The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862
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Various >> The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862
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EDITOR'S TABLE.
At last we are wide awake. At last the nation has found out its
strength, and determined, despite doughface objections and impediments
to every proposal of every kind, to push the war with energy, so that
the foe _shall_ be overwhelmed. Six hundred thousand men, as we write,
will soon swell the ranks of the Federal army, and if six hundred
thousand more are needed they can be had. For the North is arming in
real earnest, thank God! and when it rises in _all_ its force, who shall
withstand it? It is a thing to remember with pride, that the
proclamation calling for the second three hundred thousand by draft, was
received with the same joy as though we had heard of a great victory.
Government has not gone to work one day too soon. From a rebellion, the
present cause of strife has at length assumed the proportion of equal
war. The South has cast its _whole_ population, all its means, all its
energy, heart and soul, life and future, on one desperate game; while we
with every advantage have let out our strength little by little, so as
to hurt the enemy as little as possible. Doughface democracy among us
has squalled as if receiving deadly wounds at every proposal to crush or
injure the foe. It opposed, heart and soul, the early On to Richmond
movement, when the Republicans clamored for an overwhelming army, a
grand rally, and a bold push. It rejoiced at heart over Bull Run--for
the South was saved for a time. It upheld the wounded snake, 'anaconda'
system, it opposed the using of contrabands in any way, it urged, heart
and soul, the protection of the property of rebels, it warred on
confiscation in any form, it was ready with a negative to every
proposition to energetically push the war, and finally its press is now
opposing the settling our soldiers on the cotton-lands of the South.
Thus far the slow course of this war of ten millions against twenty
millions is the history of the action of falsehood and treason benumbing
the majority. They have lied against us, and against millions, that the
negro was all we cared for, though it was the WHITE MAN, far, far above
the black for whom we spoke and cared, or how else could that _free_
labor in which the black is but a small unit have been our principal
hope and thought?
But treason at home could not last forever, nor will lies always endure.
The people have found out that the foe _can not_ be gently whipped and
amiably reinstated in their old place of honor. Moreover we have no time
to lose. Another year will find us financially bankrupt, and the enemy
in all probability, in that case, free and fairly afloat by foreign aid.
And if the South goes, _all_ may possibly go. In every city exist
desperate and unprincipled men--the FERNANDO WOODS of the
dangerous classes--who to rule would do all in their power to break our
remaining union into hundreds of small independencies. The South would
flood us with smuggled European goods--for, be it remembered, this
iniquitous device to beat down our manufacture has always been prominent
on their programme--our industry would be paralyzed, exchanges ruined,
and the Eastern and Middle States become paltry shadows of what they
once were.
The people have at last seen this terrible ghost stare them full in the
face. They have found out that it is 'rule or ruin' in earnest. No time
now to have every decisive and expedient measure yelled down as
'unconstitutional' or undemocratic or unprecedented. No days these to
fight a maddened foe with conservative kid-gloves and frighten the fell
tiger back with democratic rose-water. We must do all and every thing,
even as the foe have done. We have been generous, we have been
merciful--we have protected property, we have returned slaves, we have
let our wounded lie in the open air and die rather than offend the
fiendish-hearted women of Secessia--and what have we got by it? Lies and
lies, again and yet again. For refusing to touch the black, Mr. Lincoln
is termed by the Southern press 'a dirty negro-stealer,' and our troops,
for _not_ taking the slaves and thereby giving the South all its present
crop and for otherwise aiding them, are simply held up as hell-hounds
and brigands. Much we have made by forbearance!
The miserable position held by Free State secessionists, Breckinridge
Democrats, rose-water conservatives, and other varieties of the great
Northern branch of Southern treason, is fully exemplified by the
following extract from Breckinridge's special organ, the Louisville
_Courier_, printed while Nashville was still under rebel rule, an
article which has been of late more than once closely reechoed and
imitated by the Richmond _Whig_.
'This,' says the _Courier_, 'has been called a fratricidal war by
some, by others an irrepressible conflict between freedom and
slavery. We respectfully take issue with the authors of both these
ideas. We are not the brothers of the Yankees, and the slavery
question is merely the _pretext, not the cause of the war_. The
true irrepressible conflict lies fundamentally in the hereditary
hostility, the sacred animosity, the eternal antagonism, between
the two races engaged.
