The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

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Mr. Trollope declares that without the slaves the South would be a
wilderness; he also says that the North is justified in the present war
against the South, and although he doubts our ability to attain our ends
in this war, he would be very glad if we were victorious. If these are
his opinions, and if further, he considers slavery to be the cause of
the war, then why in the name of common-sense does he not advocate that
which would bring about our lasting success? He expresses his
satisfaction at the probability of emancipation in Missouri, Kentucky,
and Virginia, and yet rather than that abolition should triumph
universally, he would have the Gulf States go off by themselves and sink
into worse than South-American insignificance, a curse to themselves
from the very reason of slavery. This, to our way of thinking, is vastly
more cruel to the South than even the 'hell upon earth,' which,
supposing it were possible, emancipation would create. A massacre could
affect but one generation: such a state of things as Mr. Trollope
expects to see would poison numberless generations. The Northern brain
is gradually ridding itself of mental fog, begotten by Southern
influences, and Mr. Trollope will not live to see the Gulf States sink
into a moral Dismal Swamp. The day is not far distant when a God-fearing
and justice-loving people will give these States their choice between
Emancipation and death in their 'last ditch,' which we suppose to be the
Gulf of Mexico. Repulses before Richmond only hasten this end. 'But
Congress can not do this,' says Mr. Trollope. Has martial law no virtue?
We object to the title, 'An Apology for the War,' which Mr. Trollope has
given to one of his chapters; and with the best of motives, he takes
great pains to prove to the English public how we of the North could not
but fight the South, however losing a game it might be. No true American
need beg pardon of Europe for this war, which is the only apology we can
make to civilization for slavery. Mr. Trollope states the worn-out cant
that the secessionists of the South have been aided and abetted by the
fanatical abolitionism of the North. Of course they have: had there been
no slavery, there would have been no abolitionists, and therefore no
secessionists. Wherever there is a wrong, there are always persons
fanatical enough to cry out against that wrong. In time, the few
fanatics become the majority, and conquer the wrong, to the infinite
disgust of the easy-going present, but to the gratitude of a better
future. The Abolitionists gave birth to the Republican party, and of
course the triumph of the Republican party was the father to secession;
but we see no reason to mourn that it was so; rather do we thank God
that the struggle has come in our day. We can not sympathize with Mr.
Trollope when he says of the Bell and Everett party: 'Their express
theory was this: that the question of slavery should not be touched.
Their purpose was to crush agitation, and restore harmony by an
impartial balance between the North and South: a fine purpose--the
finest of all purposes, had it been practicable.' We suppose by this,
that Mr. Trollope wishes such a state of things had been practicable.
The impartial balance means the Crittenden Compromise, whose
impartiality the North fails to see in any other light than a fond
leaning to the South, giving it all territory South of a certain
latitude, a _latitude_ that never was intended by the Constitution. It
seems to us that there can be no impartial balance between freedom and
slavery. Every jury must be partial to the right, or they sin before
God.

Mr. Trollope tells us that 'the South is seceding from the North because
the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different
appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is well for one
man to say that slavery has caused the separation, and for another to
say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying speaks the truth.
Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on which
the two have agreed to differ. But slavery has not caused it, seeing
that other points of difference are to be found In every circumstance
and feature of the two people. The North and the South must ever be
dissimilar. In the North, labor will always be honorable, and because
honorable, successful. In the South, labor has ever been servile--at
least in some sense--and therefore dishonorable; and because
dishonorable, has not, to itself, been successful.' Is not this arguing
in a circle? The North is dissimilar to the South. Why? Because labor is
honorable in the former, and dishonorable, because of its servility, in
the latter. The servility removed, in what are the two dissimilar? One
third of the Southern whites are related by marriage to the North; a
second third are Northerners, and it is this last third that are most
violent in their acts against and hatred of the North. They were born
with our instincts and appetites, educated in the same morals, and
received the same culture; and these men are no worse than some of their
brothers who, though they have not emigrated to the South, have yet
fattened upon cotton. The parents of Jefferson Davis belonged to
Connecticut; Slidell is a New-Yorker; Benjamin is a Northerner; General
Lovell is a disgrace to Massachusetts; so, too, is Albert Pike. It is
utter nonsense to say that we are two people. Two interests have been at
work--free labor and slave labor; and when the former triumphs, there
will be no more straws split about two people, nor will the refrain of
agriculture _versus_ manufacture be sung. The South, especially
Virginia, has untold wealth to be drained from her great water-power.
New-England will not be alone in manufacturing, nor Pennsylvania in
mining.

