Complete Prose Works

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GENERAL SUFFRAGE, ELECTIONS, ETC.

It still remains doubtful to me whether these will ever secure,
officially, the best wit and capacity--whether, through them, the
first-class genius of America will ever personally appear in the
high political stations, the Presidency, Congress, the leading State
offices, &c. Those offices, or the candidacy for them, arranged, won,
by caucusing, money, the favoritism or pecuniary interest of rings,
the superior manipulation of the ins over the outs, or the outs over
the ins, are, indeed, at best, the mere business agencies of the
people, are useful as formulating, neither the best and highest, but
the average of the public judgment, sense, justice, (or sometimes want
of judgment, sense, justice.) We elect Presidents, Congressmen, &c.,
not so much to have them consider and decide for us, but as surest
practical means of expressing the will of majorities on mooted
questions, measures, &c.

As to general suffrage, after all, since we have gone so far, the more
general it is, the better. I favor the widest opening of the doors.
Let the ventilation and area be wide enough, and all is safe. We
can never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest
gambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President--though such may not
only emulate, but get, high offices from localities--even from the
proud and wealthy city of New York.

WHO GETS THE PLUNDER?

The protectionists are fond of flashing to the public eye the
glittering delusion of great money-results from manufactures, mines,
artificial exports--so many millions from this source, and so many
from that--such a seductive, unanswerable show--an immense revenue of
annual cash from iron, cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundred
other things, all bolstered up by "protection." But the really
important point of all is, _into whose pockets does this plunder
really go?_ It would be some excuse and satisfaction if even a fair
proportion of it went to the masses of laboring-men--resulting in
homesteads to such, men, women, children--myriads of actual homes in
fee simple, in every State, (not the false glamour of the stunning
wealth reported in the census, in the statistics, or tables in the
newspapers,) but a fair division and generous average to those workmen
and workwomen--_that_ would be something. But the fact itself is
nothing of the kind. The profits of "protection" go altogether to
a few score select persons--who, by favors of Congress, State
legislatures, the banks, and other special advantages, are forming a
vulgar aristocracy, full as bad as anything in the British or European
castes, of blood, or the dynasties there of the past. As Sismondi
pointed out, the true prosperity of a nation is not in the great
wealth of a special class, but is only to be really attain'd in having
the bulk of the people provided with homes or land in fee simple. This
may not be the best show, but it is the best reality.

FRIENDSHIP, (THE REAL ARTICLE)

Though Nature maintains, and must prevail, there will always be plenty
of people, and good people, who cannot, or think they cannot, see
anything in that last, wisest, most envelop'd of proverbs, "Friendship
rules the World." Modern society, in its largest vein, is essentially
intellectual, infidelistic--secretly admires, and depends most on,
pure compulsion or science, its rule and sovereignty--is, in short, in
"cultivated" quarters, deeply Napoleonic.

"Friendship," said Bonaparte, in one of his lightning-flashes of
candid garrulity, "Friendship is but a name. I love no one--not even
my brothers; Joseph perhaps a little. Still, if I do love him, it is
from habit, because he is the eldest of us. Duroc? Ay, him, if
any one, I love in a sort--but why? He suits me; he is cool,
undemonstrative, unfeeling--has no weak affections--never embraces any
one--never weeps."

I am not sure but the same analogy is to be applied, in cases,
often seen, where, with an extra development and acuteness of the
intellectual faculties, there is a mark'd absence of the spiritual,
affectional, and sometimes, though more rarely, the highest esthetic
and moral elements of cognition.

