The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862
by
Various
Part 5 out of 5
At length this great commerce has been interrupted, and the South, cut
off from this almost indispensable supply of the necessaries of life, is
now struggling for existence, and diverts its negroes from the
remunerative culture of sugar and cotton to the cultivation of grain and
corn.
There are few at the North who appreciate the sacrifice which attends
this diversion, or the extent of the pressure which led to this
disastrous change.
In Illinois, Iowa, or Indiana, the farmer can grow rich while selling
his corn for ten cents per bushel, and it is now common for a man and a
boy to cultivate a hundred acres and to gather five thousand bushels in
a single season. The South does not possess the rich and exhaustless
soil of the prairies, which for half a century will yield without return
successive and luxuriant crops of corn. Its soil is generally light and
easily exhausted, and is tilled by the rude and unwilling labor of the
slave. The census apprises us that its average crop of corn is but
fifteen bushels to the acre, in place of fifty to sixty in Illinois, and
even this depends in part on guano or artificial stimulants. The average
yield of wheat south of Tennessee is but six bushels to the acre, in
place of twenty to forty in Ohio. The Southern planters, who can sell
cotton with profit at ten cents per pound, cannot produce corn for less
than one dollar per bushel, or tenfold the cost in the West, and in past
years a dollar has been the customary price from North Carolina to
Texas.
Before the war, the cotton-crop of the South had risen to five millions
of bales; but now four-fifths of the land in cultivation is devoted to
corn and grain. In place of five millions of bales, worth at former
prices two hundred millions of dollars, and at present rates at least
eight hundred millions, the South, in its folly, to the injury of the
world, and the ruin of most of its planters, is now producing, in place
of its cotton, less corn than could be furnished in Illinois in ordinary
seasons for twenty millions of dollars. But even this is inadequate to
the wants of its people and its stock. Its small farmers are diverted
from the cultivation of the soil. The conscript-law is drafting all the
able-bodied white men into the army.
The States from Tennessee and North Carolina to Texas have neither
pasture nor mowing; their feeble stock gains but a precarious livelihood
from the cane-brakes or weeds of the forests and Northern hay. Corn and
grain were transported by railway more than three hundred miles into the
interior. The writer has stood beside a yoke of Georgia oxen in Atlanta
so small that they might well pass for calves at the North. Two Illinois
steers would weigh down a half-dozen such animals. But, diminutive as
they are, they, as well as the people of the South, require Northern
supplies. And at this moment their last dependence is placed upon the
valley of Virginia and the valleys of East Tennessee. Let us hope that
the Union armies which now possess Nashville, Memphis, and Cumberland
Gap may soon occupy Knoxville.
In the language of the "Richmond Examiner," "the possession of the lead,
copper, and salt mines, and the pork, corn, and hay-crop of these
countries, Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia, is now vital to the
existence of the Confederacy. This section of the country is the
keystone of the Southern arch. It is now in great peril, as is the great
artery through which the life-blood of the South now circulates. Whether
the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad is to be surrendered, whether
the only adequate supply of salt is to be lost, whether the only
hay-crop of the South is to be surrendered, are questions of vast and
pressing importance."
The wall of fire to which allusion has sometimes been made in debate is
now closing in around the Southern Confederacy. The Mississippi is
closed. But a single point of contact, at Vicksburg, remains between the
States west of the Mississippi and the Atlantic States. Texas is
insulated. The blockade is daily becoming more stringent upon the
seaboard. One effort more, soon to be made, must sever the rich valleys,
mines, and furnaces of Tennessee from the cotton districts, and the
exhaustion of supplies of every description will soon become more and
more apparent.
It is undoubtedly true that an occasional cargo escapes the blockade,
that a few boat-loads of supplies are ferried by treason at the midnight
hour across the Chesapeake, and sold at extravagant prices; but what
does this amount to? What a contrast this trade presents to the millions
of tons which used to reach the South from the Free States and Europe
before it was crushed by the rebellion! And what a contrast does it
present to-day to the commerce of the North,--to the barks and
propellers which float down the Lakes deeply laden with grain,--to the
weekly exports of New York, (twelve millions for the last three
weeks,)--to its vast income from duties,--to the ships of the North
visiting every ocean, earning more freight than for years past, although
deprived of the carrying-trade of the South, and contending successfully
with the marine of Great Britain for the supremacy on the ocean! How
signal has thus far been the failure of the Southern prophecies made
before the outbreak!
