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THE PIRATE "ALABAMA."
THE picture of this
famous pirate, which will be found on the
preceding page, has been attentively
examined by Captain Hagar of the
Brilliant,
and pronounced correct. He has kindly given us the following certificate of the
fact:
I have seen
the drawing
of the
Alabama which will appear
in the next
number
of
Harper's Weekly,
and pronounce
it a correct
picture.
GEORGE HAGAR,
Capt. of
ship Brilliant.
October 18,
1862.
No ship should sail out of port without this number
of Harper's Weekly, in order
that her captain may be able to recognize the pirate.
HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1,
1862.
THE REBEL ENTERPRISE IN
KENTUCKY.
THE
smoke is clearing away from the scene of the campaign in Kentucky, and we are at
length beginning to understand the mysterious movements of
Buell and Bragg.
When
Mr. Lincoln called for a new levy of 600,000 men it was evident to the
Southern leaders that, unless they could achieve decisive successes before that
new levy was brought into the field armed and disciplined, their cause was gone.
The fiat, therefore, went forth that the defensive policy must be abandoned and
the Northern States invaded. At that time General Bragg was at Chattanooga,
General Buell within 20 miles of him, each with an army of some 35,000 men. For
some time past Buell's object had been to manoeuvre Bragg out of Chattanooga,
which then appeared to be, and will again become, the key to the situation in
that part of the country. In August last, to the astonishment of Buell, Bragg
evacuated the place, and moved rapidly northward in the direction of
Nashville.
Rapidly comprehending the movement, Buell likewise abandoned the object for
which he had so long contended, and marched northward on a parallel line to
Bragg. Being nearer to Nashville than his enemy, he arrived there first, and the
capital of Tennessee was saved. Bragg, perceiving that he was foiled, shifted
his line of march to the eastward, and entered
Kentucky, where
John Morgan and
Kirby Smith, with the armies of Eastern Tennessee, had been operating for some
little time previous.
This was the situation at the middle of September. That the object of Bragg was
to capture
Louisville and Cincinnati there can be now no doubt whatever. Buell
had to choose between moving eastwardly upon Bragg—which would have brought on a
battle, the result of which would have insured the fall of Louisville, if our
army had been beaten—and marching toward Louisville on a parallel line to his
enemy, with the advantage which he had previously enjoyed on the march to
Nashville, of being nearer the point they both wished to reach. He chose the
latter, with evident wisdom, and reached Louisville in time: Bragg's army being
nearly two day's march from the place when Buell's advance-guard entered it.
Buell's entry into Louisville was evidently the turning-point in the campaign.
Foiled in both his objects, having taken neither Nashville nor Louisville, Bragg
had now no choice but to retreat back whence he came. Buell, on the other hand,
was free to pursue him with a largely increased army, freshly equipped and
supplied. He commenced the pursuit accordingly, dividing his army in
such a way, and directing them to march by such roads as, in the opinion
of competent judges, rendered it likely that Bragg might be surrounded.
This plan failed, owing, it is said, to the disobedience of a corps commander,
who could not resist the temptation of giving battle, at Perryville, with his
single corps, to the whole rebel army. The consequence was that Bragg made good
his escape in the direction of Crab Orchard and
Richmond. Buell, at latest
dates, was following him close—about one day's journey behind; but the prospect
was that, with the aid of Morgan's flying squadron, and other guerrilla bands,
Bragg would make good his escape to and beyond the Cumberland Mountains, with
his artillery and most of his stores.
Take it all in all, it must be admitted that the rebel enterprise in Kentucky
has failed. Bragg has not succeeded in the great objects he had in view—the
capture of Nashville or Louisville. He has not achieved the decisive success
which the rebel leaders deemed it essential to achieve before our new levies
were in the field. He has not wrested from us and permanently held any single
point. He has overrun and plundered the finest region of Kentucky, but this will
have no more influence upon the result of the war than the raids of the pirate
"290."
It is a little remarkable that, while a large number of journals and politicians
at the North have been reviling Buell for not fighting Bragg, the rebel papers
are equally severe on Bragg for not fighting Buell. The probability is that both
Generals acted for the best. If Buell had fought Bragg in Southern Tennessee, or
again in Southern Kentucky, and had been defeated,
Louisville and Kentucky would inevitably have been lost. And the forces of the
two Generals were so nearly matched that no one can tell what might have been
the issue of a battle. If Bragg had been routed in Southern Tennessee nothing
could have saved Chattanooga, Rome, and Knoxville to the Confederacy.