LACKS AND WANTS YET

Of most foreign countries, small or large, from the remotest times
known, down to our own, each has contributed after its kind, directly
or indirectly, at least one great undying song, to help vitalize and
increase the valor, wisdom, and elegance of humanity, from the points
of view attain'd by it up to date. The stupendous epics of India, the
holy Bible itself, the Homeric canticles, the Nibelungen, the Cid
Campeador, the Inferno, Shakspere's dramas of the passions and of the
feudal lords, Burns's songs, Goethe's in Germany, Tennyson's poems
in England, Victor Hugo's in France, and many more, are the widely
various yet integral signs or land-marks, (in certain respects the
highest set up by the human mind and soul, beyond science, invention,
political amelioration, &c.,) narrating in subtlest, best ways, the
long, long routes of history, and giving identity to the stages
arrived at by aggregate humanity, and the conclusions assumed in
its progressive and varied civilizations.... Where is America's
art-rendering, in any thing like the spirit worthy of herself and
the modern, to these characteristic immortal monuments? So far, our
Democratic society, (estimating its various strata, in the mass, as
one,) possesses nothing--nor have we contributed any characteristic
music, the finest tie of nationality--to make up for that glowing,
blood-throbbing, religious, social, emotional, artistic, indefinable,
indescribably beautiful charm and hold which fused the separate
parts of the old feudal societies together, in their wonderful
interpenetration, in Europe and Asia, of love, belief, and loyalty,
running one way like a living weft--and picturesque responsibility,
duty, and blessedness, running like a warp the other way. (In the
Southern States, under slavery, much of the same.)... In coincidence,
and as things now exist in the States, what is more terrible, more
alarming, than the total want of any such fusion and mutuality of
love, belief, and rapport of interest, between the comparatively few
successful rich, and the great masses of the unsuccessful, the poor?
As a mixed political and social question, is not this full of dark
significance? Is it not worth considering as a problem and puzzle in
our democracy--an indispensable want to be supplied?

RULERS STRICTLY OUT OF THE MASSES

In the talk (which I welcome) about the need of men of training,
thoroughly school'd and experienced men, for statesmen, I would
present the following as an offset. It was written by me twenty years
ago--and has been curiously verified since:

I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, Judges, and Generals,
unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that
supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a
thousand years. I expect to see the day when the like of the present
personnel of the governments, Federal, State, municipal, military, and
naval, will be look'd upon with derision, and when qualified mechanics
and young men will reach Congress and other official stations, sent
in their working costumes, fresh from their benches and tools, and
returning to them again with dignity. The young fellows must prepare
to do credit to this destiny, for the stuff is in them. Nothing gives
place, recollect, and never ought to give place, except to its clean
superiors. There is more rude and undevelopt bravery, friendship,
conscientiousness, clear-sightedness, and practical genius for any
scope of action, even the broadest and highest, now among the American
mechanics and young men, than in all the official persons in these
States, legislative, executive, judicial, military, and naval, and
more than among all the literary persons. I would be much pleas'd to
see some heroic, shrewd, fully-inform'd, healthy-bodied, middle-aged,
beard-faced American blacksmith or boatman come down from the West
across the Alleghanies, and walk into the Presidency, dress'd in a
clean suit of working attire, and with the tan all over his face,
breast, and arms; I would certainly vote for that sort of man,
possessing the due requirements, before any other candidate.

(The facts of rank-and-file workingmen, mechanics, Lincoln, Johnson,
Grant, Garfield, brought forward from the masses and placed in the
Presidency, and swaying its mighty powers with firm hand--really with
more sway than any king in history, and with better capacity in using
that sway--can we not see that these facts have bearings far, far
beyond their political or party ones?)

MONUMENTS--THE PAST AND PRESENT

If you go to Europe, (to say nothing of Asia, more ancient and
massive still,) you cannot stir without meeting venerable
mementos--cathedrals, ruins of temples, castles, monuments of the
great, statues and paintings, (far, far beyond anything America can
ever expect to produce,) haunts of heroes long dead, saints, poets,
divinities, with deepest associations of ages. But here in the New
World, while _those_ we can never emulate, we have _more_ than those
to build, and far more greatly to build. (I am not sure but the day
for conventional monuments, statues, memorials, &c., has pass'd
away--and that they are henceforth superfluous and vulgar.) An
enlarg'd general superior humanity, (partly indeed resulting from
those,) we are to build. European, Asiatic greatness are in the past.
Vaster and subtler, America, combining, justifying the past, yet
works for a grander future, in living democratic forms. (Here too are
indicated the paths for our national bards.) Other times, other lands,
have had their missions--Art, War, Ecclesiasticism, Literature,
Discovery, Trade, Architecture, &c., &c.--but that grand future is the
enclosing purport of the United States.

