We may well ask 'what sustains the hopes of the rebels?' when such a mass of treason as this wretched volume contains is suffered to be freely published and circulated. That the Administration can find the force to oppose open foes in the field, and yet make no exertion to suppress traitors at home who are doing far more than any armed rebels to reduce our country to ruin, is a paradox for whose solution we have for some time waited, not by any means in patience.
That a Copperhead, who from his own account richly deserves the halter, should have the impudence to publish a complaint of being simply imprisoned, is indeed amusing. But could the mass of vindictiveness, sophistry, and vulgarity which these pages contain be simply submitted to impartial and intelligent men, we should have little dread of any great harm resulting from them. Unfortunately this Copperhead poison, with its subtle falsehoods and detestable special pleading, its habeas corpus side-issues and Golden-Circle slanders, is industriously circulated among many who are still frightened by the old bugbear of 'Abolition,' and who, like the majority in all wars whatever, have accustomed themselves to grumble at those who conduct hostilities. Such persons do not reflect that a great crisis requires great measures, and that in a war involving such a tremendous issue as the preservation of the Federal Union and the development of the grandest phase which human progress has ever assumed, we are not to give up everything to our foes because Mr. Mahoney and a few congenial traitors have, justly or unjustly, been kept on crackers and tough beef. When a city burns and it is necessary to blow up houses with gunpowder, it is no time to be talking of actions for trespass.
If we had ever had a doubt of the rightfulness of the course which Government has taken in imprisoning Copperheads, it would have been removed on reading this miserable book. A man who holds on one page that every private soldier is to be guided by his own will as regards obeying orders, and on another sneers at our army as demoralized,—who calls himself a friend of the Union, and is yet a sympathizer with the enemies of the Union,—who abuses in the vilest manner our Government and its officers in a crisis like the present, is one who, according to all precedents of justice, should be richly punished under military law, if the civil arm be too weak to grasp him. It was such Democrats as Mahoney, who yelled out indignantly in the beginning at every measure which was taken to protect us against the enemy, who, when they had nearly ruined our cause by their efforts, attributed the results of their treason to the Administration, and who now, changing their cry, instead of clamoring for more vigor against the rebels, boldly hurrah for the rebellion itself. It is strange that they cannot see that they are now bringing themselves out distinctly as tories, and men to be branded in history. Do they suppose that such a revolution as this—a revolution of human rights and free labor against the last great form of tyranny—is going backward? Do the events of the last thirty years indicate that Southern aristocracy and Copperhead ignorance and evil are to achieve a final victory over republicanism? Yet it is in this faith, that demagoguism will be stronger than a great principle, that such men as Mahoney write and live.
Wild Scenes in South America; or, Life in the Llanos of Venezuela. By Don Ramon Paez. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street.
The work before us takes the reader not only through all the adventures and chances of the desperate life of the llaneros or herdsmen of South America, but also gives many startling scenes from the revolutions of Colombia, embracing an excellent biography of the truly great general Paez, the friend and colleague of Bolivar. But when we remember that it contains such a mass of valuable historical material, from the pen of a son of General Paez, aide-de-camp to his father, and an eyewitness of, or actor in, some of the bloody scenes of a civil war, and that even the description of herdsman's life is filled with deeply interesting scientific records of the natural history and botany of our southern continent, it seems strange that such a volume could appear under a title smacking of the veriest book-making for the cheap Western market.
The writer, Don Ramon Paez, who was born among the people whom he describes, and was afterward well educated in England, was probably the best qualified man in South America to depict the life of the llaneros, of whom his father was long the literal chief. Half of his pages are occupied with the account of a grand cattle-hunt, involving sufferings and adventures of a very varied and remarkable description, giving the world, we believe, the best account of wild herdsman American-Spanish life ever written. A very curious study of the character of the writer himself is one of the many interesting traits of this volume. A love of literature, of science, of much that is beautiful and refined, contrasts piquantly with occasional glimpses of true Creole character, and of a son of 'the best horseman in South America,' who is too much at home among the fierce people whom he describes to fully assume the tone of a foreigner and amateur. In this latter respect Don Ramon seems to have been influenced by regarding as models the works of European travellers, as well as by a very commendable spirit of modesty; for modest he certainly is when speaking of himself, when we consider the temptations to self-glorification which his adventures would have presented to any of the English adventurers of the present day!
The book cannot fail to be extensively read, since it is not only entertaining, but instructive. Its sketches of the causes of the continual civil wars in South America are not only explanatory, but may serve as a lesson to us in this country to give ourselves heart and soul to the Union, and to crush out treason and faction by every means in our power. If the rebels and Copperheads triumph, we shall soon see the United States reduced to the frightful anarchy of South America.