The Richmond
Examiner is especially severe on Bragg for being "too slow," and for
allowing Buell so constantly to "outstrip him in the race." We think this may be
fairly set against the oft-repeated
complaints of our journals about Buell being "too slow." The fact is,
that both Generals marched very fast indeed, but Buell having the shorter
distance to run, won the race. And the practical result of the enterprise is,
that the rebels have been, or are being, expelled from Kentucky, where they have
left a record which will make them execrated for generations.
LEE, BEAUREGARD, AND
McCLELLAN.
No one who reads the voluminous Reports of
Scott's Campaign in Mexico can fail
to observe the frequency with which special honorable mention is made of three
young officers of the Engineers. In his first dispatch, giving an account
of the capture of Vera Cruz, General Scott, after ascribing the success
of this operation mainly to the engineer officers,
says:
"If
there be any thing in the form, position, and arrangement of the trenches and
batteries, or in the manner of
their execution, it is due to the ability, devotion, and unremitting zeal of
these officers." Prominent among those specially named are "Captain
R. E. Lee,
First Lieutenant
P. G. T. Beauregard, and Brevet Second Lieutenant
George B.
McClellan."
Lee seems to have been the special favorite
of the veteran General, and there is hardly a single dispatch in which
his name is not honorably mentioned. Perhaps this may be owing to
the fact that, as he was highest in rank, the direct execution of the
more important duties was committed to him. In the reports of subordinate
officers the names
of Beauregard and McClellan, with special commendations of their zeal and
ability, appear with about equal frequency. We have noted nearly thirty
instances of honorable mention of each of their names; and that of Lee is found
quite as frequently mentioned, mainly by Scott himself.
In reading the reports of the battles in Mexico, and remembering the positions
now occupied by the various officers, some curious coincidences are found. Thus
Magruder gives especial credit to
Sumner, and
Joseph E. Johnston is warm in his
commendation of
Reno. After the battle of Churubusco Major Loring reports to his
immediate superior, Earl Van Dorn: "The Rifles were accompanied throughout by
the distinguished young Lieutenants Beauregard, Smith, and McClellan, the two
latter in command of a portion of the Engineer corps; all, I am happy to say,
bore themselves with the greatest gallantry."
At Churubusco McClellan was under the immediate command of Lieutenant G. W.
Smith, subsequently Street Commissioner in New York, and now one of the
"Generals," the highest rank in the Confederate service, superior to
Major-General, and nearly corresponding to "Marshal" in the French army. Smith
is especially warm in his commendation of McClellan. He says: "Lieutenant
McClellan, frequently detached, and several times in command of the Engineer
Company, is entitled to the highest praises for his cool and daring gallantry on
all occasions in the actions of the 19th and 20th." And again:
"The Rifles, with Captain Lee of the Engineers, were reconnoitring the
same works, and had gone to our right considerably further from the battery than
we were." McClellan was directed to ascertain the posture of affairs, and
reported that Lee was engaged with a superior force. "I ordered Lieutenant
McClellan," continues Smith, "to report the result of his operations to
General
Twiggs. He did so, and on the recommendation of Lieutenants Stevens and
McClellan, in which I concurred, the first regiment of artillery was ordered to
support the Rifles. I have every reason to be more than satisfied with the
daring gallantry of Lieutenants G.
B. McClellan and J. G. Foster, and am much indebted to them for the
efficient manner in which they
performed their arduous duties on the 19th and 20th of August."
At Churubusco McClellan was also under the immediate command of Smith, who, in
his report to Captain Mackall (the Confederate General Mackall, we suppose, who
was killed near Corinth), says: "To Lieutenant G. B. McClellan, of the Engineer
Company, I am indebted for most important services, both as an engineer and a
company officer. His daring gallantry, always conspicuous, was never more
clearly shown than on this occasion. Operating most of the time separately, I
relied implicitly on his judgment in all matters where I was not present, and am
happy to say that the result in every case justified his decisions."
The careful reader of the whole series of dispatches respecting the campaign in
Mexico will come to the conclusion that the three men who, after the veteran
commanding General, displayed the highest military talents were the
three young officers of Engineers, Lee, Beauregard, and McClellan. Beauregard
has not, on the whole, justified his early promise in as high
a degree as the others; though it may be doubted whether the reason is
not to be found in the jealousy of the Confederate authorities rather than in
any want of capacity on his part. Lee and McClellan are now virtually at
the head of the two armies of the North and the South, and by the almost
unanimous consent of both sides
they are the most capable men to fill these posts. So far as we can now
judge, from the combined result of the whole series of operations in which they
have been pitted against each other, McClellan has shown himself the superior.
