Volume 1 — EDITOR'S TABLE

It was usual, of old, to characterize as Annus Mirabilis, or A Year of Wonder, any twelvemonth which had been more than usually prolific in marvels. The historian who may in future days seek a dividing point or a date for the greatest political and social struggle of this age, can hardly fail to indicate 1861 as the Annus Mirabilis of the Nineteenth Century in America. That heart does not beat, the brain does not throb on earth, which is capable of feeling or appreciating the tremendous range of consequences involved in the events of this year. We hear the most grating thunder-peals of horror; the whole artillery of death and disaster roars and crashes from fort and field; there is blaze and ruin, such as this continent knew not perhaps even in the primeval times of its vanished Golden Hordes;—and again there rise prophetic organ-tones of solemn praise; merry bells ringing the carillon of joy; sweet voices as in dreams singing of the purple evening peace; while mysteriously and beautifully, beyond all, breathes the Daughter of the Voice—that strangest of prophecies known to the Hebrew of old, softly inspiring hopes of a fairer future America than was ever before dreamed of. For, of a truth, above all sits and works the awful destiny of man, proclaiming as of old, amid strange races now forgotten, that the humanity which bravely toils and labors shall live, while the haughty and the oppressor and the sluggard, puffed up with vanity, shall all pass away as the mist of the morning.

It is worth while, at the conclusion of such a year, to look about us; to see what has been done or what is now doing, and to surmise as well as we may what great changes the future may bring forth.

A year ago this country was plagued and disgraced beyond any on the face of the earth by swarms of professional politicians; by men who regarded all legislation as one vast Lobby and Third House, and 'ability' as the means of turning corruption to their own personal advantage. These miserables, whether on the Northern or Southern side, tacitly united in driving all legislation or congressional business from its legitimate halls into the procrastinating by-paths, in order that they might make speeches and magnify themselves unto Buncombe, and be glorified by the local home press because of their devotion to—the party! The party! That was always the word. Where are these men of froth and wind now,—these heroes of the stump and the bar-room? Passing away into nothing, at headlong speed, before the great storm of the times. Now and then they 'rally'—there was one ghastly wig-and-hollow-pumpkin effort at recovery in the trembling, rattle-jointed Peace Movement of these last summer months. Where is it now? There answers a gay laugh and merry stave from the corners of irreverent weekly newspapers:—

'The piece of a party, called the party of peace, Like everything else which deceases, Has gone where the wicked from trouble shall cease, For the party of peace is in pieces.'

Or we may see now and then wretched election meetings, as of late in New York, where a worn-out Fernando Wood and others like him gabble as much treason as they dare. It is all played out—Mozart, Tammany, and all the trash. Rummy, frowsy candidates, treating Five-Point graduates, and shoulder-hitting bravos yelling at the polls, are beginning to be disgusting and anti-national elements. Their very existence is an insult to these great, serious and glorious times of manly war, when young men are beginning at last to 'think great.' A few more gasps by the politicians and down they must go into infinite depths of congenial darkness, to be remembered only as allied to 'the abominable state of affairs before the war.'

It is no small thing to have driven so much of the old iniquity out; but from this and that side come murmurs that there are but few signs of the young genius coming in. Oh, for one hour of Dundee! Oh, for a Webster in the cabinet, whose right arm should go forth and take hold of England and Frank-land of the East, while his left swept the isles of the South with fearful power! Oh, for the fierce old Dandolo of America, who was not blind, but whose piercing glance at this hour would dart through many a diabolical diplomatic difficulty—for ANDREW Jackson! Oh, for the trumpet tones of Clay—of Marcy—for one brave blast of that dread horn of olden time which rang so bravely to battle!

Friends, have patience. Remember that these men, and all like them, were slowly born of great times, and that we must await time's gestation. In this age there spring no longer heroes dragon-tooth born into full fighting-life inside of 2.30. But so surely as stars shine in their rounding life, or water runs, or God lives, so surely are these days of storm and sorrow and tremendous travail bringing slowly on their legitimate fruit of great ideas and great men. Young man—whoever you are—be sacred to yourself now, and, for a season, serious and pure and noble—for who knows in these times to what he may grow? But a century ago, this land lay buried in obscurity. Here and there young land-surveyors and country store-keepers wondered that destiny had buried them on Virginia farms and in Yankee backwoods. But war came,—no greater than this of ours—one involving no grander principles of human dignity and freedom,—and the young 'obscures' darted to the heaven and took glorious places amid the constellations of fame. 'When the tale of bricks is doubled,' says the Hebrew proverb, 'Moses comes.'

