Charles Harding Firth

“ In America the claim of the minority to break up the government, if they could not direct it, linked the maintenance of free government and the maintenance of the union together. "I have thought it proper," said Lincoln, "to keep the integrity of our union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our side." The "war was commenced by the South to destroy our union," and "the administration accepted the war thus commenced for the sole avowed object of preserving our union." Any nation which accepted the principles of the Southern leaders must cease to be a nation. ”

“ I will go further and say that the very idea of compromise was as unfamiliar to the average seventeenth-century Englishman as it was familiar to the average citizen of the United States. The constitution of the United States was itself a compromise; not a compromise slowly effected by the incessant and insensible action of opposing forces, as our constitution is, but a compromise made purposely and at once by the ingenious statecraft of able legislators. ”

“ A war between men of the same race, who had lived for three-quarters of a century under the same government, regarded themselves as one nation, and spoke the same language, is essentially a civil war. ”

“ Cromwell saw in the midst of the English people a smaller body, "a peculiar people," "the people of God," "a people that are to God as the apple of His eye." It was the cause of "the people of God" that he had always in his mind, not that of the people in general, though he held that the interests of the two were not incompatible. Lincoln, when he qualified the word "people," spoke of "the plain people" as his special care, and of himself as their representative. One man thought of a class which included all but the whole nation; the other of a minority consisting of a number of allied sects. ”

“ Take two races of the same stock, both trained by free institutions and both nurtured by the same creeds, heat them in the fire of political passions, subject them to the strain and pressure of civil war, and we should expect results of much the same kind to follow. ”

“ He termed himself one of the common people. Once, as he told his secretary, he dreamt that he was in a great assembly which made way to let their President pass. As he passed, someone said, "He is a common looking fellow." In his dream Lincoln turned -to the critic and answered, "Friend, the Lord prefers common looking people; that is why he made so many of them." Lincoln always felt that he was one of the many and sympathised with the many, not with the few. His definition of a free government was one "where every man has a right to be equal with every other man." ”

“ Each regarded himself as the champion of the people. Each used precisely the same phrase about the nation he ruled: both style it "the best people in the world." "Incomparably the best people in the world," said Cromwell, forestalling future comparisons. Cromwell's assertion that his government ruled "for the good of the people, and for their interest, and without respect to any other interest," may be set side by side with Lincoln's statement that his aim was to preserve "the government of the people, for the people, by the people." ”

“ It is worth while to compare men as well as events, after the manner of Plutarch. At the close of our war Cromwell was in a position very much like that of Grant: a successful general whose victories marked him out for the headship of the State. But it is not with Grant that I shall compare Cromwell. Each nation, in its need, produced one man whose figure dominates the time, who seems to incarnate for posterity the ideals of the party which triumphed in the struggle, Cromwell and Lincoln. Lincoln was a statesman, Cromwell a great general as well. ”

“ Not till law was obeyed both by soldiers and citizens, till both thought more of duties than of rights, would success be possible. "There are about six millions of men in the country all thinking themselves sovereign and qualified to govern; some thirty-four governors of States who feel like petty kings; and about ten thousand editors, who presume to dictate to generals, presidents, and cabinets." While Lincoln thought that the issue of the struggle would show whether popular government was an absurdity or not, Sherman thought that the struggle itself was proving it an absurdity. ”

“ It is more important to remember that the Parliament, like the Federal government, possessed far greater financial resources than its adversary. It held the richest part of the country, most of the capitalists lived in its quarters, the taxes it levied were more productive, and it could raise loans with greater facility. In the American Civil War the possession of mines and foundries and factories was one of the elements in the superiority of the North; in our Civil War the simpler economic organisation of the time made the control of the manufacturing districts less vital. ”

“ In America the defeated party accepted the result of the war as final: in England they took up arms again and called in the Scots to aid them. After our first Civil War no man suffered on the scaffold for his part in it: the officers of the army were eager for a reconciliation and were disposed to grant the defeated royalists better terms than the politicians and civilians of their party thought wise. But after the second Civil War the temper of the officers was changed: they became eager for the punishment of the royalist leaders. ”

“ As in England no settlement was attained till the old constitution was restored and the disfranchised royalists regained their rights, so in America none was possible till the excluded class were re-enfranchised and the reality of self-government restored to the Southern States.
Each of these settlements left later generations a problem which it would tax their statesmanship to solve. In both countries wise men blundered when they had to deal with racial questions. We Englishmen have still to reckon with the consequences of the policy of Cromwell and the Puritans in Ireland. ”

