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HARPER'S WEEKLY.
FUNERAL ODE.
WHEN raging earthquakes bury
towns, Or fierce volcanoes lash their manes
Of boundless, fiery ruin round
The groaning hills and shrieking
plains, he world may fitting emblems find To speak the horror of its heart,
In cities craped, in banners
furled, And all the solemn show of art.
But when a Human Hand is turned
Into a ruthless demon-power,
And smites a nation in its Chief,
Even at his triumph's crowning
hour,
What emblems shall Man fitting
find, What types sad, grand enough to show
The horror shaking continents,
And their infinity of woe?
Alas! alas ! we wildly feel
There should be still some
outward sign, And so we furl the shining flag
And darkly cloud the glowing
shrine.
How vain ! At last the Nation
lifts
Its naked hands to Heaven, and
owns
The impotence of every type
Before the awful Throne of
Thrones :
Then silent stands and thinks of
him
The swerveless Good, the calmly
Great : In wonder would the reason pierce
Of their Beloved's mystic fate.
Was he too dear an Idol here ?
Too merciful for this dread time?
Did Heaven now will a sterner hand, With justice mailed, to guard the clime?
O God of Nations, if we sin
In questioning, forgive, for we
Are by our woe driven on to seek
The meaning of Eternity !
Forgive, and bless, and make us
feel' That Thou wilt still love, watch, save all,
Though even the best of rulers
die, Though earth should sink and planets fall !
HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1865.
THE PRESIDENT AND THE
REBEL CHIEFS.
IN his sermon upon the Sunday
morning after his return from Charleston the Rev. Mr. BEECHER said it was a
fact, which would be soon authenticated, that before the war began by the shot
at Sumter the chief conspirators took a military officer of the United States,
now living, into their secret council, and said that they knew that the South
had never been oppressed ; that it had always governed the country ; and that
the denunciation of the agitation of the
Slavery question, and of the injustice
of Northern tariffs, etc., was merely the method by which they dragged the
people of the South into their plans. For the two sections, they said, can no
longer live together, and we mean that they shall be separated.
These are the men whom
President
JOHNSON describes as leaders. These are they whose tender mercies he and the
faithful Union men of the Border and of the South have experienced. These are
the chiefs whom he has in mind when he says that treason is a crime which is
justly punishable by the laws. These are the leaders, of whom JOHN C.
BRECKINRIDGE is one, who doubtless dictated the terms of
SHERMAN'S extraordinary
convention with
JOHNSTON. They are men whom
ANDREW JOHNSON has known all his
life—their spirit, their purpose, their cruel despotism, their guilty
ambition—and he says steadily, upon every occasion, holding them full in his
eye, that he does not think the enormity of the crime should remit the penalty.
From this opinion, which he
reiterates, we gather at least one conclusion. The men hitherto known as
political leaders at the South, the chiefs of the rebellion that has wet the
land with innocent blood, will not be allowed to tamper with the pacification of
the country. The men who, upon the plea of the supreme sovereignty of States,
have arrayed the people of the South against those of the North, now that they
are defeated in the field, will not be suffered to continue their work in the
Legislature.
President JOHNSON is clearly of opinion that the American people
are not disposed to surrender to arts what they have refused to arms. He does
not believe that the rebel leaders are less rebellious because they are baffled.
He knows that the cause to which they are devoted is a perpetual rebellion
against the Union and Government, and the spirit which inspires them a necessary
treason to man and God. Every speech he has made is a warning to those leaders,
and an encouragement to the men they have betrayed. For those who have been
deceived are the men of the class from which the President himself sprang, and
his hostility to the betrayers is based upon long and bitter knowledge.
President JOHNSON can do this
country no better service than by persuading it of the cardinal truth that the
regeneration of the South is not to come from men like
Davis, HUNTER,
WIGFALL, BENJAMIN,
SLIDELL,
MASON, and their fellow-conspirators and " eminent confederates," but will
proceed from the mass of the Southern people white and black. The slave-holding
class is not large. The actual pecuniary and political interest of the mass of
the population in slavery has been very slight. They have been influenced by it
as a prejudice, not a palpable advantage. The great proprietors of the South,
who owned the land and the slaves, and who monopolized political power, have
always purposely kept the poorer class of whites ignorant. They were painfully
degraded. The faithful reports of the best observers for many years have shown
us how sad their condition was. And this class could be kept silent while
slavery endured. So long as their color was itself a symbol of superiority, and
being wretched and poor, they could yet claim to be-long, though but in name, to
the ruling class, and despise a servile race, so long they were content to eat
clay and submit to a condition against which every man bearing the name of
American ought instinctively to protest.