We think that Mr. Trollope fails to appreciate principle when he likens
the conflict between the two sections of our country to a quarrel
between Mr. and Mrs. Jones, in which a mutual friend (England) is, from
the very nature of the case, obliged to maintain neutrality, leaving the
matter to the tender care of Sir Creswell. There never yet existed a
mutual friend who, however little he interfered with a matrimonial
difference, did not, in sympathy and moral support, take violent sides
with _one_ of the combatants; and Mr. Trollope would be first in taking
up the cudgels against private wrong. The North has never wished for
physical aid from England; but does Mr. Trollope remember what Mrs.
Browning has so nobly and humanely written? 'Non-intervention in the
affairs of neighboring States is a high political virtue; but
non-intervention does not mean passing by on the other side when your
neighbor falls among thieves, or Phariseeism would recover it from
Christianity.' England, the greatest of actual nations, had a part to
act in our war, and that part a noble one. Not the part of physical
intervention for the benefit of Lancashire and of a confederacy founded
upon slavery, which both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston inform the
world will not take place 'at present.' Not the part of hypercriticism
and misconstruction of Northern 'Orders,' and affectionate blindness to
Southern atrocities. But such a part as was worthy of the nation, one of
whose greatest glories is that it gave birth to a Clarkson, a Sharpe,
and a Wilberforce. And England has much to answer for, in that she has
been found wanting, not in the cause of the North, but in the cause of
humanity. Had she not always told us that we were criminals of the
deepest dye not to do what she had done in the West-Indies, had she not
always held out to the world the beacon-light of emancipation, there
could be little censure cast upon the British ermine; but having laid
claim to so white and moral a robe, she subjects herself to the very
proper indignation of the anti-slavery party which now governs the
North.

Mr. Trollope confesses that British sympathy is with the South, and
further writes: 'It seems to me that some of us never tire in abusing
the Americans and calling them names, for having allowed themselves to
be driven into this civil war. We tell them that they are fools and
idiots; we speak of their doings as though there had been some plain
course by which the war might have been avoided; and we throw it in
their teeth that they have no capability for war,' etc., etc. Contact
with the English abroad sent us home convinced of English animosity, and
this was before the Trent affair. A literary woman writes to America:
'There is only one person to whom I can talk freely upon the affairs of
your country. Here in England, they say I have lived so long _in Italy
that I have become an American_.' We have had nothing but abuse from the
English press always, excepting a few of the liberal journals. Mill and
Bright and Cobden alone have been prominent in their expression of
good-will to the North. And this is Abolition England! History will
record, that at the time when America was convulsed by the inevitable
struggle between Freedom and Slavery, England, actuated by selfish
motives, withheld that moral support and righteous counsel which would
have deprived the South of much aid and comfort, brought the war to a
speedier conclusion, gained the grateful confidence of the anti-slavery
North, and immeasurably aided the abolition of human slavery.

