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WE publish on the
preceding
page a picture - from photographs taken at the time--of
Mr. Lincoln raising the
stars and stripes
opposite
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on the morning of Washington's
birthday. Just in front of the main entrance to the State House, and but a few
feet from the sacred hall of liberty, a large platform had been erected for the
President-elect to stand upon before the people
while he raised the starry banner of the republic. The elevation, nearly six
feet, enabled a vast multitude to observe every thing enacted thereon. The front
and sides of the stage were wrapped around with an American flag, while lesser
flags floated from the stanchions.
Before the flag was raised prayer
was offered, and Mr. S. Benton, on behalf of the city of Philadelphia, addressed
Mr. Lincoln in words of welcome. The President replied as follows:
"FELLOW-CITIZENS,—I am invited
and called before you to participate in raising above
Independence Hall the flag of our country, with an additional star
upon it. [Cheers.] I propose now, in advance of performing this very pleasant
and complimentary duty, to say a few words. I propose to say that when that flag
was originally raised here it had but thirteen stars. I wish to call your
attention to the fact that, under the blessing of God, each additional star
added to that flag has given additional prosperity and happiness to this
country, until it has advanced to its present condition; and its welfare in the
future, as well as in the past, is in your hands. [Cheers.] Cultivating the
spirit that animated our fathers, who gave renown and celebrity to this Hall,
cherishing that fraternal feeling which has so long characterized us as a
nation, excluding passion, ill-temper, and precipitate action on all occasions,
I think we may promise ourselves that not only the new star placed upon that
flag shall be permitted to remain there to our permanent prosperity for years to
come, but additional ones shall from time to time be placed there, until we
shall number, as was anticipated by the great historian, five hundred millions
of happy and prosperous people. [Great applause.] With these few remarks, I
proceed to the very agreeable duty assigned me."
We copy from the Philadelphia
Press the following account of the actual raising of the flag:
"The excitement was of a fearful
character when the
President-elect seized the rope to hoist the flag
of the country to the crest of the staff over the State House. The souls of all
seemed starting from their eyes, and every throat was wide. The shouts of the
people were like the roar of waves which do not cease to break. For full three
minutes the cheers continued. The expression of the President-elect was that of
silent solemnity. His long arms were extended. Each hand alternately pulled at
the halyards, and a bundle of bunting, tri-colored, which had never been kissed
by the wind before, slowly rose into the sky. If the shouting had been fearful
and tumultuous before, it became absolutely maniacal now. From the smallest
urchin to the tall form which rivaled the President's in compass of chest and
length of limb, there rose a wild cry. It reminded us of some of the storied
shouts which rang among the Scottish hills in the days of clans and clansmen.
Suddenly, when the broad bunting had reached the summit of the mast it unrolled
at once, and blazed in the sunlight. At the same moment the band struck up the
Star Spangled Banner, and a cannon ranged in the square sent up peal after peal.
Mr. Lincoln was then escorted to his hotel, and in a short time the crowd had
melted away, many going back to their yet untasted breakfast, and the rest
moving off as business or pleasure prompted."
HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1861.
RECONSTRUCTION.
AT last the practical statesmen
of the country seem to see the way clear to a settlement of the pending
political trouble, which has endangered the existence of our Confederacy. It
seems pretty certain now that, by conceding certain points not inconsistent with
the statement of principles on which
President Lincoln claimed the suffrages of his
fellow-citizens in November last, the Border Slave States can be retained in the
Union. Whatever obstacles of detail may intervene, experienced observers are
satisfied that a compromise will shortly be made which may conserve the
allegiance of Virginia, North Carolina, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Arkansas to the Union, and which, so far as these States are
concerned, will enable the new Administration to enter upon its career with a
fair measure of tolerant support. If, as is expected, such men as JOHN A.
GILMER, of North Carolina,
ANDREW JOHNSON or EMERSON ETHERIDGE, of
Tennessee, and
Mr. Holt, of Kentucky, are invited to occupy
seats in the new
Cabinet, that support would naturally become
active and energetic.