New York, we were told, was dependent on Southern commerce, and was to
be ruined by the war; there were to be riots in the streets, and its
palaces were to fall in ruins: but the riots and the ruins are to be
found only in Southern latitudes.
The manufacturers of Massachusetts were to be broken down: but the
woollen trade and the shoe-trade have received a new impetus,--are
highly prosperous; and the cotton-spinners, with more than a year's
supply of cotton, have by the rise of prices enjoyed a profit
unprecedented. Having used their cotton with moderation, they have at
the close of each six months seen their stocks of raw material and
goods, by the rise of prices, undiminished in value, and blessed like
the widow's cruse of oil. Nearly all have paid large dividends, many
have earned dividends for the year to come, and are now sending their
male operatives to the war, and their females to their rural homes,
where they expect to perform some of the duties of brothers who have
volunteered for the war. The ruin predicted falls not upon the spinner,
but upon the authors of Secession.
Let us glance for a moment at the present condition of the South.
General Butler found at New Orleans proof of its exhaustion in the
prices of food,--with corn, for instance, at three dollars per bushel,
flour twenty to thirty dollars per barrel, and hay at one hundred
dollars per ton.
If we pass on to Mobile, we hear of similar prices, and learn that not a
carpet can be found on the floor of any resident: they have all been cut
into blankets for the army. White curtains and drapery have been
converted into shirts; for cotton cloth cannot be had for a dollar a
yard.
As we come on toward the North, we find the shops of Savannah nearly
empty, with shoes and boots quoted at thirty dollars per pair. At such
rates, what must it cost to put an army in condition to move?
At Charleston, the stores which two years since were overflowing with
merchandise, and the daily recipients, of entire cargoes, are utterly
empty; and when we reach Richmond, we see sugar quoted at three-fourths
of a dollar, coffee at two dollars, and tea at sixteen dollars per
pound, broadcloth at fifty dollars per yard, while whiskey, worth at
Cincinnati twenty cents per gallon, commands at Richmond six dollars.
Such is the condition of affairs, while the South still has access to
Virginia and East Tennessee, and after it has received a year's supply
of Northern productions for which no payment has been made.
Having thus pictured the physical resources of the enemy, let us inquire
what is the force which he can bring into the field, and his means of
maintaining it.
There is conclusive evidence that at no period during the war has the
Confederacy had more than three hundred and fifty thousand effective men
in the field, and it has no power to carry that number beyond four
hundred thousand. The population of the Union, by the census of 1860,
was thirty-two millions. At the usual rate of increase it now amounts to
thirty-four millions; of these, four millions are blacks, and of the
residue, twenty-six millions are in the loyal districts, and but four
millions in the Confederacy, if we exclude New Orleans and those
portions of Virginia and Tennessee which have been subdued by the
Federal arms.
In our Northern States the militia has rarely exceeded ten per cent. of
the population. At least one-half of the population is composed of
females; one-half of the residue is below the age of sixteen. If we
deduct from the remainder three-twentieths for those below eighteen,
those above forty-five, and those exempted by law or infirmity,
one-tenth alone will remain.
It is said that the Confederacy has called out all the white males
between sixteen and thirty-five, and proposes to summon all those
between thirty-five and fifty. If it does so, we may well expect such
forces to break down in heavy marches or suffer from exposure. But let
us assume that it can bring into the field fourteen per cent. of its
entire population--(and we must not forget that this is a high estimate,
as all the able-bodied men of Massachusetts are but twelve per cent. of
her population, or one hundred and fifty-five thousand): upon this
assumption, the effective force of the Confederacy at the start was but
five hundred and sixty thousand, and if to this we add forty thousand
more for volunteers and conscripts from Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky,
and East Tennessee, we have a capacity for six hundred thousand only. Of
these there has been a continual waste from the outset by sickness,
desertions, capture, and the casualties of war. The Union army has lost
at least one-third, and been reduced from six hundred thousand to four
hundred thousand by such depletion; and in the same ratio, the South,
with inferior supplies and stores, and with greater exposure, must have
lost at least an equal number.
In estimating its present capacity at four hundred thousand men, we
undoubtedly exceed the actual resources of the South. To meet this we
have at least four hundred thousand effective men now in the field, to
be increased to a million by the new levies, and soon to be aided by
thirty mail-clad steamers added to our present fleet on the ocean and
the Mississippi,--a naval force equivalent to at least two hundred
thousand more.
