Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

From The Spectator, 20 July.

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

THE view we have taken from the first of the character and policy of the American President is strongly supported by his last

message.

which American journalists describe them, like the decrees proposed to a government heading a revolution. The "Indemnity Bill” sounds like a constitutional form, but the remainder are all "up to the height of cir

The peaceful republic is to pass at once a law "to increase the military establishment," and thereby secure skilled officers; a bill "for the better organization of military establishments," which will reorganize the bureaux; a bill" to promote the efficiency of the army," which will make discipline stern, and a "bill for a national guard," which will be a standing army.

Mr. Lincoln writes like a half-ed- cumstances." ucated lawyer, and thinks like a European sovereign. It is difficult to imagine any thing more feebly diffuse than the long columns by which he justifies the war, or any thing more haughtily energetic than the single paragraph in which he demands means for carrying it to a successful end. That paragraph, explained as it is by the official reports of the secretaries of state, clears up all that was doubtful in the There can be no mistake as to the meaning policy of the Cabinet, scatters to the winds all of all this. The American people may have rumors of compromise, and declares that the different views, may refuse the means necesAmerican republic tolerates rebellion as lit-sary to make these menaces effective, or may tle as any monarchy on earth. The Presi- shrink from the long war now so plainly before dent defends himself for his delay before the them, and we have considered below the possiassault on Sumter, promises a long paper from bility of those occurrences; but discussion on the attorney-general on his right to arrest the designs of the Government has come at last traitors, asks "if it is just that the South should to an end. The President says nothing about be off without any consent or any return" for the last man and the last shilling, but if it be the money invested in Florida, and through- not his resolve to expend both, rather than out stands on the defensive in a style fatal to make terms with rebellion, words and acts have English ideas of the dignity of his office. But alike no meaning. American statesmen are in the midst of this slip-slop garrulity he asks trained to servility, and we cannot expect, for an army equal to that of a first-class mili- even from a President, the independent volitary power, and supplies on a scale which tion it is the pride of an English statesman to startles Englishmen accustomed to pay war display. But, though bowing always—and, taxes, and calmly discusses his course "after in English judgment, bowing too low-towards this rebellion shall have been suppressed." the people, Mr. Lincoln's own purposes are That sentence is the key to the President's terribly clear and plain. He may distrust resolution. Secession is rebellion, and re- the people, but they, if they mean war, have bellion shall be suppressed at any outlay of no cause to distrust him. He will go forward treasure, or any expenditure of life. Mr. relentlessly, as if the war were a suit, expend Lincoln asks for four hundred thousand men armies as if they were costs, and press judgand a hundred millions sterling as the first ment to execution as if he were only distraincontribution of Congress towards the neces- ing a fraudulent or menacing debtor. sary war. And this, he says, with a cold res- is not perhaps the highest form of resolution, olution which all his verbiage cannot hide, is but it is one against which threats are as much but a small demand. The army will be only lost as sophistry or bribes. "a tenth of those of proper ages within the There is one other point to be noticed in regions where apparently all are willing to the President's Message. From first to last, engage," and the money is "less than a twenty-throughout all those weary columns of type, third part of the sum owned by those who the word slavery never occurs-the thing seem willing to devote the whole." The talk of slavery is never referred to. The President a strong Union party within the South is kept up, but its existence is treated as matter of no moment. If all Southerners are volunteers against the Union, and all Southern wealth is devoted to that one end, the Union is still to find means to enforce its complete supremacy. Secession is rebellion, and the number of the rebels only increases the means the loyal must raise to effect the inevitable suppression. Compromises, if made at all, must be made by the people, and till then the President" will not shrink, nor count the chances of his own life in what may follow." The bills introduced by the Government tally well with this cold resolve. They read, in the short sentences in

This

thrusts the slave question wholly out of sight. Even in the paragraph in which he alludes to his course "when this rebellion shall have been suppressed," he gives no pledge as to state rights or the peculiar institution. "Lest," he says, "there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is to be the course of the Government towards the Southern States after the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the Executive deems it proper to say it will be his purpose then, as ever, to be guided by the Constitution and the laws, and that he probably will have no different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal Government, relatively

to the rights of the states and the people under the Constitution, than that expressed in the inaugural address."