LITTLE OR NOTHING NEW, AFTER ALL

How small were the best thoughts, poems, conclusions, except for a
certain invariable resemblance and uniform standard in the final
thoughts, theology, poems, &c., of all nations, all civilizations, all
centuries and times. Those precious legacies--accumulations! They come
to us from the far-off--from all eras, and all lands--from Egypt, and
India, and Greece, and Rome--and along through the middle and later
ages, in the grand monarchies of Europe--born under far different
institutes and conditions from ours--but out of the insight and
inspiration of the same old humanity--the same old heart and
brain--the same old countenance yearningly, pensively, looking forth.
What we have to do to-day is to receive them cheerfully, and to give
them ensemble, and a modern American and democratic physiognomy.

A LINCOLN REMINISCENCE

As is well known, story-telling was often with President Lincoln a
weapon which he employ'd with great skill. Very often he could
not give a point-blank reply or comment--and these indirections,
(sometimes funny, but not always so,) were probably the best responses
possible. In the gloomiest period of the war, he had a call from a
large delegation of bank presidents. In the talk after business was
settled, one of the big Dons asked Mr. Lincoln if his confidence in
the permanency of the Union was not beginning to be shaken--whereupon
the homely President told a little story: "When I was a young man
in Illinois," said he, "I boarded for a time with a deacon of the
Presbyterian church. One night I was roused from my sleep by a rap at
the door, and I heard the deacon's voice exclaiming, 'Arise, Abraham!
the day of judgment has come!' I sprang from my bed and rushed to the
window, and saw the stars falling in great showers; but looking back
of them in the heavens I saw the grand old constellations, with which
I was so well acquainted, fixed and true in their places. Gentlemen,
the world did not come to an end then, nor will the Union now."

FREEDOM

It is not only true that most people entirely misunderstand Freedom,
but I sometimes think I have not yet met one person who rightly
understands it. The whole Universe is absolute Law. Freedom only
opens entire activity and license _under the law_. To the degraded or
undevelopt--and even to too many others--the thought of freedom is a
thought of escaping from law--which, of course, is impossible. More
precious than all worldly riches is Freedom--freedom from the painful
constipation and poor narrowness of ecclesiasticism--freedom in
manners, habiliments, furniture, from the silliness and tyranny of
local fashions--entire freedom from party rings and mere conventions
in Politics--and better than all, a general freedom of One's-Self
from the tyrannic domination of vices, habits, appetites, under which
nearly every man of us, (often the greatest brawler for freedom,) is
enslav'd. Can we attain such enfranchisement--the true Democracy, and
the height of it? While we are from birth to death the subjects of
irresistible law, enclosing every movement and minute, we yet escape,
by a paradox, into true free will. Strange as it may seem, we only
attain to freedom by a knowledge of, and implicit obedience to, Law.
Great--unspeakably great--is the Will! the free Soul of man! At its
greatest, understanding and obeying the laws, it can then, and then
only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the highest, that law
as absolute as any--more absolute than any--the Law of Liberty. The
shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from
every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law
of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, or
partial individual law, with those universal, eternal, unconscious
ones, which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immortality,
give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the last dignity
to human life.

BOOK-CLASSES--AMERICA'S LITERATURE

For certain purposes, literary productions through all the recorded
ages may be roughly divided into two classes. The first consisting of
only a score or two, perhaps less, of typical, primal, representative
works, different from any before, and embodying in themselves their
own main laws and reasons for being. Then the second class, books and
writings innumerable, incessant--to be briefly described as radiations
or offshoots, or more or less imitations of the first. The works of
the first class, as said, have their own laws, and may indeed be
described as making those laws, and amenable only to them. The sharp
warning of Margaret Fuller, unquell'd for thirty years, yet sounds in
the air: "It does not follow that because the United States print and
read more books, magazines, and newspapers than all the rest of the
world, that they really have, therefore, a literature."

OUR REAL CULMINATION

The final culmination of this vast and varied Republic will be the
production and perennial establishment of millions of comfortable city
homesteads and moderate-sized farms, healthy and independent, single
separate ownership, fee simple, life in them complete but cheap,
within reach of all. Exceptional wealth, splendor, countless
manufactures, excess of exports, immense capital and capitalists, the
five-dollar-a-day hotels well fill'd, artificial improvements,
even books, colleges, and the suffrage--all, in many respects, in
themselves, (hard as it is to say so, and sharp as a surgeon's lance,)
form, more or less, a sort of anti-democratic disease and monstrosity,
except as they contribute by curious indirections to that
culmination--seem to me mainly of value, or worth consideration, only
with reference to it.