To sustain such forces in the field and on the water will doubtless tax
all the energies of the Union; but how is the inferior force of four
hundred thousand to be clad, fed, and paid by the exhausted Confederacy,
with a white population less than one-sixth of that opposed to them,
without commerce and the mechanic arts, and with no productive
agriculture?
The pecuniary resources of the South for carrying on this war have thus
far consisted principally of a paper currency and bonds, with a forced
circulation. It has drawn little from taxes or forfeiture, although it
has been aided by the appropriation of both public and private property
of the United States.
We have no record of the currency issued, but we know that both prices
and pay have been higher in Southern than in Northern armies; and if
with us it has cost a thousand dollars per annum to sustain a soldier in
the field, it has cost at that rate four hundred and sixty-seven
millions to maintain three hundred and fifty thousand men for the last
sixteen months in the Southern army, and of this at least four hundred
millions has been met by the issue of paper.
Such an issue would be equivalent to an issue of seven times that
amount, or of twenty-eight hundred millions, to be borne by the whites
who now recognize the Union. How long can the South continue to float
such a currency? Does it not already equal or exceed the paper currency
of our Revolution, which became utterly worthless, notwithstanding our
nation achieved its independence?
Our fathers, long before the surrender at Yorktown, resorted to specie,
to the bank of Morris, and to French and Dutch subsidies: but how is the
South to command bank-notes or specie, or to buy arms, powder, or
provisions, or to satisfy soldiers with a currency such as has been
described, or to make new issues at the rate of twenty-five millions per
month?
At Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, gold ranges from 125 to 150
per cent. premium. Must not this advance require a double or triple
issue of currency, namely, fifty to seventy-five millions per month, to
accomplish as much as has already been effected? And how as has already
been effected? and how long can such a currency be floated within a
contracting circle, and in the face of our new levies and our unbounded
national credit? If the war should last another year, and this
depreciating currency can be floated at all, it is safe to infer from
the history of the past that the debt of the South must increase at
least one thousand millions. Under the pressure of such growing weight
its end may be safely predicted.
Thus far in the contest the South has possessed one great advantage. The
planter's son, reared to no profession, in a region where the pursuits
of trade and the mechanic arts have little honor, has been accustomed
from childhood to the use of the horse and rifle. In most of the towns
of the South you will find a military academy, and here the young cadet
has been trained to arms and qualified for office: we have no such class
in the Free States, except a few graduates from West Point. Under such
officers, a motley army has been collected, composed of foreigners who
have toiled in Southern cities as draymen and porters, of Northern
clerks driven by coercion or sheer necessity to enlist, the poor whites,
the outcasts of the South, a class the most degraded in public
estimate,--a class which has the respect of neither the white man nor
the negro. These people inhabit to a great extent the scrub-oak or
black-jack forests, the second growth which has sprung up on exhausted
plantations. Destitute of schools, churches, and newspapers, unable to
read or write, without culture, generally steeped in whiskey, their sole
property a cabin, and perhaps a few swine, which roam through the
forests, these Pariahs of society gain a precarious subsistence by
hunting, fishing, and occasional depredations upon the property of the
planters. During a brief visit to Columbia, in 1860, one of these
outcasts was arraigned before the Court of Sessions for stealing
black-jack from a plantation and selling it in the streets of Columbia;
and the judge in his flowing robes, while enlarging upon the offence,
facetiously remarked, that the prisoner had doubtless swallowed the
black-jack,--an allusion to the habits of the class which seemed well
understood by the bar.
The position of this class has thus far been improved by the war. In the
army the poor white has associated with the officer, far above him in
social life. His aid has been courted, he has received high wages in
Confederate notes, he has found better fare and clothing than he could
procure at home, and has been lured to the contest by the eloquent
appeals of the planter, by bitter attacks upon the North, and glowing
pictures of the ruin which the abolitionists would bring upon the South.
The Confederate notes have until recently proved sufficient for his
purposes, while other classes have supplied the means to prosecute the
war. But as the circle contracts and these notes prove worthless, food
and clothing, tobacco and whiskey will cease to be attainable; and when
the provost marshal has swept the plantation, and comes to the poor
man's cabin to take his last bushel of meal and to shoot down his swine
for the subsistence of the army, he will at length ask what he has to
gain from the further prosecution of the war.
