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OUR FLAG!
[As one of the brigades of the Reserve Corps which came up to the rescue of
General Thomas at Chicamauga was marching through Athens, Alabama, a bright-eyed
girl of four summers was looking at the sturdy fellows tramping
by. When she saw the sun glancing through the stripes of red and on the
golden stars of the flag she exclaimed, clapping her hands, "Oh, pa! pa! God
made
that flag! See the stars!"
A shout deep and loud went up from that column, and many a bronzed
veteran lifted his hat as he passed the sunny-haired child, resolving, if his
good right arm availed any thing, God's flag should conquer.]
DOWN the long street the soldiers passed
In solid columns through the town ;
Their clothes were soiled with Southern dust,
Their faces with the sun were brown.
They marched the field of blood to reach,
Where the fierce cannon thundered loud, And where 'twixt hostile armies rolled
The black and blinding battle-cloud.
They bore aloft with conscious pride
The flag our fathers loved of old—That banner with the crimson stripes,
And with the shining stars of gold.
Close by the road-side stood a child
With flaxen hair and radiant eyes,
'Neath whose white lids imprisoned seemed The color of the azure skies.
And when she saw the sacred flag
For which our brave boys bear their scars,
Papa!" she
cried, and clapped her hands, " God made that flag—see, see the stars!"
The soldiers heard her little voice,
And pealing to the far-off sky
A shout prolonged and
loud went up From those bronzed veterans passing by.
Some raised aloft their dust-stained hats, And many a stern face kindly smiled,
And eyes unused to tender looks .
Turned fondly on the fair-haired child.
God's banner ! Yes. With patriot blood
To-day its hallowed folds are wet ; But by each precious drop now spilled
Its stars shall be forever set.
HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, JULY 16,
1864.
THE
FLAG AND THE ARMY.
THE good news from
General
SHERMAN, whose campaign is
one of the most daring and, thus far, triumphant upon record, and the masterly
skill and tenacity of General
GRANT, keep the mind of the
country firmly fixed upon the army and the progress of the war. The action of
Congress and the resolution of the War
Department in devising means for recruiting the
ranks and presenting an undiminished as well as undaunted front to the enemy,
merely respond to the evident
purpose of the country. The Government takes the nation at its word.
Every great Convention, every orator who speaks
for the people, every man who knows the incalculable
prize at stake, calls for the prosecution of the war, and demands that this
campaign, if possible, shall shake the rebellion to the heart.
The desperate determination, the valor of the rebels in the field, nobody
disputes. Their leaders have placed their names, their hopes, their pride, their
fortunes, and their lives upon the hazard. For three years they have struggled,
and they will struggle on until further struggle is not hopeless only, for it is
that now, but impossible.
They have scraped their section and brought every available man into the
field. They have frankly acknowledged that their defeat now is final. For two
months the great battle has been joined.
GRANT has steadily driven them to bay in Richmond. SHERMAN
has relentlessly pushed them backward to Atlanta. Their furious shocks and
onsets have been repelled. Their heaviest blows have helped them little. On land
and sea their ill-fated and cursed cause totters, and the Government of the
loyal people of the United States, which aims, as it has aimed from the
beginning of the war, only at the restoration of the absolute authority of the
people, and peace by
justice and equal rights, now calls upon those
people to supply the men that shall show at
once
to the rebels and to the
world that the power of a great, free, self-governing nation is
exhaustless and irresistible.
Now then is the time, before the formal order
is issued, for every citizen-to use every effort to send a substitute if he can
not go himself, and to replenish the army by the spontaneous act of the people.
While the rebellion wavers, a steady, strong blow will bring it down. There are
yet nearly five good months of fighting weather, and the heroes in the field ask
only that they may be supported. The terms of the new bill for recruiting, in
which the commutation is abolished, are clear, earnest, and—it seems to us—well
considered. The bill means fight, as the country does. The Copperhead papers
oppose it, of course, as they formerly opposed the
commutation,
because
they do not mean fight,
They mean compromise, surrender, and disgrace. Our
armies were never so well led, were
never so united and enthusiastic, never fought so persistently and bravely as
they do now. Let every loyal man in the land make himself a recruiting
committee, that he may have the ennobling
consciousness forever, and say to his children,
that he too did his active part, by personal
retrenchment and sacrifice and exertion, if not by actual service in the field,
to secure the permanent
victory of that flag whose inspirations and benedictions are so glowingly
portrayed in the picture which adorns our present number.
THE " ALABAMA."
