Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861




When we speak of coercion, we do not mean violence, but only the
assertion of constituted and acknowledged authority. Even if seceding
States could be conquered back again, they would not be worth the
conquest. We ask only for the assertion of a principle which shall give
the friends of order in the discontented quarters a hope to rally round,
and the assurance of the support they have a right to expect. There is
probably a majority, and certainly a powerful minority, in the seceding
States, who are loyal to the Union; and these should have that support
which the prestige of the General Government can alone give them. It is
not to the North or to the Republican Party that the malcontents are
called on to submit, but to the laws, and to the benign intentions of
the Constitution, as they were understood by its framers. What the
country wants is a permanent settlement; and it has learned, by repeated
trial, that compromise is not a cement, but a wedge. The Government did
not hesitate to protect the doubtful right of property of a Virginian
in Anthony Burns by the exercise of coercion, and the loyalty of
Massachusetts was such that her own militia could be used to enforce an
obligation abhorrent, and, as there is reason to believe, made purposely
abhorrent, to her dearest convictions and most venerable traditions; and
yet the same Government tampers with armed treason, and lets _I dare
not_ wait upon _I would_, when it is a question of protecting the
acknowledged property of the Union, and of sustaining, nay, preserving
even, a gallant officer whose only fault is that he has been too true
to his flag. While we write, the newspapers bring us the correspondence
between Mr. Buchanan and the South Carolina "Commissioners," and surely
never did a government stoop so low as ours has done, not only in
consenting to receive these ambassadors from Nowhere, but in suggesting
that a soldier deserves court-martial who has done all he could to
maintain himself in a forlorn hope, with rebellion in his front and
treachery in his rear. Our Revolutionary heroes had old-fashioned
notions about rebels, suitable to the straightforward times in which
they lived,--times when blood was as freely shed to secure our national
existence as milk-and-water is now to destroy it. Mr. Buchanan might
have profited by the example of men who knew nothing of the modern
arts of Constitutional interpretation, but saw clearly the distinction
between right and wrong. When a party of the Shays rebels came to
the house of General Pomeroy, in Northampton, and asked if he could
accommodate them,--the old soldier, seeing the green sprigs in their
hats, the badges of their treason, shouted to his son, "Fetch me my
hanger, and I'll _accommodate_ the scoundrels!" General Jackson, we
suspect, would have accommodated rebel commissioners in the same
peremptory style.

While our government, like Giles in the old rhyme, is wondering whether
it is a government or not, emissaries of treason are cunningly working
upon the fears and passions of the Border States, whose true interests
are infinitely more on the side of the Union than of Slavery. They are
luring the ambitious with visionary promises of Southern grandeur
and prosperity, and deceiving the ignorant into the belief that the
principles and practice of the Free States were truly represented by
John Brown. All this might have been prevented, had Mr. Buchanan in his
Message thought of the interests of his country instead of those of his
party. It is not too late to check and neutralize it now. A decisively
national and patriotic policy is all that can prevent excited men from
involving themselves so deeply that they will find "returning as tedious
as go o'er," and be more afraid of cowardice than of consequences.

Slavery is no longer the matter in debate, and we must beware of
being led off upon that side-issue. The matter now in hand is the
reestablishment of order, the reaffirmation of national unity, and the
settling once for all whether there can be such a thing as a government
without the right to use its power in self-defence. The Republican Party
has done all it could lawfully do in limiting slavery once more to the
States in which it exists, and in relieving the Free States from forced
complicity with an odious system. They can be patient, as Providence is
often patient, till natural causes work that conviction which conscience
has been unable to effect. They believe that the violent abolition of
slavery, which would be sure to follow sooner or later the disruption
of our Confederacy, would not compensate for the evil that would be
entailed upon both races by the abolition of our nationality and the
bloody confusion that would follow it. More than this, they believe
that there can be no permanent settlement except in the definite
establishment of the principle, that this government, like all others,
rests upon the everlasting foundations of just Authority,--that that
authority, once delegated by the people, becomes a common stock of Power
to be wielded for the common protection, and from which no minority
or majority of partners can withdraw its contribution under any
conditions,--that this Power is what makes us a nation, and implies
a corresponding duty of submission, or, if that be refused, then a
necessary right of self-vindication. We are citizens, when we make laws;
we become subjects, when we attempt to break them after they are
made. Lynch-law may be better than no law in new and half-organized
communities, but we cannot tolerate its application in the affairs of
government. The necessity of suppressing rebellion by force may be a
terrible one, but its consequences, whatever they may be, do not weigh
a feather in comparison with those that would follow from admitting the
principle that there is no social compact binding on any body of men too
numerous to be arrested by a United States Marshal.

