The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Philosophy
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Another thirty years brings us to the landing of Moidart, the rising
of the clans, the fall of Edinburgh and Carlisle, the "Bull's Run" at
Prestonpans, and the panic of London. If we are anxious to guard our
civilization according to Hanoverian precedents, there is one name
commonly given to the Commander-in-chief at Culloden which Congress
should add to the titles it is preparing against McClellan's successful
advance. The "Butcher Cumberland" not only hounded on his troops with
the tempting price of thirty thousand pounds for the Pretender _dead or
alive_, but every adherent of the luckless Jefferson Davis of that day
was in peril of life and wholesale confiscation. The House of Hanover
not only broke the backbone of the Rebellion, but mangled without mercy
its remains.
We come now, in another thirty years, to the next struggle of England
with a portion of her people. It is impossible, as well as unfair,
to say what might have been done with "Mr. Washington, the Virginia
colonel," and Mr. Franklin, the Philadelphia printer, had they not been
able to determine their own destiny. We can only surmise, by referring
to two well-known localities in New York, the "Old Sugar-House" and the
"Jersey Prison-Ship," how paternally George III was disposed then to
resume his rights. And without disposition to press historic parallels,
we cannot but compare Arnold and Tryon's raid along the south shore of
Connecticut with a certain sail recently made up the Tennessee River to
the foot of the Muscle Shoals by the command of a modern Connecticut
officer.
But as we were spared the necessity of testing the royal clemency to the
submitted Provinces of North America, we had better pass on twenty years
to the era of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. In
this country the Irishman need not "fear to speak of '98," and in this
country he still treasures the memory of the whippings and pitch-caps of
Major Beresford's riding-house, and other pleasant souvenirs of the way
in which, sixty years ago, loyalty dealt with rebellion. There is no
inherent proneness to treason in the Hibernian nature, as Corcoran and
the Sixty-Ninth can bear witness; nor is Pat so fond of a riot that he
cannot with fair play be a--well, a good citizen. Yet at home he has
been so "civilized" by his British guardian as to be in a chronic state
of discontent and fretfulness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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