We hear much said of the honest, sturdy, no-nonsense virtues of the old revolutionary stock, both male and female. The thing is plain enough—they had passed through serious times and great thoughts, through trials, and sorrows, and healthy privation, and come out strong. Just such will be the stock of men and women born in spirit of this war. It is making the old material over again. It was all here as good as ever, but wanted a little stirring up, that was all. He who has seen in the sturdy East and glorious West the unflinching honesty and earnestness with which men are upholding this war to the knife and knife to the hilt, as Palafox phrased it,—or, as the American hath it in humbler phrase, 'from the wheel to the hub and hub to the linch-pin,'—has no doubt that at this minute it was never so popular, never so determined, never so thoroughly ingrained, entwined, inter-twisted with the whole life-core and being of our people. 'We suffer—but on with the war! Hurrah for battle—only give us victory! Do you ask for money, arms, ships?—take all and everything to superfluity—but oh, give us victory and power!' Out of such will as this there come the greatest of men—giants of a fearfully glorious future. When we look around and see this red-hot iron determination to see all through to the victorious end, we may well feel assured that the day of great ideas and of great men is not far off.

It is superb for a stranger to see how the spirit of the Revolution still lives in New England, and is voiced and acted by men bearing Revolutionary names—it is magnificent to behold the stream, grown to a thunder-torrent, roaring and foaming over the broad West. Hurrah! it still lives—that old spirit of freedom, its fires are all aflame, and it shall not again smoulder until the whole world has seen, as it did before, that it is the light of the world, and the pillar guiding as of old to the promised land.

If 1861 had brought nothing else to pass it would be supremely great in this, that amid toil and trial, foes within and without, it has seen the American people determine that Slavery, the worm which gnawed the core of its tree of life, shall be plucked out. Out it shall go, that is settled. We have fought the foe too long with kid gloves, but now puss will lay aside her mittens and catch the Southern rats in earnest. It is the negro who sustains the South; the negro who maintains its army, feeds it, digs its trenches, squires its precious chivalry, and is thereby forced most unnaturally to rivet his own chains. There shall be an end to this, and our administration is yielding to this inevitable necessity. Here again the great year has worked a wonder, since in so short a space it has made such an advance in discovering a basis by which all Union men may conscientiously unite in freeing the black. There have been hitherto two steps made towards the solution. The first was that of the old Abolition movement, which saw only the suffering of the slave and cried aloud for his freedom, reckless of all results. It was humane; but even humanity is not always worldly wise, and it did unquestionably for twenty years defeat its own aim in the Border States. But it worked most unflinchingly. Then came Helper, who saw that the poor white man of the South was being degraded below the negro, and that industry and capital were fearfully checked by slavery. In his well-known work he pointed out, by calm and dispassionate facts and figures, that the land south of 'Mason and Dixon's' was being sacrificed most wastefully, and the majority of its white inhabitants kept in incredible ignorance, meanness, and poverty, simply that a few privileged families might remain 'first and foremost.' These opinions were most clearly sustained, and the country was amazed. People began to ask if it was quite right, after all, to suffer this slavery to grow and grow, when it was manifestly reacting on the poor white man, and literally sinking him below the level of the black. This was the second movement on the slave question, and its effect was startling.