It may be said that we of the North have no intention of touching the
'institution,' and therefore England can not sympathize with us.
Whatever the theory of the administration at Washington may have been,
he is insane as well as blind who does not see what is its practical
tendency. In the same length of time, this tendency would have been much
farther on the road to right had the strong arm of England wielded the
moral power which should belong to it. Mr. Trollope says: 'The complaint
of Americans is, that they have received no sympathy from England; but
it seems to me that a great nation should not require an expression of
sympathy during its struggle. Sympathy is for the weak, not for the
strong. When I hear two powerful men contending together in argument, I
do not sympathize with him who has the best of it; but I watch the
precision of his logic, and acknowledge the effects of his rhetoric.
There has been a whining weakness in the complaints made by Americans
against England, which has done more to lower them, as a people, in my
judgment, than any other part of their conduct during the present
crisis.' It is true that at the beginning of this war the North _did_
show a whining weakness for English approbation, of which it is
sincerely to be hoped we have been thoroughly cured. We paid our
mother-land too high a compliment--we gave her credit for virtues which
she does not possess--and the disappointment incurred thereby has been
bitter in the extreme. We were not aware, however, that a sincere desire
for sympathy was an American peculiarity. We have long labored under the
delusion that the English, even, were very indignant with Brother
Jonathan during the Crimean war, when he failed to furnish the quota of
sympathy which our cousins considered was their due, but which we could
not give to a debauched 'sick man' whom, for the good of civilization,
we wished out of the world as quickly as possible. But England was
'strong;' why should she have desired sympathy? For, according to Mr.
Trollope's creed, the weak alone ought to receive sympathy. It seems to
be a matter entirely independent of right and wrong with Mr. Trollope.
It is sufficient for a man to prove his case to be '_strong_,' for Mr.
Trollope to side with his opponent. Demonstrate your weakness, whether
it be physical, moral, or mental, and Mr. Trollope will fight your
battles for you. On this principle--which, we are told, is English--the
exiled princes of Italy, especially the Neapolitan-Bourbon, the Pope,
Austria, and of course the Southern confederacy, should find their
warmest sympathizers among true Britons, and perhaps they do; but Mr.
Trollope, in spite of his theory, is not one of them.

The emancipationist should _not_ look to England for aid or comfort, but
it will be none the worse for England that she has been false to her
traditions. 'I confess,' wrote Mrs. Browning--dead now a year--'that I
dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too
large for England, having courage, in the face of his countrymen, to
assert of some suggested policy: 'This is good for your trade, this is
necessary for your domination; but it will vex a people hard by, it will
hurt a people farther off, it will profit nothing to the general
humanity; therefore, away with it! it is not for you or for me.'' The
justice of the poet yet reigns in heaven only; and dare we dream--we
who, sick at heart, are weighed down by the craft and dishonesty of our
public men--of the possibility of such a golden age?

On the subject of religion as well, we are much at variance with Mr.
Trollope. Of course, it is to be expected that one who says, 'I love the
name of State and Church, and believe that much of our English
well-being has depended on it; _I have made up my mind to think that
union good, and am not to be turned away from that conviction_;' it is
to be expected, we repeat, that such an one should consider religion in
the States 'rowdy.' Surely, we will not quarrel with Mr. Trollope for
this opinion, however much we may regret it; as we consider it the glory
of this country, that while we claim for our moral foundation a fervent
belief in GOD and an abiding faith in the necessity of
religion, our government pays no premium to hypocrisy by having fastened
to its shirts one creed above all other creeds, made thereby more
respectable and more fashionable. 'It is a part of their system,' Mr.
Trollope continues, 'that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no
man shall be in any way constrained in that matter,' (and he sees
nothing to thank God for in this system of ours!) 'consequently, the
question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy manner.'
That which we have gladly dignified by the name of religious toleration,
(not yet half as broad as it should and will be,) Mr. Trollope degrades
by the epithet of 'free-and-easy.' This would better apply were ours the
toleration of indifference, instead of being a toleration founded upon
the unshaken belief that God has endowed every human being with a
conscience whose sufficiency unto itself, in matters of religious faith,
we have no right to question. And we are convinced that this experiment,
with which we started, has been good for our growth of mind and soul, as
well as for our growth as a nation. Even Mr. Trollope qualifies our
'rowdyism,' by saying that 'the nation is religious in its tendencies,
and prone to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things.'

And now we have done with fault-finding. For all that we hereafter quote
from Mr. Trollope's book, we at once express our thanks and _sympathy_.
He is '_strong_,' but he is also human, and likes sympathy.

