HARPER'S WEEKLY.

JANUARY 16, 1864.]

34

AVERILL'S RAID.

WE give on page 36 the portrait of GENERAL AVERILL, whose dash upon the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad is "one of the most hazardous, important, and successful raids since the commencement of the war." We must defer to a future time a sketch of the services of General Averill. The best account of his raid is contained in his own dispatch, the essential points of which will be found in our Number of January 9. Our sketch presents an instant in this expedition, which is thus described by a correspondent of the press: "All of the columns suffered severely from cold and hunger; but the severest suffering was attached to Averill's command. The nights were bitter. It rained, snowed, and hailed. Imagine the gathering of clouds, the twilight approaching, the wearied soldier and foot-sore horse climbing and scraping up the steep mountain roads; then the descending of the storm, the water freezing as it touched the ground, the line winding its way up one side and down another, entering passes that seemed to be the terminus of these mountainous creations, and then emerging upon open lands but to feel the fury of the storm the more severe, and he can form but a mere idea of what was the scene on this trying occasion."

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1864.

THE GOVERNOR AND THE
POLICE.

GOVERNOR SEYMOUR has removed the Metropolitan Police Commissioners upon the ground that their report of the riots of last summer is sectarian and partisan. The passage of the report upon which he bases this objection is as follows:

"These violent proceedings had a political design and direction, and received encouragement from newspapers and partisans of influence and intelligence. The Board of Police had been threatened with summary removal, which was expected to occur immediately. Members of the force desired the removal, and there were not lacking instances of insubordination — the fruit of the expected change. A large portion of the force were of the same nationality and political and religious faith of the riotous mob."

Certainly there could be no simpler or calmer statement of the facts than is here presented. Is it "partisan" to say that the riots received encouragement from newspapers and partisans of influence and intelligence? But Governor Seymour has surely not forgotten his own speech at the Academy of Music on the 4th of July, about ten days before the riots, in which, after sneering at the war and the Government, he warns the latter that mobs can play at necessity as well as a Government. Governor Seymour surely knows, what every other man in the country knows, that the riots sprang from the bitter hostility to the Government and the war, and the incessant denunciation of the law of the land which distinguished the speeches of Vallandigham, Brooks, and other men at the regular meetings of Mr. Luke Cozans's Democratic Association, Mr. Cozans, as is well known, being a particular friend of Fernando Wood. Governor Seymour surely knows, what no law-obeying citizen has forgotten, that not only did the mob and its abettors count upon his passive cooperation; but that he stood at the City Hall, the chief civil magistrate sworn to execute the laws, and told the rioters, reeking with innocent blood and raving in outrage of every law human and divine, that he had asked the Government to suspend the operation of the law, which they put forth as their excuse for arson and massacre.

These are facts of history. Is not Governor Seymour a "partisan of influence and intelligence," and is it an offense incapacitating men for public office to tell the truth of him as of all other instigators of the mob?

Or is it any less true that influential papers in the city spoke of these bloody and murderous mobs as "an uprising of the people," hoping that they would lead to some signal and fearful embarrassment of the Government in prosecuting the war? And will any honest man read the daily issues of a single paper, The World, for a fortnight before the outbreak, and not say that it gave "encouragement" to the rioters? Is it, then, "partisan" to say so? Does a man cease to be fit for Police Commissioner because he thinks that the course of such papers was destructive of the public peace?

It seems also that it is "sectarian" to say that a large part of the police force were of the same religious faith with the mob. It may be a mistake, but how is it "sectarian?" Is it perhaps liable to that charge because it implies that the mob were of one religious faith? But can any fact be more notorious than that the mob was mostly composed of Irish, and that the Irish are generally of one faith? Why else did the late Archbishop Hughes summon them to his house, and address them as their spiritual head, and beg them not to disgrace the name of Irishmen and Catholics? To mention these facts, without which their report would be curiously incomplete and unfaithful, shows, according to Governor Seymour, that the Commissioners have departed from the impartial and dispassionate position of public officers, and have lost their usefulness.