But there was yet a third advance required, and it came with the past year and the war, in the form of the now so rapidly expanding 'Emancipation' movement. Helper had shown that slavery had degraded the poor whites, but the events leading to the present struggle indicated to all intelligent humanity that it was rapidly demoralizing and ruining in the most hideous manner the minds of the masters of the slaves—nay, that its foul influence was spreading like a poison mist over the entire continent. The universal shout of joyful approbation which the whole South had raised years ago when a Northern senator was struck down and beaten in the most infamously cowardly manner, had caused the very horror of amazement at such fearful meanness, among all true hearted and manly men, the world over. But when there came from the 'first families' grinnings of delight over the vilest thievery and forgery and perjury by Floyd and his fellows,—when the whole South, after agreeing in carrying on an election, refused to abide by its results,—when the whole Southern press abounded in the vilest denunciations of labor and poverty, and in Satanic contempt of everything 'Yankee,' meaning thereby all that had made the North and West prosperous and glorious,—and when, finally, it was found that this loathsome poison was working through the North itself, corrupting the young with pseudo-aristocratic pro-slavery sympathies,—then indeed it became apparent that for the sake of all, and for that of men in comparison to whose welfare that of the negro was a mere trifle, this fearful disease must be in some form abated. The result was the development of Emancipation on the broadest possible grounds,—of Emancipation for the sake of the Union and of the white man,—to be brought about, however, by the will of the people, subject to such rules as discussion and expediency might determine. This was the present Emancipation movement, first urged by that name in the New York Knickerbocker magazine, though its main principles were practically manifesting themselves in many quarters—the most prominent being the well-known proclamations of Generals Butler and Fremont.

'Emancipation' does not, as has been urged, present in comparison to Abolition a distinction without a difference. Helper desired the freedom of the slave for the sake of the poor white man in the South and for Southern development. Emancipation goes further, and claims that nowhere on the American continent is the white laborer free from the vile comparison and vile influences of slavery, and that it should be abolished for the sake of the Union and for the sake of all white men. It may be dim to many now, but it is true as God's providence, that whether it be in our Union, or out of it, we can no longer exist side by side with a state of society in which it is shamelessly proclaimed that labor, man's holiest and noblest attribute, is a disgrace; that the negro is the standard of the mudsill, and that the state must be based on an essentially degraded, sunken class, whether white or black. Yet we might for the sake of peace have long borne with all this, and yielded to the old lie-based 'isothermal' cant, had it not resulted, as it inevitably must, in building up the most miserable, insolent, and arrogant pseudo aristocracy which ever made the name of aristocracy ridiculous, not excepting that of the court of the sable Emperor Faustin of St. Domingo. It is all very well to talk of Southern rights; but humanity and progress, or, if you will, law and order, industry and capital, have their rights also, aye, and their manifest destiny too, and no one can deny that; reason as we may, or concede as much as we will, there the facts are—the principal being the utter impossibility of a slave-aristocracy—rotted to the core with theories now exploded through the civilized world—existing either in or out of a neighboring republic in which freedom

'Careers with thunder-speed along.'

So we stand at the parting of the ways. But the problem is half solved already. The year 1861 closes leaving it clear as noon-day that emancipation in the Border States is a foregone conclusion, and that, reduced to the cotton belt, it can never become a preponderating national influence. As for the details of settlement, calmly considered, they present no real difficulty to the man who realizes the enormous industrial and recuperative energies of this country.

'What are we to do with one or two million of free blacks?' asks one. A few years ago, when it was proposed to banish all free persons of color from Maryland, a cry of alarm went up lest Baltimore alone should be deprived of fifteen thousand of 'the best servants in the world.' 'How shall we ever pay for those who may be offered for sale to us, if we resolve to pay for their slaves all Southerners who may take the oath of allegiance?' Eight days' expenses of the present war would pay more than the market price for all the slaves in Maryland! But these objections are childish. Right against them rises a tremendous, inevitable destiny, which must crush all before it. So much for 1861.

We would urge no measure in this or any other relation which shall not have received the fullest endorsement of two thirds of the loyal American people. As regards all foreign interference, let it never be forgotten that public opinion after all prevails in all Western Europe, and that this would long hesitate ere it committed a national reputation to an endorsement of the Southern Confederacy. It is apparent from the authentic and shameless avowals of the Southern press that Mr. Slidell, the cut-short ambassador, was authorized to solicit a French protectorate of Louis Napoleon,—to such incredible baseness has slave 'independence' sunk,—and, as we write, much discussion is waged whether England will take in ill part our arrest of a man charged with such a monstrous mission! Let England imagine herself dependent on such a protectorate for her cotton, and the thought may possibly occur that it would have been better to have sided at once openly and squarely with the North. But John Bull is strangely changed in these times, and Yankee protection is inconceivably more awful to him than the slavery with which he has been for twenty years so much disgusted.

'The heart it pincheth sore, But the pocket pinches more.'