When this crisis arrives, and it must be approaching, how can the
Southern army retain in its ranks either the poor white, the foreigner,
or the Northern clerk, whose sympathies have never been with the
Confederacy?
It may be said, that the Confederacy can continue the war by wealth
accumulated in former years. But that wealth vested in land, slaves, or
railways, now unproductive, or in banks whose funds have been advanced
to planters still under protest. This wealth will not suffice to
prosecute the war. Thus far it has been sustained by funds on hand, the
seizure of national forts, arms, and arsenals, by the appropriation of
debts due to Northern merchants, by supplies from Kentucky, Tennessee,
and Missouri, and by the issue of paper already greatly depreciated.
With these resources it has conducted a losing warfare while we were
creating an army and a navy, and during this contest has lost three of
the most important border States, nearly half of a fourth, several of
its chief seaports, nearly all its shipping, and the navigation of the
Mississippi.
But it may be urged, Has not McClellan retired from his intrenchments
before Richmond? Have we not fought with varying results successive
battles around Manassas? Are not our troops retiring to their old lines
before Washington? Have not the enemy again broken into Kentucky? and do
they not menace the banks of the Potomac and the Ohio? Let us concede
all this. Let us admit that our new levies are for the moment
inert,--that we are now marshalling, arming, and drilling our raw
recruits; let us concede that the giant of the North has not yet put
forth his energies,--that, although roused from his torpor, one of his
arms is still benumbed, and that his lithe and active opponent is for
the moment pommelling him on every side, and has a momentary advantage;
let us admit that our go-ahead nation is indignant at the idea of one
step backward in this great contest: still it is safe to predict that
within sixty days our new army of superior men will be ready to take the
field and advance upon the foe in overwhelming force,--that soon our
iron fleet will be ready to batter down the fortresses of Charleston,
Savannah, Mobile, Vicksburg, and Galveston, the last strongholds of the
enemy. And when his army of conscripts shall have wasted away, after
their last flurry and struggle, where is he to recruit or procure a new
army for resistance or offence? The South is now taking the field with
all its strength; but when that strength is broken, what power will
remain to confront the forces of the Union?
The South has driven to the war its whole white population able to bear
arms, and when that force is exhausted, at least two-thirds of the adult
males of the North and the whole black population will still remain to
sustain the Government, and births and emigration will soon fill the
vacuum.
Let us place at the helm men of character and tried activity,--men of
intelligence and forecast,--men who can appreciate the leaders of the
South, reckless alike of property, character, and life, and the result
cannot be doubtful.
The South is now commencing a new campaign, and is to confront a navy
hourly improving, and an invulnerable fleet, armed with cannon more
effective than any yet used in naval warfare. It is to encounter, with
conscripts, a million of hardy volunteers, and to do this with its
supplies reduced and its credit broken. It has but one reliance: a slave
population of four millions, competent to maintain themselves, but
incompetent to furnish to their masters a full supply of the coarsest
food. While it furnishes a scanty supply, while it toils in the
trenches, and feeds the horses of the cavalry, or drives the
army-wagons, it is still an element of strength to the masters, and the
question occurs, Shall the nation, now so severely taxed by the
slaveholder, and compelled to pour forth its best blood like water to
preserve its existence, remove this element of present and future
strength by liberating the slave?
Can the slaveholder claim the preservation of slavery, when he relies
upon it and uses it to aid him in destroying the Government? And if
one-half of the population of the South is ready to sustain the
Government, and to withdraw its aid from the foe, shall not the
loyalist, whether white or black, be accepted and allowed the privileges
of a citizen when he takes refuge under the national flag?
Can we expect future peace, unless we reduce to order lawless men,
unless we draw them from the war-path by making labor and the arts of
peace respected?
This is a momentous question which addresses itself to our nation at the
present juncture. There are some who imagine that the negro, if
liberated, would renew the scenes of San Domingo, and massacre the
people of the South. But such has not been the case in the French and
British Isles of the West Indies, although in those islands the
proportion of the white population is far below that at the South. In
the Cotton States the whites and the negroes are nearly equal in
numbers; and if, in Jamaica, Barbadoes, Santa Cruz, and Martinique, the
slaves, when liberated, have respected the rights of the masters, and
recognized their title to the land, and have submitted to toil for
moderate wages, where a handful of whites monopolized the soil, and
demanded for it prices far beyond the value of the slave and land
together, may we not well anticipate that the slave population, barely
equal in number to the white population, trained to submission in a
region where land is of little value, will, if liberated, continue to be
a quiet and peaceful population?