More than true, if such a thing could be, is Mr. Trollope's comments
upon American politicians. 'The corruption of the venal politicians of
the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men. It behoves the
country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The
people of the nation are educated and clever. The women are bright and
beautiful. Her charity is profuse; her philanthropy is eager and true;
her national ambition is noble and honest--honest in the cause of
civilization. But she has soiled herself with political corruption, and
has disgraced the cause of republican government by those whom she has
placed in her high places. Let her look to it NOW. She is nobly
ambitious of reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called
good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as
beneficent She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing
to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy
her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which
her political democracy has debased itself. A politician should be a man
worthy of all honor, in that he loves his country; and not one worthy of
contempt, in that he robs his country.' Can we plead other than guilty,
when even now a Senator of the United States stands convicted of a
miserable betrayal of his office? Will America heed the voice of Europe,
as well as of her best friends at home, before it is too late? Again
writes Mr. Trollope: ''It is better to have little governors than great
governors,' an American said to me once. 'It is our glory that we know
how to live without having great men over us to rule us.' That glory, if
ever it were a glory, has come to an end. It seems to me that all these
troubles have come upon the States because they have not placed high men
in high places.' Is there a thinking American who denies the truth of
this? And of our code of honesty--that for which Englishmen are most to
be commended--what is truly said of us? 'It is not by foreign voices, by
English newspapers, or in French pamphlets, that the corruption of
American politicians has been exposed, but by American voices and by the
American press. It is to be heard on every side. Ministers of the
Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, State Legislatures, officers of the
army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade--all who are
presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching, public money, are
thus accused.... The leaders of the rebellion are hated in the North.
The names of Jefferson Davis, Cobb, Toombs, and Floyd, are mentioned
with execration by the very children. This has sprung from a true and
noble feeling; from a patriotic love of national greatness, and a hatred
of those who, for small party purposes, have been willing to lessen the
name of the United States. But, in addition to this, the names of those
also should be execrated who have robbed their country when pretending
to serve it; who have taken its wages in the days of its great struggle,
and at the same time have filched from its coffers; who have undertaken
the task of steering the ship through the storm, in order that their
hands might be deep in the meal-tub and the bread-basket, and that they
might stuff their own sacks with the ship's provisions. These are the
men who must be loathed by the nation--whose fate must be held up as a
warning to others--before good can come.' How long are the American
people to allow this pool of iniquity to stagnate, and sap the vitals of
the nation? How long, O Lord! how long?

On the subject of education, Mr. Trollope--though indulging in a little
pleasantry on young girls who analyze Milton--does us full justice. 'The
one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of the
United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify them in
taking to themselves praise which we can not take to ourselves or refuse
to them, is the matter of education.... The coachman who drives you, the
man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the
girl who stitches your wife's dress--they all carry with them sure signs
of education, and show it in every word they utter.' But much as Mr.
Trollope admires our system of public schools, he does not see much to
extol in the at least Western way of rearing children. 'I must protest
that American babies are an unhappy race. They eat and drink just as
they please; they are never punished; they are never banished, snubbed,
and kept in the background, as children are kept with us; and yet they
are wretched and uncomfortable. My heart has bled for them as I have
heard them squalling, by the hour together, in agonies of discontent and
dyspepsia.' This is the type of child found by Mr. Trollope on Western
steamboats; and we agree with him that beef-steaks, _with pickles_,
produce a bad type of child; and it is unnecessary to confess to Mr.
Trollope what he already knows, that pertness and irreverence to parents
are the great faults of American youth. No doubt the pickles have much
to do with this state of things.

