This Site:
Civil War
Civil War Overview
Civil War 1861
Civil War 1862
Civil War 1863
Civil War 1864
Civil War 1865
Civil War Battles
Confederate Generals
Union Generals
Confederate History
Robert E. Lee
Civil War Medicine
Lincoln Assassination
Slavery
Site Search
Civil War Links
Civil War Art
Revolutionary War
Mexican War
Republic of Texas
Indians
Winslow Homer
Thomas Nast
Mathew Brady
Western Art
Civil War Gifts
Robert E. Lee Portrait
|
A CHART MAP OF GEORGIA.
WE publish on the preceding page
a CHART MAP OF
GEORGIA, similar to the one we published of
South Carolina in our Number of November 23.
The tint, by its depth of shade, shows the comparative percentage of
slaves to the total population in each county,
that percentage being likewise stated in figures in the centre of the tint. Thus
in Ware County only seven per cent of the total population are slaves, while in
Chatham County the percentage is 71, or nearly three-quarters. It will be
noticed that the largest slave communities are on the seashore and round the
points to be occupied by our troops. Chatham County, in which
Tybee is
situate, contains 71 per cent. of slaves ; Glynn County, where Brunswick is
situate, 86 per cent. ; Camden County, whose sea-port is Fernandina, Florida, 67
per cent. This map will be of use to the philosopher and student.
HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1861.
THE MEETING OF CONGRESS.
BEFORE these lines are read by
the public Congress will have met. The session will be the most important in our
history.
The extra session held in July
last committed the country fairly to the policy of maintaining the Union by
force. But it left all matters of detail to be determined afterward. The
Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to borrow money almost in any way he
pleased. The Secretary of War was authorized to raise any number of men from
five hundred thousand to a million. The instructions to the Navy Department were
of the most vague character. On the all-important question of Slavery, the
action of Congress was so loose that each general has acted according to his own
judgment. It will devolve upon Congress at the present session to determine all
these points, and to place the policy of the nation on a precise and clear
footing in regard to every exigency growing out of the war.
The Government has borrowed of
the banks $150,000,000, and they have the option of taking $50,000,000 more of
7-30 Treasury Notes on 1st January. It will devolve upon Congress to provide
ways and means for some $200,000,000 more. This can be done either by
authorizing an issue of United States Notes, not redeemable in coin till after a
certain period ; or by the establishment of a United States Bank, with power to
issue irredeemable paper money during the war up to a certain amount ; or by
authorizing an issue of United States six or seven per cents. to the amount
required. It will be the duty of Congress to choose among these various methods.
The experience of the past few weeks has proved that no foreign demand for our
national securities will be developed so long as the ultimate issue of the
conflict remains uncertain in the eyes of foreigners ; and that the voluntary
absorption of Treasury Notes by the public at home is too slow to meet the
requirements of the Government.
Congress will also have to fix a
limit to the army. Six hundred thousand men ought to suffice to do the work
which is to be done. Over this number of troops are already in the field, and it
only remains for Congress to organize them into an army, by abolishing State
distinctions, and distinctions of uniform, drill, etc. This force is enlisted
for three years or the war. It is to be hoped that the war will not last three
years. But if it were ended tomorrow the country would not be safe without a
force of 100,000 men in active service, and a reserve of double that number at
home. It will devolve upon Congress to enact the laws necessary for such a
reorganization of the volunteer force, so as to relieve the President of the
duty of dealing with the case in the event of the surrender of the rebels during
the recess.
Fresh enactments are required to
enable the Navy Department to perform its office usefully. More
iron-clad ships must be built, and the
instructions to the Department to provide vessels of light draft must be made
imperative. At the extra session a sum of $1,200,000 was appropriated for the
construction of several side-wheel steamers of about 500 tons each. Only one of
these has been ordered. They should all have been afloat by this time. To be
safe, we must have a navy equal to that of any Power in the world. We do not
want vessels to make war on Europe, but we do want a navy which shall in case of
necessity be able to defend our own coasts against the combined navies of
England and France.
The policy of the Government with
regard to Slavery must be authoritatively defined. Events will regulate the
great question without laws. But it is subversive of good government and order
for one general to pursue one policy at St. Louis, and another directly the
opposite at Alexandria or
Port Royal. The Confiscation Act needs amendment and
extension in this regard, for it is obvious that a slave who stays on a rebel
plantation and hoes corn for the rebel army, is as palpably used in supporting
the rebel cause as if he were employed in throwing up intrenchments or standing
sentry. Legislation is needed, too, for the case of slaves who escape from their
masters and still decline to
work for our generals. At
Beaufort,
General Sherman finds some difficulty in procuring negro labor, though seven or
eight thousand adult negroes are believed to be loose on
Hilton Head and the adjacent islands. The old
vagrant Acts will furnish a sound precedent for the laws required by the
emergency.