THE British
pirate ship
Alabama
has been sunk by the American ship of war Kearsarge.
The action took place off Cherbourg harbor on the morning of June 19, 1864,
beginning about eleven o'clock and lasting more than an hour. The armament of
the
Alabama
is reported by various authorities to have been three heavy rifled guns, with
eight broadside 32-pounders;
that of the
Kearsarge
two eleven-inch shell-guns,
four 32-pounders, and two smaller guns. The crew of the
Kearsarge
is said by the same authorities
to have been one hundred and fifty that of the
Alabama
about the same number. The
Alabama
opened the fight by a single longrange shot at two thousand yards, the
Kearsarge
reserving her fire. The vessels sailed around each other in circles seven times,
and the fighting
was mainly done at the distance of a quarter of a mile. After the exchange of
about a hundred
and fifty rounds from the
Alabama
and a hundred from the
Kearsarge,
the pirate ship slacked fire, and seemed to be making sail for the shore,
which was
about nine miles distant. At half-past twelve she was in a sinking and disabled
state. The English yacht
Deerhound,
which had been hovering near during the action,
immediately made toward the
Alabama,
saving
about forty men, including
SEMMES
and thirteen
officers. Of the rest of her crew eight were killed, seventeen wounded, and
sixty-eight captured.
The Kearsarge
sustained very little damage, and only three of her crew were wounded. She did
not lose a man.
Thus, as was fitting, it appears that the Captain of the
Alabama was saved by a party of his British abettors, who doubtless came
out for that purpose. Others invited him to a public dinner at Southampton,
which he declined, and went to Paris to make his dismal report to the rebel
emissaries there. The English story that the yacht
Deerhound saved him at the request of the Captain of the
Kearsarge is a malignant libel upon the character of that officer. No man
who has the honor of the navy at heart will easily suppose that an American
captain would connive at the escape
from just punishment of a buccaneer whose sole business has been to prey
upon defenseless ships and burn them, and who has done more than any
other man to drive American vessels from the ocean and destroy American
commerce.
But the great fact remains that the British pirate ship, built by British hands
in a British yard, manned by British sailors, paid for by British money,
encouraged by British sympathy, and cheered by British lungs, as she sailed from
a British port, has been destroyed in the British Channel, and under the noses
of British sympathizers, by the brave Jack tars who fight under and for the
American flag. " Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark" she has gone
down to her own place. May the Rebellion, of which she was a fitting instrument,
soon follow her!
ENGLISH FRIENDS UPON THE
PRESIDENCY.
Two of the most notable and influential of our English friends have lately
expressed themselves upon the question of the Presidency. Their views are
interesting from the character of the men and from their hearty sympathy
in our cause. The first is Mr. FRANCIS W. NEWMAN,
who, in a public letter to Mr. GARRISON,
rebukes that gentleman for supporting the President for another term.
His letter is long, but
its substance is a complaint
that
Mr. LINCOLN has not taken, as President, the strongest anti-slavery
position, but has
emancipated slaves not on moral grounds but only as a
military necessity. "Horrible indeed," says Mr. NEWMAN,
" is the augury for your future, when your chief magistrate dares not
indulge the moralities of his heart through conscientious tremors at the guilt
of violating the wicked laws of conquered rebels ?"
The total and unnecessary mental confusion evinced by such a passage as that is
appalling. Mr. NEWMAN seems not to
have the least perception of the fact that the President is a magistrate
bound by oath to administer a government
according to a constitution, and that, while that
constitution confers, under certain circumstances,
the highest powers, those powers can be properly and safely exercised
only with due regard to the will of
the people of whom the magistrate is the agent. If now it were possible
for Mr. NEWMAN to comprehend the
circumstances under which
the President exercises that power, he would see that to accomplish in
any degree the
end for which Mr. NEWMAN and all good men
pray, it is necessary, vitally and inevitably necessary, to proceed as the
President does. This war is only indirectly a moral reform. If the President, on
the 14th of April, 1861, had summoned the country to arms to save the
Union by abolishing slavery, the
country would not have responded. It may be our shame that we hastened
to obey a call for union merely, which we should only partially and
unsuccessfully have answered for emancipation; but it is no less
, true. The slave influence
had so debauched the national mind, was so intrenched in party spirit, that the
rebels would have asked nothing better than an edict of universal emancipation.