There are some who predict that the negroes, if emancipated, will
overrun the North and West. But why should they fly from the South to
the cold winters and less genial climate of the North or West? It is
servitude which degrades the negro; and if the stigma which he now bears
is removed, why should he not cling to the region in which he was born
and bred, and to which he is adapted by nature?
Should the institution of slavery survive the war into which we have
been plunged by its adherents and propagators, we might well fear that
our Northern and Western States would be overrun by the fugitives, who,
having escaped during the war, would be disposed to place distance
between themselves and their late masters, and to fly from the borders
of States which would not hesitate to reduce them again to servitude;
but if the institution itself should be terminated by the war, why
should the free man be a fugitive from his home?
Our Western States are desirous to perpetuate in its purity the
Anglo-Saxon blood, and would colonize the West with men raised under
free institutions. They shrink from all contact with a race of bondmen.
Our President, himself a Western man, proposes to colonize the free
negro in Central America, and thriving colonies already exist on the
coast of Africa. But why should we send from this country her millions
of laborers? Is our land exhausted? Is there no room for the negro in
the region where he lives? Has not the demand for sugar and cotton, for
naval stores and timber, overtaken the supply? and has not the frank and
truthful Mr. Spratt, of South Carolina, announced in the councils of
that State, that the South must import more savages from Africa, to
reclaim and improve its soil? Why, then, banish the well-trained laborer
now on the spot?
Does not history apprise us how Spain suffered in her agriculture, and
the arts of life declined, when the Moriscos were driven from her soil?
how Belgium, the garden of Europe, decayed when Spanish intolerance
banished to England the Protestant weavers and spinners, who laid the
foundation of English opulence? how France retrograded when superstition
exiled from her shores the industrious Huguenots? And are we to draw no
light from history? Would we, at this moment, when our cotton-mills are
closing their gates,--when the cotton-spinner of England appeals to the
British minister for intervention,--when the weaver of Rouen demands the
raw material of Louis Napoleon,--shall we, at a time when a single crop
of cotton is worth, at current prices, nearly a thousand millions, or
twice the debt contracted for the war,--impair our national strength by
destroying the sources of supply? At least one crop has been lost, and
this will for a term of years insure high prices. Are we to deprive our
nation of these prices, and of the freights which would attend the
shipments to Europe? Shall not cotton contribute to make good our
losses, and to the progress of the nation?
Why is colonization necessary?
There is a belt of territory, now sparsely populated, and inhabited
chiefly by negroes, extending from the Dismal Swamp to the Capes of
Florida, and from these Capes to the Brazos,--generally level, and free
from rocks and stones,--of the average width of nearly one hundred
miles,--its area at least two hundred millions of acres,--competent to
sustain forty millions of negroes, or ten times the number which now
exist within the United States. Here are vast forests, unctuous with
turpentine, annually producing pitch, tar, rosin, and ship-timber, with
material for houses, boats, fuel, and lightwood, while the mossy drapery
of the trees in suitable for pillows and cushions. Here is a soil which,
with proper cultivation, can produce rice, corn, cotton, tobacco, and
indigo, and is admirably adapted to the culture of the ground-nut and
sweet potato. Here are rivers and inlets abounding in fish and
shell-fish. Here is a climate, often fatal to the white, but suited to
the negro. Here are no harsh winters or chilling snows. Along the coast
we may rear black seamen for our Southern steamers,--cooks, stewards,
and mariners for our West India voyages.
Has not Nature designed a black fringe for this coast? Has not the
importation of the negro been designed by Providence to reclaim this
coast, and to give his progeny permanent and appropriate homes? And, to
use a favorite phrase of the South, does not Manifest Destiny point to
this consummation? and why should the negro be exiled from these shores?
Does he not cling like the white man to his native land? and are not his
tastes, wishes, and attachments to be consulted,--a question so
important to his race?
But it may be urged, that this is not public domain,--that it has been
already appropriated, and is now the property of the Southern planter.
But here is a public exigency, and the remedy should be proportioned to
the exigency. The right of eminent domain should be exercised by the
nation either directly after conquest, or through the States or
Territories it may establish. By that right, in England and in most of
our States, private property is taken for highways or railways. In New
York it is thus appropriated for markets, hospitals, and other public
purposes.