Two other points of importance
will naturally engage the attention of Congress. The interchange of prisoners is
one, and the collection of debts due by Southern men to Northern debtors is
another.
Mr. Lincoln has never been willing to recognize
the rebels as belligerents by exchanging prisoners with them, though he has not
objected to his generals doing so, and from the first outbreak in Missouri to
the present time prisoners have been regularly exchanged on
the Mississippi. It seems a puerile matter
—this affecting to deny that we are at war ; we presume that Congress will at
once authorize an exchange. It is also probable that an act will be passed,
empowering courts-martial in the
rebel States to take cognizance of civil suits
brought by Northern creditors against Southern debtors. As the case stands, the
bulk of the Southern traders who are indebted to the North are believed to be
willing to pay their honest debts, but are forbidden to do so by the oppressive
ordinances of the rebel bodies called Conventions and Confederate Congresses ;
while Southern rogues naturally shield themselves under such ordinances,
where—as in Alexandria —they are not directly prevented from paying what they
owe. A very brief act will settle this matter. Our Northern merchants are
entitled to Congressional protection, and they will doubtless obtain it.
MR. OSGOOD, of Boston, writes to
us to say that, though he was the correspondent of the London Critic in 1860,
and is so now, yet he did not write the paragraph in the American correspondence
of that journal referring to Mr. DU CHAILLU and Mr. NORDHOFF, which was noticed
in our last Number.
THE
LOUNGER.
"COMPLIMENTARY FLUNKYISM."
THIS expressive term had the
following origin : A few years since, upon the anniversary of the battle of
Bunker Hill, there was a celebration in Boston, and among the guests invited
with special distinction was James M. Mason, then Senator from Virginia.
James M. Mason was known to the country only in
the most offensive manner : first, as a man whose bearing in the Senate was a
perpetual insult to every body who did not think the Union was intended
exclusively as a slave-pen ; and, second, as the author of the Fugitive Slave
bill of 1850.
These were his credentials to
national favor. As to the first, the personal manners of any man are the concern
of his associates. All that can be said is, that if Sir. Mason's bearing was
agreeable to the society he frequented, then it was a very remarkable society.
But the second matter was a public concern. Granting that a Fugitive Slave bill
is constitutional, the particular bill of 1850, prepared by James M. Mason, was
exhaustively characterized by
Charles Francis Adams, in his famous speech of
the 21st January, 1861 : " So far from being constructed with any view to effect
its object, that measure has always seemed to me to have the appearance of being
made purposely offensive, in order to insure its non-execution, so that
complaints against the Free States might grow out of it."
The part of the country which
felt most aggrieved by the harsh severities and unquestionable unconstitutional
clauses of that law was New England, of which Boston is the metropolis. What Mr.
Adams further said, in his calm and cogent speech, was peculiarly applicable to
his own State of Massachusetts : "A collision with a popular prejudice, however
ill-founded, will annul the most beneficent law..... Thus it happens that the
codes of all countries abound in obsolete laws.
Such were the..... Such was, in
fact, the
Fugitive Slave law of 1850; and, for different reasons, such are
likewise the Personal Liberty laws. In a very large section of the Free States
the former is inoperative, and always will be; and the reason is, that its
harshness against innocent men runs counter to the sympathies of the people. It
is no matter how many laws you make about it, the more cruel they are the less
will you be likely to find them efficient. This is a law of human feeling, which
every man made with a heart can readily comprehend."
It was the author of such a law
that was especially invited to Boston upon the anniversary of the first great
battle of our liberties, and received such peculiar social honor that an ardent
young orator on the following Fourth of July felicitously branded the spirit
that, at this time of day and in New England, could take pains to toady such a
man, as Complimentary Flunkyism. That a Senator of the United States should be
invited, was well; that a Southern Senator should be asked, was hospitable. But
that the man who represented all that was most offensive in the institutions of
the country should be selected as an honored guest at Bunker Hill, was a wanton
insult to the conscience and the " law-abiding" tranquillity of New England. And
it was but another proof to the present traitor, that when the hour for treason
sounded he and his confederates would find ready and active supporters even at
the base of Bunker Hill.
The 19th of April undeceived him.
Commodore Wilkes opened one of his eyes ; and Colonel Dimmick,
at
Fort Warren, will open the other. And yet—and
yet
AND YET—WHAT?
AND yet there are kind people in
Boston who would gladly send Mason and Slidell boxes of wine and hampers of
game.