But when slavery goes, when
contact with Northern men in the army shows the Southern people what their
rights are, they will be ready to claim them. When they find by actual
experience that Yankees are neither savages nor brutes—when they perceive that
they are not cowards nor base tinkers, but brave men who have overpowered the
utmost resources of the South —when the Southern people learn how basely and
cruelly they have been deceived by the men whom they trusted, and that they have
been fighting
DAVIS'S battle, and HUNTER'S, and
TOOMBS's, and JACOB THOMPSON'S,
and
CLEMENT CLAY'S, but have not been fighting their own, then they too will be
emancipated from the long bondage of blindness and ignorance which slavery
imposes upon the mass of any slaveholding community, and they will be the men,
with the slaves who have been instinctively and always faithful to the country,
by whom the South will be regenerated.
It is because in the speeches of
President JOHNSON we find the indications of this whole-some disbelief in the
rebel chiefs and this cordial faith in the multitude that we regard them as
peculiarly significant. He is clearly also of opinion that those who are good
enough to fight for the Government are good enough to vote for it ; and that a
black heart is a more serious defect in an American citizen than a black face.
If the measures of the policy now foreshadowed shall be as temperate and firm as
its spirit is true the work that ABRAHAM LINCOLN wisely began ANDREW JOHNSON
will wisely finish.
GENERAL SHERMAN.
THE convention of
General SHERMAN
with the
rebel General JOHNSTON is not the least of the astounding events of the
last few weeks. The rebellion had failed. Its chief army was disbanded. Its
military chief had surrendered. Its civil chief was a fugitive. Its capital had
fallen. Its last sea-port was gone. The sudden dispersion of its offensive force
had been marvelous, when the hero of Georgia and of the Carolinas, the soldier
who had led his army through the rebel section from the Ohio to the coast, the
Lieutenant who had just returned from an interview with his superior at City
Point, and who knew as every body in the country knew that the idea of an
armistice had been steadily repelled by the people and the Government, who knew
that when President LINCOLN went to Hampton Roads to meet the rebel
commissioners he expressly told
General GRANT not to suspend military operations
for a moment, who knew that
General GRANT himself while corresponding with
General LEE
was still fighting him, the soldier who knew all this and the terms upon which
JOHNSTON'S superior had just surrendered to his own superior officer, suddenly
quits the military sphere, and dashing into the political and diplomatic, fails
as signally and sadly as before he had gloriously triumphed.
General SHERMAN not only treats
with the rebel
General JOHNSTON, but with " high officials"—that is to say, with
the conspirators who have formed what was called " the Confederate Government."
He says to his army that, when ratified, the terms will secure peace from the
Potomac to the Rio Grande. Ratified by whom ? He has already told us in the
convention with
JOHNSTON : " Not being fully empowered by our respective
principals to fulfill these terms," etc. They are then to be ratified by the
principals—that is, by the Government of the United States and the " Confederate
Government."
General SHERMAN could not have
surprised his country more if he had surrendered his army to
JOHNSTON, and the
first emotion of every loyal man was the wish to await some explanation of
conduct apparently inexplicable. In the absence of such assistance we must seek
the solution in what we already know.
General SHERMAN had lived long in
Louisiana when the war began. He has been constantly in the remote field of
operations, far from the knowledge of current opinion, and he has shown a
peculiar hostility to newspapers and correspondents. He had no special sympathy
with the moral sentiment which animated the patriotism of the Northern States.
He probably
held the Southern view of
slavery, although he did not hesitate to say, while opposed to the arming of
colored men, that whoever was worthy to carry a musket in defense of the
Government was not unworthy to cast a ballot. He has, however, always taken a
purely military view of the rebellion. His demand has constantly been merely
that the insurgents should lay down their arms ; and he said last autumn that
the war had but just begun. By this we understood him to mean that the spirit of
rebellion was so desperate that it would prevent the possibility of peace so
long as any considerable number of rebels remained in arms.
