The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 | Page 2

exclaim: 'How strange!' How monstrous an anomaly! What singular fatality has brought two such irreconcilable opposites together? It is as if two individuals, deadly foes, should by a mysterious chance, encounter each other unexpectedly on some wide, dreary waste of the Arctic solitudes. Whither no other souls of the earth's teeming millions come, thither these two alone, of all the world beside, are, as if helplessly impelled, to settle their quarrel by the death of one or the other. Thus singular and inexplicable does it at first sight seem--this juxtaposition of freedom and slavery on the shores of the new world.
On second thoughts, however, we shall find this apparent singularity and mystery to disappear. We are surprised only because we see a familiar fact under a new aspect, and do not at once recognize it. What we see before us in this great event is only an underlying fact of every individual's personal experience, expanded into the gigantic proportions of a nation's experience. In every child of Adam are the seeds of good and of evil. Side by side they lie together in the same soil; they are nourished and developed together; they become more and more marked and individualized with advancing years, swaying the child and the youth, hither and thither, according as one or the other prevails; until at some period in the full rationality of riper age comes the deadly contest between the power of darkness and the power of light--one or the other conquers; the man's character is fixed; and he travels along the path he has chosen, upward or downward.
So it is now with the great collective individual, the American republic. So it is and has been with every other nation. The powers of good and evil contend no less in communities and nations than in the individuals who compose them; and, according as one or the other influence prevails in rulers or in ruled, have human civilization and human welfare been advanced or retarded.
In the American Union, the contrast has been more marked, more vivid, and of greater extent than the world has ever seen, because of the higher, freer, more humane character of our institutions, and the extent of region which they cover. The brighter the sunshine, the darker the shadow; the higher the good to be enjoyed, the darker, more deplorable is the evil which is the inverse and opposite of that good. Hence, with a knowledge of this prevalent fact of fallen human nature, and also of the fact that nations are but individuals repeated--one might almost have foreseen that if institutions, more free and enlightened than had ever before blessed a people, were to arise upon any region of the globe--something proportionately hideous and repulsive in the other direction would be seen to start up alongside of them, and seek their destruction.
Is this so strange then? It is only in agreement with the great truth, that the best men endure the strongest temptations. He who was sinless endured and overcame what no mere mortal could have borne for an instant. So the highest truths have ever encountered the most violent opposition. The most salutary reforms have had to struggle the hardest to obtain a footing; in a word, the higher and holier the heaven from whence blessings descend to earth, the deeper and more malignant is the hell that rises in opposition. With the truly-sought aid of Him, however, who alone has all power in heaven, earth, and hell, victory is certain to be achieved in national no less than in individual trials.
But in both national and individual difficulties it is indispensable, in order that courage may not waver, that hope may not falter--it is indispensable that there should be, as already urged, a clear intellectual comprehension of the full nature of the good thing for which battle is waged. The brilliant vision of attainable good must be preserved undimmed--ever present in sharp and radiant outline to the mental eye; and so its lustre may also fall in a flood of searching light on the evil which is battled against, clearly revealing all its hideousness.
A clear understanding by the people at large, of what that is in which the value of the Union consists, is only next in importance to the Union itself; since the preservation of the Union hangs upon the nation's appreciation of its value. Then only can we be intensely, ardently zealous; full of courage and motive force; full of hope and determination that it shall be preserved at whatever cost of life or treasure. But without the deep conviction of the untold blessings that lie yet undeveloped in the Union and its Constitution, without the hearty belief that this Union is a gift of God, to be ours only while we continue fit to hold it,