While awarding high praise to American women _en masse_, Mr. Trollope
mourns over the condition of the Western women with whom he came in
contact, and we are sorry to think that these specimens form the rule,
though of course exceptions are very numerous. 'A Western American man
is not a talking man. He will sit for hours over a stove, with his cigar
in his mouth and his hat over his eyes, chewing the cud of reflection. A
dozen will sit together in the same way, and there shall not be a dozen
words spoken between them in an hour. With the women, one's chance of
conversation is still worse. 'It seemed as though the cares of this
world had been too much for them.... They were generally hard, dry, and
melancholy. I am speaking, of course, of aged females, from
five-and-twenty, perhaps, to thirty, who had long since given up the
amusements and levities of life.' Mr. Trollope's malediction upon the
women of New-York whom he met in the street-cars, is well merited, so
far as many of them are concerned; but he should bear in mind the fact
that these 'many' are foreigners, mostly uneducated natives of the
British isles. Inexcusable as is the advantage which such women
sometimes take of American gallantry, the spirit of this gallantry is
none the less to be commended, and the grateful smile of thanks from
American ladies is not so rare as Mr. Trollope imagines. Mr. Trollope
wants the gallantry abolished; we hope that rude women may learn a
better appreciation of this gallantry by its abolition in flagrant cases
only. Had Mr. Trollope once 'learned the ways' of New-York stages, he
would not have found them such vile conveyances; but we quite agree with
him in advocating the introduction of cabs. In seeing nothing but
vulgarity in Fifth Avenue, and a thirst for gold all over New-York City,
we think Mr. Trollope has given way to prejudice. There is no city so
generous in the spending of money as New-York. Art and literature find
their best patrons in this much-abused Gotham; and it will not do for
one who lives in a glass house to throw stones, for we are not the only
nation of shop-keepers. We do not blame Mr. Trollope, however, for
giving his love to Boston, and to the men and women of intellect who
have homes in and about Boston.

We are of opinion that Mr. Trollope is too severe upon our hotels; for
faulty though they be, they are established upon a vastly superior plan
to those of any other country, if we are to believe our own experience
and that of the majority of travelers. Mr. Trollope sees no use of a
ladies' parlor; but Mr. Trollope would soon see its indispensability
were he to travel as an unprotected female of limited means. On the
matter of the Post-Office, however, he has both our ears; and much that
he says of our government, and the need of a constitutional change in
our Constitution, deserves attention--likewise what he says of
colonization. We do elevate unworthy persons to the altar of heroism,
and are stupid in our blatant eulogies. It is sincerely to be regretted
that so honest a writer did not devote two separate chapters to the
important subjects of drunkenness and artificial heat, which, had he
known us better, he would have known were undermining the American
_physique_. He does treat passingly of our hot-houses, but seems not to
have faced the worse evil. Of our literature, and of our absorption of
English literature, Mr. Trollope has spoken fully and well; and in his
plea for a national copyright, he might have further argued its
necessity, from the fact that American publishers will give no
encouragement to unknown native writers, however clever, so long as they
can steal the brains of Great Britain.

To conclude. We like Mr. Trollope's book, for we believe him when he
says: 'I have endeavored to judge without prejudice, and to hear with
honest ears, and to see with honest eyes.' We have the firmest faith in
Mr. Trollope's honesty. We know he has written nothing that he does not
conscientiously believe, and he has given unmistakable evidence of his
good-will to this country. We are lost in amazement when he tells us: 'I
know I shall never again be at Boston, and that I have said that about
the Americans which would make me unwelcome as a guest if I were
there.' Said what? We should be thin-skinned, indeed, did we take
umbrage at a book written in the spirit of Mr. Trollope's. On the
contrary, the Americans who are interested in it are agreeably
disappointed in the verdict which he has given of them; and though they
may not accept his political opinions, they are sensible enough to
appreciate the right of each man to his honest convictions. Mr.
Trollope, though he sees in our future not two, but three,
confederacies, predicts a great destiny for the North. We can see but a
union of all--a Union cemented by the triumph of freedom in the
abolition of that which has been the taint upon the nation. If Mr.
Trollope's prophecies are fulfilled, (and God forbid!) it will be
because we have allowed the golden hour to escape. Pleased as we are
with Mr. Trollope the writer--who has not failed to appreciate the
self-sacrifice of Northern patriotism--Mr. Trollope the _man_ has a far
greater hold upon our heart; a hold which has been strengthened, rather
than weakened, by his book. The friends of Mr. Trollope extend to him
their cordial greeting, and Boston in particular will offer a hearty
shake of the hand to the writer of _North-America_, whenever he chooses
to take that hand again.

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