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THIRTEEN AND THIRTY-FOUR.
COURAGE, Sons of Freedom !
brightly
Still our Flag floats o'er the
brave;
Coward hearts hold honor lightly;
Hold the trust, its fame to save!
Strike for the 34! Country and
Home restore! Strike for the old 13! Unite their hearts once more! Hurrah for
the old 13!
Tiger for the 34!
Soldiers, up and at their legions
Who our Union would assail,
Brother foes or foreign minions ;
strong must perish—Right prevail!
Stand by the 34! Bear all your
fathers bore. Stand by the old 13! proudly midst
cannons' roar, Charge for the
old 13!
Salute the 34!
Patriots, ours to guard the
ramparts
Of our proud inheritance !
Equal hearts—forbearance—true
hearts,
Still our rock and sure defense!
Equal the 34! from lake to
ocean's shore; Equal the old 13! as thrilled in days of yore! One cause the old
13;
One heart the 34!
Speed the day when pride,
ambition, Party fends, intestine strife—All shall yield to the fruition Of a
new-born civil life !
Glorious the 34! glorious as
ne'er before !
Honored the old 13 ! as in the
days of yore
Glorious the old 13! Honored the
34!
God of Truth! in gloomiest hour,
When all other bulwarks fail,
Thou wilt be our Strength and
Tower, 'Gainst us none can e'er prevail:
Spare us the 34! humbly we Thee
implore;
Spare us the old 13! clasped
forever more!
God bless the old 13 !
God bless the 34!
NAZARETH, PENNSYLVANIA, June 8,
1861.
HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1861.
THE capture of the
privateer
Savannah will test Mr. Lincoln's nerve. Will he
have the courage to hang the pirate captain ?
In law the case is clear. The
privateer was a pirate craft, and every man on board of her was guilty of
piracy. It is impossible to conceive a more obviously piratical act than the
seizure of the brig Joseph, which was taken into Georgetown, South Carolina, by
part of the crew of the Savannah shortly before her capture. The law declares
that the penalty of piracy is death. Will the President suffer the law to take
its course, or will he interfere to protect the
pirates ?
People are asking each other this
question with no little anxiety. Merchants and shipowners, who have come forward
nobly in support of the Government, are trembling in apprehension lest Mr.
Lincoln should not have the nerve to carry out his policy, and crush piracy in
the bud. Foreigners will decide, from Mr. Lincoln's action in this case, whether
the President's proclamations are in earnest or mere bug-a-boos.
It is a question of nerve merely.
The rebels threaten to retaliate upon Northern men if we hang their pirates. But
they are already hanging every Northern man they can find—while we are actually
liberating the scoundrels who fire upon our pickets, on condition that they
swear allegiance to the United States. What worse can they do?
We incline to the belief that as
the United States
army advances into Virginia, the rebels will be chary of using
the halter in a public way. The more sagacious among them must begin to see that
by-and-by the fate of not a few of the secessionist leaders will be in the hands
of the United States Government. What that fate would be, if the threatened
"retaliation" were attempted, they can readily infer.
We are indebted to the Captain
of the State of Georgia, transport, for favors.
We have received TROW'S City
Directory, as full as usual; an indispensable work for every counting-house and
store. BACHMAN's Birds-eye View of the Seat of the War in the West is an
excellent sheet, and gives a very good idea of the relative positions of the
rebel and United States forces.
THEODORE WINTHROP.
THE blood of the heroes who fall
in this war for liberty and humanity consecrates to the work every man who
remains. Our brothers who have marched before us are encamped upon the field;
and we, whose turn has not yet come, are but encamped upon our hearth-stones.
Yet the red hand that strikes one camp wounds the other. The soldiers fall, but
the homes suffer. They suffer, but they do not shrink. They are the nurseries of
that patriotism in which this wild conspiracy had no faith. They cheer their
children, and send them forth with smiles in their eyes and victory in their
hearts. They have counted the cost.
" We wait beneath the furnace
blast The pangs of transformation; Not
painlessly doth God recast And mould anew the nation."
Such homes, such soldiers, make
the terrible armies; for they know what they fight for, and they fight through
death to victory. They know how fearful war is; but they know also how holy, and
wise, and imperative it may be. And whether after many years and long service
they return old men, wounded and weary, or whether they fall in the very opening
of the struggle and in the bright flush of their own youth, the same love, and
glory, and honor follow them, and their names are sweet and blessed forever.
