Maurice Maeterlinck - "Wisdom And Destiny"

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - "The House of Life"

G. A. Henty - "By Sheer Pluck"

Emile Zola - "The Flood"

North America

A >> Anthony Trollope >> North America




In Rhode Island they were more honest. It is there declared that
every man shall be free to worship God according to the dictates of
his own conscience, and to profess and by argument to maintain his
opinion in matters of religion; and that the same shall in no wise
diminish, enlarge, or affect his civil capacity. Here it is simply
presumed that every man will worship a God, and no allusion is made
even to Christianity.

In Massachusetts they are again hardly honest. "It is the right,"
says the constitution, "as well as the duty of all men in society
publicly and at stated seasons to worship the supreme Being, the
Great Creator and Preserver of the universe." And then it goes on
to say that every man may do so in what form he pleases; but
further down it declares that "every denomination of Christians,
demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the
commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law."
But what about those who are not Christians? In New Hampshire it
is exactly the same. It is enacted that "every individual has a
natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the
dictates of his own conscience and reason." And that "every
denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves quietly and as
good citizens of the State, shall be equally under the protection
of the law." From all which it is, I think, manifest that the men
who framed these documents, desirous above all things of cutting
themselves and their people loose from every kind of trammel, still
felt the necessity of enforcing religion--of making it, to a
certain extent, a matter of State duty. In the first constitution
of North Carolina it is enjoined "that no person who shall deny the
being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, shall be
capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit." But
this was altered in the year 1836, and the words "Christian
religion" were substituted for "Protestant religion."

In New England the Congregationalists are, I think, the dominant
sect. In Massachusetts, and I believe in the other New England
States, a man is presumed to be a Congregationalist if he do not
declare himself to be anything else; as with us the Church of
England counts all who do not specially have themselves counted
elsewhere. The Congregationalist, as far as I can learn, is very
near to a Presbyterian. In New England I think the Unitarians
would rank next in number; but a Unitarian in America is not the
same as a Unitarian with us. Here, if I understand the nature of
his creed, a Unitarian does not recognize the divinity of our
Saviour. In America he does do so, but throws over the doctrine of
the Trinity. The Protestant Episcopalians muster strong in all the
great cities, and I fancy that they would be regarded as taking the
lead of the other religious denominations in New York. Their
tendency is to high-church doctrines. I wish they had not found it
necessary to alter the forms of our prayer-book in so many little
matters, as to which there was no national expediency for such
changes. But it was probably thought necessary that a new people
should show their independence in all things. The Roman Catholics
have a very strong party--as a matter of course--seeing how great
has been the emigration from Ireland; but here, as in Ireland--and
as indeed is the case all the world over--the Roman Catholics are
the hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Germans, who have
latterly flocked into the States in such swarms that they have
almost Germanized certain States, have, of course, their own
churches. In every town there are places of worship for Baptists,
Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, and every denomination of
Christianity; and the meeting-houses prepared for these sects are
not, as with us, hideous buildings, contrived to inspire disgust by
the enormity of their ugliness, nor are they called Salem,
Ebenezer, and Sion, nor do the ministers within them look in any
way like the Deputy-Shepherd. The churches belonging to those
sects are often handsome. This is especially the case in New York,
and the pastors are not unfrequently among the best educated and
most agreeable men whom the traveler will meet. They are for the
most part well paid, and are enabled by their outward position to
hold that place in the world's ranks which should always belong to
a clergyman. I have not been able to obtain information from which
I can state with anything like correctness what may be the average
income of ministers of the Gospel in the Northern States; but that
it is much higher than the average income of our parish clergymen,
admits, I think, of no doubt. The stipends of clergymen in the
American towns are higher than those paid in the country. The
opposite to this, I think, as a rule, is the case with us.