It was a necessary result of such
opinions that he should believe a consent to disband its military forces was a
result to be bought of the rebellion at almost any price. We must assume that
his experience in Georgia and the Carolinas had confirmed this view. But it
still remains inexplicable why he should suppose that he could not make as
favorable terms for his country with the miscellaneous army of
JOHNSTON as
General GRANT had, as he knew, already made with the veterans of
ROBERT E. LEE ; or why he
should undertake to do upon his own responsibility what he knew the Government
had refused to allow his superior to do under circumstances a thousand-fold more
unpromising than those in which he stood.
It is hardly possible to believe
that he sup-posed his convention would be approved by the country and
Government, even before the
murder of President LINCOLN ; and equally difficult
to perceive how any man of ordinary common sense could anticipate peace upon the
terms of his arrangement. But the painful event vindicates the wisdom of
President LINCOLN in refusing from the beginning to allow the Generals in the
field to decide the questions that were really political. He disapproved all
such action in the instances of Generals
FREMONT, HUNTER, and
McCLELLAN, and his
last official act in his first term was an express instruction to
General GRANT
to confine himself to military operations.
General SHERMAN knew that this was
the undeviating policy of the Government. He has yet to explain why he utterly
disregarded it.
That he had any personal
political advantage in view the country will hesitate to believe. That some
vision of being the great final Pacificator for a moment bewildered an impetuous
and imperious nature is not inconceivable. But that he utterly misunderstands
the scope of the war in which he has been so conspicuous and successful a
soldier—that he comprehends neither the spirit nor the purpose nor the character
of the " high officials" who have been now for four years by arms, and for
thirty years by the most unscrupulous and appalling debauchery of the national
mind and heart, seeking to destroy the Government of his country—this
humiliating proposal to the conspirators is the final and painful proof. That
the best of soldiers may be the worst of statesmen is easily credible ; but it
is lamentable to have the truth illustrated by a man of whom we were all so
proud as we were of
General SHERMAN.
THE TRUEST MOURNERS.
WHILE the nation mourns, and
cities are solemnly tapestried with the signs of sorrow, and the
funeral
train moves across the land amidst tolling bells and minute-guns and slow
pealing dirges ; while orators and societies and communities speak their grief
in impassioned eloquence or in sober narrative of a life devoted in every
heart-beat to the common welfare—there is one class of mourners little seen or
rudely repulsed, yet whose
grief for ABRAHAM LINCOLN is profounder and more
universal than all.
To the unhappy race upon whose
equal natural rights with ourselves this nation had so long trampled — upon our
dusky brothers for whom God has so long asked of us in vain while we haughtily
responded that we were not our brothers' keepers, the death that bereaves us all
falls with an overwhelming and appalling force. The name of
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
meant to them freedom, justice, home, family, happiness. In his life they knew
that they lived. In his perfect benignity and just purpose, inflexible as the
laws of seed-time and harvest, they trusted with all their souls, whoever
doubted. Their deliverer, their emancipator, their friend, their father, he was
known to them as the impersonation of that liberty for which they had wept and
watched, hoping against hope, praying in the very extremity of despair, and
waiting with patience so sublime that fat prosperity beguiled us into the
meanness of saying that their long endurance of oppression proved that God had
created them to be oppressed.
The warm imagination of this
people cherished
ABRAHAM LINCOLN as more than mortal. He dies ; and in his death
slavery doubtless seems to them again possible. It is a sorrow beyond any words,
beyond any comfort, except the slow conviction of time that the work he did for
them was not his work ; that he was but the minister of the nation ; and that
ABRAHAM LINCOLN emancipated them because the American people had declared they
should be free. Yet none the less, as the terrible tale is whispered all over
the region where for four years a black face has been the sure sign of a true
heart, the nameless and inconceivable fear will paralyze
that people. Of the operations of
Government, of the tides and currents of public opinion, of the grateful
sympathy of a nation, they can know little, but they knew that
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
was the name of the power that was lifting them from darkness into light, from
death into life, from a hopeless past into a jubilant future, and the shock of
our sorrow can not re-veal to us, even in kind, the depth and reality of theirs.