There is a subtle something in the common earth, crops, cattle, air,
trees, &c., and in having to do at first hand with them, that forms
the only purifying and perennial element for individuals and for
society. I must confess I want to see the agricultural occupation of
America at first hand permanently broaden'd. Its gains are the only
ones on which God seems to smile. What others--what business, profit,
wealth, without a taint? What fortune else--what dollar--does
not stand for, and come from, more or less imposition, lying,
unnaturalness?

AN AMERICAN PROBLEM

One of the problems presented in America these times is, how to
combine one's duty and policy as a member of associations, societies,
brotherhoods or what not, and one's obligations to the State and
Nation, with essential freedom as an individual personality, without
which freedom a man cannot grow or expand, or be full, modern, heroic,
democratic, American. With all the necessities and benefits of
association, (and the world cannot get along without it,) the true
nobility and satisfaction of a man consist in his thinking and acting
for himself. The problem, I say, is to combine the two, so as not to
ignore either.

THE LAST COLLECTIVE COMPACTION

I like well our polyglot construction-stamp, and the retention
thereof, in the broad, the tolerating, the many-sided, the collective.
All nations here--a home for every race on earth. British, German,
Scandinavian, Spanish, French, Italian--papers published, plays acted,
speeches made, in all languages--on our shores the crowning resultant
of those distillations, decantations, compactions of humanity, that
have been going on, on trial, over the earth so long.

APPENDIX

PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH

1834-'42

DOUGH-FACE SONG

--Like dough; soft; yielding to pressure; pale----_Webster's
Dictionary_.

We are all docile dough-faces,
They knead us with the fist,
They, the dashing southern lords,
We labor as they list;
For them we speak--or hold our tongues,
For them we turn and twist.

We join them in their howl against
Free soil and "abolition,"
That firebrand--that assassin knife--
Which risk our land's condition,
And leave no peace of life to any
Dough-faced politician.

To put down "agitation," now,
We think the most judicious;
To damn all "northern fanatics,"
Those "traitors" black and vicious;
The "reg'lar party usages"
For us, and no "new issues."

Things have come to a pretty pass,
When a trifle small as this,
Moving and bartering nigger slaves,
Can open an abyss,
With jaws a-gape for "the two great parties;"
A pretty thought, I wis!

Principle--freedom!--fiddlesticks!
We know not where they're found.
Rights of the masses--progress!--bah!
Words that tickle and sound;
But claiming to rule o'er "practical men"
Is very different ground.

Beyond all such we know a term
Charming to ears and eyes,
With it we'll stab young Freedom,
And do it in disguise;

Speak soft, ye wily dough-faces--
That term is "compromise."

And what if children, growing up,
In future seasons read
The thing we do? and heart and tongue
Accurse us for the deed?
The future cannot touch us;
The present gain we heed.

Then, all together, dough-faces!
Let's stop the exciting clatter,
And pacify slave-breeding wrath
By yielding all the matter;
For otherwise, as sure as guns,
The Union it will shatter.

Besides, to tell the honest truth
(For us an innovation,)
Keeping in with the slave power
Is our personal salvation;
We've very little to expect
From t' other part of the nation.

Besides it's plain at Washington
Who likeliest wins the race,
What earthly chance has "free soil"
For any good fat place?
While many a daw has feather'd his nest,
By his creamy and meek dough-face.

Take heart, then, sweet companions,
Be steady, Scripture Dick!
Webster, Cooper, Walker,
To your allegiance stick!
With Brooks, and Briggs and Phoenix,
Stand up through thin and thick!

We do not ask a bold brave front;
We never try that game;
'Twould bring the storm upon our heads,
A huge mad storm of shame;
Evade it, brothers--"compromise"
Will answer just the same.

PAUMANOK.

DEATH IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM (_A Fact_)

Ting-a-ling-ling-ling! went the little bell on the teacher's desk of
a village-school one morning, when the studies of the earlier part of
the day were about half completed. It was well understood that this
was a command for silence and attention; and when these had been
obtained, the master spoke. He was a low thick-set man, and his name
was Lugare.

