it needs but some bold apostle to take upon himself the propagation and execution of the plan, to make the idea a startling reality. And herein lies the secret of the sympathy of the English aristocracy with the confederates in their struggle for independent existence.
The Puritan, guided by the hand of God, planted his future abode on the shores of New England, a land truly congenial to him, whose whole mental and physical life had hitherto been one of storm and tempest. Nor could a fitter type in the human race have been found than he to tame the rock-crowned hills, to brave the rigors of such winters as Old England never knew, and the lurking dangers at the hands of a powerful and jealous race. Here was no place for indolence and luxurious ease. Only by the most persevering and painful labors could the bleak hills and gorge-like valleys be made to yield the fruits of life. Only by unremitting energy and the most patient self-denial could starvation be kept from his door, while constant watchfulness and never-flinching courage were required to ward off the many dangers that beset his path. Nature herself seemed pitted against him to contest every inch of his progress. But his nature was as stern and rough as that of the land he had come to tame. Accustomed to move steadily on in the pursuit of some one great purpose, to surmount every obstacle and crush every impediment, looking neither to the right nor the left, nor even pausing to pluck the flowrets that bloomed by the wayside, there was for him no such word as fail. Here the unbounded resources and exhaustless energy of body and mind found fitting scope. What to ordinary men would seem but hopeless, cheerless toil, was to him but pastime. The Puritan was just the man for New England, and New England the land for the Puritan. How he succeeded let all Christendom proclaim, for his works were not for himself nor his immediate posterity, but for the whole world.