The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 | Page 8

make this war in very truth the
greatest blessing that has ever befallen us. And if this moral progress
shall be such and so great as to throw down the golden calf from his
throne and make the place of honor the reward of true merit alone, then
shall we have cause, for the remotest generations, to thank God for this
seeming calamity which has fallen upon us.
And these same facts, standing out as shining lights in the darkness,
tend to show that we are, after all, not quite so sordid as we seem; that,
with all our worship of the money god, there is yet, away down in the
great American heart, a wealth of strong, true, generous feeling, ready
at the first call of sorrow and of suffering to spring forth and scatter its
golden blessings even beyond the seas. It is not alone that, years ago,
when we were at peace and at the height of prosperity, many ships left
our shores laden down with food, the voluntary contributions of the
American citizen to his starving brethren of the Emerald Isle; though
this of itself was enough to place our civilization on a level with that of
the most polished nation of the Old World. But even now, when we are
struggling for our very existence, when every energy and every
material resource is being exerted to stem the tide of internal
dissensions and crush out the hydra of internal treason; at a time when
the mother country has gone to every length short of open war to aid
and assist those who are striving for our downfall, and her press is

exhausting every epithet of vituperation and scurrilous abuse of us,
who are battling so earnestly in our own defence, and who are entitled
by every truth of human nature to her warmest sympathy--a press
which, adopting the phraseology of its Secession friends and allies,
scruples not to place the civilization of the slaveholding States far in
advance of that of the 'Northern mudsills'--even now, when the cry of
the starving operatives of the English mills comes to us across the
water, forgetting for the time all the abuse and maltreatment we have
received, all the enmity and bitter hostility which the traitorous perfidy
of England has engendered, more than one full-freighted vessel has left
our ports bearing grain to those whom their own proud aristocracy is
either powerless or too niggardly to sustain. Is this not evidence of a
civilization considerably advanced beyond any which history has yet
recorded?--a civilization based upon the golden rule of Christianity,
and upon that still more precious command: 'Love those that hate you,
and do good to those that persecute you.' For it is in its moral aspect
that every civilization must in the end be judged; and that society which
develops such noble principles and feelings as these, which manifests
itself in this higher region of spiritual excellence, in the exercise of
these finer feelings of the heart, is certainly nearest to perfection, in that
it follows most closely the law of God, the truths of divine revelation.
When instances such as these occur on the part of any of the older
nations of the world, it will do for them to boast of a civilization
superior to ours; but until their faith is shown by their works, suffering
humanity the world over will accord to us the palm. Nor will it answer
to ascribe to us an unworthy motive in this matter--a desire to win
credit in the eyes of the world. An individual might, with some degree
of plausibility, fall under such an imputation, but a great people does
not move spontaneously and unitedly in one direction from such a
motive, since none but a pure and just principle can produce unity in
the masses. Such an unworthy and degrading motive is the property of
individuals, not of nations, even if it were possible for such an idea to
be conceived at one and the same time by a multitude of minds. No! it
was the spontaneous expression of a deep and pervading principle of
American society--of American humanity--a free outpouring of the
American heart; and as such it will stand upon the page of history as
the evidence of a civilization behind none of its age.

Nor is this the only mark of the moral awakening of our people.
Instances are every day appearing in our midst of this truest of charity,
not the least of which are the 'wood processions' of the Western cities
and towns; those long lines of wagons laden with fuel and provisions
for the families of the absent soldiers, whose sole object and motive is
the comfort of those whose protectors and supporters are sustaining the
country's honor in the field;