And when the story of his life is
told, it will be seen that it was one long act of unwearied service to these
least of the little ones. He saw clearly from the beginning that the danger to
his country lay out of sight—that it lay deep down in the condition of the most
friendless of all classes. He saw that the national peril lay in the
demoralization of the conscience of the country, wrought by a growing inhumanity
and injustice. He saw and said that all prosperity was delusive which was
founded upon immorality ; and in a part of the country where the prejudice
against the colored race was fiercest, where political disgrace seemed to await
the man who persistently pleaded their cause, he never failed to declare in the
face of the most subtle sophistry, of the coarsest and most injurious ribaldry,
and of the most passionate denunciation, that slavery was, beneath all other
considerations, a moral question ; that it was a moral wrong; and that not until
all the lights of truth and morality were extinguished could it cease to vex the
country, and then cease only because it had ruined it.
He did not unite with " the
abolitionists"—he did not even plead for political privileges for colored
men—but he unswervingly proclaimed the right of all innocent men to personal
liberty; and while he expressly disclaimed any intention of interfering with
slavery in the States which tolerated it, he did not hesitate to say, with
incisive and irresistible logic, that the Union could not endure half slave and
half free. He hoped that slavery would disappear from the country. He knew that
if it did not, liberty would ; and he unfolded the details of the great
conspiracy, of which the country showed that at last it was aware by electing
him President. He believed, also, that the extinction of slavery would be
accomplished by legal and peaceful methods. In that he was mistaken. This
simple, homely, sagacious man, who declared that the Government could not endure
half slave and half free, was called to be the minister of securing its
permanence by making it wholly free, and the statesman whom slavery had never
deceived, who had exposed its immorality, as the clear calm eye of the old
philosopher exposed the serpent in the woman's form, died by a stealthy blow
from its desperate, dying hand. His death justifies every word of his life. The
shot of the assassin completed the absolute extirpation of the loathsome system
which that of the rebels at Sumter four years before had begun.
We are all grateful to the good
man whom we are burying, but if we had all been Carolina slaves what speechless
woe, what eternal gratitude, would ours be 1 As time passes they will learn that
their cause is also ours. They will see that slavery, not LINCOLN, is dead. For
the work in which he was but the minister of the people, the people will fulfill
to the utmost with a sacred devotion.
RICHARD COBDEN.
THE English Liberals bewail in
the death of RICHARD COBDEN one of the great Englishmen; even the London Times
confesses that his eminence must remain unquestionable ; and the
Emperor Louis
NAPOLEON orders his bust to be placed in the gallery at Versailles. Yet he held
no office ; he had refused to be made a baronet; but he was universally honored
for the sincerity of his life and character, and for the devotion of noble
powers to the welfare of his country.
RICHARD COBDEN was what is called
a self-made man, which means simply that he used his opportunities, and had the
happy gift of knowing when and how to use them. In this he was like Mr. LINCOLN.
There are plenty of poor boys, sons of small farmers in England, like RICHARD
COBDEN, or of poor Western settlers in America, like ABRAHAM LINCOLN, who are
thrown upon the world, and after a desperate struggle succeed in living
respectable lives. But it is a peculiar energy, clearness, tenacity, and purity
of purpose which enables them to become what LINCOLN and COBDEN were.
It is the good fortune of England
at this time that she never had an abler group of liberal leaders. They are a
distinct body from the Whig chiefs. In the days of Sir FRANCIS BURDETT the folly
of the radical party defeated its best purposes. But the liberal leaders of
to-day, such men as RICHARD COBDEN, JOHN STUART MILL, JOHN BRIGHT, with their
immediate allies, belittle both the Whig and Tory giants. They represent what is
noblest, best, and most humane in English political thought and progress.
Mr. COBDEN'S signal and most
illustrious service was his advocacy of free trade. In 1839 ho led the movement
for establishing the Anti-Corn Law League, and after a tremendous and incessant
agitation, which exasperated the agricultural, as the anti-slavery agitation had
exasperated the commercial, interest in England. (Continued
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