The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 | Page 4

covertly or avowedly justified slavery.
To each of these parties a few words of comment must be given.
1st. The party which believed in the sincerity, the right, and the probable eventual success of the North was, I think, extremely small during the greater part of the war,--say, between the first Battle of Bull Run and the capture of Atlanta. By sincerity I mean such points as these: that the Federal Government was honestly desirous of fulfilling its obligations towards the South; that the North, having to maintain the integrity of the country by force of arms, was ready to make all needful sacrifices for that object, and to lavish its blood and treasure; above all, that the professions of dislike to slavery, the offer of military emancipation to negroes, and, finally, the efforts to amend the Constitution so as to abolish slavery, root and branch, were sincere. Many, of course, believed in the right of the North, and in one of other of these items of sincerity; few, I think, in the right, in the sincerity throughout, and in the success as well. The delusion, that the North, after using up its Irish and German population and its incoming immigrants, would quail before the necessity of hazarding also a large proportion of its own settled Anglo-Saxon population, was extremely prevalent. Equally prevalent the notion that the North was fighting merely for a constitutional idea, or for national integrity, predominance, or (as Lord Russell phrased it) "for empire," without any real regard for the interests of the negro. And when all these demands upon one's faith had to be supplemented by a belief in the probable success of the North, few persons seemingly ventured to commit themselves to the whole of the proposition. Within my own personal circle of observation, I could name but one, or, at the utmost, two, besides myself, who, in the main, with some variations according to the changing current of events, clung to the cause of the North in its entirety. The first of these two persons is a painter of great distinction and a man, in other respects, of very thinking and serious mind, well known by name, and partially by his works, to such Americans as take an interest in fine art. The second of the two is one of our very greatest living poets.--As to the question of success, the following may perhaps be a tolerably fair account of the varying impressions of many, who, along with myself, hoped for the triumph of the North, and were disposed, though not with any overwhelming confidence, to believe in it. Up to the first Battle of Bull Run, opinion was suspended or fluctuating; but in the main one's sympathies conspired with one's information as to the comparative resources of the opponents to produce a considerable degree of confidence. That battle and some other Southern successes acted as a severe check; and discouragement prevailed up to the time when the capture of New Orleans, Grant's advance on the line of the Mississippi, and McClellan's "On to Richmond" march righted the balance. Great uncertainty, however, was still felt; and I should say that afterwards, between the repulse of McClellan and Pope and the Battle of Gettysburg, most of the adherents of the North were consciously "hoping against hope," and, especially at the time of the defeat at Chancellorsville and the Northern invasion by Lee in 1863, were almost ready to confess the case desperate.[A] Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Port Hudson altered the face of affairs, and revived a confidence which gradually strengthened almost into a conviction, such as not all the vast difficulties which afterwards beset Grant in his advance towards Richmond, nor all the nonsense of the Times and other Southern journals about "Johnston continuing to draw Sherman from his base," or Hood cutting him off from his communications, and compelling him to retreat by that most singular of retreating processes, the triumphal march through Georgia from end to end, could ever avail substantially to becloud. Soon after the victory at Gettysburg, those who were not blinded by their wishes or preconceptions saw ground for thinking that the South had made its greatest efforts, and failed,--the North sustained its worst rebuffs, and surmounted them.
2d. The party which believed in the right of the North, but which doubted or disbelieved its sincerity, especially on the question of Slavery, or its eventual success, or both, was of necessity very large,--including, as it did, in a general way, all the Northern partisans whose strength and fulness of conviction were not great enough to enroll them in my first division. It is extremely difficult to form an opinion, or even a guess, on the question of relative numbers; but I have always fancied, that, could the whole nation have been polled on