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and frequent contributions to periodicals, he has written History of the Great Rebellion, in conjunction with Henry M. Alden (1863-67); The Spanish Armada (1878); Thomas Carlyle: His Theories and Opinions (1880); Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and Poet (1881), and The World's Opportunities and how to Use Them (1884).

THE OPENING OF THE CIVIL WAR.

We have now traced the origin and described the development of the great conspiracy against the Union, fortifying our statements by a copious array of documentary, evidence. We have shown how, after forty years, it culminated in the Great Rebellion. We have depicted the great uprising of the North to oppose that Rebellion. Henceforth it remains to tell the story of the War for the Union. We are to show how a peaceful people, whose armies had for generations numbered only a few thousand men, found itself suddenly transformed into two great military nations, equipping and bringing into the field the greatest armies of modern times. We shall have to tell of great victories and of great defeats-of disasters overcome and of opportunities thrown away. We shall unduly praise no man because he strove for the Right; we shall malign no man because he fought for the Wrong. We shall endeavor to anticipate the sure verdict of afterages upon events in which we have a deep personal interest. Whether in the end, we shall have to speak of a Nation made strong by the sharp trial through which it will have passed, or of that Nation broken and shattered, the future must unfold.

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We may consider this war to have fairly begun on the 8th of February, 1861, when the Southern Confederacy-consisting of the seven States which had formally seceded from the Union-was formally inaugurated. All that had before been done was the isolated action of disaffected individuals and local com

This, and the succeeding extract, were written early in 1863.

munities. From that moment these individuals and communities became formidable by the league into which they had entered, and by the further accessions upon which they might reasonably count. The die was cast when the Confederacy was formed. All previous steps might have been retraced; now, nothing was left but to submit the question to the arbitrament of strength, and to abide the consequences.-History of the Great Rebellion.

THE CONFEDERACY AND THE UNION.

The eleven States of which the Confederacy finally consisted had a white population of five and a half million, leaving twenty-one and a half millions in the Union. But it was confidently believed at the Southand for a time feared at the North-that Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri would join the other slaveholding States. This would bring the white population of the Confederacy up to eight millions, leaving nineteen millions to the Union. These anticipations and apprehensions have not been realized, although the Confederates have received much support from individuals in these States, and Kentucky and Missouri have been formally admitted as members of the Confederacy, and are represented in its Congress.

But besides their free population, the Confederate States contained three and a half millions of slaves; and there was room for a wide difference of opinion as to the influence of this class upon the military resources of the Confederacy.

The North believed that the slaves, instead of adding strength to the Confederacy, were an element of positive weakness. Not only, said they, is society so constituted that from more than three-eighths of the able-bodied population, not a soldier can be raised for the army or a dollar for the treasury, but they are, from their very condition, so hostile to their masters, that a large portion of the whites must remain at home to keep the blacks in subjection. The march of a Union army into the South will be the signal for a general servile uprising.

The South denied all this. They affirmed that their domestic institution gave them power, as a military nation, altogether beyond their mere population. In every State, they said, there must be men who rule, and, if need be, fight; and others who hold the place of servants and laborers. Everywhere else in the civilized world these two classes merge into each other so gradually that no one can draw the line between them. With us the line is clear and palpable. Every black man. knows that he is a laborer, and can never be anything else; he is to work, not to vote or hold office. Every white man feels that he is a ruler to-day, and may be a soldier to-morrow. Under our institutions so completely is the ordinary labor of life performed by the slaves, that every able-bodied white man could take the field at a week's notice, and everything would go on as before. Try this at the North: take three-fifths of your men of military age from their farms and their workshops, and everything would come to a stand-still in a month. There is no danger of an uprising of the slaves. If they were disposed to rise, they have no means of arming themselves, or of acting in concert. Besides, they have no disposition to rise. They have been for generations so trained to obedience, that the women, the old men and boys, who cannot take the field, will be amply able to keep them in subjection.

There was something of truth in both these representations. For a short war, to be waged abroad, or even upon the frontiers of the country, slavery, as the event proved, undoubtedly gave great facilities for raising and equipping an army. There is probably no other nation of eight millions who could raise from nothing the armies which the Confederacy has brought into and maintained in the field. The habits of the people furnished the basis for a military organization. The population was almost entirely rural. New Orleans was indeed a great city, with a population of 170,000; there were three or four other cities with a population of from 20,000 to 50,000; beyond these there was hardly a town with more than 5,000 inhabitants. Of the rural population, every man had a gun, most of them a horse; and there were few who were not to a good degree expert

in their use and management. Men living far apart, with abundant leisure, naturally seek occasions of coming together. These, in the South, were afforded by the regular sessions of the courts and by the militia musters. The court-houses are placed as nearly as possible in the centre of the county; and the militia musters were usually held there. From all the region men thronged to court and muster. The parade of the militia was not the least attraction at these gatherings; and every man was enrolled in the same company, and had learned something of military discipline. Rude as this militia organization was, it formed a basis for something better, and did good service when the people were summoned to actual warfare. In a few months the South was enabled to transform itself into a great military camp, with no serious interruption in the routine of its regular life.

At the North-and especially at the East-the case was widely different. There every man was engaged in some regular occupation. Besides New York and Philadelphia, each with a population of more than 600,000, there were six cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants -averaging 150,000,-nearly a score with from 40,000 to 80,000, fully fifty more with 10,000 each; and towns almost without number with more than 5,000, many of them being so closely connected with the great cities that they might be regarded as suburbs. Nearly onehalf of the inhabitants of the North were urban; fully nine-tenths of the South were rural. One consequence of this is obvious: The man in the country may need to protect himself and his household, and so provides himself with arms; the man in a town is protected by the police, and rarely requires arms. The rule was, therefore, that the Southern man was acquainted with the use of arms; the Northern man was not, and it required time to transform him into a soldier.

The Confederacy was strong also in the entire unanimity of its people. Several of the States hesitated to secede from the Union; but that step once taken, there was no overt opposition except in Western Virginia and Eastern Tennessee. The doctrine of State Supremacy had come to be an undisputed article of political faith with all parties. The Federal Government was merely

an agent created by the States, to be used or discarded at the pleasure of any one of them. Every man was bound to abide by the action of his State, to which alone he owed allegiance.

The North at first showed no such unanimity. The ties between the great Democratic party at the North and the South had been so close, that many believed that the Northern Democrats would yield everything to their old Southern associates rather than take part in the War for the Union; and the utterances of many of the leaders of the party furnished grounds for that belief. It was months before it came to be apparent that the attachment of the great body of the Northern Democrats to the Union was not less earnest than that of the Republicans. Mr. Lincoln, whose election to the Presidency was the signal for secession, recovered only a little more than two-fifths of the popular vote cast at the Presidential election of 1860. He was not even the first choice of a majority of his own party. He was untried in public affairs, and when nominated was hardly known beyond the limits of his own State. Taking all things into consideration, the Confederates had at the outset fair reasons for their confident anticipations of success. History of the Great Rebellion.

THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY.

The natural argument for the personal immortality of the individual man, as set forth by Mr. Emerson, may be thus briefly presented: "God has implanted in the nature of man a longing for immortality, and, by so implanting it he has promised that this longing shall be realized He is always true to his promises; and therefore man must be immortal." To us this argument is altogether inconclusive. If we rightly understand Emerson, it is inconclusive to him also, in so far at least as anything like personal immortality is concerned. "I confess," he says, "that everything connected with our personality fails. Nature spares the individual. No prosperity is promised to that. We have our indemnity only in the success of that to which we belong. That is immortal, and we only through that.

VOL. XII.-9

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