FRENCH JUDGMENT OF AMERICA.
AGREAT man, condemned by his countrymen, " left his name and memory to foreign nations and to the next age ;" for it is in nations, free at least from the passions and prejudices of our own country, that we may in some degree anticipate the impartial judgment of future generations. In England these who have dared to profess sympathy with the Northern States of the American Union in the dreadful struggle just concluding have until now found themselves in so small a minority, that they may reasonably look for sym- pathy from this anticipated sentence of future times. We propose therefore to-day to give our readers some samples of the manner in which the subject has been treated by one of the most justly reverenced of living Frenchmen, Count de Montalembert, who has just published (in The Correspondent for May 25) an article entitled " The Victory of the North in the United States."
What must strike every reader at first sight is the hearty cordiality of the Count's sympathy with the Americans. fle is by no means insensible to their faults, but he evidently suffers at the sight of them as at the shame of those near and dear to him. He rejoices in their glory and virtue as he would at those of his own brother. This is exactly the feel- ing which one would heartily desire to see in Englishmen towards Americans. It is hard, although it is easily to be accounted for, that we should desire it in vain ; for after all the connection of the United States with France is merely political, while we, though under different Governments, are in fact one nation with them.
Count de Montalembert begins with what we must call a cry of joy, such as his ancestors may have raised at witness- ing the prowess of a favoured knight in a tournament, then checking himself, he asks,—
"But ought we indeed to rejoice and bless God for this victory ? I answer without hesitation—Yes ! It is right to thank God, because a great nation has aroused itself and for ever purified itself from a hideous leprosy, which gave to every enemy of liberty a pretext and an argument for re- viling it,—because it is at this moment justifying all the hopes that were reposed in it ; because we have need of it, and it is restored to us penitent, triumphant, and saved. Yes, it is right to thank God, because that leprosy of slavery has disappeared under the sword of the conquerors of Richmond, extirpated for all future time from the only great nation, which, together with Spain, was still infected by it ; because that great market of men is closed for ever, and never more for all future time upon the glorious continent of North America shall a human being, made in the image of God, be set up to auction to be knocked down and given over, with his little ones and with their mother, as a prey to the caprice, the cruel selfish- ness, the infamous gain, or the vile passions of one of his own species. Yes, it is right to thank God, because in this great and terrible struggle between servitude and freedom, freedom has remained victorious. Freedom, which among ourselves has often been the victim of blunders, treachery, and disorders, and has so often been compromised and dishonoured by false friends and unworthy champions, had great need of one of those great changes of fortune which perforce open the eyes of all men to its inestimable importance. Yes, it is right to thank God, because according to the most trustworthy testimony this victory has remained pure ; because the good cause has not been tarnished by any excess, or stained by any crime; because its advocates have no cause to blush for its soldiers, nor its soldiers for their chiefs, nor its chiefs for their fortune, nor fortune itself for having crowned base desires or wicked plots."
The United States had formerly been spoken of by an illustrious Frenchman as " an infant in swaddling clothes." " Well," he replies, " it is now our work to say this infant has grown up, it has become a man, and that man is a giant. This people, the subject of scorn, misunderstanding, calum- nies, and ridicule in a crisis the most terrible through which any nation could possibly pass, has shown a degree of energy, self-devotion, intelligence, and heroism which has put to shame its ill-wishers and astounded the most ardent of its friends. It takes its place to-day on the highest step among the great peoples of the world. Above all, we used to be told, the American people can never carry on a war, and if it does, whether valorous or conquered, it will fall a prey to some fortunate general, some Bonaparte, who will begin by being a dictator and end by being a despot ; who will be called by his fellow-citizens to save them, and in exchange for saving them will demand what the Caesars demanded—their honour and their liberty.