I have said that religion in the States is rowdy. By that I mean
to imply that it seems to me to be divested of that reverential
order and strictness of rule which, according to our ideas, should
be attached to matters of religion. One hardly knows where the
affairs of this world end, or where those of the next begin. When
the holy men were had in at the lecture, were they doing stage-work
or church-work? On hearing sermons, one is often driven to ask
one's self whether the discourse from the pulpit be in its nature
political or religious. I heard an Episcopalian Protestant
clergyman talk of the scoffing nations of Europe, because at that
moment he was angry with England and France about Slidell and
Mason. I have heard a chapter of the Bible read in Congress at the
desire of a member, and very badly read. After which the chapter
itself and the reading of it became a subject of debate, partly
jocose and partly acrimonious. It is a common thing for a
clergyman to change his profession and follow any other pursuit. I
know two or three gentlemen who were once in that line of life, but
have since gone into other trades. There is, I think, an
unexpressed determination on the part of the people to abandon all
reverence, and to regard religion from an altogether worldly point
of view. They are willing to have religion, as they are willing to
have laws; but they choose to make it for themselves. They do not
object to pay for it, but they like to have the handling of the
article for which they pay. As the descendants of Puritans and
other godly Protestants, they will submit to religious teaching,
but as republicans they will have no priestcraft. The French at
their revolution had the latter feeling without the former, and
were therefore consistent with themselves in abolishing all
worship. The Americans desire to do the same thing politically,
but infidelity has had no charms for them. They say their prayers,
and then seem to apologize for doing so, as though it were hardly
the act of a free and enlightened citizen, justified in ruling
himself as he pleases. All this to me is rowdy. I know no other
word by which I can so well describe it.

Nevertheless the nation is religious in its tendencies, and prone
to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things. A man there is
expected to belong to some church, and is not, I think, well looked
on if he profess that he belongs to none. He may be a
Swedenborgian, a Quaker, a Muggletonian,--anything will do, But it
is expected of him that he shall place himself under some flag, and
do his share in supporting the flag to which he belongs. This duty
is, I think, generally fulfilled.



CHAPTER XX.

FROM BOSTON TO WASHINGTON.


From Boston, on the 27th of November, my wife returned to England,
leaving me to prosecute my journey southward to Washington by
myself. I shall never forget the political feeling which prevailed
in Boston at that time, or the discussions on the subject of
Slidell and Mason, in which I felt myself bound to take a part. Up
to that period I confess that my sympathies had been strongly with
the Northern side in the general question; and so they were still,
as far as I could divest the matter of its English bearings. I
have always thought, and do think, that a war for the suppression
of the Southern rebellion could not have been avoided by the North
without an absolute loss of its political prestige. Mr. Lincoln
was elected President of the United States in the autumn of 1860,
and any steps taken by him or his party toward a peaceable solution
of the difficulties which broke out immediately on his election
must have been taken before he entered upon his office. South
Carolina threatened secession as soon as Mr. Lincoln's election was
known, while yet there were four months left of Mr. Buchanan's
government. That Mr. Buchanan might, during those four months,
have prevented secession, few men, I think, will doubt when the
history of the time shall be written. But instead of doing so he
consummated secession. Mr. Buchanan is a Northern man, a
Pennsylvanian; but he was opposed to the party which had brought in
Mr. Lincoln, having thriven as a politician by his adherence to
Southern principles. Now, when the struggle came, he could not
forget his party in his duty as President. General Jackson's
position was much the same when Mr. Calhoun, on the question of the
tariff, endeavored to produce secession in South Carolina thirty
years ago, in 1832--excepting in this, that Jackson was himself a
Southern man. But Jackson had a strong conception of the position
which he held as President of the United States. He put his foot
on secession and crushed it, forcing Mr. Calhoun, as Senator from
South Carolina, to vote for that compromise as to the tariff which
the government of the day proposed. South Carolina was as eager in
1832 for secession as she was in 1859-60; but the government was in
the hands of a strong man and an honest one. Mr. Calhoun would
have been hung had he carried out his threats. But Mr. Buchanan
had neither the power nor the honesty of General Jackson, and thus
secession was in fact consummated during his Presidency.