'The Norman cavalier can not brook the vulgar familiarity of the
Saxon Yankee, while the latter is continually devising some plan to
bring down his aristocratic neighbor to his own detested level.
Thus was the contest waged in the old United States. So long as
_Dickinson dough-faces were to be bought_, and _Cochrane cowards to
be frightened_, so long was the Union tolerable to Southern men;
but when, owing to divisions in our ranks, the Yankee hirelings
placed one of their own spawn over us, political connection became
unendurable, and separation necessary to preserve our
_self-respect_.
'As our Norman friends in England, always a minority, have ruled
their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present
day, so have we, the slave oligarchs, governed the Yankees till
within a twelve-month. We framed the Constitution, for seventy
years molded the policy of the Government, and placed our own men,
or '_Northern men with Southern principles_,' in power.'
Cool--and in part true. They _did_ rule us in political vassalage, they
_did_ place their own men, or 'Northern men with Southern principles,'
in power, and there are scores of such abandoned traitors even now
crying out 'pro-slavery' and abusing Emancipation among us, in the hope
that if some turn of Fortune's wheel should separate the South, they may
again rise to power as its agents and representatives! GOD help them! It
is hard to conceive of men sunk so low! Nobody wants them now--but a
time _may_ come. They are in New-York--there is a peculiarly
contemptible clique of them in Boston, and the Philadelphia _Bulletin_
informs us that there is exactly such another precious party in the city
of Brotherly Love, who are 'in a very awkward position just now,
inasmuch as there is no market for them. They are in the position of
Johnson and Don Juan in the slave-market at Constantinople, and ready to
exclaim:
'I wish to G--d that some body would buy us!''
The first draft for the army was a death-blow to the slow-poison
democracy, and it has been frightened accordingly. Like a slug on whom
salt has just begun to fall, the crawling mass is indeed manifesting
symptoms of frightened activity--but it is the activity of death. For
the North is awake in real earnest; it is out with banner and bayonet;
there is to be no more playing at war or wasting of lives--the foe is to
be rooted out--_delanda est Dixie_. And in the hour of triumph where
will the pro-slavery traitors be then? Where? Where they always strive
to be--on the _winning_ side. They will 'back water' as they have done
on progressive measure which they once opposed, since the war begun;
they will eat their words and fawn and wheedle those in power until the
opportunity again occurs for building up on some sham principle a party
of rum and faro-banks, low demagogue-ism, ignorance, reaction, and
vulgarity. Then from his present toad-like swelling and whispering, we
shall hear the full-expanded fiend roar out into a real life. It is the
old story of history--the corrupt and venal arraigning itself against
truth and terming the latter 'visionary' and 'fanatical.'
* * * * *
Those who visit the sick soldiers and do good in the hospitals
occasionally get a gleam of fun among all the sad scenes--for any wag
who has been to the wars seldom loses his humor, although he may have
lost all else save that and honor. Witness a sketch from life:
A LITTLE HEAVY.
C----, good soul, after taking all the little comforts he could afford
to give to the wounded soldiers, went into the hospital for the fortieth
time the other day, with his mite, consisting of several papers of
fine-cut chewing-tobacco, Solace for the wounded, as he called it. He
came to one bed, where a poor fellow lay cheerfully humming a tune, and
studying out faces on the papered wall.
'Got a fever?' asked C----.
'No,' answered the soldier.
'Got a cold?'
'Yes, cold--lead--like the d----l!'
'Where?'
'Well, to tell you the truth, it's pretty well scattered. First, there's
a bullet in my right arm, they han't dug that out yet. Then there's one
near my thigh--it's sticking in yet: one in my leg--hit the bone--_that_
fellow _hurts_! one through my left hand--that fell out. And I tell you
what, friend, with all this lead in me, I feel, ginrally speaking, _a
little heavy all over_!'
C---- lightened his woes with a double quantity of Solace.
* * * * *
C---- was a good fellow, and the soldier deserved his 'Solace.' Many of
them among us are poor indeed. 'Boys!' exclaimed a wounded volunteer to
two comrades, as they paused the other day before a tobacconist's and
examined with the eyes of connoisseurs the brier or bruyere-wood pipes
in his window, 'Boys! I'd give fifty dollars, if I had it, for four
shillins to buy one of them pipes with!'