Upon this point at least the experiment has been tried, and never was prediction more strikingly falsified. The Americans have been able to carry on a war. They have done it with an energy, a spirit, and a perseverance which no one can deny. They have not become the prey of any general, of any dictator, of any Crew. They have carried on the most difficult and most terrible of all wars, a civil war. They have developed in it all the qualities, all the virtues which make great military nations. It has been on an immense scale. No modern nation, not revolutionary France itself, with its fourteen armies, has raised and hurled against the enemy forces so large in proportion to the population, so well disciplined, so well equipped, so steady under fire. Mere tradesmen have lavished upon the requirements of the war their wealth with as much prodigality as the English shop keepers in their struggle against Napoleon and their children with a self-sacrifice as heroic as that of France in 1792 in its struggle against Europe. While ridiculous detractors were denouncing to Europe imaginary armies of mercenaries more than a million volunteers were taking arms, on the one side in defence of the Union and of republican institutions, on the other to maintain their independence and local franchises, and out of all this million of armed men, Heaven be praised! not one has become either the butcher of his brethren or the satellite of a dictator.
Then among the "improvised" generals, " not only masters of tactics and strategy, but great politicians and great citizens," he enumerates " Grant and Lee, Burnside and Sherman, M'Clellan and Beauregard, Sheridan and Stone- wall Jackson." I designedly name the leading chiefs of both the hostile armies. For I rejoice to bear in mind that in this respect at least it is to the whole American people that the homage of our admiration is due. Both parties, both corps, have shown the same courage, the same indomitable obstinacy, the same marvellous energy, the same fearless resolution, the same self-denial, the same spirit of sacrifice. All our sympathies are with the North, but that by no means destroys the admiration with which the heroism of the South in- spires us. Though displayed in the service of injustice and wrong, it was heroism none the less. It even seems that some of the Southerners have shown greater military merit, greater energy and talent, greater spirit and distinction than thEe'r enemies, especially in the earlier part of the struggle. It is impossible not to admire them, even while we regret that qualities so high and so rare should not have been devoted to a more blameless cause. What men ! and, more- over, nay, even more, what women! As daughters, wives, mothers, these Southern women have revived in the midst of the nineteenth century the patriotism, the self-devotion, the self-denial of the women of Rome or the best times of the Republic. The Clelias, the Cornelias, the Portias have found their rivals in many a village, in many a plantation of Louisiana and Virginia. Nay, even among ourselves we have seen feeble maidens and modest wives separated from their kindred, deprived of their fortune, yet high-spirited in their poverty, resigned to suffering, to ruin, to exile, happy to offer their own part of the sacrifice to the national cause, rejecting with indignation the least idea of a transaction, of a concession, bearing in their flashing eyes the unquestionable signs of that determination which is the characteristic of a manly race. Heroines like this make us understand better than any ex- planation of what sort of soldiers the armies of the Con- federates must have been composed, and what prodigies of resolution and perseverance must have been required to over- come them. Those prodigies have been wrought, but at the cost of efforts and sacrifices which prove the obstinate hardihood and astonishing firmness of the Southern soldiers. Four years of efforts and seven hundred thousand men were required to take Richmond, the capital of the South. No fortress, not Sebastopol itself, has cost such efforts, and as for the European capitals, many are not to be mentioned. So must Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Paris, remain to witness.
And thus this Republic, which was supposed to be absorbed in trade and agriculture, enervated by wealth and prosperity, incapable of the efforts and sacrifices which are required for war,—this Republic has already shown itself upon battle-fields the rival of the republics of Rome and Greece. Like the Grecian republics, it has already had its two Nervio wars—its Persian and its Peloponnesian war. The war of 1774 to 1782, which created its nationality, and the war of 1861 to 1865, which has put an end to slavery, has engraved its name in the first class among the records of martial glory. That is enough for it. God grant that it may be able to stop without going farther in this career of blood and danger!
But even these martial virtues, rare and heroic as they are, appear ordinary and insignificant in comparison with those civil virtues of which the American race has shown itself to be possessed in the course of this terible war. No one liberty suppressed, no law violated, no voice stifled, no guarantee given up, no dictatorship called for. This is the true marvel, the highest victory.