The prospect is, of course,
bitter and nauseous to the old political leaders : it is natural they should
repine at the revolution which is sweeping them from the political arena. For a
large segment of a century Senators
Mason and Hunter, of Virginia, for instance,
have been the most powerful personages in American politics. The one, at the
head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, has really regulated our
foreign relations for more than ten years. No foreign minister could be
appointed, no embassy sent forth, no treaty ratified, no line of foreign policy
determined, save with his consent. Congress, the President, the Secretary of
State, have all been his servants. The power which in foreign countries is
divided between the Executive, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the
legislative body has all been wielded by him. Can it be- a matter of surprise
that he should cling to it, and should welcome a general catastrophe to hide his
own overthrow ? The other Virginia Senator has been for nearly sixteen years
Chairman of the Senate Committee
on Ways and Means. According to Parliamentary usage, he is the leader of the
Senate. He has been, as the custom is, dictator in his Committee, which is
dictator in the Senate, on all money bills. No tariff, or loan, or appropriation
bill has ever passed against his opinion. In all matters involving the
collection or the expenditure of money, or the regulation of the national
finances and currency, his will has been supreme. The President and the
Secretary of the
Treasury have been his servants. Does any one who knows any
thing of human nature suppose that such power can be relinquished without
bitterness of heart,. and even frantic struggles ?
Happily for the country, the
interest of Virginia is not exclusively the interest of these two Senators. She
has noble sons—Clemens, and Summers, and Millson, and Rives, and scores of
others—who will maintain the honor of the Old Dominion, even if her present
Senators should be stripped of their power. So with Kentucky. If certain of her
sons declare the case hopeless, the sagacious Guthrie, noble old Crittenden, and
the majority of her Legislature, ste' into the gap, and stand by the country and
the Union. So with Tennessee. While some of her representatives in Congress seem
to court universal chaos and destruction,
Andrew Johnson and Emerson Etheridge stand like
the brave old Romans at the Sublician Bridge, and their people triumphantly
sustain them. So with North Carolina. There are disunionists there too ; but the
real chief of the North Carolina delegation, and one of the most practical of
the Southern leaders in Congress, John A. Gilmer, is square and uncompromisingly
for the Union.
These brave men are entitled to
such concessions from the now dominant North as they may deem requisite to
enable them to fight successfully against disunion at home. This is not a crisis
to stand upon niceties of doctrine, or exact shades of platforms. Practical
politicians know that the policy of governments must not disdain to respect the
temporary and erroneous passions and prejudices of the masses. Granted—if you
will, for the sake of argument —that the Southern rebellion against the election
of a sectional President is treason, and liable to punishment—is it wise, is it
prudent, is it possible to punish it? Is it not wiser and better to deal with it
as a fact, and so handle it . that it may yield by-and-by to its own inherent
weakness and the vice of its origin ? If rulers had always despised outbursts of
popular passion and prejudice, there would have been no government on earth at
the present time. The oldest and best of the free governments in the world, that
of Great Britain, has repeatedly yielded to popular pressure, and her best
states-men have repeatedly sacrificed their own convictions to temporary
exigencies, wisely deeming that popular errors contain within themselves the
elements of their own correction, while civil war nursed no germs but hate,
strife, Mood, rapine, and ruin. Nor need we go abroad for examples of the spirit
of concession to error, and compromise with prejudice. The formation of the
Confederacy was a wonderful instance of compromise. Our first President, General
Washington, frequently abandoned his own designs to adopt the views of others
which he deemed less sound—for the sake of peace. For the sake of peace,
Jefferson, as we learn from his writings, departed from his peculiar principles
on numberless occasions. So did Madison, Monroe, and Adams. Jackson, who is so
often quoted as an example by the opponents of compromise, did directly
compromise in the most open way to avoid a civil war with the little State of
South Carolina—when the other
Southern States were ready to crush her out at a
moment's notice. In a word, our Government, like all other Governments, like
every collective body, like every family, rests upon the corner-stone of
COMPROMISE — the yielding by each component part of something for the general
good. It is not possible that in the present day of enlightenment, civilization,
progress, and commerce these obvious truths should be ignored.
But, it will be said, what of the
Gulf States ? Without some security for their return to the Union,
reconstruction is incomplete, and the North, if they stay out, will have
compromised in vain.
We believe that the work of
reconstruction is proceeding in the Gulf States. The
Montgomery Convention has
elected a very moderate man for President, and the most emphatic enemy of
disunion for Vice-President. It has adopted the Constitution of the United
States, and has altered none of the laws, and displaced none of the officials
appointed by the General Government.