"I will adhere," said the emperor of Austria, last week, "to the principles laid down in my first speech to the Reichsrath;" and in the minds both of President and emperor the intention of the reference is the same. Both intend to declare a consistent resolution. That of the President is to uphold the Constitution, which, as the North wields the majority, may, "probably," prohibit slavery in the states, and will certainly forbid it within the territories. It is difficult to believe that this reticence was not of design. A word on the state right to regulate slavery would have conciliated thousands of wavering Southerners, but the word would have pledged the Cabinet not to pursue the path which they perceive, willing or unwilling, they must tread.

But will the people concede the enormous powers demanded by their Government? That, after all, is the real point at issue, for, however resolved the President may be, his policy, unless it meets the assent of the people, is simply an individual opinion. And, moreover, can the people, even if carried such lengths by their enthusiasm, bear the enormous burden the President desires to impose? It needs no argument to prove that the burden is onerous to the last degree. The war will not end in a year, and to keep four hundred thousand men in the field two years is an effort which would task the resources of England, with twice the wealth of the states, and tax the human supply of Russia, with twice their population. The army is to be drawn from the North, from a people, that is, less numerous than that of England alone, and the outlay exceeds fivefold the national revenue of the republic. The President, too, speaks of the hundred millions paid for Florida, and then asks for four hundred millions to spend in recovering them; he talks of the free institutions which are a model to the world, and then proposes a standing army. He places these requests before people who have never furnished a native recruit to their permanent force, and have never borne a direct tax, or provided for a more than nominal national debt. Feeling acutely the force of these objections, we still believe that the North will endure this tremendous strain. The mere fact that they asked to do it will of itself treble their willingness. Their complaint has hitherto been that the Government lagged behind, that it refused the means placed at its disposal, seemed lukewarm, or even treacherous. The President has now shot forward far in advance, but there is no proof that he has outstripped the people. The Republicans are

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE.

743

content, and the House of Assembly has elected a Republican speaker. The galleries cheered the demand for four hundred millions, and the galleries on such occasions are filled with the best representatives of the Union. The talk about compromise has for weeks elicited nothing but indignation. The Democratic leaders dare not even yet attack the war, except by expressing their doubts whether the same expenditure would not conquer the continent. Above all, the American people are convinced that the South is already defeated, that it needs but one great levy and one bold push to secure the unconditional surrender. It matters little now, as it mattered nothing in March, what course the trading politicians may take. The silent millions of the North, whose hearts have been ulcerated for thirty years by enforced submission to ceaseless insult, will accept any demand rather than yield, and with their decision the controversy, however warm, or however much to the apparent advantage of the South, will, as before, instantly end. That individuals will resist, that some Charles Fox will appear, that a strong minority will grow up, as in our own European war, craving only for peace, is more than probable. But the mass of the nation, like the mass of the British people, is with the war, and nothing but sharp distress will make it even temporarily unpopular. Of the will of the North at present there can, we believe, be no doubt whatever.

Of their power there is perhaps more doubt, but even on this point, though with more hesitation, we must reply in the affirmative. It is evident that the men can be procured: Whether it be that social life in the states tempts men to soldiership, or that the great foreign population, as some say, is really in distress, or that the heart of the nation is really aroused to a depth we can scarcely appreciate, the men, it is evident, can be obtained. The Secretary of War reports that three hundred and ten thousand men are already collected. Eighty thousand of these are three months' volunteers, but after that great deduction, two hundred and thirty thousand men remain engaged for the war. Nearly a hundred thousand more are fretting in the Western States because their services cannot be entertained, and with money in plenty the balance will be only too easily gathered together. Whether these men will submit to the discipline a long campaign requires; whether they can turn out cavalry in any thing like adequate numbers; whether, in short, they can be reduced by service or discipline into an army, events alone can decide. But the men, we believe, can be found, and behind them remains, as a reserve, the whole population of states like Iowa, in