His campaign in the peninsula resulted unfavorably, it
is true, but the unanimous verdict of the country
is that this was owing to his plans being thwarted by men without any
competent military knowledge. The success of his operations in
Maryland, where
he has had uncontrolled authority,
vindicates the highest claim for military capacity which his friends have
ever advanced for him.
SCHOOL-BOOK LITERATURE.
THERE was a time—and fully within the memory
of the oldest inhabitant—when it was thought
that almost any kind of a book would answer for
school purposes, and when, consequently, the little
that there was of the pabulum of school-book
literature consisted of the
hardest crusts and the dryest
morsels imaginable. Those only who can go
back with us to our school-days, can appreciate the change for the better
which a single generation has seen. Now the very best books, instead of
the poorest, are for the school-room: the hest talent
is employed in compiling them; the best artists in illustrating them; and
the "getting up" must be of the neatest, most attractive, and most substantial
kind. The first expense—the outlay—to
the publishers is indeed enormous; but then the market for a really good
school-book—and
none but the good ones are now
likely to succeed—is, indeed, almost illimitable.
We have been led to these remarks by an examination of a series of truly
splendid "School and Family
Charts," twenty-two in number, prepared by
Messrs. Willson and Calkins, and published by the Harpers. Nothing equal
to them—whether as to
attractiveness or adaptation—is in existence in the entire range of works
for primary instruction, either in the Old World or in the New. The early
numbers continence with Reading Lessons for beginners
upon the "object" system—with
type sufficiently large to
be easily read twenty feet distant;
then succeed charts of Elementary Sounds, Phonics, Writing, Drawing,
Lines and Measures, Forms, Solids,
Colors, Quadrupeds, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, Plants, etc., etc., the
whole embracing more than six
hundred colored illustrations! And though so costly in the getting up,
and so beautiful as works of art,
the low price at which they are sold—nine
dollars for a complete set, mounted—places
them within the reach of nearly every family and every school. An
accompanying Manual of Instruction by Mr. Willson, the author of the well-known
series of "School and Family Readers,"
gives the information and the directions for their use. Every family in
which there are children to be
educated, and every school, should have a set of these Charts and a copy
of the Manual.
THE LOUNGER.
THE ABOLITIONISTS.
THERE is no word more frequently and angrily used and less understood than the
word Abolitionist.
President Lincoln
and Daniel S. Dickinson,
Governor Johnson and Governor Andrew, Thurlow
Weed and Wendell Phillips, are all called by the same name. Of course
there is but one point upon which all these men agree, and that is, a truly vigorous
prosecution of the war. But that is not abolitionism.
Emancipation as a means of
war may be justified by all of them; but that is not abolitionism. The word
Abolitionist designates a
party in the country whose position and influence
have never been correctly estimated, because its members have been too much
hated to be fairly treated. Nobody has taken the trouble to know what
they thought or what they proposed. It has
been enough that they were said to be disunionists.
What kind of disunionists, or why disunionists, have not been questions
thought to be worth the asking, especially by the politicians who now call their
late companions Abolitionists, because they
insist upon the Union at every cost; and who think and call the open
bloody disunionists of the South
"erring brethren."
But the history of these times will have to deal differently with the facts, the
influences, and the characters which are summarily classed as "Abolitionism."
For merely to call the men known as Abolitionists a handful of fanatics,
incendiaries, and agitators, explains them and their cause as much as Sydney
Smith's sneering accounts of Methodism and the Methodists, or Hume's description
of Cromwell and the Independents; but
no more. It is certainly not very complimentary to the American people to say
that a few bitter fanatics at the North called Abolitionists, and a
few other fanatics at the South called Secessionists,
plunged thirty millions of us into this tremendous
civil war. If the individual James Otis had held
his tongue would there have been no Revolution? If John Hampden had paid the
ship-money would the Stuarts
to-day be Kings of England? James Otis and John Hampden were but men who
spoke for fundamental and decisive
principles. When those ideas
were in play those men were inevitable. If fifty Abolitionists and as
many Secessionists had been hung, think many, there would have been no
trouble. But do you think that if Luther had
been hung there would have been no Reformation?
In what conceivable way was Luther strong or successful but in being the mouth
of those who believed as he did? Unless you could have hung the instinct of
popular liberty in England in 1640,
or the same instinct in America in 1770, you would
have struck but one soldier of an army in striking Hampden or Otis.
Unless you could kill Protestantism you might as well spare Luther. And unless
you can hang abolitionism you will hang Abolitionists in vain.