Mr. Davis has bestirred himself actively and
successfully to prevent such a collision as would impede reconstruction. His
cabinet consists of Union men. The only South Carolinian, who had the courage to
avow himself a friend of the Union, is also the only South Carolinian invited to
a seat in the administration. You find nowhere in the proceedings at Montgomery
any indorsement of the extreme per se disunionists. More than this, more than
one half the ties existing between the Gulf States and the Union remain
unsevered. The United States mail is carried
throughout-the seceding States. "
Foreigners" in Alabama prepay letters to other " foreigners" in Georgia with
United States postage stamps. Postmaster Huger, at
Charleston, sends regularly to Washington for
stamps and blanks, and renders his accounts as usual. The United States patent
laws and copyright laws still obtain. Youths from Georgia, Mississippi, and
Alabama are still in their classes at West Point and
Annapolis. Not five per
cent. of the Southern officers in the United States army and navy have resigned
their commissions. There has been a formal change in the revenue service. The
United States collectors call themselves collectors for their several States.
But they collect duties under the United States tariff, keep accounts of the
receipts, and their States will account for the money by-and-by. South Carolina,
on the eve of certain secession, still sent her
census returns faithfully to
Washington. Surely this is a very mild kind of separation.
It would undoubtedly be a very
mischievous undertaking to keep half a dozen States in the Union against the
deliberate wishes of their people. Whatever popular feeling—roused to frenzy by
the seizure of forts, arsenals, revenue-cutters, and mints—might prompt on the
spur of the moment, there can be no question but the enterprise of holding the
Union together by force would ultimately prove futile. It would be in violation
of the principle of our institutions. But it is impossible to survey the
proceedings of the Gulf States in their Convention without coming to the
conclusion that there is a large party in those States in favor of the
maintenance of the Union, and that a fair and generous tender of equal rights,
and a kindly attempt to disabuse their people of the prejudices engendered by
politicians would give that party the control of all the Gulf States, even
including South Carolina. Time will certify this. As the leaders of the Southern
Confederacy come to grapple with the practical difficulties of their position,
they will find it much harder than they supposed to tear asunder a confederacy
so closely knit together as ours. The pas-sage of secession ordinances, amidst
popular clamor, bell-ringing, and the firing of salutes, the muster of brave
young men for the attack of forts, and the discussion of new flags and new
national emblems, are all very easy and very pleasant work. But when it comes to
the organization of a new postal system at a dead loss of some two millions a
year, of a new revenue system on some experimental basis, of a new scheme of
taxation which takes money out of the pockets of poor and rich, of new copyright
and patent systems, of new naval and military schools, and of a new set of
treaties with the world at large, the task will not prove so agreeable.
Especially difficult will the negotiation of foreign treaties be found. Senator
Mason, wielding the whole power of the United States, has been accustomed, any
time these ten years, to bully the world at large. But the Foreign Minister of a
Southern Confederacy would not find the task so simple. Dispatches in gobemouche
newspapers have predicted a speedy recognition of a Southern Confederacy by the
European Powers. But it is not likely that Great Britain and France would
acknowledge any such Confederacy till long after the United States had set the
example. Englishmen and Frenchmen are universally what we call Garrisonian
abolitionists. They admit negroes to their table, and permit their daughters to
marry them. One of the prize scholars at the College St. Louis, at Paris, the
other day, was a mulatto, who was specially complimented by the Emperor.
Alexandre Dumas himself is of negro extraction. As for England, more than one
British Judge, wearing the ermine and holding the Queen's commission, is fully
half negro : negroes are admitted to society in London ; only the other day a
high-bred girl of wealthy British family married a coal-black African, without
the least objection from her friends. It has been suggested that the cotton
question would rule the policy of Great Britain and France. This is a fallacy.
In Europe trade does not rule as it does here. Traders are a part, but not the
leading part of society. Both England and France went to war in 1854 in spite of
the earnest protest of the traders. But even the commercial community of Great
Britain could not be relied upon by a Southern Confederacy. The Economist, the
leading organ of the British commercial class, emphatically declared, the other
day, that no part of England would be found more hostile to a Southern
Confederacy than Manchester, Leeds, and Paisley. The only effect of a cotton
panic, it said, would be to stimulate British spinners to find new sources of
supply.
If we of the North give our
Southern friends time enough to encounter these difficulties fairIy they will
find that, after all, we are their best friends, and that they can gain nothing
by throwing us off. It is well that they should try their experiment. If they
can do better with-out us than with us, God forbid that we should keep them ! If
the Union is really injurious to them, Heaven forbid that we should insist on
preserving it ! But we think that, if they have time to consider the matter
coolly, they will discover that it is best for them as for us. When they do,
reconstruction will become a fact.
MAKING WATER RUN UP HILL.