And now with the New Year. Amid red-flashing war and wild strivings we look bravely and hopefully forward into the future, and see amid these storms blue sky rifts and golden sun gleams. Already strong and practical advances in education, in political economy, in industry, in all that is healthier and sounder in life, are beginning to manifest themselves. This country can be in nothing put back by this struggle, in no wise weakened or injured. It is our hope and will that in these columns some share of the good work may be honestly carried out. We wish to speak under the most vital American influences to the American people, ambitious of being nothing more nor less than soundly national in all things. We see a new time forming, new ideas rising, and would give it and them a voice in such earnest and energetic tones as the people love. We call not only for the matured thought, but also for the young mind of the country, and beg every man and woman who entertains vigorous and practical ideas to come out boldly and speak freely. Think nobly, write rapidly! Remember that every letter printed in these times will take its place in history. The forgotten comment of the moment will rise up in after years to be honored perhaps as the right word in the right place. The day is coming when the songs and sentences of this great struggle will be garnered up into literary treasuries, pass into household words, and confer honor on the children of those who penned them. Lay hand to the work, all you who have aught to say, aid us to become a medium for the time, and honor yourselves by your utterances. There are a thousand reforms, innumerable ideas fit for the day, ready to bloom forth. Write and publish; the public is listening. Now is the time, if it ever was, to develop an American character, to show the world what treasures of life, strength and originality this country contains. Beyond the old conventional belles lettres and æsthetic scholarship which limited us in peace, lies a fair land, a wilderness it may be, but one bearing beautiful, unknown flowers, and strange but golden fruits, which are well worthy a garden. Let all who know of these bring them in. The time has come.

We have been questioned from many of the highest sources as to the future tendency and scope of our magazine. Let us say then, briefly, that we hope to make a bold step forward, presenting in our columns contributions characterized by variety, vigor, and originality, to be written by men who are fully up with the times and endeavoring to advance in all things. In a word, we shall do our best to give it exuberant life—such as the country and age require. We shall advocate the holy cause of the Union with might and main, and leave no means whatever neglected to urge the most vigorous prosecution of this war, until the sacred principles of liberty as transmitted to us by our forefathers have been fully recognized and re-established. Believing in Emancipation, subject to the will of the majority and the action of the administration, we shall still welcome to our pages the properly expressed views of every sound 'Union man' or woman on this or other subjects, however differing from our own. We shall urge the fullest development of education as the great basis of future social progress, and shall have faith in making woman's intellect and labor as available as possible in all respects. We shall hold to the belief that in constant industrial development, the increase of capital, and the harmony of interests between these, lies the material salvation of the country, and that labor in every form should be continually ennobled and socially dignified.

We shall, moreover, look with true love to all that art and beauty in their manifold forms can supply to render life lovely and pleasant, and welcome all that can be written in their illustration. Our columns will never be deficient in tales, poetry and sketches, and that nothing may be neglected, we shall always devote full room to genial gossip with the reader, and to such original humors, quips, jests and anecdotes as chance or the kindness of correspondents may supply. And we would here entreat all our readers to be good friends and at home with us; regarding the editorial department as a place of cheerful welcome for anything which they may choose to commune on; in which all confidences will be kept, and where all courtesies will be honorably acknowledged. We have received most abundant and cordial promises of assistance and support in our effort to maintain a thoroughly spirited, 'wide-awake,' and vigorous American magazine, from the very first in the land, and therefore go on our way rejoicing. We enter into no rivalry, for we take a well-nigh untrodden field, and shall fail in our dearest hope unless we present the public with a monthly of a thoroughly original and 'go-ahead' character. We are told that these are bad times; but for our undertaking, as we understand it, there could be none better—for it shall be made for the times, 'timely and temporal in all things.'

We are indebted to a correspondent for the following comment on a subject which has thus far excited not a little wonder, and which, as the loyal reader may be disposed to add, should excite some degree of vigorous inquiry among the people at large. Like every other practical point involved in this struggle, it suggests the mortifying truth that with all our sacrifices, and all our patriotism, we are as yet in the conduct of the war far too amiable, and by far too irresolute.