“ If we search a little we shall find that the superficial resemblances conceal fundamental differences, just as, when we look beneath the surface of things, we shall often perceive a real likeness where at first sight only the dissimilarity struck the eye.
Suppose then that we take events which possess some general resemblance, and examine into the reasons why they resemble each other, and the extent to which they differ, and consider why they differ. Such a comparison is often profitable for the historian. It helps him to understand the real character of both events better ”

“ In America, Sherman, who also regarded efficiency as the one thing that mattered, dwelt continually on the difficulty of conducting a war under a democratic form of government. He complained that the enforcement of discipline was made impossible, that politicians dictated military movements, that the press betrayed the plans of the generals, and turned the armies against their leaders. ”

“ In Ireland, where the struggle was not so much a civil war as a war of races and creeds, the Catholic landowners lost two-thirds of their estates, and had to remove to Connaught to obtain an equivalent for the other third. In America the Southern landowners did not lose their estates, but by the emancipation of their negroes they lost the capital which made their estates productive. ”

“ In both countries, directly or indirectly, the struggle was a struggle for the maintenance of a free government, but in England the problem took the simplest and most elementary form. The question was, whether the will of one man should determine the destinies of a whole people. So at least the leaders of the republicans asserted, seeing more clearly than other men what the real issue would become. ”

“ It was necessary "to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets." ”

“ Now supposing that the Confederate leaders had imitated the English royalists, taken up their arms again in 1867, and called in an army of Canadians or Mexicans to help them to overthrow the government of the Republic, is it not likely that Grant's officers would have become as implacable as Cromwell's? Would a second triumph over rebellion have been as stainless as the first? ”

“ If he had died then, Cromwell's fame, though not as spotless as Washington's or Lincoln's, would have been purer than it is. The next seven years gave occasion to half his party to denounce him as an apostate, and to the next generation to regard him as a tyrant. Mr Roosevelt describes him as a man "cursed with love of power," a man who "had acquired a dictatorial habit of mind." ”

“ But there was not either in the army of King or Parliament one single regiment of trained men to serve as a nucleus and a model. In America there was a regular army of about 16,000 men, and about 1,200 officers who had received a scientific military training at West Point were available for service. About a fifth of these 1,200 officers sided with their States against the Federal government, while the North had four-fifths of them at its disposal, as well as all the privates. ”

“ If a minority will secede rather than acquiesce they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority [4] . ”

“ One can hardly say that Cromwell's aim included government by the people. "What's for their good, not what pleases them " was his motto. Lincoln held that in the long run the people was infallible, but there is no trace of that optimistic view in Cromwell's speeches. ”

“ In England on the contrary the constitution had practically perished in the struggle. All that survived was a part of it, and that a fragmentary part. The cases would have been parallel if the Americans had emerged from the contest without a President or a Senate, and with about a quarter of the Legislature installed as a provisional government and exercising absolute power. But the position of England between 1651 and 1660 was not like that of the Americans in 1865. ”

“ In the South, as Mr Goldwin Smith puts it, "the gentry were accustomed to command, the common people to obey." The Southern aristocracy furnished regimental officers who were accepted as natural leaders and loyally followed. In the regiments of volunteers raised by the North the officers were usually elected by their men, chosen for popularity rather than competence, and as a result indifferently obeyed. The democratic spirit made it difficult for discipline to take root. ”

“ The disparity which at first existed between the Federal and the Confederate cavalry was due to a different cause to physical rather than moral deficiencies: man for man the horsemen of the South were better riders and better shots, and at the time they were better organised and better led. The Southern infantry, taking them as a whole, were better marksmen than those of the North, owing to the different conditions of life in the two sections of the country. ”

“ He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." But Cromwell when he attained power could never succeed in reconciling the movement for religious liberty and the movement for political liberty. ”

“ The Americans had the advantage of retaining the old fabric intact, strengthened rather than weakened by the storm through which it had passed, and needing only a few amendments to adapt it to the new state of things. ”

“ County committees acted on a small scale like the State governments. They enlisted forces of their own and had power to appoint commanders; they levied taxes, raised requisitions, and waged local campaigns against the adherents of the other party. Often these local forces refused to serve outside the boundaries of their shires. Sometimes a county endeavoured to remain neutral. In Cheshire and Yorkshire at the beginning of the war formal treaties of neutrality were signed by the leaders of the two parties. The county of Devon made a truce with the county of Cornwall. ”