Various - Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863

the people , or a portion of them, lacking organization and leadership, and consequently obliged to submit to the tyranny that has laid its iron hand upon them. I do not believe, and never have believed, in the asserted unanimity of the Southern people. Recalling my eight years' residence among, and acquaintance with, the people of the South, of two of the cotton States principally, I cannot think that they have, almost to a man, lost their respect and love for the national banner and authority, and, rather than submit to it again, would prefer to be ' English Colonists ,' ' French vassals ,' or ' Russian serfs !' No; their leaders first grossly cajole and deceive them, and then basely slander them. That there is an apparent oneness, I admit; but I think the time is not far off when, if the Federal Government but does its duty, and uses its authority and strength wisely, crippling the rebel faction in every possible way, thousands of liberated arms will spring forth to seize the sword in its defence, and as many liberated voices swell the All hail! that will burst out for its welcome. For, so long tutored to the repression of any independent ideas, any sentiments that do not tally with the doctrines to full belief in which these leaders have aimed to educate the men of the last generation, viz., the divine origin and purpose of slavery, and the other mischievous and absurd dogma of State sovereignty, which, but for slavery and its imperative demands, would never have seen the light, but have perished stillborn – they have no idea of the freedom of opinion and expression permitted among us, and their minds and consciences have become nerveless and supine to an astonishing degree; or, if thinking and feeling, as very many do, they suffer in silence, not daring to resist the oppressive faction that has ruled them so long. Moral force and courage is not the fruit of subserviency to the principles and ideas that have gradually filled the Southern mind. No wonder that the Union sentiment that showed itself so plainly at the outbreak of the rebellion became, ere long, like one of those streams that, starting impetuously from its mountain source, flows on awhile clearly and rapidly, and then begins to wander and slacken its pace, till finally it is lost in the dreariness and desolation of some marshy wilderness, and so never reaches its destination, the open sea. There is no people in the world so abused and defrauded as the bulk of the Southern whites. If you pity the oppressed of another race, then pity still more those of your own blood who are suffering a worse slavery, and who yet do not know it, but hug fondly the chains of their servitude. Then, too, consider the thousands of Northern men and women scattered all over the South, and say if you think they are linked, heart and hand, with the destroyers of the Government.

But with all this as an offset, still there is an undeniably strong and unscrupulous faction there, composed of the leading minds of the South, acute, imperious, sophistical, used to political and social rule, and backed by a small but cunning minority here at the North, so vile and contemptible that, in comparison with its adherents, they, these slave oligarchs, are 'Hyperion to a satyr.' These, with the thousands both North and South, misled and befooled by them, form the formidable opposition with which the Government is even now closing in a life-or-death encounter. These represent one of the two grand ideas at last met in a decisive struggle on this North American Continent, after the numberless petty skirmishes, reconnoissances, and lesser conflicts which have stained the battle fields of the world with the best blood of humanity during so many thousand years. No child's play now – no diplomatic dissembling – no sword thrusts intended to be parried, no machiavelian hits nor disguises. The fight is close, desperate, deadly; it is yard arm to yard arm; it is heart seeking for naked heart, flashing eye to eye, visor down, and hot breath mingling with hot breath, as the foes close in the last grapple. The other idea is embodied in the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and is represented by the Federal authority. The South, then, is taken to mean the one, and the North, its opposite. On one side barbarism, slavery, injustice, ignorance, despotism, the woes and maledictions of oppressed races, the carnival of fiends; on the other, civilization, freedom, justice, education, republicanism, the gladness and gratitude of redeemed humanity, the jubilee of joy among angels. On the side of disunion, endless bickerings, intestine wars, standing armies, crushing debts, languishing commerce, all improvement at a stand still, tyranny settling darkly down over the liberties of the people and of individuals, and national influence gone forever. On the side of Union, honorable peace, legitimate expansion, social order and improvement, increasing commerce, the education and elevation of the masses, the path of success open to all, the freedom and rights of all, even the least and poorest secured, and the nation occupying a front rank among nations, her flag loved no less than feared, her government the model one of the world, and the great experiment of self-government safe beyond the peradventure of failure. Who doubts the issue of such a struggle – who would cheat himself of being one with God and good men in the glory of a triumph so possible and certain?

But why is it that the hate of all rebels, North and South, is so malignantly directed toward New England especially? What has she done more than New York or Illinois? Again I reply, it is not geographical New England that is so feared and hated, but the ideas she represents. I have called these, already, the Northern idea. But if the nature of our political philosophy be closely scanned, if we exactly analyze the genius of our institutions in their proper and unbiased action, we shall be forced to acknowledge that it was the Puritan idea which predominated; that it is, in fact, the saving clause in the gospel of our national salvation. And New England was the first home of the Puritans – the focus from which have radiated the myriad beams of the light of which they were the repositories to the remotest corners of the land. Let no one be alarmed at the mention of the word Puritan . There are some people who have no other notion of a Puritan than that of a close-cropped, saturnine personage, having a nasal twang, who is forevermore indulging an insane propensity to sing psalms, quote Scripture, or burn witches. These are the people who can never see into the profound deep of a great truth, but are quite ready to laugh at its travesty or caricature. And what high or holy truth has not been caricatured? For one, I envy not the head or the heart of him who can think the name of Puritan a badge of shame or reproach, and who has no sympathy nor admiration for the stern resolution, the wondrous fortitude, the deep enthusiasm for freedom, the unwavering faith, and the high religious devotion of those men and women who first lit a torch in the wilderness, soon to become the beacon light of the world.

Nor would I be understood to mean a wholesale and indiscriminate adoration of the Puritans as a sect . The appellation, which was bestowed upon them in opprobrium, and which they certainly wore in no meek manner, but evidently gloried in as a word of highest praise and honor, I use as a convenient one to characterize the idea I would represent. These men were but the chosen instruments in the hands of Him who no doubt has ever ordered the course of affairs in the world, to open up a new epoch in its history. The time was ripe – the men had been moulded – and through them the free principles which had been culminating through the ages, which had stirred the souls, animated the imaginations, and quickened the desires of the best and noblest of the race from its birth till now, were at last to find a resistless voice, a limitless scope, an unrepressed expansion, on a new and magnificent theatre. For freedom is of no time, nor clime, nor color, nor sect, nor nationality. She is the primal gift of God to his intelligent creatures, and is the kingly dower of every human soul. She was not born with the Puritans, nor did she die with them. In no age or land, among no sect or people, has she been without her priesthood, her altar, her ritual, her heart worship. Nor is she to blame for the wrongs and atrocities committed in her name. The ideas and principles the Puritans were ordained to carry out and embody in a great political structure were of the noblest, rarest, most enduring and beneficent; the faults that marred the beauty and consistency of their own character, were the exaggerations of their virtues, and arose from the frailty and instability of the human heart, even when most governed and inspired by the highest motives. The principles remain steadfast, immovable, immortal; the defects we can but grieve over and forgive for the sake of the grandeur they only marred but could not destroy.

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