But Mr. Lincoln's party, it is said--and I believe truly said--
might have prevented secession by making overtures to the South, or
accepting overtures from the South, before Mr. Lincoln himself had
been inaugurated. That is to say, if Mr. Lincoln and the band of
politicians who with him had pushed their way to the top of their
party, and were about to fill the offices of State, chose to throw
overboard the political convictions which had bound them together
and insured their success--if they could bring themselves to adopt
on the subject of slavery the ideas of their opponents--then the
war might have been avoided, and secession also avoided. I do
believe that had Mr. Lincoln at that time submitted himself to a
compromise in favor of the Democrats, promising the support of the
government to certain acts which would in fact have been in favor
of slavery, South Carolina would again have been foiled for the
time. For it must be understood, that though South Carolina and
the Gulf States might have accepted certain compromises, they would
not have been satisfied in so accepting them. The desired
secession, and nothing short of secession, would in truth have been
acceptable to them. But in doing so Mr. Lincoln would have been
the most dishonest politician even in America. The North would
have been in arms against him; and any true spirit of agreement
between the cotton-growing slave States and the manufacturing
States of the North, or the agricultural States of the West, would
have been as far off and as improbable as it is now. Mr.
Crittenden, who proffered his compromise to the Senate in December,
1860, was at that time one of the two Senators from Kentucky, a
slave State. He now sits in the Lower House of Congress as a
member from the same State. Kentucky is one of those border States
which has found it impossible to secede, and almost equally
impossible to remain in the Union. It is one of the States into
which it was most probable that the war would be carried--Virginia,
Kentucky, and Missouri being the three States which have suffered
the most in this way. Of Mr. Crittenden's own family, some have
gone with secession and some with the Union. His name had been
honorably connected with American politics for nearly forty years,
and it is not surprising that he should have desired a compromise.
His terms were in fact these--a return to the Missouri compromise,
under which the Union pledged itself that no slavery should exist
north of 36.30 degrees N. lat., unless where it had so existed
prior to the date of that compromise; a pledge that Congress would
not interfere with slavery in the individual States--which under
the Constitution it cannot do; and a pledge that the Fugitive Slave
Law should be carried out by the Northern States. Such a
compromise might seem to make very small demand on the forbearance
of the Republican party, which was now dominant. The repeal of the
Missouri compromise had been to them a loss, and it might be said
that its re-enactment would be a gain. But since that compromise
had been repealed, vast territories south of the line in question
had been added to the union, and the re-enactment of that
compromise would hand those vast regions over to absolute slavery,
as had been done with Texas. This might be all very well for Mr.
Crittenden in the slave State of Kentucky--for Mr. Crittenden,
although a slave owner, desired to perpetuate the Union; but it
would not have been well for New England or for the West. As for
the second proposition, it is well understood that under the
Constitution Congress cannot interfere in any way in the question
of slavery in the individual States. Congress has no more
constitutional power to abolish slavery in Maryland than she has to
introduce it into Massachusetts. No such pledge, therefore, was
necessary on either side. But such a pledge given by the North and
West would have acted as an additional tie upon them, binding them
to the finality of a constitutional enactment to which, as was of
course well known, they strongly object. There was no question of
Congress interfering with slavery, with the purport of extending
its area by special enactment, and therefore by such a pledge the
North and West could gain nothing; but the South would in prestige
have gained much.

But that third proposition as to the Fugitive Slave Law and the
faithful execution of that law by the Northern and Western States
would, if acceded to by Mr. Lincoln's party, have amounted to an
unconditional surrender of everything. What! Massachusetts and
Connecticut carry out the Fugitive Slave Law? Ohio carry out the
Fugitive Slave Law after the "Dred Scott" decision and all its
consequences? Mr. Crittenden might as well have asked Connecticut,
Massachusetts, and Ohio to introduce slavery within their own
lands. The Fugitive Slave Law was then, as it is now, the law of
the land; it was the law of the United States as voted by Congress,
and passed by the President, and acted on by the supreme judge of
the United States Court. But it was a law to which no free State
had submitted itself, or would submit itself. "What!" the English
reader will say, "sundry States in the Union refuse to obey the
laws of the Union--refuse to submit to the constitutional action of
their own Congress?" Yes. Such has been the position of this
country! To such a dead lock has it been brought by the attempted
but impossible amalgamation of North and South. Mr. Crittenden's
compromise was moonshine. It was utterly out of the question that
the free States should bind themselves to the rendition of escaped
slaves, or that Mr. Lincoln, who had just been brought in by their
voices, should agree to any compromise which should attempt so to
bind them. Lord Palmerston might as well attempt to reenact the
Corn Laws.