Such a soldier fell in the action
at Great Bethel when Theodore Winthrop, an aid and military secretary of
General
Butler, sank mortally wounded. What quiet heroism, clear intelligence, steadfast
faith, generous hope, thoughtful enthusiasm, tempered by singular coolness,
skill, wide experience, and personal bravery, which would as surely have made
his name shine in this war as they had already advanced him, are lost with hint
to his country, only the friends who knew him very intimately can know. And with
them only remain the knowledge and the hallowed memory of the stainless candor,
ready humor, shrewd sympathy, heroic reticence, and utter unselfishness which,
with his various cultivation and sagacious observation in much travel, made him
so charming and beloved a companion. He had the Yankee tact which is never at
fault in practical life ; and, with a romantic courage, a deep poetic refinement
of nature which inspired him with literary ambition, and made him a lover of art
and the friend of artists.
Those who knew hint truly counted
among their friends few men so well appointed as he. But, partly from ill
health, partly from temperament, a dreamy sadness overhung his life and
dispirited his efforts. Glad of his friends' success, and conscious of the
kindred impulse, he still wistfully delayed. Of great industry and restless
endeavor; he saw success slide by, and seemed to be waiting in melancholy
patience the rising of a happier star. It has risen at last, and shines upon his
grave.
On the Sunday afternoon after the
fall of Sumter he was walking with a friend in the woods upon Staten Island,
near his home. No man could have a clearer conception of the significance of
that event. An American in the noblest sense, he felt that the time had come in
which our liberties could be maintained only in the same way that they were won.
"Tomorrow," said his friend, " we shall have a proclamation from the
President." " Then tomorrow," he answered, "I shall enlist." He did so. If he
had hesitated before there could be no hesitation now. Mother, sisters, brother,
farewell! It is God who calls in the voice of my country.
With his brother he marched among
the first soldiers from New York in the ranks of the Seventh, dragging a
howitzer. The passionate enthusiasm of that departure is best told in his own
story of it ; and of all those thousand young men who marched in that April
sunset with steady step, amidst a tumult of shouts and sobs and prayers and
blessings, to an expected immediate battle, he is the first who has met the
death which each one of them heroically awaited.
Writing from
Camp Cameron early
in May to the same friend, he says : " I wish to enroll myself at once in the
police of the nation, and for life, if the nation will take me. I do not see
that I can put myself—experience and character—to any more useful use." In this
spirit he acted, and such was his evident ability that in a month he was aid and
military secretary to General Butler, and held at his disposal a first
lieutenancy in the army. The success of his paper in the Atlantic, and his ardor
and advance in military life, indicated to his friends that his public career
was opening just as he would have it. To him the cause to which he gave himself
was that of mankind, and was worth all it might cost.
"Fellow-soldier," he writes
again, "what do you think now of the necessity of our trade ? It seems that the
world can not do without us. It is shabby that mankind will not keep the peace
and be decent. Did you suppose, in the epoch gone by, that your beloved country
was civilized? Did you fancy that vi et armis was obsolete ? Ah well !
perhaps—perhaps—we are now assisting at the dying agonies of Bellona."
Again he says : " As to the
threatened
guerrilla warfare, have no fear of it. The Virginians are not
Spaniards or Swiss. They are not united, and they have their slaves always in
the rear. Guerrilla warfare is nearly impossible in a country like this. There
are no Pyrenees or Alps to defend. Our flankers and skirmishers will take care
of all the fellows behind fences. A few burned villages, a dozen guerrillas
hung, one scouring skirmish or battle will pacify a whole State. Under the
discipline and esprit du corps of a regiment or an array the South may fight ;
but they will not have moral conviction enough to risk their separate lives
except in assassinations, and those a few sharp examples will terminate. We
heard their threats at Annapolis. We heard also the pitiful plaints of the timid
who believed the threats. No, if we are patient and well led, we
shall do our work without much massacre."
In the same letter he adds, in
the most characteristic strain: "I have fun. I get experience. I see much. It
pays. Ah yes ! But in these fair days of May I miss my Staten Island. War stirs
the pulse ; but it wounds a little all the time."
A few hours before the expedition
left Fort Monroe he wrote: "If I do not come back, give my dearest love to all."
So, also, by a sad and curious coincidence, the last words of his paper in the
unpublished number of the Atlantic—words whose significance no one more fully
apprehended than he—are " Good-by, every body!"
The expedition left Fort Monroe
and the camps at midnight on Sunday, June 9. Adjutant Schaffner of the Seventh
(volunteers) says :
" I made a reconnoissance with
Major Winthrop about 12 o'clock in the day, and can testify to his bravery and
daring. He was very much exhausted, having wanted for sleep, food, and water,
and the day had turned out very hot. We stuck our heads out of some underbrush,
and instantly
there was a perfect shower of
balls rained upon us, which compelled us to withdraw a few paces. Major Winthrop
laid himself behind a tree, saying if he could only sleep for five minutes he
would be all right. He remarked, as lie did this, that he was going to see the
inside of that intrenchment before he went back to the fortress—his manner being
that of cool, ordinary conversation. He continued self-possessed and cool
throughout the whole engagement, up to the time when he received his
death-wound, which happened by the side of Lieutenant Herringen, Company E, who
remained with him, and cared for him until life had fled. He was shot in the
side."