Correctly speaking, the Abolitionists were, in
our history, a body of persons who thought slavery
wrong; who held that the Constitution favored it; and that as the system
was sure to corrupt the whites as
well as imbrute the blacks, there was no
hope for either but in the change of the Constitution and the dissolution of the
Union of which it was the bond. But they proposed that the change
should be effected peacefully and legally, by common
consent; and to that end they endeavored to
show what they considered the ultimate danger and present wrong of the
Constitution. This was their "agitation." They opposed violence of every
kind. They were, many of them, non-resistants.
They did not vote; for to vote was to acknowledge what they thought a
wicked Constitution. They did not
approve the method, but only the purpose of John Brown; and they said to
the rest of us, "You who believe in
force have no right to blame him for helping others to do what you praise our
fathers for doing in the Revolution." They believed
that immediate emancipation was desirable,
but they aimed to achieve it solely by influencing
public opinion through that perfect freedom of discussion which the Constitution
guaranteed. Some among them—but very few—were more vehement,
and sometimes attempted to resist the law, as in Boston at the Burns
capture. But the Personal Liberty
bills, although the Abolitionists approved and advocated them, were passed by
Legislatures in which no Abolitionist sat, because no Abolitionist
could swear to support the Constitution and the laws of the United
States.
Abolitionism, justly understood, was thus a
purely moral power. It sought a moral end solely by moral means. It was fierce,
vituperative, and denunciative; but so has every party been. Its leaders
deliberately resigned all the prizes of worldly ambition, and accepted the
contumely heaped upon them by both
the great parties in the country. Republican and Democrat equally
eschewed the name or suspicion of abolitionism. And justly. For the Democrats
were in political alliance with
slavery, and the Republicans differed fundamentally from the Abolitionists in
their interpretation of the
Constitution. The latter held it to be a bond of slavery; the former of
liberty. The Abolitionists thought
the only hope of the country was in escaping from the Constitution. The
Republicans believed that the
Slavery question could be
settled peacefully for liberty without change of the Constitution.
They were right. For it was the clear perception
of the slave interest that it could be so settled—a
fact of which Mr. Lincoln's election was the earnest—that
drove that interest to arms to destroy the Constitution. Philosophically,
the difference between the
Republicans and the Abolitionists was one
of political method, not of moral conviction. But in
human affairs a difference of method is radical. The Republicans, therefore,
neither decried the Constitution
nor the Union. But they deplored the false interpretation of the one and the
prostitution of the other. They believed that the people would yet save
both. Consequently they were all of them unswerving Unionists. They did not
threaten to rebel if they were not
successful at the polls, and
they severely condemned all who assented to such threats. For they had
faith in a popular government to right even the worst wrongs. And their faith is
justified.
There is no more interesting chapter of our history
than that known as Abolitionism, which is an episode in the great movement of
liberty upon this continent.
To call it fanaticism, and consider that
a final and satisfactory explanation, is as ludicrous
as to define Washington simply as a rebel, or Luther
as a heretic.
OLD LETTERS.
To show a private letter without the authority
of the writer, except in cases of no especial importance,
or to establish and expose fraud, or some other purpose of general
advantage, is something which people
generally prefer not to do. But at a late party political meeting a letter was
read which was written by
General Scott to
Mr. Seward a year ago last March, and which was confessedly
made public without General Scott's authority.
The point of the letter was, that, in General Scott's opinion, the wisest way
for the new administration was to say to those who threatened to rebel, "Wayward
sisters, depart in peace!"
As to the letter itself, there are two things to be
said. One is that General Scott is a soldier and
not a statesman; and that his advice, under the
circumstances, was valuable solely so far as it concerned
military operations. In his estimation at
that time, if the Government should think fit not to surrender to a threat of
rebellion, but should think it worth while to try to defend its
existence, a young and able
general, with 300,000 disciplined
men, and $250,000,000, and with enormous waste
of life and property, would be essential, and, after all, would do no good.
General Scott's conviction
in March, 1861, therefore, as a soldier, was that the
Union could not be maintained by military force. Whether the General had
changed his opinion in July, 1861,
does not appear.
The second thing to be said upon the letter is
that it by no means follows that a man's views are
the same now that they were upon the eve of
Mr. Lincoln's inauguration.
Multitudes of the bravest
and best men in the army, who have relinquished all to fight for the Government
and the cause of liberty under law, who believe, with
General Corcoran, that it
is an ''accursed rebellion," undoubtedly held the views that General
Scott expresses (Next Page)
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