which every man needs only instruction in will tap an exhaustless mine. The Union, drill to be an efficient soldier. The levy will taking the calculation head by head-for if do infinite mischief to the country, will in- she has fewer rich than England she has also. crease the military feeling so strong in the fewer poor-can bear a national debt of five states, will check the prosperity of the West, hundred millions, and yet be no heavier and will perhaps menace the liberty for which weighted than ourselves. The Secretary's the volunteers say they fight; but the men demand is for less than one eighth of that can be obtained. So can the National Guard, amount. The men and the money are fortha force long since demanded by the holders coming, and annoyed as all men must feel of property, who see in the weakness of at the bombastic rubbish with which Amerthe Executive a permanent danger to them-icans overlay earnest feeling, we still know selves. of nothing nobler than the constancy with which the people sacrifice their dreams, their wealth, and their lives to preserve their honor.

From The Press, 20 July.

It remains to provide the money, and it must be remembered that the lightness of taxation which has hitherto distinguished the states, only makes heavy taxation the more easy and productive. The financial secretary, like his chief, states his demand with sufficient clearness but in many words. The THE WAR IN AMERICA. expenditure for the current year may be LARGE as is the vote of men and money taken at eighty millions sterling, of which which the Message of President Lincoln desum twenty millions must, he conceives, be mands from the American Congress, it can raised by taxes. By placing a tax on sugar, hardly be said to be adequate for a substanmolasses, coffee, and tea, he hopes that the tial prosecution of the war. Men are too indirect taxes may be made to produce fifteen apt to measure the proportions of this strugmillions, and for the remaining five he pro-gle by the standard of wars between indiposes two alternatives. A tax of half a vidual nations, and to forget that preparacrown in the pound on the entire property tions which would be stupendous as the of-of the North would produce just the amount fensive armament of a single state, figure deficient, or it may be made up by light im- but poorly as the equipment of one half of a posts on ale and beer, tobacco and spirits, continent for the subjugation of the other. bank notes and spring carriages, jewelry Mr. Lincoln must be advised by very sanand legacies. This is a goodly list of guine politicians or very poor military auburdens, and reminds one painfully how thorities, if he expects that 400,000 men near Sydney Smith's prophetical caution to and 400,000,000 dollars will furnish to the brother Jonathan is to its fulfilment. But Federal Government "the legal means for none of the duties, though some of them making the contest a short and decisive will be heavy-as, for example, ten pence a one." With no larger means at their dispound on green tea-are unbearable, or ex-posal, the Notherners will scarcely be able ceed those we ourselves pay, murmuring, but obedient. None of them press on the sources of wealth, or demand from the people the sacrifice of necessaries with which it would be injurious to dispense. Even the property tax might be borne, and the machinery already exists for collecting that impost for state expenses. The Union will simply glide out of the class of lightly taxed states into that of fairly taxed nations-a change the progress of events was sure sooner or later to involve. But this is not all the burden to be imposed. Sixty millions sterlingtwo hundred and forty millions of dollars remain to be provided for by loan, and the moneyed interest is already, it is said, biased towards the South. The moneyed interest, however, whatever their "proclivities," will follow their instincts, and swarm round a ministry which creates a national debt like flies round honey. Or if they do not, there remains the device of the open loan, a device which, in a country where every farmer saves and five sixths of the national wealth is real,

to make an energetic commencement of the campaign, and the close of the year 1861 will probably wear itself out in the same inactivity which has characterized its commencement.

It does not seem that any great result has followed the movement of General Patterson across the Potomac. A loss of sixtythree men killed and several wounded, which made up the combined casualties on both sides, will not probably be thought to have given any great military significance to his brush with General Johnston's forces, and it will only be by courtesy that their rencontre can hereafter be styled "The Battle of Martinsburg."