The moral sentiment of the country, as well as its political consistency and
fidelity, had to be educated by the war. And whatever the moral convictions of
the President might have been, it would have been the extremest folly for him to
have assumed them to exist in the heart and wish of the people. They were not
there. He knew it. Every thoughtful man in the land knew it. The very problem
was, whether the war could be waged upon the other ground, or whether, as
the rebels and their Northern
friends fondly hoped, the
revolution was virtually
accomplished before it began.
Mr. NEWMAN, in his letter, shows so profound
an ignorance of the controlling facts of
the case in which he gives so
summary and decisive
a verdict, that we have a
right to ask him whether the very fact that he differs from Mr. GARRISON,
whose whole life is an act of moral
devotion, ought not to
suggest to him that he may possibly
be in error upon some essential point.
It is idle to say that a
statesman, in the
position of Mr. LINCOLN, is
to do all that he may think
to be abstractly right upon
any occasion,
without regard to times, or
places, or persons.
The duty of a statesman is to
do all the good he can. If Mr. NEWMAN could acquaint himself,
as he can not, as no
foreigner can, with the exact
condition of public affairs
and the public sentiment
when Mr. LINCOLN assumed office, down to the
opening of this campaign, and contemplate the measures of justice that have
characterized his administration, we are very sure that instead
of denouncing him with
Mr. FREMONT and Mr.
WENDELL PHILLIPS, as betraying human liberty,
he would rather cheer with the black soldiers
in GRANT'S army, when the President rode
by, for " the Liberator." It is a cruel injustice at home, it is a needless
injustice in England, to revile the President for steadily walking over stones
and through thorns toward the desired bourne, instead of trying to fly thither
above all obstacles, and dropping at once, impotent, baffled,
and despised.
Mr. NEWMAN condemns himself in the very
last sentence of his letter. If we Americans have a " ruinous national
insanity—prejudice against color" and we do not deny,
but deplore, that the phrase
is almost exact ; it
is but another way of saying
that that prejudice is quite universal. How, then, can a President, who retains
his common sense, affect that it does not exist ? How can he, without criminal
folly, disregard that fact in his administration, however heartily he may bewail
it and aim to overcome it ? The first duty of every citizen is doubtless to
destroy so unmanly, so mean a prejudice.
But its destruction is not accomplished by passing a law which assumes that it
does not
exist. The law may wait, it must and should wait, until it expresses the
conviction of
the people.
Meanwhile our friends every where may be very sure that the President and every
other good citizen will do what he can to remove the shame. Does Mr. NEWMAN
propose to chide the hand for waiting sixty minutes before
it marks the hour ?
Another English friend, of greater public renown than Mr. NEWMAN, writes in a
private letter : " I shall be glad to see you safe through the crisis of the
Presidential election. The feeling of your friends here is, I think, universally
in favor of LINCOLN, both because he seems to them, on the whole, to have
done his part well, and because it would be a proof of constancy on the part of
the ' fickle democracy' of America. His
recent letter explaining the principles of his conduct on the question of
slavery appeared to all of us an admirable document. No state paper equal to it
in sterling qualities has been produced on this side of the water for many a
year."
Our English friends have a very difficult duty
to perform. They must maintain our cause often in profound ignorance of
circumstances and of the details of the truth. Thus we have
lately heard of ROBERT BROWNING citing
the case of the
colored sergeant WALKER, who was
shot rather than serve without regular soldier's wages, as an instance of
unmatched heroism. We have not spared our word for justice to the colored troops
in the matter of pay. But justice should lead Mr. BROWNING to correct his
judgment when he learns that WALKER was shot for attempting a mutiny. If every
soldier is to take the righting of wrongs into his own hands, and try to
persuade others to join him, the result is clear enough. We are glad to know
that the mass of the friends of this country
abroad agree with the great multitude of Union men at home that the
President has done his part too well
to be set aside for any untried man.
WENDELL
PHILLIPS
UPON
THE
BALTIMORE
CONVENTION.
IF the articles in the
FREMONT organ, the
ratification meeting
at the
Cooper Institute,
and the letter of Mr.
WENDELL PHILLIPS
to time
Independent, are
illustrations of
the manner
in
which
the
campaign
of
the Radical
Democracy
is to
be prosecuted,
all feeling
of indignation
disappears in
incredulity and
pity. The
speeches and
the
Copperhead applause
may be
contemplated with a
smile, but it
is impossible
to read
Mr. PHILLIPS'S letter
without sadness,
not because
he favors Mr.
FREMONT,
but
because
he
asperses
those who support
Mr.
LINCOLN.