It will be plain enough to every attentive

reader of these reasons for the removal that Governor Seymour lends himself to the pitiful attempt of Mr. McKeon to excite a religious rancor in this country. Do these gentlemen not know that they are playing with edged tools? that to excite such a feeling is to annihilate those for whose support it is a bid? Much may be pardoned to the desperate political extremity of Mr. Seymour. A year ago his prospects were unclouded for the nomination and support of the "Conservative" party for the Presidency. This year even the rump of the old Whig party passes him by for McClellan, and a man would be laughed at who should name Mr. Seymour as a candidate. Mr. Seymour knows why. It is his conduct as "a partisan" during the riots, and his futile struggles to perplex the Government and the war. Much may be pardoned to his extremity. But when he tries to excite religious hate, it is an effort which shows his own consciousness of his desperate position.

THE TRUTH CONFESSED.

THE Richmond Inquirer of December 18 has a very remarkable article upon the rebel conscription, in which it states plainly the political philosophy of the leaders in the rebellion. It is exactly that of Mr. Calhoun. It is that which every honest supporter of slavery must logically hold. And when the mass of the people in the Southern States are once able to comprehend the intentions of the leaders they now so blindly follow, the retribution will be terrible and deserved.

The argument for the universal conscription, says the Inquirer, is based upon the equality of every man, from which it is inferred that every man ought to go to the field. It then asks: "Is not our war based on the principle and fact, which all history has demonstrated. as a truth—the inequality of man—for policy we say of races." In other words, the rebellion is a reaction against the Declaration of Independence. Men have not equal rights, and although we do not yet quite dare to say so, that is what we mean.

The great need of the Southern people is a leader. Some man who would show them that, under pretense of holding colored men in slavery, the real purpose of the aristocracy is that capital shall own labor of every kind; and that, if secession could be accomplished, an immediate reorganization of society upon a strictly aristocratic basis would follow. Such a leader would show the people that the scriptural argument for slavery upon which the slaveholders rely, is an argument for the enslaving of white men, for the old Hebrew slaves were not black; and that, in fact, they are fooled to their own destruction by the men for whom they fight so bravely. It was the knowledge that, if the right of free speech, guaranteed by the Constitution, were tolerated in the South, slavery would be destroyed by the common-sense of the Southern people, which made Calhoun and all his school insist upon suppressing it. Consequently, in its most important provision, the Constitution has been a dead letter in every slave State for more than thirty years.

Meanwhile as the rebel leaders are all slave-drivers, and bound by a common purpose and peril, and as the people have neither the habit of free thought nor discussion, but, being ignorant, are the easy victims of appeals to prejudice and the baser passions, it will be yet a long time before they fairly understand their condition, and see that they are fighting merely to rivet their own chains. But some day we shall hear that in some remote corner a few men have made a stand against the sweeping conscription. There will not be available force to compel their obedience. Successful disaffection will spread; and once emancipated from the iron control of the great slave-drivers, these men will see that their interest, their prosperity, their peace and progress, lie in the total overthrow of a system which makes a great slave-driver like Jefferson Davis the direct and overpowering rival of every poor artisan or laborer in the South who lives by the work of his own hands.

"OUR OWN."

MR. CHARLES MACKAY, the correspondent of the London Times, has returned to this country and to his vocation. When he left for England in the autumn it was supposed that he had been recalled on account of the ridiculous position into which his reports of affairs and opinions upon this side of the water had thrown the Times. The Chevalier Galenga, more generally known as Mariotti (a family name), who filled the post of correspondent ad interim, was a man of very much greater ability than Mr. Mackay, but of a disappointed and bitter feeling, which rendered all his comments upon our affairs sharp and cynical.

It seems that it was a mistake to suppose Mr. Mackay recalled. He has resumed the duties of his post. It is not a pleasant one, and he has our sincere commiseration. To reside in a country for the purpose of finding fault with it; to supply information about it derived from its enemies; to live in New York, and to wish the rebels at Richmond to succeed, when success in Richmond would be anarchy in New York; and to do all this in exile, must be as dreary a business as the New Year is likely to see.

Let us, then, offer a word of friendly advice to this correspondent. We advise him to turn to his letters

of last summer, in June and July—letters in which he plainly said that the loyal Union men had virtually given up the contest, and in which he announced that the riots were the beginning of the counter-revolution—and then consider whether it is worth while to suppose that the Copperheads are the true representatives of public opinion in this struggle, or that General Lee, who has not had a solitary success since Stonewall Jackson died, is the only "great captain" on this continent.