It comes to this Lounger upon
unquestionable authority that the men at Fort Warren who are the most guilty—not
the poor ignorant soldiers taken in arms at
Hatteras and elsewhere, but the great
instigators and plotters and chiefs of the rebellion—are constantly receiving
baskets of Champagne and other luxuries from those who are by no means disloyal,
but who seem to forget, in their sympathy for prisoners, the crimes for which
they are imprisoned.
A few weeks ago Boston was struck
to the heart by the
disaster at Ball's Bluff. Massachusetts wept her children. A
cruel, utterly causeless war, waged for the meanest and most atrocious purpose,
unredeemed by a solitary gleam of honor or dignity—a war begun in the most
shameless fraud and waged with barbarous ferocity, involving the happiness of
the country and striving to ruin the nation, had snatched these men into sudden
graves. That war was deliberately planned. It had begun at Sumter on the 12th of
April, and was continued in Baltimore a week after, upon the 19th, by the
slaughter of Massachusetts men marching to defend the capital of the country,
and the peace, unity, and prosperity of the nation. It has been maintained ever
since, until every home has its heart invested in the great cause. It is a war
as solemn and critical upon the part of the nation as the Revolution was. To
maintain our liberty we have to fight as firmly as our fathers fought to
establish it.
The first great point is to
persuade the world, and ourselves, and the rebels, that we are in earnest ; that
we mean what we say ; that we intend, at any cost of terrible and prolonged war,
to defend the honor and maintain the integrity of the nation. And yet when we
have by a just vigor made prisoners of the men who are morally responsible for
the Baltimore massacre, and for all the lost lives, broken hearts, blood and
ruin, and agony of this war, they are the recipients of such gifts from our
friends as are only sent when we wish to mark especial regard and high
consideration. Does any body suppose they believe in our sincerity? Does any
body doubt that with each bottle they drink to the success of the rebellion-a
success which can be achieved only by the blood, and bitter sorrow, and utter
ruin of the neighbors and friends of those who thus unconsciously help to betray
their own cause? While who does not see that the friends of these rebels at home
will only the more deeply despise what will inevitably seem to them, as it does
to us? "Ho, ho, mudsills," they contemptuously cry, " you have caught some of
your masters, and your craven souls can not hold you from licking their feet!
You call them traitors and rebels, and yet such is your poor, flimsy, cowed
spirit that you treat them like honored guests!"
When shall we learn that the
rebels have a perfectly sincere contempt for us, and that courtesy is as much
lost upon them as it is upon a rhinoceros?
The motives of those who shower
such attentions upon imprisoned traitors—and with us that word has an entirely
new association—are not to be questioned. They do not think much about it. They
have a vague feeling that the prisoners are only political prisoners, and that
political prisoners are not criminals. They recall, perhaps, other days when
they personally knew them and enjoyed social intercourse with them. But reflect
a moment!
Many of the men who have been
forced to arms to resist the machinations and foul plots of these traitors
against the peace and welfare of the country are captured also and by the party
of the traitors. How are they treated? Colonel Corcoran is in a felon's cell.
Dr. Harris, who was taken at
Bull Run, has told us his story of imprisonment
at Richmond. Do you think Colonel Corcoran receives wine and game and other such
assurances of sympathy ? If he did, would not the fact be trumpeted aloud as
proof of the essential weakness of the rebel cause ? If Mr. Wade, or Mr. Sumner,
or Marshal Murray, or Mr. Adams, or General Fremont were prisoners in rebel
hands, do you think they would not be treated like the prisoners of a party
which is in earnest, and is seen to be so in the conduct of every man, woman,
and child? The offense for which the chief prisoners are held at Fort Warren is
high treason ; levying war against the United States, adhering to their enemies,
giving them aid and comfort. Is treason nothing? Is the war a joke ?
But it is said that we have no
personal animosity against the rebels. True. We have not. We have no more
animosity against them—making due allowance for human nature—then we had against
Hicks the pirate, or any criminal who atones for the injured majesty of law. But
no honorable American can feel very friendly toward men who, for the basest
purpose, have compassed the death of noble men, and have dealt the present blow
at the nation. Not revenge, but justice, requires that they should feel that we
are not friends of the enemies of our country. It is not magnanimity, it is
pusillanimity, which condemns treason and coddles traitors. Let these men be
treated with perfect humanity. Let them have air, and light, and proper space,
and cleanliness, and warmth, and good and sufficient food and clothing, and
books, and innocent correspondence with their friends. Is that inhuman? But to
treat them as we should wish to treat our own most honored and most loyal men,
is that not to confound all distinctions of justice, and utterly to stultify
ourselves as honorable men and patriots?