THE other morning, quietly
jogging along in a country stage, the Lounger heard an expression which was very
amusing, and upon which, in the manner of Dr. Franklin and his whistle, lie
immediately fell to moralizing. It was in a retired and romantic region among
the hills, and an aqueduct crossed the road, over the head of the passenger,
upon its way from a spring in the hill-side to some factory below. Viator, who
sat opposite the Lounger, began to smile, and presently to laugh in a low voice,
as he looked up the woody hill
"Now," said he, "Joe was a good
fellow—a mighty good fellow ; yes, and a smart. But there was one thing that was
always a leetle ahead of him, and that was to make water run up hill."
Then he laughed quietly to
himself again, and his face beamed pleasantly like she west when the sun sets
calmly. Victor Number Two said, " Humph!" as a mere mattes- of courtesy
apparently, not at all as if Joe had undertaken any very difficult task. But the
Lounger, as is the habit of loungers, began instantly to think of all the Joes
he knew who had always found making water run up hill a leetle ahead of them.
There, for instance, is Joe A,
for fifteen years he has been pursuing Serena W, with his heart in his hand, and
throwing it at her continually. In vain, it doesn't hit. In vain she smiles and
begs him to save himself and spare the pains. Joe will fling his heart. Serena
is perfectly willing to pick it up as a brother's gift to a sister ; but the
word brother makes Joe frantic. In vain Serena shows him and tells him that she
has no heart to throw him in return—that she gave it away long ago to a youth
who died, and, carrying with him all his most precious possessions, it was
buried with him. Joe will not listen ; he will not believe ; and to his last day
he will wonder why on earth he could not make water run up hill.
Then there is Joe B, the poet. He
believes in his poetry as Parson Adams believed in his sermons. He reads his
verses to kind friends, and, as they toast their feet by his fire and smoke his
cigars, they say to him, " By Jove, what publisher are you going to let bring
them out ?" Could they grudge a kind word in repayment of such comfortable
quarters ? In vain Joe sends an ode privately to the newspapers. They will not
publish. In vain he incloses sonnets to the magazines. They are respectfully
declined. In vain he besieges the publishers in their counting-rooms. They bluff
him off and bow him out. In vain more judicious friends suggest that his verses
are not remarkable. Joe only waxes indignant—reminds them of the traditional
neglect of poets, and declares that he will bide his time. But he does not bide
it. He frets in a burning fever to take the public captive. He pays for the
insertion of some of his best lines in a popular journal. - The Public agrees
with Joe's judicious friends, and that capital, good fellow does not see that he
is trying to make water run up hill.
And there is Joe C. He is rich
and well, and an American citizen. He groans and sighs over his country. " Where
are we going to? What is to become of me ?" he asks and asks twenty times a day.
He curses the politicians, the parties, the people. It all comes, he is sure, of
our foul and corrupt partisans, the total want of principle in our public men,
the grog-shop statesmanship of the country. But he stays at home, and sobs and
blubbers and whines. He would not go to primary meetings. He would have nothing
to do with filthy politicians. He would be afraid of his morals as well as his
pockets if he ventured into their society. Yet every thing depends upon him and
such as he. The government is nothing but the people ; and whoever shirks his
political duty removes the strength and support of one stone from the edifice,
and brings it just so much nearer its ruinous fall. Joe knows that he can not
have a hat without paying the price of a hat ; but he apparently seriously
believes that he can have the best government in the world without paying any
price of personal exertion and inconvenience whatever. Joe C. is the worst of
all possible cases of men who are trying to make water run up hill. He is a
clever man and a respectable man; but if the people of this country interpreted
their duty as he does his, the success of our system would be always as much, as
getting water to run up hill was a leetle ahead of the original Joe.
MOTLEY'S HISTORY.
THE history of the great epoch of
modern times is properly written by a son of the country which is the fairest
flower and illustration of the spirit which was victorious at that epoch. The
close of the seventeenth century is the most fascinating, as well as momentous,
of all the periods since the Christian era ; for it was the hour of the final
de-bate between the great systems of despotism and liberty; between freedom of
thought and speech and the annihilation of the very fundamental conditions of
human progress; between the Papacy and all its consequences and the Reformation
with all its results.
Our own national existence, and
the circumstances and spirit of the settlement of this country, are so directly
referable to the movement of that time, that the champions of religious liberty
then should naturally be our household heroes now. The Netherlands were the
battle-field of Christian civilization and political progress ; and the great
captains in that battle, whether they fought with sword or pen, or, as was most
generally the case, with both, were, upon the side of religious liberty, men
whose fame makes the most splendid era of their countries.
It was Elizabeth's England—the
greatest monarch and the most illustrious subjects that that country has ever
seen—which stands in history as the final succor of the cause, which is our
cause
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