If it were not for the stoppage of trade throughout a great mercantile continent, and for the stimulus which a perpetual bivouac seems to give to those habits of vagrancy and dissipation which are already too prevalent among Americans, we might well rejoice that the civil war should have so long a prelude; and, as it is, any development

of such enormous bulk; and an occupation of either of those cities could only be maintained by the employment of all the forces of the Union, and such an expenditure of men and money as must of itself bring the war to a close.

It is not a plausible supposition that the loss of one out of many capitals would prove more ruinous to the cause of the Southern States than the capture of Moscow did to the Russians in 1812. It is far more probable, on the contrary, that causes analogous to those which drove back Napoleon would bring about the extinction of any Northern army that might mistake a similar occupation for a conquest of the South.

of the struggle which should suffice to mass the scattered contingents of the North and South-no matter with what good effect to their moral condition-and bring two large kindred armies to each other's throats, would be most lamentable. That the enormous frontier from Arkansas to the Atlantic should be sprinkled with groups of recruits, who consume both their time and their constitutions in games of chance, political invective, and brandy-smashes, and whose military drill seems confined to an intermittent and unregimental practice among themselves with the bowie-knife and revolver, is doubtless to deplored. Such a state of things would be happily terminated by any solution of the present difficulty, perhaps The protracted siege of a fortress not even excluding a recognition, in some at her southern extremity sufficed to suck shape or other, of the seceding confederacy. the strength of Russia in 1855. But it was But to stop the present demoralization of not the importance of the capture that closed these levies, by giving to their embodiment the Crimean war with the siege of Sebastothe only purpose of which it is susceptible, bol. It was the siege that exhausted the vanwould be to correct, by a still more terrible quished, and not the loss of the place, which disaster, that which is already sufficiently in- might have been regained in subsequent jurious. The ridicule which has been so campaigns. The waste of money and lives largely thrown upon the tardiness which the in a land-transit from Archangel to the Sea Americans show in commencing actual war- of Azov, during which the armies of Nicholas fare has doubtless been more than commonly melted away as they went to war, and in irritating to the vainest of all living nations. which millions were spent before a shot was But it may be doubted whether it is wise, fired, made just that balance of chances in in communities like our own, which would favor of the allies which would tell for the suffer so largely from the conflict, to employ Confederated States, if the Government of so powerful an incitement to the contending President Lincoln could be induced to carry parties. Nor is it by any means certain that the campaign far to the south of the Potothe ridicule can be justified. Apart from mac. On the other hand, aggresive movethe acknowledged want of preparation on ments can form no part of the intentions the part of the Federal Government, and the or interests of the confederate generals. lack of real military resources and equip- Their strength and the strength of the cause ment upon the side of the confederates, it for which they contend is pre-eminently to sit does not seem easy to commence a campaign still. How the rear of his army could be from such an enormous base of operations. protected, or its retreat secured in an invaThe position and conditions of both parties sion of the Southern States, is a question are unmatched in the military history of the which those who condemn General Scott world. It is hardly to be imagined that an and affect to sneer at the Yankee appetite aggressive movement from either side would for battle have not yet been called upon to anresult in any thing else than the grave dis-swer. Nor does it seem that such people comfiture of the aggressor. And for defen- have thought it worth their while to inquire sive purposes, it would be absurd to attempt whether, in the present ignorance of what a concentration of large forces upon any one can be ultimately effected even by a successpoint in a frontier of 2,000 miles, even if the ful campaign, it may not be as well that the expense of transporting troops over such generals on each side should abstain from enormous distances did not preclude the en- any operations that would irremediably tertainment of such an idea by belligerents pledge the people of the North. At present, commencing hostilities with empty treas- short of the chimerial notion which is fast uries. It is difficult to estimate the number being abandoned of coercing the whole of the of men that would be requisite for the prose- South, all is vague and undetermined in the cution of a systematic war over so gigantic councils of Washington. There are few an area. The extent in mileage of the con- politicians who would venture to place the federate territory is rather more than reclamation of Carolina in the list of their equivalent to England, France, Italy, Ger- contingencies, and still fewer who, failing many, and Spain, put together. The capture to do that, could sketch out any probabilities of Charleston or Richmond, if effected, whatever for the revolution." It is by no would be an unappreciable blow in a body means certain that substantial intentions