As we are writing these sentences, the news comes to us that South
Carolina has taken the initiative, and chosen the arbitrament of war.
She has done it because her position was desperate, and because she
hoped thereby to unite the Cotton States by a complicity in blood, as
they are already committed by a unanimity in bravado. Major Anderson
deserves more than ever the thanks of his country for his wise
forbearance. The foxes in Charleston, who have already lost their tails
in the trap of Secession, wished to throw upon him the responsibility of
that second blow which begins a quarrel, and the silence of his guns has
balked them. Nothing would have pleased them so much as to have one of
his thirty-two-pound shot give a taste of real war to the boys who are
playing soldier at Morris's Island. But he has shown the discretion of a
brave man. South Carolina will soon learn how much she has undervalued
the people of the Free States. Because they prefer law to bowie-knives
and revolvers, she has too lightly reckoned on their caution and
timidity. She will find, that, though slow to kindle, they are as slow
to yield, and that they are willing to risk their lives for the defence
of law, though not for the breach of it. They are beginning to question
the value of a peace that is forced on them at the point of the bayonet,
and is to be obtained only by an abandonment of rights and duties.

When we speak of the courage and power of the Free States, we do not
wish to be understood as descending to the vulgar level of meeting brag
with brag. We speak of them only as among the elements to be gravely
considered by the fanatics who may render it necessary for those who
value the continued existence of this Confederacy as it deserves to be
valued to kindle a back-fire, and to use the desperate means which God
has put into their hands to be employed in the last extremity of free
institutions. And when we use the term Coercion, nothing is farther from
our thoughts than the carrying of blood and fire among those whom
we still consider our brethren of South Carolina. These civilized
communities of ours have interests too serious to be risked on a
childish wager of courage,--a quality that can always be bought cheaper
than day-labor on a railway-embankment. We wish to see the Government
strong enough for the maintenance of law, and for the protection, if
need be, of the unfortunate Governor Pickens from the anarchy he has
allowed himself to be made a tool of for evoking. Let the power of the
Union be used for any other purpose than that of shutting and barring
the door against the return of misguided men to their allegiance. At the
same time we think legitimate and responsible force prudently exerted
safer than the submission, without a struggle, to unlawful and
irresponsible violence.

Peace is the greatest of blessings, when it is won and kept by manhood
and wisdom; but it is a blessing that will not long be the housemate of
cowardice. It is God alone who is powerful enough to let His authority
slumber; it is only His laws that are strong enough to protect and
avenge themselves. Every human government is bound to make its laws
so far resemble His, that they shall be uniform, certain, and
unquestionable in their operation; and this it can do only by a timely
show of power, and by an appeal to that authority which is of divine
right, inasmuch as its office is to maintain that order which is the
single attribute of the Infinite Reason that we can clearly apprehend
and of which we have hourly example.

* * * * *


REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.


Personal History of Lord Bacon, From Unpublished Papers. By WILLIAM
HEPWORTH DIXON, of the Inner Temple. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp.
424.

The life of Bacon, as it has been ordinarily written, presents contrasts
so strange, that thoughtful readers have been compelled either to doubt
the accuracy of the narrative, or to admit that in his case Nature
departed from her usual processes, and embodied antithesis in a man. The
character suggested by the events of his life has long been in direct
opposition to the character impressed on his writings; and Macaulay, who
gave to the popular opinion its most emphatic and sparkling expression,
increased this difference by exaggerating the opposite elements of the
human epigram, and ended in manufacturing the most brilliant monstrosity
that ever bore the name of a person. Lord Campbell followed with a
biography having all the appearance of conscientious research and
judicial impartiality, but which was really nothing more than a weak
translation of Macaulay's vivid sentences into such English "as it had
pleased God to endow him withal." Bacon, to all inquiring men, still
remained outside of the statements of both; and after the lapse of
nearly two centuries, the slight biographical sketch by his chaplain,
Dr. Rawleigh, conveyed a juster idea of the man than all the
biographies by which it had been succeeded, but not superseded.