Another says :
"The gallantry of Major Winthrop
is the subject of universal admiration with both the Federal and the rebel
forces. The rebel riflemen in the pits before the Bethel battery state that they
several times took deliberate aim at him, as he was all the time conspicuous at
the head of the advancing Federal troops, loudly cheering them on to the
assault."
Eighty-six years ago, on the day
on which these words are written, Joseph Warren fell, " last in the trenches,"
upon Bunker Hill. He gave gladly his heart's-blood to gain the peace of liberty
for his country. Not less gladly fell Theodore Winthrop to secure that holy
peace; nor with less honor be his name remembered. Farewell, brave heart!
Farewell, manly soul! By such sharp pangs is the nation born again. In blood so
costly are her sins washed away ! T
WHAT WILL CONGRESS DO?
THE next question is, What will
Congress do? It is very clear what should be done. The amplest authority should
be given to the Administration to carry on a vigorous and overwhelming campaign.
Either that, or the Slave-conspiracy should be acknowledged.
There has been some feeble talk
of what is called compromise. Compromise with what? An incendiary is trying to
fire your house in which your family is sleeping, and you have him within range
of your rifle. He proposes compromise. If you will let him steal quietly away
with his weapons and matches, he will agree for the moment not to kindle your
house. No, no. For that reckless and cruel assassin there is but one compromise.
You will shoot him as he crouches, or hand him over to justice. In either case
his doom is sure.
For this cruel and cowardly
rebellion, which began in perjury and robbery and is continued in desperation,
there can be, and there will be, no other compromise than absolute surrender,
and then the course of justice.
A great nation is peacefully
pursuing its career. Under a Constitution of singular wisdom and adaptability to
every event, its flag is every where respected; its name is the synonym of
power; its people enjoy a general wellbeing unprecedented in history ; its
position secludes it from the contagion of other national troubles ; by the
quiet operation of its laws it is gradually eliminating the defects of its own
system; so that, in the lapse of a few years, every man should be secured in the
enjoyment of every right that God gave or society can protect ; when, suddenly,
without the pretense that any law or right has been violated, that any injury
has been done to the person or the property of the citizens, a large body of
people, led by men who, sitting in the seats of lawful authority, have conspired
its overthrow, because they have lost the personal control, appear in arms
against the Government. They steal its property, its ships, arsenals, mints,
hospitals, navy-yards, and forts; they fire upon its flag ; they murder its
loyal citizens; they send emissaries to corrupt the opinion of other nations ;
they blight the national prosperity; they impoverish the individual citizen;
they cover the name of the country with doubt and disgrace; they aim, by
overthrowing the Government, to subvert the foundations of all peaceful society;
they cruelly destroy private happiness and public peace, and intentionally
plunge the land into the bitter, bloody horrors of war, and then, when the
nation, springing from its paralysis of consternation and incredulity, rouses
itself, obedient to the tremendous impulse which thrills from its Atlantic to
its Pacific nerves, startling the whole frame into a majesty of wrath and power,
raises its hand to cleave the barbarous, wanton, wicked conspiracy asunder, the
leaders, both outside and inside its camp, begin to suggest compromise.
If any word justly stinks in the
nostrils of this nation, it is the word Compromise. Because it is a principle of
human action, founded in common sense, that we must do what we can, not what we
would, it seems to be assumed that we must do nothing at all. The principle of
doing what you can is perfectly correct ; and the thing we can do at present is
to suppress this rebellion. And that is the thing we ought to do, in simple
justice to ourselves and to posterity. For what is there to compromise? Is the
obedience of the citizens of the United States to the Government a question of
compromise ? The moment the Government treats with traitors it surrenders to
treason and subverts itself.
And with what and whom will you
compromise ? With the faction that carried the Missouri bargain under the
pretense of peace ? Do you say the bargain would have kept the peace if it had
not been broken ? But why was it broken ? Because there was no faith on the side
which had derived all the advantage from it. And it is precisely that side—which
holds, in regard to the Free States of this country, the doctrine of Philip
Second toward the Netherlands, No faith with heretics—which now begins to
whisper compromise.
The slave oligarchy which
contends for the control of this Government against the mass of the free
citizens, and which takes up arms to recapture that control when it lawfully
loses it, has always carried its point under the mask of compromise. When the
Missouri bill was passed, John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, sadly
conceded that the oligarchy had conquered. William Pinkney wrote exultingly home
in the same strain. The oligarchy politely bowed, and called victory compromise.