Then comes the question whether Mr. Lincoln or his government could
have prevented the war after he had entered upon his office in
March, 1861? I do not suppose that any one thinks that he could
have avoided secession and avoided the war also; that by any
ordinary effort of government he could have secured the adhesion of
the Gulf States to the Union after the first shot had been fired at
Fort Sumter. The general opinion in England is, I take it, this--
that secession then was manifestly necessary, and that all the
blood-shed and money-shed, and all this destruction of commerce and
of agriculture might have been prevented by a graceful adhesion to
an indisputable fact. But there are some facts, even some
indisputable facts, to which a graceful adherence is not possible.
Could King Bomba have welcomed Garibaldi to Naples? Can the Pope
shake hands with Victor Emmanuel? Could the English have
surrendered to their rebel colonists peaceable possession of the
colonies? The indisputability of a fact is not very easily settled
while the circumstances are in course of action by which the fact
is to be decided. The men of the Northern States have not believed
in the necessity of secession, but have believed it to be their
duty to enforce the adherence of these States to the Union. The
American governments have been much given to compromises, but had
Mr. Lincoln attempted any compromise by which any one Southern
State could have been let out of the Union, he would have been
impeached. In all probability the whole Constitution would have
gone to ruin, and the Presidency would have been at an end. At any
rate, his Presidency would have been at an end. When secession, or
in other words rebellion, was once commenced, he had no alternative
but the use of coercive measures for putting it down--that is, he
had no alternative but war. It is not to be supposed that he or
his ministry contemplated such a war as has existed--with 600,000
men in arms on one side, each man with his whole belongings
maintained at a cost of 150l. per annum, or ninety millions
sterling per annum for the army. Nor did we when we resolved to
put down the French revolution think of such a national debt as we
now owe. These things grow by degrees, and the mind also grows in
becoming used to them; but I cannot see that there was any moment
at which Mr. Lincoln could have stayed his hand and cried peace.
It is easy to say now that acquiescence in secession would have
been better than war, but there has been no moment when he could
have said so with any avail. It was incumbent on him to put down
rebellion, or to be put down by it. So it was with us in America
in 1776.

I do not think that we in England have quite sufficiently taken all
this into consideration. We have been in the habit of exclaiming
very loudly against the war, execrating its cruelty and
anathematizing its results, as though the cruelty were all
superfluous and the results unnecessary. But I do not remember to
have seen any statement as to what the Northern States should have
done--what they should have done, that is, as regards the South, or
when they should have done it. It seems to me that we have decided
as regards them that civil war is a very bad thing, and that
therefore civil war should be avoided. But bad things cannot
always be avoided. It is this feeling on our part that has
produced so much irritation in them against us--reproducing, of
course, irritation on our part against them. They cannot
understand that we should not wish them to be successful in putting
down a rebellion; nor can we understand why they should be
outrageous against us for standing aloof, and keeping our hands, if
it be only possible, out of the fire.

When Slidell and Mason were arrested, my opinions were not changed,
but my feelings were altered. I seemed to acknowledge to myself
that the treatment to which England had been subjected, and the
manner in which that treatment was discussed, made it necessary
that I should regard the question as it existed between England and
the States, rather than in its reference to the North and South. I
had always felt that as regarded the action of our government we
had been sans reproche; that in arranging our conduct we had
thought neither of money nor political influence, but simply of the
justice of the case--promising to abstain from all interference and
keeping that promise faithfully. It had been quite clear to me
that the men of the North, and the women also, had failed to
appreciate this, looking, as men in a quarrel always do look, for
special favor on their side. Everything that England did was
wrong. If a private merchant, at his own risk, took a cargo of
rifles to some Southern port, that act to Northern eyes was an act
of English interference--of favor shown to the South by England as
a nation; but twenty shiploads of rifles sent from England to the
North merely signified a brisk trade and a desire for profit. The
"James Adger," a Northern man-of-war, was refitted at Southampton
as a matter of course. There was no blame to England for that.
But the Nashville, belonging to the Confederates, should not have
been allowed into English waters. It was useless to speak of
neutrality. No Northerner would understand that a rebel could have
any mutual right. The South had no claim in his eyes as a
belligerent, though the North claimed all those rights which he
could only enjoy by the fact of there being a recognized war
between him and his enemy the South. The North was learning to
hate England, and day by day the feeling grew upon me that, much as
I wished to espouse the cause of the North, I should have to
espouse the cause of my own country. Then Slidell and Mason were
arrested, and I began to calculate how long I might remain in the
country. "There is no danger. We are quite right," the lawyers
said. "There are Vattel, and Puffendorff, and Stowell, and
Phillimore, and Wheaton," said the ladies. "Ambassadors are
contraband all the world over--more so than gunpowder; and if taken
in a neutral bottom," etc. I wonder why ships are always called
bottoms when spoken of with legal technicality? But neither the
lawyers nor the ladies convinced me. I know that there are matters
which will be read not in accordance with any written law, but in
accordance with the bias of the reader's mind. Such laws are made
to be strained any way. I knew how it would be. All the legal
acumen of New England declared the seizure of Slidell and Mason to
be right. The legal acumen of Old England has declared it to be
wrong; and I have no doubt that the ladies of Old England can prove
it to be wrong out of Yattel, Puffendorff, Stowell, Phillimore, and
Wheaton.

