The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
were demonstrating too plainly the inherent activity and irresistible
energy of a purely democratic form of government. Therefore _Carthago
delenda est_. "But yet the pity of it, Iago!" Mark how a Christian
nation deals with a Christian ally. Our destruction is to be
accomplished, not by open warfare, but by the delusive and dastardly
pretence of neutrality. There is to be no diplomatic recognition of an
independent Southern Confederacy, but a formidable navy is to be
furnished to our enemies, and their armies are to be abundantly supplied
with the munitions of war. But how? By the English Government? Oh, no!
This would be in violation of solemn treaties. Earl Russell says, "We
have long maintained relations of peace and amity" with the United
States. England cannot officially recognize or aid the South without
placing herself in a hostile attitude towards this country. Yet
meanwhile English capitalists can publicly subscribe to the loan which
our enemies solicit, and from English ship-yards a fleet of iron-clad
war-vessels can be sent to lay waste our commerce and break our blockade
of Southern ports. What the end will be no one may venture to foretell;
but it needs no prophet to predict that many years will not obliterate
from the minds of the American people the present policy of the English
Cabinet, controlled as it is by the genius of English aristocracy.
* * * * *
THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.
"The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop," said one to me a few days ago,
"he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they
entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the
Mayflower can't afford to do that!'
"'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I
wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came
to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of
vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and
life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor."
That is to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he
remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt
that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work,
than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the
opening chapter of "John Brent," that "deeds of the heroic and chivalric
times do not utterly disdain our day. There are men," he continues, "as
ready to gallop for love and strike for love now as in the age of
Amadis." Ay, and for a nobler love than the love of woman--for love of
country, and of liberty--he was ready to strike, and to die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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