Mr. Dixon's "Personal History of Lord Bacon" is the first attempt to
vindicate his fame by original research into unpublished documents. It
is a mortifying reflection to all who speak the English tongue, that
this task should have been deferred so long. There has been no lack
of such research in regard to insignificant individuals who have been
accidentally connected with events which come within the cognizance
of English historians; but the greatest Englishman among all English
politicians and statesmen since the Norman Conquest has heretofore been
honored with no biographer who considered him worthy the labor which has
been lavished on inferior men. The readers of Macaulay's four volumes
of English history have often expressed their amazement at his minute
knowledge of the political mediocrities of the time of James II.
and William III. He spared neither time nor labor in collecting and
investigating facts regarding comparatively unknown persons who happened
to be connected with his subject; but in his judgment of a man who,
considered simply as a statesman, was infinitely greater than Halifax
or Dauby, he depends altogether on hearsay, and gives that hearsay
the worst possible appearance. In his article on Bacon, he not merely
evinces no original research, but he so combines the loose statements he
takes for granted, that, in his presentation of them, they make out
a stronger case against Bacon than is warranted by their fair
interpretation. Indeed, leaving out the facts which Macaulay suppresses
or is ignorant of, and taking into account only those which he includes,
his judgment of Bacon is still erroneous. Long before we read Mr.
Dixon's book, we had reversed Macaulay's opinion merely by scrutinizing,
and restoring to their natural relations, Macaulay's facts.

But Mr. Dixon's volume, while in style and matter it is one of the most
interesting and entertaining books of the season, is especially valuable
for the new light it sheds on the subject by the introduction of
original materials. These materials, to be sure, were within the reach
of any person who desired to write an impartial biography; but Mr. Dixon
no less deserves honor for withstanding the prejudice that Bacon's
moral character was unquestionably settled as base, and for daring to
investigate anew the testimony on which the judgment was founded. And
there can be no doubt that he has dispelled the horrible chimera, that
the same man can be thoroughly malignant or mean in his moral nature and
thoroughly beneficent or exalted in his intellectual nature. While we do
not doubt that depravity and intelligence can make an unholy alliance,
we do doubt that the intelligence thus prompted can exhibit, to an eye
that discerns spirits, all the vital signs of benevolence. If, in the
logic of character, Iago or Jerry Sneak be in the premises, it is
impossible to find Bacon in the conclusion.

The value of Mr. Dixon's book consists in its introduction of new facts
to illustrate every questionable incident in Bacon's career. It is
asserted, for instance, that Bacon, as a member of Parliament, was
impelled solely by interested motives, and opposed the government merely
to force the government to recognize his claims to office. Mr. Dixon
brings forward facts to prove that his opposition is to be justified
on high grounds of statesmanship; that he was both a patriot and a
reformer; that great constituencies were emulous to make him their
representative; that in wit, in learning, in reason, in moderation, in
wisdom, in the power of managing and directing men's minds and passions,
he was the first man in the House of Commons; that the germs of great
improvements are to be found in his speeches; that, when he was
overborne by the almost absolute power of the Court, his apparent
sycophancy was merely the wariness of a wise statesman; that Queen
Elizabeth eventually acknowledged his services to the country, and, far
from neglecting him, repeatedly extended to him most substantial
marks of her favor. This portion of Mr. Dixon's volume, founded on
state-papers, will surprise both the defamers and the eulogists of
Bacon. It contains facts of which both Macaulay and Basil Montagu were
ignorant.

