The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 3, March, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 3, March, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
influenced or governed by the suggestions contained in the writing. It
is therefore an adaptation to an imperfect order of things, a mixed or
concrete phase of political practical philosophy, which is the most that
can now be aspired to. The point of view in question is therefore far
lower than that of a final social philosophy having its basis in a
perfect scientific theory, and working out from that basis into
practical life. Perhaps, as will be again suggested in the course of
this article, the events of this war may conduce to a readiness on this
continent, or may create an earnest demand even, for higher solutions
and the thorough treatment, by some competent mind, of all our Political
and Sociatory problems. The day, however, for such a radical diagnosis
and treatment of the disease of human society has not yet arrived.
In the mean time we must content ourselves with partial remedies,
alleviations, best temporary resorts, and even desperate expedients. It
is from this stand-point that the writer of these articles now speaks;
that, feeling deeply in his heart and recognizing clearly in his head
the common brotherhood and the equal essential manhood of the
inhabitants of the Southern and Northern States--sympathetically and
socially drawn, even, to the Southern side, by many endearing
associations and recollections; that, clearly appreciating the
fratricidal nature of this war--its essential non-necessity, if men were
wise enough to avail themselves of better known and feasible,
methods--he still deliberately and forcibly insists, under the
circumstances which are, that the North should not only fight out the
war to the last word of determinate conquest, but that it should, with
wise but merciless rigor, extinguish the cause of the war, and hold with
unflinching hand every advantage it gains, until new institutions and
new methods of thought shall have been securely planted on every inch of
the soil of the South.
Since, even, the last previous part of this series of papers was sent to
the press, new and alarming indications have appeared in various
quarters, of the drift in the public mind--North--in favor of an
easy-going and conceding policy toward the South as the war draws to a
close; a policy which would be nearly certain to lose to ourselves and
to the world all the benefits of the war; to deprive the South, even, of
those higher and ulterior benefits which would come to her also; to
leave untouched the causes of the war, and to foster its early renewal
with more than its former desperation.
Not to mention the reiterated and urgent renewals of the subject of
reconstruction in quarters where we are accustomed to look for a partial
loyalty or a covert opposition to the war, articles like the following,
from the New York _Times_, of November 19th, frequently appear in the
undoubtedly loyal press:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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