* * * * *
In a late number of an English magazine, Harriet Martineau gives some
account of her conversations, when in America in 1835, with
Chief-Justice Marshall and Mr. Madison. These men then represented the
old ideas of the Republic and of Virginia as it had been. The following
extract fully declares their opinions:
'When I knew Chief-Justice Marshall he was eighty-three--as
bright-eyed and warm-hearted as ever, while as dignified a judge as
ever filled the highest seat in the highest court of any country.
He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life;
he had seen her become the second, and sink to be (I think) the
fifth.
'Worse than this, there was no arresting her decline if her
citizens did not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any
intention to do so, east of the mountains, at least. He had seen
whole groups of estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He
had seen agriculture exchanged for human stock-breeding; and he
keenly felt the degradation.
'The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild
creatures which had not been seen for generations were reaeppearing,
numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were
degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on
that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day
should come which he foresaw.
'To Mr. Madison despair was not easy. He had a cheerful and
sanguine temper, and if there was one thing rather than another
which he had learned to consider secure, it was the Constitution
which he had so large a share in making. Yet he told me that he was
nearly in despair, and that he had been quite so till the
Colonization Society arose.
'Rather than admit to himself that the South must be laid waste by
a servile war, or the whole country by a civil war, he strove to
believe that millions of negroes could be carried to Africa, and so
got rid of. I need not speak of the weakness of such a hope. What
concerns us now is that he saw and described to me, when I was his
guest, the dangers and horrors of the state of society in which he
was living.
'He talked more of slavery than of all other subjects together,
returning to it morning, noon, and night. He said that the clergy
perverted the Bible because it was altogether against slavery; that
the colored population was increasing faster than the white; and
that the state of morals was such as barely permitted society to
exist.
'Of the issue of the conflict, whenever it should occur, there
could, he said, be no doubt. A society burdened with a slave system
could make no permanent resistance to an unencumbered enemy; and he
was astonished at the fanaticism which blinded some Southern men to
so clear a certainty.
'Such was Mr. Madison's opinion in 1855.'
But the trial has come at last, and it is for the country to decide
whether the South is to be allowed to secede, or to remain strengthened
by their slaves, planting and warring against us until our own resources
becoming exhausted, Europe can at an opportune moment intervene. But
will that be the end? Will not Russia revenge the Crimea by aiding
us--will not Austria be dismembered, France on fire, Southern Europe in
arms, and one storm of anarchy sweep over the world? It is all possible,
should we persevere in fighting the enemy with one hand and feeding him
with the other.
* * * * *
There is such a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is
shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown
by the subjoined brace of anecdotes:
DEAR SIR: I have had, in my time, not a little experience
of jailer, warden, and, of late, camp life, and would like to say a
word about silly, misplaced sympathy, of which I have witnessed
enough in all conscience.
At one time, while officering it in a prison not one thousand
miles--as the penny papers say--from the State of New-York, we
received into our hands about as degraded a specimen of the _genus_
'murderer,' as it was ever my lot to see. He had killed a woman in
a most cowardly and cruel manner, and was, to my way of thinking,
(and I was used to such fellows,) about as brutal-looking a human
beast as one need look at. However, we had hardly got him into a
cell, before a carriage drove up to the door, and a
splendidly-dressed lady, with a basket of oranges and a five-dollar
camellia bouquet, asked to see the prisoner.
'_Do_ let me see him!' she cried, 'I read of him in the newspaper,
and, guilty as he is, I would fain contribute my mite to soothe
him.'
'He is a rough customer, marm,' said my assistant.
'Yes, but you know what the poet says:
"Bring flowers to the captive's lonely cell."
So she went in. She took but small notice of the prisoner, however,
arranged her bouquet, left her oranges, and departed. It occurred
to me to promptly search the bouquet for a concealed note or file,
so I entered the cell as she went out. I found Shocky, as we called
him, sucking away at an orange, and staring at the flowers in great
amazement. Finally, he spoke.
'Wat in ----'s the use a sendin' them things to a feller fur,
unless they give him the rum with 'em?'
'What do you suppose they are meant for?' I replied.
'Why, to make bitters with, in course. An't them come-a-mile
flowers?'
The second is something of the same sort. Not long since, a lot of
us--I am an H. P., 'high private,' now--were quartered in several
wooden tenements, and in the inner room of one lay the _corpus_ of
a young Secesh officer, awaiting burial. The news soon spread to a
village not far off. Down came tearing a sentimental and not
bad-looking specimen of a Virginny dame.