"Boys," said he, "I have had a complaint enter'd, that last night some
of you were stealing fruit from Mr. Nichols's garden. I rather think I
know the thief. Tim Barker, step up here, sir."

The one to whom he spoke came forward. He was a slight, fair-looking
boy of about thirteen; and his face had a laughing, good-humor'd
expression, which even the charge now preferr'd against him, and the
stern tone and threatening look of the teacher, had not entirely
dissipated. The countenance of the boy, however, was too unearthly
fair for health; it had, notwithstanding its fleshy, cheerful look, a
singular cast as if some inward disease, and that a fearful one,
were seated within. As the stripling stood before that place of
judgment--that place so often made the scene of heartless and coarse
brutality, of timid innocence confused, helpless child-hood outraged,
and gentle feelings crush' d--Lugare looked on him with a frown
which plainly told that he felt in no very pleasant mood. (Happily a
worthier and more philosophical system is proving to men that schools
can be better govern'd than by lashes and tears and sighs. We are
waxing toward that consummation when one of the old-fashion'd
school-masters, with his cowhide, his heavy birch-rod, and his many
ingenious methods of child-torture, will be gazed upon as a scorn'd
memento of an ignorant, cruel, and exploded doctrine. May propitious
gales speed that day!)

"Were you by Mr. Nichols's garden-fence last night?" said Lugare.

"Yes, sir," answer'd the boy, "I was."

"Well, sir, I'm glad to find you so ready with your confession. And
so you thought you could do a little robbing, and enjoy yourself in
a manner you ought to be ashamed to own, without being punish'd, did
you?"

"I have not been robbing," replied the boy quickly. His face was
suffused, whether with resentment or fright, it was difficult to tell.
"And I didn't do anything last night, that I am ashamed to own."

"No impudence!" exclaim'd the teacher, passionately, as he grasp'd a
long and heavy ratan: "give me none of your sharp speeches, or I'll
thrash you till you beg like a dog."

The youngster's face paled a little; his lip quiver'd, but he did not
speak.

"And pray, sir," continued Lugare, as the outward signs of wrath
disappear'd from his features; "what were you about the garden for?
Perhaps you only receiv'd the plunder, and had an accomplice to do the
more dangerous part of the job?"

"I went that way because it is on my road home. I was there again
afterwards to meet an acquaintance; and--and--But I did not go into
the garden, nor take anything away from it. I would not steal,--hardly
to save myself from starving."

"You had better have stuck to that last evening. You were seen, Tim
Barker, to come from under Mr. Nichols's garden-fence, a little
after nine o'clock, with a bag full of something or other over your
shoulders. The bag had every appearance of being filled with fruit,
and this morning the melon-beds are found to have been completely
clear'd. Now, sir, what was there in that bag?"

Like fire itself glow'd the face of the detected lad. He spoke not a
word. All the school had their eyes directed at him. The perspiration
ran down his white forehead like rain-drops.

"Speak, sir!" exclaimed Lugare, with a loud strike of his ratan on the
desk.

The boy look'd as though he would faint. But the unmerciful teacher,
confident of having brought to light a criminal, and exulting in
the idea of the severe chastisement he should now be justified in
inflicting, kept working himself up to a still greater and greater
degree of passion. In the meantime, the child seem'd hardly to know
what to do with himself. His tongue cleav'd to the roof of his mouth.
Either he was very much frighten'd, or he was actually unwell.

"Speak, I say!" again thunder'd Lugare; and his hand, grasping his
ratan, tower'd above his head in a very significant manner.

"I hardly can, sir," said the poor fellow faintly. His voice was husky
and thick. "I will tell you some--some other time. Please let me go to
my seat--I a'n't well."

"Oh yes; that's very likely;" and Mr. Lugare bulged out his nose and
cheeks with contempt. "Do you think to make me believe your lies? I've
found you out, sir, plainly enough; and I am satisfied that you are
as precious a little villain as there is in the State. But I will
postpone settling with you for an hour yet. I shall then call you up
again; and if you don't tell the whole truth then, I will give you
something that'll make you remember Mr. Nichols's melons for many a
month to come:--go to your seat."