Any
expression of
opinion may be easily
enough disposed
of if you may
stigmatize it, unchallenged, as
insincere. If
we may
say that
the men who made the Cleveland platform
were hypocrites, Mr. PHILLIPS'S
position becomes
painfully absurd.
But he does
deliberately say this of
the Baltimore
Convention, and, of course,
as hypocrites are rascals,
he has the
argument, after the
start, all his own way. He calls
one of
the Baltimore
resolutions " meaningless
and hypocritical," and
speaks of
another as a
compliment insincerely offered.
Now, that a man should find a
resolution meaningless is
his undoubted right. Nothing, for
instance, can be more meaningless
to us than the
Cleveland assertion that the
rebellion has destroyed
Slavery. But
how if we should say,
in view
of some
of the prominent managers
at Cleveland and of
the loud applauders of
the Cleveland nominations,
that its wish to secure equality for
all men before the
law is
hypocritical ? Yet we should have,
we imagine,
quite as
much reason as Mr.
PHILLIPS in his
aspersion upon Baltimore.
When a
great convention
of
patriotic
men,
who
do
not
become
speculators
and
contractors
because
Mr.
PHILLIPS
calls
them
so,
declare
that
harmony
should
prevail
in the national
councils,
and that
those only are
worthy of public
confidence who cordially approve
certain principles,
they may be
mistaken ;
but why
are they any more hypocritical
than their
accuser when he
says that
he has
confidence in the anti-slavery
purpose
of
JOHN
C.
FREMONT ?
His
argument is, that
Mr.
FREMONT
should
be publicly
trusted because
he holds
certain
principles.
The
Baltimore resolution
declares
that only
those
who
hold
certain
principles
should
be
publicly
trusted.
Hypocrites!
cries
Mr.
WENDELL
PHILLIPS.
Shall
we
retort
"
hypocrite
?"
No;
for
we
confide
in
his
honesty,
and
if
he
does
not
confide
in
the
honesty
of
the
men
who
met at
Baltimore,
it
is
simply
because
he
knows
noticing
about
them,
and
is
much too
swift to
assume
the
dishonesty
of
all
who
do
not
agree
with
him.
Mr. PHILLIPS'S
letter has
been
well answered,
and at
length, in
the Independent.
Our
object is
only to
protest
against that
kind of
argument
which
consists
in
calling
your
opponents
knaves.
If he
really believes
that the
Baltimore
Convention said
what it
did not
mean, he
must be content
to
know
from
those
who
are
better
informed
that he
is utterly
mistaken. There
are men
who
oppose
Mr.
LINCOLN,
there
are
others
who
support
him
reluctantly
;
but the
Convention
was
composed of
those
who
commended
him and
his
general
administration
with
heart-felt
sincerity.
Mr. PHILLIPS
has no
right
what-ever to call
them
hypocrites. All
generous men forgive to his
honest
zeal
the unsparing,
wholesale, and
savage
invective
against
an administration
which has
done more
to
accomplish the object
to which his
life has
been nobly
devoted than
all other administrations together
from the
beginning. To his chosen
and well
filled part of
moral agitator they forgive his
caustic and
contemptuous criticism
of all expedients
by which
great moral principles are
to be reduced to
practice. But his
vast vituperation
and bitter assaults
upon the characters
and motives of men who love liberty and
their country
not less
than he,
however
they
may differ
from
him
as
to
the means
of serving them, these
are things
which make
many an admiring
friend
sad
and sorry for him, and will
they not
one day
make him profoundly sorry
for himself?
" WE
CAN'T SUBDUE THE
REBELS."
To the desponding
or exulting exclamation "Oh,
we can't subdue
the rebels !" there is but
one reply. If
it be indeed true, then the Government
is at
end ; the
Union is dissolved ; and
every State is again
an individual
political community, for the
bond which holds New
York to
Pennsylvania is exactly the
same that unites New
York and
Georgia, and
if
it
is
broken
any
where it is broken every where.
If it
be true, our national flag
has disappeared, the national
honor is
gone; and
most of the States of
the American Union are
separate powers
of smaller population than
the cities of London
or Paris. There
is no
navy, no
army, no common
force, no
collective glory.
The work of a
hundred years is undone,
and what State,
section, party, or
individual is
the gainer of
the least
real advantage
?
If we
" can't
subdue the rebels,"
the rebels
have subdued
us. In that case JEFFERSON
DAVIS will
be content,
because his pride will be
satisfied. FERNANDO
WOOD
and his
followers, (Next Page)
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