James Ford Rhodes

“ I could not feel that to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country and Constitution all together.... I think the Constitution invests its Commander-in-Chief with the law of war in time of war. The most that can be said—if so much—is that slaves are property. ”

“ Happy the country whose dictatorship, if dictator there must be, falls into wise and honest hands! The honesty, magnanimity, and wisdom of Lincoln guided him aright, and no harm has come to the great principles of liberty from the arbitrary acts which he did or suffered to be done. On the other hand he has so impressed himself upon the Commonwealth that he has made a precedent for future rulers in a time of national peril, and what he excused and defended will be assumed as a matter of course because it will be according to the Constitution as interpreted by Abraham Lincoln. ”

“ Slow to act and distrustful of his impulses, Lincoln let the great opportunity slip when with a word he might have won the equivalent of a successful campaign in the field. Alike a leader and a representative of popular sentiment, he in this instance suffered his representative character to overtop the leadership. The fellow-feeling with the American public that in any dispute with Great Britain there is but one side to be considered prevented him from making a brilliant stroke. ”

“ Of course we thrill at his tribute to Washington, where he has summed up our reverence, trust, and faith in him in one single sentence which shows true appreciation and deep feeling; and it flatters our national vanity, of which we have a goodly stock, to read in his fourth volume that the creation of the United States was one of the turning points in the history of the world.
No saying is more trite, at any rate to an educated American audience, than that the development of the English nation is one of the most wonderful things, if not the most wonderful thing, which history records. ”

“ The sympathy of the British government and public with Italy during the war of 1859, and the progress made in that war towards Italian liberty, impressed upon the English mind the doctrine that a body of people who should seek to throw off an obnoxious dominion and form an orderly government of their own, deserved the best wishes of the civilized world. Why, it was asked in England, if we were right to sympathize with Italy against Austria, should we not likewise sympathize with the Southern Confederacy whose people were resisting the subjugation of the North? ”

“ He will recognize in Homer and Shakespeare the great historians of human nature, and he will ever attempt, although feeling that failure is certain, to wrest from them their secret of narration, to acquire their art of portrayal of character. He must be a man of the world, but equally well a man of the academy. If, like Thucydides and Tacitus, the American historian chooses the history of his own country as his field, he may infuse his patriotism into his narrative. ”

“ An editor of very positive opinions, he was apt to convey the idea that if any one differed from him on a vital question, like the tariff or finance or civil service reform, he was necessarily a bad man. He made no allowances for the weaknesses of human nature, and had no idea that he himself ever could be mistaken. Though a powerful critic, he did not realize the highest criticism, which discerns and brings out the good as well as the evil. He won his reputation by dealing out censure, which has a rare attraction for a certain class of minds, as Tacitus observed in his “History.” ”

“ The most significant and touching feature of the situation was that the operatives of the North of England who suffered most from the lack of cotton, were frankly on the side of the United States. They knew that their misery came from the war, and were repeatedly told that it would cease in a day if the North would accept an accomplished fact; but discerning, in spite of their meagre intelligence, that the struggle was one of democracy against privilege, of freedom against slavery, they resisted all attempts to excite them to a demonstration against its continuance. ”

“ But Lincoln though unversed in finance had a first-rate knowledge of men, and this it was that led him to retain as his Secretary of the Treasury one whose inflexible honesty and receptive mind justify the popular estimate of him as a strong finance minister. That the war had gone on for nearly two years with an immense expenditure of money, and that the Government could still buy all it needed of food and munitions of war and could pay its soldiers, was due primarily to the patriotism and devotion of the Northern people, but honor should also be given to the manager of the country’s finances. ”

“ This appeals to those imbued with the spirit of the academy who frankly acknowledge, in the main, our inferiority in the scholarship, which produces great works of literature and science, to England, Germany, and France, and who with patriotic eagerness wish that we may reach the height attained in the older countries. To recur to my own study again, should we produce a historian or historical writer the equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay there would be a feeling of pride in our historical genius which would make itself felt at every academical and historical gathering. ”

“ Yet Lincoln clearly feared to give up Mason and Slidell, although he must have appreciated that their voices were more eloquent from their prison than they would have been in London and Paris. Indeed, as a mere matter of policy, the United States ought to have made it easy for the author of the Fugitive Slave Law to reach London and the champion of filibustering in the interest of slavery to reach Paris, since their pleading could in no way injure the Northern cause, so well was it understood, at any rate in England, that they represented slavery. ”

“ The United States can only get rid of its undesirable executive by a cumbrous and tedious process which can only be brought to bear during a period of revolutionary excitement; and even this failed because a legal case was not made against the President. The criticism was pregnant, but the remedy was not Cabinet responsibility. Whatever may be the merits or demerits of our polity, it has grown as has the English; it has fitted itself to the people, and cabinet government cannot be had without a complete change of the organic act, which is neither possible nor desirable. ”

“ Such was the posture of affairs on the evening of August 29, when Frémont went to bed, with an undoubted perception of the strength of anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the need of some diversion to maintain his sway. Inspiration must have come to him in the night. At all events he decided upon a proclamation freeing the slaves. Next day he issued it, declaring the slaves of all persons in the State of Missouri, taking up arms against the United States, freemen. That it was a play to retain his power was evident to hard-headed men. ”

“ He will speak of the broad acres and their products, the splendid industrial development due to the capacity and energy of the captains of industry; but he will like to dwell on the universities and colleges, on the great numbers seeking a higher education, on the morality of the people, their purity of life, their domestic happiness. He will never be weary of referring to Washington and Lincoln, feeling that a country with such exemplars is indeed one to awaken envy, and he will not forget the brave souls who followed where they led. ”

“ But there were English statesmen and writers of ability who understood that the fight of the North was against slavery; they urged her cause without ceasing, although many times their hearts failed them as they feared she had undertaken an impossible task. They had as their followers the workingmen whom hunger stared in the face but who realized, as did the upper class, that the cause of the Union was the cause of democracy in England.
Up to the latter part of November, Great Britain preserved a strict neutrality. ”

“ Any one who has studied public sentiment in this country for any period knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the truth. If a student should ask me in what one book he would find the best statement of popular opinion at the North during the Civil War, I should say, Read Sumner’s letters as cited in Mr. Pierce’s biography with the author’s comments. ”

“ Although the number of the Confederates was exaggerated, their power as an invading army, by virtue of their mobility and the genius of their leaders, was rated none too high. Considering that 55,000 veteran soldiers led by Lee, Jackson and Longstreet marched out of Frederick with high spirits and confidence of victory, the alarm which spread over the North was no greater than a community so gravely imperilled might be expected to feel. In Washington the anxiety was no longer so much for the safety of the capital, which was well fortified and garrisoned, as for the danger to the cause. ”

“ What hitherto the eye of genius alone could perceive may become the common property of every one who cares to read a dozen books. But with all of our advantages, [p5] do we write better history than was written before the year 1859, which we may call the line of demarcation between the old and the new? If the English, German, and American historical scholars should vote as to who were the two best historians, I have little doubt that Thucydides and Tacitus would have a pretty large majority. If they were asked to name a third choice, it would undoubtedly lie between Herodotus and Gibbon. ”