may not hereafter be formed by both sides, which will centralize and give object to the struggle. But whatever they may be, they must of necessity be subsequent to a recognition of the permanent disruption of the Union. This proposition once assumed, a contest for the possession of Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee may possibly turn out to be its legitimate consequence, as it has all along been the only issue to which the aggression of the North could practiaally tend. The coercion of the main body of the seceding states is a project only less manifestly absurd than an invasion of the North by the South would be; and it is doubtful whether the Government at Washington ever seriously contemplated it. To save the border states for the Union, and to thrust back as far as possible the boundary line of the new confederacy, is a fair effort of policy; and it was safer, before those states which were wavering had seceded, to advertise the reconquest of those already in open rebellion, than to stimulate further secession by professedly stepping in to restrain it.

pect. The loss or gain of some or all of these states will make the success and failure of the struggle. No advantages gained by either party beyond such acquisition would ever be permanent, and probably no one who looks to the welfare of America wishes that they could be. If the North were to close the conquest, having secured the above named provinces, many would probably rejoice that its disruption from the South had enabled it to free so large a section of the great American continent as would then form the United States from the trammels and distractions of the unhappy institution which is the professed cause of the revolution.

From The Saturday Review, 20 July. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. FOUR hundred thousand men and eighty millions sterling! A few months ago, English democrats were in the habit of holding up to the envy of their countrymen the great republic which had neither an army nor a national debt; and now one section of the Union is raising colossal forces with an estimate that every soldier will correspond to an expenditure of $1,000. In the South, also, troops are counted by myriads; and although money is there less abundant, rich and poor are eagerly contributing their persons and their produce for the maintenance of a deadly war. The inference is not that republican institutions have broken down, but that no community, however free and intelligent, can be relieved from the immutable conditions of political society. The United States were exempt from the danger and cost of a standing army, because they had no equals on their own continent to respect or to fear. Their domestic organization seemed to defy the risk of dissolution so long as it had never been tried. As soon as a cause of difference arose which interested

Whatever may be the knowledge which the populations of the Union have of the true objects of the expedition, nothing can be more creditable to their courage and patriotism than the rapidity with which the levies have grown, and the cheerfulness with which the prospect of a heavy taxation is entertained. It is perhaps as well that our home capitalists will be deterred by their fears of repudiation from subscribing largely to the loans which will shortly be contracted. Great Britain will thus neither directly nor indirectly contribute to the success or necessities of either of the belligerents. The favorable state of feeling which doubtless exists in the South towards this country has not induced our merchants to take the bonds of the new government. And the North has perhaps to thank the rabid threats with which its press has insisted upon our unjust a part of the federation more nearly than partiality for the loss of much substantial assistance to its exchequer. In the face of such national hostility as the New York papers affect to represent, it would be highly dangerous for any Englishman to invest his money in fresh American securities.

On the whole, it is not to be apprehended that there will be any grave and immediate change for the worse in the position of affairs. It is probable that the war will eventually concentrate itself in one or other of the states which are to be prizes of the conflict. There will be compaigns in Virginia for Virginia, in Missouri for Missouri, in Tennessee for Tennessee, unless their possession is made the subject of negotiations. More than this the North can hardly attempt, and less than this the South can hardly ex

the traditions of the Union, the fabric fell asunder, like many a political combination of the ancient world, and the only instrument by which it can be brought together again is the rude contrivance of military force. The armaments will involve a debt, customs duties, and direct taxes; and although the resources of the country are equal to the occasion, it is doubtful whether the forms or spirit of the Constitution will survive the change in the circumstances of the country. Cheap administration and the peace which is founded on immunity from attack are but vulgar objects of enthusiasm. A state may reach its highest pitch of greatness when it has mortgaged the earnings of many generations for the maintenance of enormous military and naval establishments.

« AnteriorContinuar »