Oh, but the rebels will
retaliate? Retaliate what ? Will they secure air, light, warmth, good food,
clothes, books, and correspondence, to our friends in their hands ? So much the
better. If
they will not, they are not our
models. Their inhumanity must not make us inhuman. Though we fight Indians, we
must not scalp our prisoners. If they starve Corcoran and Lee, we must still
feed Slidell and Mason. Even if they roast them at a slow fire, we must only
hold their emissaries fast prisoners. Then if those emissaries are found guilty
of high treason, let the same humanity see that the cord is strong.
The sternest justice is
compatible with the utmost humanity. Whatever their ultimate fate may be these
men at Fort Warren are not meanwhile to feel—are they ?—that their imprisonment
is merely a temporary personal inconvenience, soon to be forgotten in Boston
bumpers. Baker, Lyon, Greble, Ward, Winthrop, Ellsworth, do these names mark
temporary personal inconveniences? No : they attest the solemnity and
earnestness of the war. But if the kind people in Boston who send game and wine
to the state prisoners are doing right, then this war is a frightful sham, a
crime upon our part, the more flagrant because frivolous and futile.
YANCEY RIGHT FOR ONCE.
IN his speech to the Fishmongers
in London—a guild which invites all kinds of lions to roar at its feasts, and
which, in its cups, would cheer Mr. Wendell Phillips quite as loudly as it did
Mr. Yancey—the latter gentleman made one very true remark :
"There can be no basis for
negotiations, or for peace proposals or consultations, so long as the
Confederates are deemed to be and are treated as rebels."
Exactly so. It suits the whole
case. If they were not rebels, we either should not be at war with them, or,
being at war, it would inevitably terminate by "negotiations" of some kind. But
as this war is simply an armed insurrection which the National Government is
suppressing, the idea of the Government's negotiating with rebels as to the
terms upon which they will consent to obey the laws, or treating with them for
peace upon any conditions whatever except absolute surrender and obedience, or
consulting with them whether or not it is worth while to prevent the National
destruction, is an idea which Mr. Yancey justly declares to be out of the
question. The whole case is very simple. Either the Government can maintain
itself or it can not. If it can, it maintains itself as it is. If it does not so
maintain itself, it is overthrown. To offer any other terms to the rebels than
simple obedience to the laws they are defying is to own an entire defeat. If in
the Astor Place riot the magistrates had consented to forbid the military to
fire upon condition that the mob would tear down only one side of the
Opera-house, and cut off only the little finger of Macready's left hand, the
authority of the law would have been as utterly overthrown as if the whole city
had been sacked.
This is only an insurrection,
however formidable. A rebellion is only a riot upon a large scale. If the
Macready mob could have succeeded, it would have governed the city. If the Davis
rebellion succeeds, it will govern the country.
"DEMONSTRATIONS."
WHATEVER may be the truth about
the removal of
General Fremont—and we confess that nothing has
yet appeared that necessarily invalidates his honesty or ability—yet it is very
clear that this is not the time for public " demonstrations" in his honor, of
the kind which the Germans in New York lately contemplated.
His friends believe his case to
be clear enough. If so, it will not fail so to appear upon the official
investigation. But until it does appear, and while so many are unconvinced, and
while a cloud of obscurity certainly rests upon parts of the Missouri campaign,
it is premature, and therefore imperious to him, to treat the case as closed and
the verdict rendered. Should that verdict be unfavorable yet evidently unjust,
his friends who would have the evidence in common with the country, could not
help expressing their continued regard for him and faith in him by public
expressions. Should the verdict be favorable, they would naturally congratulate
themselves and him. Meanwhile it is not fair to him that any prejudice should be
excited against him, as it inevitably must be by "demonstrations."
There is no man who can more
unhesitatingly trust the future than Fremont. The public mind is now disposed to
be very just to every man. If there has been any conspiracy against him, it will
somehow appear. That many of the men around him were of bad reputation may be
conceded. But their executive ability must also be granted. And then the
question is whether Fremont did not employ, as all great leaders have done, the
most capable men, relying upon his own power to use their skill and withstand
their knavish tendencies?
It is wrong to foment a
factitious public opinion. Those of us who believe that General Fremont is an
honest, energetic, able man, wish that the truth may appear without parade. It
will so appear in a proper Court of Inquiry. And it will be only clouded and
confused by every thing that previously prejudices the public mind.
LOOKING ROUND.
AFTER Bull Run, how many were
ready to give up all for lost ! After Beaufort, how many thought the war
virtually over ! We can not too constantly remember that this war can not be
settled by any single stroke. Even a decisive defeat of our army upon the
Potomac would not break the heart of the national resolution. It would defer the
day of the restoration of peace by the suppression of the rebellion ; but that
is all. The rebel army might at some point press into Maryland ; some faint
hearts among us would give up the ghost ; and some foreign power might declare
that the rebellion held its own and had justified its action.
But such results could only
combine us more closely and strengthen us more surely. The supply (Next
Page)
|