And they have always done it.
Compromise,
in the history of the United
States, means in the Slave States victory, and in the Free States surrender.
What has been the object of this kind of compromising? To prevent the slave
oligarchy from taking up arms to dissolve the Union. But they have done it. They
are armed now, and moving. They have spit upon the flag. They have murdered our
loyal brothers. They have been the sore spot and canker ever since we were a
nation. They have humiliated us abroad. They have disgraced us at home. They now
ask us to surrender again. For what? To buy them off from doing the very thing
they are engaged in. To allow them to hold the threat of disunion as a permanent
terror over the Government.
Is there any man in the country
who wants more of this? No. The oligarchy has always threatened rebellion; and
under the fear of that threat the nation was well-nigh demoralized. It has
always threatened, and now it is acting. Let us settle the question at once and
forever. Let its prove the scope of the threat. Let us understand whether the
Government of this nation exists by the sufferance of any faction in the
country, or whether it is able to crush treason and punish traitors.
ADAMS AND CALHOUN.
IN Josiah Quincy's "Memoir of
John Quincy Adams" there is a great deal of most interesting detail of
conversations between Calhoun and Adams which have a singular pertinence to this
epoch.
One day, during the debate upon
the Missouri bill, Mr. Calhoun remarked to Mr. Adams that he did not think the
slave question, then pending in Congress, would produce a dissolution of the
Union but if it should, the South would, from necessity, be compelled to form an
alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain. Mr. Adams asked if that
would not be returning to the old colonial state. Calhoun said, " Yes, pretty
much; but it would be forced upon them."
Mr. Adams inquired whether he
thought if, by the effect of this alliance, the population of the North should
be cut off from its natural outlet upon the ocean, it would fall back upon its
rocks, bound hand and foot, to starve; or whether it would retain its power of
locomotion to move Southward by land.
Mr. Calhoun replied that in the
latter event it would be necessary for the South to make their communities all
military.
Mr. Adams pressed the
conversation no further, but remarked, "If the dissolution of the Union should
result from the slave question, it is as obvious as any thing that can be
foreseen of futurity that it must shortly afterward be followed by a universal
emancipation of the slaves. A more remote, but perhaps not less certain
consequence would be the extirpation of the African race on this continent by
the gradually bleaching process of intermixture, where the white is already so
predominant, and by the destructive process of emancipation, which, like all
great religious and political reformations, is terrible in its means, though
happy and glorious in its end."
ANOTHER VOICE.
IN a time like this every man who
has the opportunity of speaking to the public is recreant if he does not swell
the universal and indignant chorus which demands that the costly lives of
American citizens shall not be sacrificed to the criminal blunders of imbecile
commanders. The Government is no more justified in appointing city politicians
and country lawyers to high military commands than it would be in sending
lieutenants and captains of the regular army to argue abstruse legal cases
before the courts. War is a science. It is not a question of personal bravery,
but of strategic skill. It is a science which, like every other, is to be
mastered only by devoted study; and lawyers and politicians are no more likely
to be adepts in it than chemists or tailors.
Look at the case. Here is a
formidable rebellion organized against the Government. It is in the hands of men
who have controlled that Government for many years. It establishes, first of
all, a military despotism. It silences the press. It seals every opposing mouth.
It is encamped upon a vast territory, and has stolen the most valuable military
property and advantages from the United States. It appoints to important
commands only experienced soldiers. Brigand-General Floyd may call for arms in
obscure quarters; but Beauregard and able officers direct the essential
movements in critical positions. The conspiracy works silently and secretly and
swiftly. Its sole hope of temporary success lies in the bold dash it may make;
and instead of confronting it upon the Florida Keys or the remote Gulf shore,
the Government of the United States is entrenched before its own capital,
disputing its very seat upon the Potomac with the rebels.
That Government, to insure
speedily the victory which it must finally achieve, requires only three
conditions—and it has them all at command-
First, It wants plenty of money;
Second, Plenty of men ;
Third, Plenty of skilled leaders.
It has all of them, if it
chooses. If three hundred thousand men are wanted, they are ready and anxious to
march. If more money is wanted, people will be pinched, but it shall be had. And
for leaders, there is not a second lieutenant in the army who would not have
gone out and hung himself had he commanded at
Great Bethel.
It is true that our Government
depends upon volunteers. But then volunteers are our array; the army with which
we must carry on war ; and war is still a science. If, therefore, the volunteer
officers are unacquainted with it, skilled officers must be substituted before
the men are allowed to go into action. Otherwise the army is demoralized, and
defeated before the battle begins. What man hereafter could do his best under
the unfortunate General Pierce ? But hereafter every inexperienced civilian is a
General Pierce to his soldiers. A man may be intelligent, energetic, (Next
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