Wanted, a Fouché for Washington.—It is high time that a good, sharp detective police officer was set to work to discover the source of the continued leakage of our government's plans. Of our late naval flotilla for Beaufort, we are told that 'The positive destination of our fleet was known even in New Orleans on the 17th ult.,—weeks before it was known in the North! and extra troops were dispatched from points south of Charleston to defend the approaches of that coast.' We are informed that every care was exercised to prevent the destination of the expedition being made public; with how much effect the above quoted paragraph fully demonstrates. In view of this, I repeat that a Fouché, a keen detective, is wanted at head-quarters; believing that any man with half the shrewdness of the celebrated 'Duke of Otranto' would pin the traitor in less than twenty-four hours. That such a man can easily be found, any one who has learned what American detectives have done, can readily believe. Active, intelligent, and wide awake, the American who by necessity takes up this life, brings to bear upon his investigations the shrewdness of a savage, the tenacity of an Englishman, and, in a modified degree, the aplomb of a Parisian. No one can read Poe's 'Murder of the Rue Morgue' without recognizing at a glance the latent talent that would have made of the cloudy poet a brilliant policeman, and would have won for him the ducal fortune without the empty title. If we must handle the Southern mutineers in their Rebelutionary war with a velvet glove, let there be an iron hand inside, worked by the high-pressure power of public indignation at their treachery and faithlessness. We should stop this leakage of our plans, cost what it may, and the traitorous Southern correspondent meet the execration of Arnold, and the fate of André. The iron hand should stop the treacherous pen, should choke the wagging tongue. The North demands it.

And yet again, since the above was penned, we learn that it has been ascertained by a balloon reconnaissance that a projected flank movement, planned by General McClellan and confided to a very limited number, had been completely anticipated—indicating the basest treachery in a high quarter. Very agreeable this to all interested in the war! And what does it mean?

It means that Washington, and not Washington alone, but the entire North, needs purging and purifying from most injurious influences. There are traitors among us everywhere—where two or three are gathered together will be one who sneers at Northern successes, smiles at Southern victory, and is a traitor at heart—ready to be a spy if needed.

No wonder that warm friends of the Union sometimes burst out into indignant remonstrance and fierce complaint at such toleration!

Still, we must look at the matter philosophically; rather in sorrow than in anger, for thus only can we correct the evil. There is a large number of well-meaning people, especially in Washington, who have lived only for and in a society in which Southern influence greatly predominated. Familiar with the wildest excitement of politics, yet accustomed to regard the leaders of all parties as equally unprincipled, and only persuaded of the single social fact, that it is highly respectable to own slaves, they can not see, even in the horrors of war, anything more than the old excitement, in which shrewd and wily politicians continue to pull wires. And in many other places besides Washington do the voices of pleasant interests, or the echoes of pleasant memories, recall old friendships or old ties. The head may be patriotic and union-loving and at war with the South, but the heart is peaceful and clings to ancient memories.

Now, if there is anything, dear reader, which is allied to real goodness, it is this very same soft-heartedness which we find it so hard to thoroughly condemn, even in such a case as that of the good Scotch clergyman, who pitied and prayed for 'the poor auld deevil' himself. But here it is that the 'gallant Southron' has the advantage over us. No lingering love for Northern friends of olden time, no kindly regard for by-gone intimacies, flashes up from the darkened abyss of 'Dixey.' And, to be frank and fair, reader, does it not seem to you that while the business in hand is literal fighting, not without much 'battle, murder and sudden death,' it would be at least respectful to the awful destiny of the hour to treat its ways seriously?

But let it foam and surge on, the time is coming when the great stream of Northern freedom will purify itself from all the foul stains of its old stagnation. Perhaps years may be required, but this we know,—that the dam has been broken away at last, and that now the glad torrent whirls bravely onward in sparkling young life. For at length the time is coming when a healthy Northern sentiment shall make itself felt, where of old it was carefully excluded, and the fresh breeze from the Northern pines shall purify the sickly air. They will pass away, these of the old generation—there will arise better ones to take their place, and all shall be changed.

Meanwhile, for all our late great victories and advances, let us be thankful! not forgetting the smaller crumbs of comfort—as, for instance, the capture of Slidell, Mason and Co., which a friend has kindly recorded for your benefit, most excellent reader, in the following chapter:—

CHRONICLES OF SECESSIA.