THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
ONE of the many impediments to English comprehension of the United States is, that their people speak Eng- lish. If they did not, our information would come to us, so to speak, filtered, through special correspondents, translators, and men whose knowledge enabled them at least to pare away superfluities. As it is, intelligence, written with all the minuteness of local gossip, reaches a public without the ad- vantage of local information. The mass of details bewilder the judgment, and reduces the imagination, perhaps the most important faculty in studying foreign questions, to momen- tary inanition. Men can realize border war conducted on a great scale, but not the scene in Missouri. They can follow, as it were, the steps of an army, but not of individual soldiery. They can make out the drift of revolution in Russia, of which they hear only when some step has been taken, but not of a change in America, of which they bear something every day. Most men who attend to the matter at all read American papers, or know American politicians, or listen to men who have made American politics a study; and as all these authorities differ, and all offer crude masses of facts, they end usually by a frank acknowledgment that they can- not express, much less form, a consistent opinion. They want a mental emetic before the judgment can act. This evil is not quite so visible in military affairs. Prac- tical Englishmen, watching a distant campaign, do contrive, by a sort of instinctive process, to reject superfluous details. They may read details, but they really retain only the salient facts—the victory or defeat, and the bearing of the advantage gained. They read, for instance, perhaps, half a dozen accounts of the victory at Fort Henry, but they only remember that three gunboats captured the place, that it commanded the Tennessee, and that consequently the road by that river is open to the Federal force. Just now there is a general im- pression abroad that the tide of ill-fortune which set in against the North after Bull's Run has fairly begun to ebb. Nobody cares much to examine the facts on which he founds his opinion. Indeed, if cross-questioned on any special success, the hopeful speaker would probably end by giving it up, and retaining his impression unmoved. It is, we believe, a just impression, though even those whose business it is can hardly trace out its reasons. The capture of Fort Henry is not a very mighty event, when the territory to be subdued covers 800,000 square miles. Burnside's expedition, though decently successful, has only captured Roanoke, and so gained a good point d' appui from which to attack the Carolinas ; but as the South is not for the moment a commercial State, the injury inflicted can scarcely have a great influence on the war. General Hunter is about to do something wonderful in the Far West, but, as he says, he has no means of trans- port, and no very clear ideas about improvising any. The Army of the Potomac is as motionless as ever, and losing confidence in its Commander-in-chief, while the arrest of General Stone on a charge of deliberate treachery bewilders the soldiery, and may have the most terrible effect in the next action. Soldiers who suspect their generals criticise instead of obeying. The tax-bill is not yet framed, while the law making inconvertible paper a legal tender has re- ceived the assent of one branch of the Legislature, and is probably by this time in operation. Our correspondent, indeed, affirms that national bankruptcy, with all its conse- quences, is now upon the Americans, and deprecates any attempt to undervalue the crisis. Nevertheless, in spite of the small precipitate left in the critical crucible, the popular impression is correct, and the cause of the North has for the last fortnight steadily advanced. It is a moral and not a physical gain which has been really achieved—a victory in the bureaux rather than in the battle-field. The whole Department of War has been silently reorganized. In the first place, Mr. Simon Cameron, whose presence benefited only contractors, has been removed, and sent, if not to Siberia, at least to St. Petersburg, and his suc- cessor is in one respect at least happily chosen. Mr. Stanton dare be impertinent, and the swarm of hangers-on, place- hunters, contractors, and petty swindlers who infest Wash- ington ante-chambers, are slinking off in search of easier prey. Moreover, if not a man of extraordinary capacity, he has at least the power of keeping himself at the top, and the mob of generals, guerillas, and politicians who have hitherto done duty as army chiefs, finding a man among them whose voice is loud eaough to be heard, are falling back into rank. They were all fretting, and bickering, and worrying the departments, but they seem disposed to obey Mr. Stanton, who, to quicken their zeal in that direction, has practically assumed the supreme command. The President is by law Commander-in-Chief, and the moment he steps forward in that capacity, General McClellan becomes only General of a particular army. Mr. Lincoln, relying on his subordinate, has ventured to take this step, and all orders west of the Blue Ridge now go straight from the Minister at War. The change would be unwise were its object increased inter- ference, but it really involves only increased liberty for Generals at a distance. They now need only advance at their own discretion and they are sure of support. The consequence is, that the enormous combinations which only trained armies can effect, are for the moment laid aside, and Generals Buel, Halleck, Hunter, and a host of men still less known to fame, but each in command of armies, can use the energy, the rashness, and the shiftiness which are the characteristics of volunteers. The first material result of this change has been the advance on Fort Henry, but the moral effect is not to be estimated by any single incident of the campaign. The South has now, instead of one overgrown army, to resist five, each as large as the Generals can handle or the commissariat feed, all acting on one plan, but each moved at the discretion of its own leader. General McClellan used, it is said, to telegraph orders for immediate attack or immediate halt to officers a thousand miles distant from his own camp. The new cheerfulness of the Generals has communicated itself to the people, who, democrats though they may be, have discovered by experience that the first need of mankind is to be led, that even a silent pillar of cloud, if it be but visibly foremost, will make the advance of thousands coherent and effectual. No great civil leader has yet appeared—not en a. Mr. Stanton—but the revolution is perceptibly marchinOnd behind it, as usual, the.people are falling into their ranks. In other words, the vast mass of opinion which in times of national crisis always surges about helplessly is becoming coherent and firm. The nation begins to know what it wants, and to -shape for itself, more or less roughly, a consistent and working policy. A great man would shape it more quickly, and perhaps-make it a grander work, but the millions of minds now employed on one and the same design will at least construct something which meets the immediate need. The bias of all men's thought in America is obviously towards one great change—a strong central authority able to compel organization and to raise revenues adequate to a fighting civilization. The people, in short, are becoming republican instead of merely democratic, and as with each new step in that direction they find they become more strong, the pro- gress will be more and more rapid. 