Of Bacon's relations with Essex we never had but one opinion. All the
testimony brought forward to convict Bacon of treachery to Essex seemed
to us inconclusive. The facts, as stated by Macaulay and Lord Campbell,
do not sustain their harsh judgment. A parallel may be found in the
present political condition of our own country. Let us suppose Senator
Toombs so fortunate as to have had a wise counsellor, who for ten years
had borne to him the same relation which Bacon bore to Essex. Let us
suppose that it was understood between them that both were in favor
of the Union and the Constitution, and that nothing was to be done to
forward the triumph of their party which was not strictly legal. Then
let us suppose that Mr. Toombs, from the impulses of caprice and
passion, had secretly established relations with desperate disunionists,
and had thus put in jeopardy not only the interests, but the lives, of
those who were equally his friends and the friends of the Constitution.
Let us further suppose that he had suddenly placed himself at the
head of an armed force to overturn the United States government at
Washington, while he was still a Senator from Georgia, sworn to support
the Constitution of the United States, and that his cheated friend and
counsellor had just left the President of the United States, after a
long conference, in which he had attempted to show, to an incredulous
listener, that Senator Toombs was a devoted friend to the Union, though
dissatisfied with some of the members of the Administration. This is a
very faint illustration of the political relations between Essex
and Bacon, admitting the generally received facts on which Bacon is
execrated as false to his friend. Mr. Dixon adduces new facts which
completely justify Bacon's conduct. If Bacon, like Essex, had been ruled
by his passions, he would have been a far fiercer denouncer of Essex's
treason. He had every reason to be enraged. He was a wise man duped by a
foolish one. He was in danger of being implicated in a treason which he
abhorred, through the perfidy of a man who was generally considered as
his friend and patron, and who was supposed to act from his advice. As
Bacon doubtless knew what we now for the first time know, every candid
reader must be surprised at the moderation of his course. Essex would
not have hesitated to shoot or stab Bacon, had Bacon behaved to him as
he had behaved to Bacon. But we pardon, it seems, the most hateful
and horrible selfishness which springs from the passions; our moral
condemnation is reserved for that faint form of selfishness which may be
suspected to have its source in the intellect.

In regard to the other charges against Bacon, we think that Mr. Dixon
has brought forward evidence which must materially modify the current
opinions of Bacon's personal character. He has proved that Bacon, as a
practical statesman, was in advance of his age, rather than behind it.
He has proved that his philosophy penetrated his politics, and that he
gave wise advice, and recommended large, liberal, and humane measures to
a generation which could not appreciate them. He has proved that he did
everything that a man in his situation could do for the cause of truth
and justice which did not necessitate his retirement from public life.
The abuses by which he may have profited he not only did not defend,
but tried to reform. Among the statesmen of his day he appears not only
intellectually superior, but conventionally respectable,--a fact which
would seem to be established by the bare statement, that he died
wretchedly poor, while most of them died enormously rich.

But Mr. Dixon, in his advocacy of Bacon, overlooks the circumstance,
that no man could hold high office under James I., without complying
with abuses calculated to damage his reputation with posterity. We have
no doubt that Bacon's compliance was connected with considerations which
Mr. Dixon entirely ignores. Far from discriminating between Bacon the
philosopher and Bacon the politician, we have always thought that they
were intimately connected. Bacon's Method, the thing on which, as a
philosopher, he especially prided himself, was defective. It left out
that power by which all discoveries have since his time been made,
namely, scientific genius. Its successful working depended on an immense
collection of facts, which no individual, and no society of individuals,
could possibly make. He himself was never weary of asserting that the
Method could never produce its beneficent effects, unless it were
assisted by the revenues of a nation. Of the course which physical
science really followed he had no prevision. Copernicus, Kepler,
Galileo, Gilbert, he never appreciated. He was an intellectual autocrat,
who had matured his own scheme of interpreting Nature, and thought,
that, if it were systematically carried out, the inmost secrets of
Nature could he mastered. His desire to be Lord Chancellor of England
was subsidiary to his larger desire to be Lord Chancellor of Nature
herself. He hoped, by managing James and Buckingham, to flatter them
into aiding, by the revenues of the State, his grand philosophical
scheme. Combine the facts which Mr. Dixon has disinterred with the facts
which every thoughtful reader of Bacon's philosophical works already
knows, and the vindication of Bacon as a man is complete.

We are inclined to think that he failed in both of the objects of his
highest ambition. His philosophic Method is demonstrably a failure; his
attempt to convert James and Buckingham to his views resulted in his own
unjust disgrace with contemporaries and posterity. The truth is, that,
cool, serene, comprehensive, and unimpassioned as he appears, he was
from his youth actuated by a fanaticism which seems less intense than
the fanaticism of a man like Cromwell only because it was infinitely
more broad. Had he succeeded in the design he proposed to himself,
his intellectual domination would not be confined to England, or the
kingdoms of the civilized world, but would be commensurate with the
whole domain of Nature and man.