'Let me kiss him for his mother!' she cried, as I interrupted her
progress. '_Do_ let me kiss him for his mother!'
'Kiss whom?'
'The dear little lieutenant, the one who lies dead within. P'int
him out to me, sir, if you please. I never saw him, but--oh!'
I led her through a room in which Lieutenant ----, of Philadelphia,
lay stretched out on an up-turned trough, fast asleep. Supposing
him to be the 'article' sought for, she rushed up, and exclaiming,
'Let me kiss him for his mother,' approached her lips to his
forehead. What was her amazement when the 'corpse,' ardently
clasping its arms around her, returned the salute vigorously, and
exclaimed:
'Never mind the old lady, Miss, go it on your own account. I
haven't the slightest objection!'
Sentiment is a fine thing, Mr. Editor, but it should be handled as
one handles the spiked guns which the rebels leave behind, loaded
with percussion-caps--very carefully.
Yours amazingly,
WARDEN.
* * * * *
Readers who are desirous of seeing Ravenshoe fully played out will
please glance at the following:
RAVENSHOE--ITS SEQUEL.
PREFACE
There are those who assert that the doctrine of Compensation is utterly
ignored in Ravenshoe. They instance the rewarding Welter, a coarse,
brutal scoundrel and sensual beast, with wealth and title, and such
honor as the author can confer, as an insult to every rational reader;
nor can they think Charles Ravenshoe, or Horton, who endeavored right
manfully to support himself, repaid for this exertion, and for bearing
up stoutly against his troubles, by being compelled 'to pass a dull,
settled, dreaming, melancholy old age' as an invalid.
It may naturally be thought that a residence of years in Australia, the
mother of Botany Bay, where not exactly the best of American society
could be found, has had its effect in embittering even an Englishman
against Americans, and of embroiling him with his own countrymen;
therefore the reader must smile at this principle of rewarding vice and
punishing virtue; it is what Ravenshoe pretends to be--something novel.
The extreme dissatisfaction of the public with this volume calls
imperatively for a satisfactory conclusion to it, consequently a sequel
is now presented in what the Australians call the most 'bloody dingo[6]
politeful' manner.
CHAPTER I.
A small boy with a dirty face met another small boy similarly
caparisoned. Said the first: 'Eech! you don' know how much twicet two
is?'
'You are a ----' (we suppress the word he used; suffice it to say, it
may be defined, 'a kind of harp much used by the ancients!')--'twicet
two is four. Hmm!' replied the second.
The reader may not see it, but the writer does, that this trivial
conversation has important bearing on the fate of William Ravenshoe, the
wrongful-rightful, rightful-wrongful, etcetera, heir. For further
particulars, see the Bohemian Girl, where a babe is changed by a nurse
in order that the nurse may have change for it.
When Charles Horton Ravenshoe returned once more to his paternal acres,
it will be remembered he settled two thousand pounds a year, rent-charge
on Ravenshoe, in favor of William Ravenshoe. Over and above this,
Charles enjoyed from this estate and from what Lord Saltire (Satire?)
willed him, no less than fourteen thousand pounds; his settlement on
William was therefore by no means one half of the income, consequently
unfair to the exiled Catholic half-brother.
After the death of Father Mackworth he was followed by a gentleman in
crow-colored raiment, named Father Macksham, who accompanied William,
the ex-heir, to a small cottage, where the plots inside were much larger
than the grass-plots outside, and where Father Macksham hatched the
following fruit, which only partially ripened. He determined to
overthrow Welter by the means of Adelaide, then overthrow Adelaide by
means of Charles Ravenshoe, then overthrow the latter by his
illegitimate brother, and finally throw the last over in favor of the
Jesuits. He occupied all his spare moments preparing the fireworks.
CHAPTER II.
The reader will remember that Adelaide, wife of Welter, or Lord Ascot,
broke her back while attempting to jump a fence, mounted on the back of
the Irish mare 'Molly Asthore,' but the reader does not know that Welter
was the cause of his wife's fall, and that he actually hired a groom to
scare 'Molly Asthore' so that she would take the fence, and also his
wife out of this vale of tears. (This sentence I know is not
grammatical; who cares?) Welter, when he saw that his wife was not
killed, was furious. His large red brutal face turned to purple; he
smote his prize-fighting chest with his huge fists, he lowered his
eyebrows until he resembled an infuriated hog, and then he retired to
his house and drank a small box of claret--pints--twenty-four to the
dozen!
