The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 50, December, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 50, December, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
But while we should prefer a more daring, or at least a more definite
policy on the part of the Government, we do not think the time has come
for turning the war into a crusade. The example of saints, martyrs,
and heroes, who could disregard consequences because the consequences
concerned only themselves and their own life, is for the private man,
and not for the statesman who is responsible for the complex life of the
commonwealth. To carry on a war we must have money, to get money we must
have the confidence of the money-holders, who would not advance a dollar
on a pledge of the finest sentiments in the world. There is something
instructive in the fate of that mob of enthusiasts who followed the
banner of Walter the Penniless, a name of evil omen. It saves trouble to
say that we must fight the Devil with fire; though, when the Devil is
incarnate in human beings, that policy has never been very successful
at Smithfield or elsewhere. But in trying the fiery cure of a servile
insurrection, we should run the risk of converting the whole white
population of the South into devils of the most desperate sort, with
whom any kind of reconciliation, even truce, would be impossible.
We hope and believe that the end of this war will see the snake of
Slavery scotched, if not killed. Events move,--slowly, to be sure, but
they move,--and the thought of the people moves with them unconsciously
to fulfil the purposes of God. Government can do little, perhaps, in
controlling them; but it has no right to the power it holds, if it has
not the insight and the courage to make use of them at the right moment.
If the supreme question should arise of submitting to rebellion or of
crushing it in a common ruin with the wrong that engendered it, we
believe neither the Government nor the people would falter. The time for
answering that question may be nearer than we dream; but meanwhile
we would not hasten what would at best be a terrible necessity, and
justifiable only as such. We believe this war is to prepare the way for
the extinction of Slavery by the action of economical causes, and we
should prefer that solution to one of fire and blood. Already the system
has received a death-blow in Maryland and Missouri. In Western Virginia
it is practically extinct. If the war is carried on with vigor, it
may become so before long in East Tennessee. Texas should be taken
possession of and held at any cost, and a territory capable of supplying
the world with cotton to any conceivable amount thrown open to free
labor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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