"But there's Grotius," I said, to an elderly female at New York,
who had quoted to me some half dozen writers on international law,
thinking thereby that I should trump her last card. "I've looked
into Grotius too," said she, "and as far as I can see," etc. etc.
etc. So I had to fall back again on the convictions to which
instinct and common sense had brought me. I never doubted for a
moment that those convictions would be supported by English
lawyers.

I left Boston with a sad feeling at my heart that a quarrel was
imminent between England and the States, and that any such quarrel
must be destructive to the cause of the North. I had never
believed that the States of New England and the Gulf States would
again become parts of one nation, but I had thought that the terms
of separation would be dictated by the North, and not by the South.
I had felt assured that South Carolina and the Gulf States, across
from the Atlantic to Texas, would succeed in forming themselves
into a separate confederation; but I had still hoped that Maryland,
Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri might be saved to the grander
empire of the North, and that thus a great blow to slavery might be
the consequence of this civil war. But such ascendency could only
fall to the North by reason of their command of the sea. The
Northern ports were all open, and the Southern ports were all
closed. But if this should be reversed. If by England's action
the Southern ports should be opened, and the Northern ports closed,
the North could have no fair expectation of success. The
ascendency in that case would all be with the South. Up to that
moment--the Christmas of 1861--Maryland was kept in subjection by
the guns which General Dix had planted over the City of Baltimore.
Two-thirds of Virginia were in active rebellion, coerced originally
into that position by her dependence for the sale of her slaves on
the cotton States. Kentucky was doubtful, and divided. When the
Federal troops prevailed, Kentucky was loyal; when the Confederate
troops prevailed, Kentucky was rebellious. The condition in
Missouri was much the same. These four States, by two of which the
capital, with its District of Columbia, is surrounded, might be
gained or might be lost. And these four States are susceptible of
white labor--as much so as Ohio and Illinois--are rich in
fertility, and rich also in all associations which must be dear to
Americans. Without Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, without the
Potomac, the Chesapeake, and Mount Vernon, the North would indeed
be shorn of its glory! But it seemed to be in the power of the
North to say under what terms secession should take place, and
where should be the line. A Senator from South Carolina could
never again sit in the same chamber with one from Massachusetts;
but there need be no such bar against the border States. So much
might at any rate be gained, and might stand hereafter as the
product of all that money spent on 600,000 soldiers. But if the
Northerners should now elect to throw themselves into a quarrel
with England, if in the gratification of a shameless braggadocio
they should insist on doing what they liked, not only with their
own, but with the property of all others also, it certainly did
seem as though utter ruin must await their cause. With England, or
one might say with Europe, against them, secession must be
accomplished, not on Northern terms, but on terms dictated by the
South. The choice was then for them to make; and just at that time
it seemed as though they were resolved to throw away every good
card out of their hand. Such had been the ministerial wisdom of
Mr. Seward. I remember hearing the matter discussed in easy terms
by one of the United States Senators. "Remember, Mr. Trollope," he
said to me, "we don't want a war with England. If the choice is
given to us, we had rather not fight England. Fighting is a bad
thing. But remember this also, Mr. Trollope, that if the matter is
pressed on us, we have no great objection. We had rather not, but
we don't care much one way or the other." What one individual may
say to another is not of much moment, but this Senator was
expressing the feelings of his constituents, who were the
legislature of the State from whence he came. He was expressing
the general idea on the subject of a large body of Americans. It
was not that he and his State had really no objection to the war.
Such a war loomed terribly large before the minds of them all.
They know it to be fraught with the saddest consequences. It was
so regarded in the mind of that Senator. But the braggadocio could
not be omitted. Had be omitted it, he would have been untrue to
his constituency.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.