Man, elevated by knowledge in the scale of being, controls the forces of nature with greater power and grander results, and accumulates wealth more rapidly. The educated free labor of Massachusetts, we have seen, triples the products of toil, per capita, as compared with Maryland, and quintuples them (as the census shows) compared with South Carolina. One day's labor of a man in Massachusetts is equal to three in Maryland, and five in South Carolina. So, if we take our savage tribes, with their huts and tents, their rude agriculture, their furs, their few and simple household manufactures, their hunting and fishing, the average product of their annual labor, at four cents a day each, would be $14.60 a year, or more than a fourth of that of South Carolina (56.91). So that Massachusetts, in material progress, is farther in advance of South Carolina than that State is of the savage Indians. Thus, we have the successive steps and gradations of man: Massachusetts, with free labor and free schools, having reached the highest point of civilization; South Carolina, with slavery and ignorance (except the few), in a semi-barbarous stage; and the lowest savage condition, called barbarous, but nearer to South Carolina than that State to Massachusetts.
Slavery, then, the census proves, is hostile to the progress of wealth and population, to science, literature, and education, to schools, colleges, and universities, to books and libraries, to churches and religion, to the press, and therefore to free government; hostile to the poor, keeping them in want and ignorance; hostile to labor, reducing it to servitude, and decreasing two thirds the value of its products; hostile to morals, repudiating among slaves the marital and parental condition, classifying them by law as chattels, darkening the immortal soul, and making it a crime to teach millions of human beings to read or write. And shall labor and education, literature and science, religion and the press, sustain an institution which is their deadly foe?
But slavery is the enemy of free government. It has commenced and now wages an unholy war against this Union, and thus assails the liberty of our country and of mankind. It has framed a government based on the eternity of chattel slavery, and demands in its name to rule the larger portion of the Union. It seeks to sever the lakes from the gulf, and the mighty Mississippi and its vast arterial tributary system. It asks to be let alone in the commission of all these heaven-daring crimes. In the name of my bleeding country, of the millions whom it has doomed to death, or wounds, or chains, or misery; in the name of the widows and orphans it has made, whose bitter tears and agonizing sighs now fill our land with sorrow; in the name of the free and blessed government it seeks to overthrow, and the glorious Union it strives to dissolve; in the name of God and man, of religion and liberty, the world arraigns the criminal at the bar of justice. Now is the day of trial: humanity hopes and fears, mankind await the verdict. It is rendered: Guilty upon every charge of the indictment; and heaven records the righteous sentence—Slavery must die, that the Union and liberty may live forever!
SOMETHING WE HAVE TO THINK OF, AND TO DO
The President's order for a draft—aside from its immediate purpose—has an important bearing in a more general view on the education of the public mind. It is an impressive enforcement of the great principle that every able-bodied man in the nation owes military service to his country as sacredly as he owes obedience to his God. This is a principle which probably few persons will hesitate to admit when plainly confronted with it. But the conviction of it has slumbered in the mind of the people during the long years of peace we have enjoyed. There has been almost nothing to remind us of it for fifty years past. The draft is an emphatic proclamation of it. It brings it home to the conscience of the nation; and thousands, who might otherwise have scarcely thought of it, will be led to recognize and to feel it.
It is to be hoped that we shall go further—that the quickened sense of obligation will make us consider what we must do to make the discharge of it of the greatest service to the nation; that we shall learn the lessons of wisdom which the present struggle enforces on us, and see to it, that in the future, by better military organization and instruction, the able-bodied men of the country are rendered more capable of effective military service at a moment's call.
Oar military system, and the enrolment of the people under it, goes indeed upon this principle of the obligation of military service by every able-bodied citizen—and so is a constant testimony to it; but in point of fact it has done comparatively little toward cherishing the military spirit, cultivating the military virtues, and securing an effective military force, ready at any moment for active service in the field. Dreading nothing from foreign nations on this side of the ocean, counting on the obvious policy of the nations of the old world to keep the peace with us, and never dreaming of such a rebellion as has broken out in our midst—we have not only neglected but discountenanced the cultivation of the military spirit. Our men of education and high social position, instead of contributing to make the militia system respectable by the personal performance of military duty, and by using all their influence to give a high tone to the service, have evaded its requirements on themselves, and done all they could to sink it into disregard and contempt: a dereliction of duty as unwise as wrong.
It is a miserable thing for a country to have to get ready for war when war is forced upon it. This was the case when the rebellion broke out. We were not ready for it. There was indeed no lack of men. Hundreds of thousands responded to their country's call; and the great body of the people were carried away with the delusion that men with arms in their hands are soldiers, and that massing them in great numbers makes them a great army. Wise men—men of military judgment and experience—knew better. But the popular clamor for onward offensive operations prevailed; with disastrous result in the first instance. Not on the whole perhaps to be regretted. It did what nothing else could have done—it dispelled the popular delusion. It did something toward teaching the nation a lesson indispensably necessary to be learned—that a million men with arms in their hands without discipline, are nothing but an armed mob, and that the discipline which alone makes an effective army, implies a great deal more than is gotten in company trainings and regimental parades under our old militia system.
Discipline—discipline—discipline; these are the first, second, and third requisites to make men into soldiers. With it the poorest materials can be made effective. Napoleon made good soldiers of the Italian lazaroni—and a poorer material can scarcely well be conceived. It is Napoleon that said: 'discipline is the first requisite for a soldier—bravery is only secondary.' Indeed the more there is of bravery in an army composed of such men as the New England States and the rural districts of New York send to the war—'reasoning bayonets,' as Napoleon called them, bayonets in the hands of men with heads on their shoulders, and heads that have the habit of doing their own thinking—the more there is of bravery in such a soldiery, the greater the need of discipline. Not only thorough training in the use of arms, but a habit of implicit obedience is indispensable to make good soldiers.
There can be no doubt this war is destined to make us a more military people than we have been before. And good reason we should be. In the first place, because the prevalence of a higher military tone and the maintenance of a more effective military force are indispensable for the national security and defence. Until the millennium comes we shall always be liable to foreign invasions or internal rebellion. In either case there is nothing before us but to fight, and nothing but successful fighting can save us. But how can we fight successfully if we have only raw recruits