Adelaide, too, was furious, but she sent privately to London for Surgeon
Forsups--he came; then in the night season, unbeknown to Welter, an
operation was performed, and behold! in the morning light lay Adelaide,
tall, straight, commanding, proud--well as ever! in fact, straight as a
shingle. Do you think she wanted to choke Welter? I do.
CHAPTER III.
Nature was in one of her gloomiest moods, the clouds were the color of
burnt treacle, the sombre rain pelted the dismal streets; mud was
everywhere, desolation, misery, wet boots, and ruined hats. In the midst
of such a scene, Welter, Lord Ascot, died of apoplexy in the throat,
caused by a rope. Who did the deed? Owls on the battlements answer me.
Did he do it himself or was it done for him? Shrieking elements respond.
Echo answers: Justice!
CHAPTER IV.
Ravenshoe bay again. Sunlight on the waters; clear blue sky; all nature
smiling serenely; Charles Ravenshoe--I adore the man when I think of
him--landing a forty-four-pound salmon; ruddy with health, joyous in
countenance; two curly-headed boys screaming for joy; his wife, 'she
that was' (Americanism picked up among Yorkshiremen in Australia) Mary
Corby, laughing heartily at the _tout ensemble_. William Ravenshoe
affectionately helping Charles with a landing-net to secure the salmon,
thus speaks to him:
'Charles, this idea of yours of dividing the 'state evenly between us is
noble, but I shall not accept it. I would like a small piece of the tail
of this salmon for dinner, though, if it will not rob you.'
'William, halves in every thing between us is my motto; so say no more
about it. The delightful news that Father Macksham has at last fallen a
victim to his love of gain, while trying to run a cargo of cannons,
powder, and Enfield rifles to the confederate States, IN DIRECT
OPPOSITION TO HER BLESSED MAJESTY'S COMMANDS, rejoices my heart to that
extent that I exclaim, perish all Jesuits! Now that you have turned
Protestant, and are thoroughly out of the woods of medieval romance, I
may say,
'The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold,'
and quote Tennyson, like poor Cuthbert, all day long. Who is there to
hinder?'
'No one,' replied William, with all the warmth of heart of a man who was
once a groom and then a bridegroom. 'No one. I saw Adelaide this morning
a-carrying flannels and rum to the poor of the parish; how thoroughly
she has reformed, I'm sure.'
* * * * *
Reader, let us pause here and dwell on the respective merits of the
Bohemian Girl, and Father Rodin in the _Mysteries of Paris_, compared
with the characters described in _Ravenshoe_. Let us ask if an English
novel can be written without allusion to the Derby or Life at Oxford,
the accumulation of pounds or the squandering of pounds, rightful heirs
or wrongful heirs, false marriages, or the actions of spoiled children
generally? An answer is looked for.
* * * * *
'And further this deponent sayeth not.'
* * * * *
The Nashville _Union_--the new Union newspaper of that city--is
emphatically 'an institution,' and a dashing one at that. Its every
column is like the charge of a column of infantry into the unhallowed
Rebel-ry of Disunion. 'Don't compromise your loyalty with rebels,' says
the _Union_, 'until you are ready to compromise your soul with the
devil.'
Some of the humor of this brave pioneer sheet is decidedly piquant.
Among its quizzical literary efforts the review of Rev. Dr. McFerrin's
_Confederate Primer_ is good enough to form the initial of a series. We
make the following extracts:
'Nothing is more worthy of being perpetuated than valuable
contributions to literature. The literature of a nation is its
crown of glory, whose reflected light shines far down the
swift-rolling waves of time and gladdens the eyes of remote
generations. This beautiful and--to our notion--finely-expressed
sentiment was suggested to our mind in turning over the pages of
Rev. Dr. McFerrin's _Confederate Primer_, which we briefly noticed
yesterday. We feel that we then passed too hastily over a work so
grand in its conception.... The _Primer_, after giving the alphabet
in due form, offers some little rhymes for youngsters, which are
perfect nosegays of sentiment, of which the following will serve
as samples:
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