If he wishes to leave the London Times the least reputation for intelligent criticism or sagacious prophecy, let him consult other oracles than those which are inspired by the hope of attaining political power by the failure of the Government. He has hitherto made himself the mouth-piece of a faction; retailing all their venomous wishes as probabilities, and their foolish gossip as the substance of public talk. He has imbibed their frantic hate of what they call Abolitionism, and rails at the Herculean effort of a great nation to maintain its unity and civil existence, as if it were a mad ebullition of fanatic zeal. If henceforth he will try to understand that a clique of New York Copperheads are not the country, and that their hopes, and beliefs, and expectations in regard to this war are no more valuable than his own, he may succeed in writing letters which will not, indeed, be friendly or true, but may be less conspicuously and absurdly wide of the mark than those he has been in the habit of writing.

THE SANITARY FAIRS.

THE call for the great Metropolitan Fair of the Sanitary Commission is issued. New York is behind her sister cities, and ought to bring up the rear with a metropolitan magnificence. Chicago made eighty thousand dollars, Boston a hundred and forty thousand, Cincinnati is making, let us hope, two hundred thousand, and New York should continue with not less than three hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile Rochester has done nobly, Portland also: Albany is preparing, and in every town and city we hope to hear of the Sanitary Fair.

For what purpose more humane and lofty can busy the brains and the fingers of all loyal men, women, and children in the land than the continued care of the soldiers in the field? There they are—encamped by river and sea-side, on hills and in valleys, our friends, our brothers, our sons, our lovers, and as they turn their eyes and hearts and hands toward us at home, what joy so great, what cheer so encouraging, as to feel our hands outstretched and our hearts beating in response?

The Sanitary Fairs which enlist the industry, the thought, the interest of the country, hold us all closer together. It is a common cause, a common toil, and, please God! a common victory. And so long as the war lasts the work of the Commission is unending. Its means of succor for the sick and wounded—its vast supplies for hospital, and camp, and field—its agents, transports, and depots—must be constantly maintained, replenished, and renewed. It is not an institution which, when once started, goes of itself. When the kind hands of the country stop giving, and the kind hearts of the country lose the desire or thought of giving, then the great work stops, and the son and husband and father languishes in the field uncared for. As he, the soldier, can not and must not rest, but is always ready for the summons, armed and equipped, so must all the rest of us be ready at all our posts with the supports which they have a right to expect.

MONUMENT TO ROBERT FULTON.

IT is incredible that in this age and country of steam, in his own city, washed by the waters of the river on which his great experiment triumphed, in the city which that river, by means of that triumph, has so enriched, no monument has yet been built to Robert Fulton. Of a genius peculiarly American, and whose great victory was achieved within the memory of living men, the personality of Fulton is less familiar to us than that of any equally illustrious American.

It seems that there is a Fulton Monument Association which is now engaged with this subject. They are understood to have selected a site in Trinity church-yard, near Broadway, where Fulton is buried. Henry K. Brown, the sculptor, has made a design for a monument. It is a structure of Portland stone, resting on massive arches and supporting figures representing American lakes and rivers. Above these are other figures representing the four quarters of the globe, the whole crowned, at the height of forty feet, with a colossal statue of Fulton, sitting, and holding in his hand the model of a steamboat which he offers to the attention of the world. A photograph of the design may be seen at the Pacific Insurance Company's office in Trinity Building.

It is undoubtedly imposing, and what Mr. Brown does would be nobly done, but we fear lest at the height of forty feet the face of the statue should be lost. The object of such a work is not merely to commemorate the fame, but to familiarize posterity with the face and form of a benefactor, or hero, or statesman. If this can be successfully done at that height, the simplicity of the remainder of the design commends the whole. In any case, we hope to know before long that the work is to be done, and that above the clouds and smoke, and stately movement of the myriad steamers which fill the river, the traveler to the city may see, sitting enthroned, the figure of Robert Fulton from whose brain they sprang.

LITERARY.

DR. DRAPER'S "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe" (Harpers), which has just passed to a second edition in this country, and by its extensive scholarship and vigorous thought has already justly given its author so high a place among living authors, is being reprinted in England by Messrs. Bell & Daldy in two splendid

octavo volumes, with a steel portrait of the author. The work is also being translated into Italian, and will be published at Turin in April.

Charles Reade's "Hard Cash" is now issued complete by the Harpers. Mr. Dickens, who is now engaged upon his new story, declares that it is the master-piece of the author; and those who have read it as it has appeared from week to week are aware that to the usual attractions of his style this work has a peculiar value as a vivid picture of the working of the lunatic system in England; doing, in fact, for the Lunatic Asylums the service that his "Never too Late to Mend" did for the Penitentiary system. It is a tale of a great variety of interest, and of a much broader, firmer grasp than some of Mr. Reade's later works.