1. The mere fact of a terrible contest waged to preserve nationality, tends to strengthen the central authority, for it elevates the idea of the State as the supreme object of respect, and the only thing worthy of sacrifice. Themen who are ready to die for the -Union are compelled uncon- sciously to assist in investing the authority which presides in the Government with a strength it has never possessed. Accordingly, the President is invested with a revolutionary authority, before which all the old powers give way. Mr. Lincoln is not much respected, but be can, nevertheless, dismiss a Minister with a word, strip the CommandeiL in-Chief of five-sixths of his power by an order in the bureaux, and alter the whole plan of the war without any utterance at all. The politicians were powerful, but Mr. Lincoln appoints a Secretary who sets them all at defiance. The Generals were more powerful, but Mr. Lincoln, a civilian, quietly sends their orders. The newspaper press was most powerful, but Mr. Lincoln arrests the special correspondent of the most powerful journal for over-intrusive conduct. It may be argued that all this is temporary, and we trust these revolutionary acts may prove so, but ideas once adopted are never temporary, and the North hp gained the idea that the President ought to rule. It has not, indeed, as yet given him permanent means, possibly does not intend to give them to Mr. Lincoln, but the idea is there, and the power, when the provisional status is over, exists to carry out. Only a longer tenure is required,—for the "prerogative" is already great-r-and the Democrats themselves are urging for all other offices a permanent or greatly increased tenure. The revelations of the Van Wyck committee have thoroughly disgusted the people. Like the French, the Americans are eager for money, but, like them also, they resent pillage, and over-estimate pecuniary integrity. Then they are weary to death of incompetence ; they have discovered that experience means much in government as well as the counting-house, and the journals are crying eagerly for a return to the rule which alone they say will induce the best men to seek office. The belief that "one man is as good as another, and better too," is given up. Appoint- ments during good conduct are strongly advocated, and it needs but to extend the rule to the heads of office to create an administrative revolution. A president appointed for ten years, and supported by a permanent body of officials— this would be a Government strictly republican but widely different from that which exists. Moreover, while this pro- cess goes on, the whole position of Congress is changing. The advocates of State rights may still be powerful, but the people are clamouring for heavy and for equal taxation. It is Congress to which they appeal, and the power which must decree heavy taxes must also have power to enforce them. Whatever else is uncertain, it is clear that hencefor- ward an American citizen will, on the matter of taxes, be strictly a subject. The people may repudiate the debt, may disband the army, may strive in every unscrupulous way to shake the yoke from their necks. But, there is one thing they will not do, and that is, suffer themselves to be attacked with impunity, either by rebels, if they conquer the South, or by rivals, if the South gains its end. To defend themselves they must spend, and spend as a nation ; and the power which levies the taxes is certain to be in the end the centre of national life. At the same moment that Con- gress is strengthened by the assumption of this new power, it is also improved, and rendered fit for its work. Opinion is reducing its emoluments, and though the representatives cling to their privileges with despairing tenacity, they feel that the battle is lost. With Members unpaid, or badly paid, no mileages and no offices open to interest, the trade of the politician is gone, and the constituencies must perforce elect men who can live without pay from the State. The re- velations of personal corruption tend in the same direction. The journals exclaim against " hungry " candidates, and if the present condition of feeling lasts—and it is sure to last while taxation is heavy—wealth may come to be consi- dered a guarantee for honesty instead of a disqualification for office. A .Congress filled with men whom the people respect, -and invested with power to levy a heavy tax- ation, would be almost a Parliament—needs, indeed, only some control over the Executive to become one. And that control is inevitable, for Congress will, in the future, possess the strings of the purse, without which the Pre- sident, with an army to move, a fleet to maintain, and a strong tax.-gathering machinery to keep in order, cannot move one step. He must conciliate the House, and to conciliate he must explain ; and the men through whom he explains, whatever their powers or names, will be virtual Ministers. Already a vote of censure strikes a Minister of War down. Already a Secretary for the Navy finds it neces- sary to defend himself to the House. Already a Commander- in-Chief in the field can be stripped of power by a speech made in a body which has legally no more control over him than theoretically the House of Commons has over the Duke of Cambridge. There is no mistaking the drift of these things, once cleared of confusing details. A Government with a great revenue must be a strong Government, and a perma- nent Government ; and if the Union continues a nation, a great revenue is inevitable. If it does not—if it splits into three or four separate nations, then taxation will be even sharper, for every section will have to defend itself from all points of the compass at once.
Previous page