We are so grateful to Mr. Dixon for what he has done, that we are not
disposed to quarrel with him for what he has left undone. He has added
such a mass of incontrovertible facts to the materials which must enter
into the future biography of Bacon, that his book cannot fail to exact
cordial praise from the most captious critics. Bacon, in his aspirations
and purposes, was a very much greater man than he appears in Mr. Dixon's
biography; but still to Mr. Dixon belongs the credit of rescuing his
personal reputation from undeserved ignominy. If we add to this his
vivid pictures of the persons and events of the Elizabethan age, and his
bright, sharp, and brief way of flashing his convictions and discoveries
on the mind of the reader, we indicate merits which will make his volume
generally and justly popular. The letters of Lady Ann Bacon, the mother
of the philosopher and statesman-letters for which we are indebted to
Mr. Dixon's exhaustive research--would alone be sufficient to justify
the publication of his interesting book.


_Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk_. With
Memorials of the Men and Events of his Time. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
12mo. pp. 480.

Who was he? and what was he like?--Sir Walter Scott answered these
interrogatories more than thirty years ago, in this wise. He says, in
his "Review of the Life and Works of John Home,"--"Dr. Carlyle was, for
a long period, clergyman of Musselburgh; his character was as excellent
as his conversation was amusing and instructive; his person and
countenance, even at a very advanced age, were so lofty and commanding,
as to strike every artist with his resemblance to the Jupiter Tonans of
the Pantheon."

Sixty years ago, this old Scottish clergyman sat down, one January day,
in Musselburgh, and began to write his "Autobiography." He had lived
seventy-nine years among scenes of great interest, and had known men of
remarkable genius. He wrote and died. The manuscript he left has been
often read and enjoyed by clever men and women, who in their turn have
gone to the churchyard to sleep with the venerable old man the story of
whose life they had perused. Sir Walter himself once caught a glimpse
of the time-stained sheets. All are now dead who could by any chance he
pained by the publication of facts in which their relatives look part
long years ago. So the world has now another volume to add to the store
of biography, and the future historian will have another treasury of
facts from which to illumine his pages.

Himself the son of a clergyman, Alexander Carlyle had a good
school-drilling in Prestonpans, where he was born. One of the stories of
his childhood is very amusing, inasmuch as it pictures a dozen old women
listening to young Alexander, aged six, who reads the Song of Solomon to
them in a graveyard, he all the while perched on a tombstone. My Lord
Grange was the principal man in Prestonpans parish; and Master Carlyle,
with his excellent father, had great reverence for the patron who had
been the cause of the family's transplantation from Annandale. My
Lady was a very lively person, daughter of the man who shot President
Lockhart in the dark because he had infuriated him in an arbitration
case in the court. This great family attracted the boyish wonder of
young Carlyle, and some of the gossiping stories that he heard in
his father's house made his juvenile ears tingle. Poor Lady Grange!
Quarrelling with her husband one day, on his return from London, where
pretty Fanny Lindsay, who kept a coffee-house in the Haymarket, had
bewitched him, she never knew peace again. Her temper, never very
soothing or placable, got entire possession of her life, and she rained
stormy gusts of passion on her guilty lord. He trembled and endured,
till he found a razor concealed under his wife's pillow, and then he
determined to remove his violent helpmeet to a safe seclusion. By main
force, with the aid of accomplices, he seized the lady in his house in
Edinburgh, and bore her through Stirling to the Highlands. Thence she
was taken to St. Kilda's desolate island, far off in the Western Ocean,
and there kept for the remainder of her days, scantily furnished with
only the coarsest fare. Her condition was most wretched to the last.
In those days, licentiousness and religious enthusiasm were not
incompatible associates, and Lord Grange frequently spent his evenings
with the Minister of Prestonpans, praying, and settling high points of
Calvinism with the old pastor. Good Mrs. Carlyle used to complain that
they did not part without wine, and that late hours were consequent upon
the claret they liberally imbibed after their pious discussions.

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