"Dream Children." (Sever & Francis, Cambridge.) The author of "Seven little People and their Friends," published a year ago, has written another book, which, following Charles Lamb, he calls "Dream Children," and which is one of the most perfectly printed and completed little books of the year. At first glance the book seems to address itself to children; but it is really no child's book; it is too full and complex. It has something in it for every one who has not lost his childhood; who has not so matured himself as to have left out of his appreciation the finest effects of imagination and humor. This little volume will make an audience of its own, and for that audience there are no other books of the kind. The book is made up of short stories, having a vein of romance running through them, without any thing which we are in the habit of calling sentiment. All of the stories are characterized by a peculiar humor—not a broad humor like Dickens's, but nevertheless an exquisite, delicate humor. The author, in the elaboration of his work, has shown an artist's skill and taste, with a great degree of enthusiasm, as if his working formed a part of his life. The effect of the stories upon the imagination and upon the undercurrent of moral sentiment in advanced children is of the highest and purest character.

Professor Henry Drisler, of Columbia College, has attacked Bishop Hopkins's positions upon the Bible view of slavery and routed him from every one. His brief but most comprehensive and learned criticism is issued by the Loyal Publication Society, No. 863 Broadway, and is No. 39 of their publications. The surprising misstatements, inconsistencies, and inevitable conclusions of the Bishop's letter are unsparingly exposed. The special force of Professor Drisler's pamphlet is that it meets the Bishop upon his own ground. It follows him into the Bible history and into Biblical exegesis, and shows that whatever the nature of Hebrew slavery may have been, it constitutes no more excuse for African slavery than the polygamy of the Patriarchs for the Mormon sealing of wives. So of the New Testament argument: if it proves any thing it proves that captives in war may be enslaved; it certainly does not legitimate the African slave-trade. Unquestionably there has been slavery in society before ours; and undeniably, if the fact is evidence of the divine approval, it is approved. But then crime of every kind has always abounded; and this fact is as equally conclusive of the divine approval of crime. Moreover every nation as it emerges from barbarism into a higher civilization abolishes slavery. Dahomey, Turkey, and the African tribes that Captain Speke discovered, cherish slavery. But Western Europe and Northern America discard it. Bishop Hopkins pronounces for Dahomey, barbarism, and slavery. The human heart and conscience and the religion of Christ declare for civilization and liberty. That is the end of the matter. Mr. Hopkins will defend his position to the last; but he will see by a late English work that in that he is still following the King of Dahomey. Professor Drisler, in his sober, earnest, searching, and conclusive little pamphlet, has done the good cause good service.

HUMORS OF THE DAY.

WE have no sentimental tenderness for a miscreant, native or foreign; but we think that after a man is hanged he might be let alone. Not so, however, think the colonial authorities, according to the Taranaki Herald, which says,

"The trial of the half-caste prisoner, Hori, on the two charges of having taken part in the murders at Wairau, and on the attack on Lieutenant Waller, was concluded on Monday. He was found guilty of both charges, and was sentenced to be hanged for the first offense, and imprisoned for life for the second."

"I suppose," said a gentleman—pointing to one of those huge perambulating photographic vans that go rolling about the country, and which was then stationary on the common—"that thing is the fellow's parlor, kitchen, bed-room—in short, his every thing?" "Yes, his drawing-room included," replied his witty companion.

A VERY CLEVER DISTINCTION.—A Lover is a Suer—a heiress-hunter a purse-suer.

Why is a balloonist like a man disinherited?—Because he is an heir-o'-naught.

When is an oarsman like a herring?—When he has a hard roe.

"Where shall I go?" as thebullet said to the trigger.

To what color does flogging change a boy's complexion?

—It makes him yell—O!   

"I prefer being foremost," as the hare said to the hounds.

Why should turtles be pitied?—Because theirs is a hard case.

A West Indian, who had a remarkably fiery nose, having fallen asleep in his chair, a negro-boy who was in waiting observed a mosquito hovering round his face. Quashy eyed the insect very attentively; at last he saw it alight on his master's nose, and instantly fly off again. "Yah, yah," he exclaimed, with great glee, "me berry glad to see you burn your fut."

"My lord," said the foreman of a Welsh jury, when giving in their verdict, "we find the man that stole the mare not guilty." (Next Page)