If here and there the military chiefs have suspended some liberties, they have been quickly restored by the civil autho- rities, and everywhere the generals have shown the most exemplary submission to the magistrates. Everywhere they have respectfully listened to the voice of the civil authorities and submissively obeyed their laws. No example has been re- ported of any presumption or insubordination on their part. Conquerors or conquered, throughout this long and cruel struggle not one has gone against this fundamental law of a free and well-ordered land, not one has shown the least symp- tom of realizing the predictions of the false prophets. When Napoleon had arrived at St. Helena he said, " We shall see what Wellington will do now." That great despiser of the human conscience could not understand how it could be pos- sible that any man should be content to live as a man of honour and an ordinary Peer of Great Britain after having won the battle of Waterloo. "We shall see what Grant and the other victorious generals will do." Such is at this moment the whisper of the detractors of America and her institutions. The glorious conqueror of Richmond has already given them their answer. Placed seven months before at the bead of the chief Federal Army, and already invested with a formidable degree of popularity, Grant refused to allow himself to be set up as a rival to Lincoln at the last Presidential election. He refused the chance of becoming chief of the Republic in the place of the " rail-splitter" by whom the sword had been en- trusted to him to save the fatherland—as saved it in fact he has.
But what is truly touching, consoling, affecting, is that this victory has hitherto remained pure, no less pure than rightful. Never at any period of history has any great political struggle been carried, or any great political question gained, at so little cost to justice, to humanity, to the conscience of man. Never was a great war waged with more humanity. Having before our eyes this combination of martial and civic virtues in the same nation, are we not right in declaring that the United States have made good their right to be placed in the first rank of the great peoples of the modern world ? This high position will still be long disputed and denied, but it will become day by day more clear to generous and truly Christian hearts, because it is founded once for all upon that which is the great act of contemporary history, the abolition of slavery among Christians. For ever there has disappeared that infamous code and that social system which (to avoid all exaggeration and declamation, and to make allowance for happy exceptions as well as for exceptional atrocities) reduced four millions of human beings to live deprived of all regular marriage and of the right of recourse to courts of justice, which made it a crime to instruct them, which placed them in the condition of animals more or less well treated in pro- portion to their value, which condemned the women to pro- miscuous intercourse, husbands and wives, parents and chil- dren to heartrending separations, which exposed all of every age and sex to punishments of which the cruelty alone was greater than the disgrace.
To bring about this great work, so marvellously accom- plished before our eyes, Providence has made use of instru- ments apparently as obscure as they were weak and insignifi-
cant. We do not, of course, forget the great writers and great orators who have kindled in the course of emancipation the flame of their eloquence. But we are most affected by the thought that the irresistible movement in America which is at this moment triumphant over such obstacles and such tempests was the work of a lady novelist and of a man that was hanged, more than of any one else. The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin has been read by every one among us and admired by almost every one, but no one ever suspected that it was to produce a triumphant and legitimate revolution. The execution went by with much less notice than the novel. Here and there some one chanced to interest himself in " old John Brown," the subject of such odious calumnies, wha brought to a close an adventurous but honourable career by expiating upon the gallows the crime of having desired to expose to the world the horrors of American slavery by exciting to insurrection a handful of Virginian negroes. Those by whom he was sacrificed on December 2, 1859, imagine& that all was over. On the contrary, it was all about to begin. The only thing which had come to an end was the scandalous impunity of their murderous domination.
Our readers have before them only a few extracts from this stirring ode of triumph. We can hardly doubt that they will read the original, and still less that when they read it they will wonder why we have omitted this or that part, which they will think probably even more striking than much that we have inserted. We have been obliged to ask ourselves the same question, and our only answer must be that we have not room for all. What we have selected we have taken be- cause it shows us the judgment formed by a foreigner of large heart, as well as great talents and eloquence, upon the conduct and position of the American people. Shame upon us that Englishmen in general should be so slow to acknowledge and honour the great and noble qualities of our own flesh and blood! For surely, though under separate Governments, the British race on the two shores of the Atlantic are but one people. Our space alone forbids us to quote what the Count of Montalembert says as to the feeling of Englishmen of the higher classes, and the justice he does to the labouring classes of Lancashire; or, again, his masterly summary of the facts- which prove that slavery was the one only cause of the war, though indignant at being compelled to prove so self-evident a matter; or his wise remarks upon the dangers which lie- on the failure of the great nation with which he so heartily sympathizes, and upon the means of meeting them.
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