The land in question, if we deduct the sites of towns and villages and
cities, as should be done, will not average in value three dollars per
acre. Let it be valued at twice that price, and be charged with the
interest of that price as a ground-rent to be paid by the settler. And
if, in Barbadoes, the free negro has raised the value of land to three
hundred dollars per acre, surely on this coast he can prosper upon land
costing one-fiftieth part of the average price of that of Barbadoes.
If six dollars would not suffice, the land might be rated at an average
value of ten dollars, and the settler charged with a quit-rent of half a
dollar per acre, and allowed to convert his tenure into a fee-simple by
the payment of the principal. The planter whose land should be
appropriated would thus realize more than its value, and in great part
the value of his slaves,--while the negro would secure at once a settled
home, with an interest in the soil and the means of subsistence.
Is not this the true solution of the great problem?
If we can give to the negro a fixed tenure in the soil under the
tutelage of the nation, he will soon have every incentive to exertion.
With peace must come a continuous demand for all the produce of the
South,--for cotton, tobacco, timber, and naval stores,--in exchange for
which the negro would require at least threefold the amount of boots,
shoes, clothing, and utensils which he at present consumes. Labor would
then become honored and respected. Upon the uplands of the South the
white man can toil effectively in the open air. In the warehouse and the
workshop he can actually toil more hours during the year than in New
York or New England, for his fingers will not there be benumbed by the
intense cold of the North. When labor ceases to be degrading, the
military school will give place to the academy, commerce will be
honored, and a check be given to military aspirations; and should an
insurrection again occur, the loyal population bordering the coast may
be armed to resist alike insurrection at home and intervention from
abroad, and unite with our navy in preserving the peace of the country.
THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.
The flags of war like storm-birds fly,
The charging trumpets blow;
Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
No earthquake strives below.
And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
Her ancient promise well,
Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps
The battle's breath of hell.
And still she walks in golden hours
Through harvest-happy farms,
And still she wears her fruits and flowers
Like jewels on her arms.
What mean the gladness of the plain,
This joy of eve and morn,
The mirth that shakes the beard of grain
And yellow locks of corn?
Ah! eyes may well be full of tears,
And hearts with hate are hot;
But even-paced come round the years,
And Nature changes not.
She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
With songs our groans of pain;
She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
The war-field's crimson stain.
Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear
Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm;
Too near to God for doubt or fear,
She shares the eternal calm
She knows the seed lies safe below
The fires that blast and burn;
For all the tears of blood we sow
She waits the rich return.
She sees with clearer eye than ours
The good of suffering born,--
The hearts that blossom like her flowers
And ripen like her corn.
Oh, give to us, in times like these,
The vision of her eyes;
And make her fields and fruited trees
Our golden prophecies!
Oh, give to us her finer ear!
Above this stormy din,
We, too, would hear the bells of cheer
Ring peace and freedom in!
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_The Tabernacle_: A Collection of Hymn-Tunes, Chants, Sentences, Motets,
and Anthems, adapted to Public and Private Worship, and to the Use of
Choirs, Singing-Schools, Musical Societies, and Conventions. Together
with a Complete Treatise on the Principles of Musical Notation. By B.F.
BAKER and W.O. PERKINS. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
This thoroughly prepared book will prove of much service in those
departments of musical study and practice for which it is intended. The
style of church-music throughout the country has undergone material
changes within the last five-and-twenty years. In the cities and larger
towns, such societies as can afford the expense have established
quartette choirs of trained vocalists, who deliver the hymns and anthems
of the service to selections from the music of the great masters, which
they are expected to render in a manner that shall be satisfactory to a
taste educated and refined by the instruction of good teachers and the
public performances of skilful musicians. In the country churches, the
congregations still unite in the singing; or, where it has been the
custom for those who could sing to "sit in the seats" and form a chorus
choir, such custom still obtains. Some notion of city taste, however,
has gone abroad in the country, and the choirs, although old-fashioned
in their organization, are not quite content with the psalm-books of old
time, and are constantly asking for something newer and better. A great
many volumes have been published in order to supply this want, some of
which have done good, while, if we say of others that they have done no
harm, it is as much as they deserve.
A music-book for general use in churches which do not have quartette
choirs and "classical" music must be prepared with care and good
judgment. It must contain, of course, certain old standard tunes which
seem justly destined to live in perpetual favor, and it must surround
these with clusters of new tunes, which shall be as solid and correct in
their harmony as the older, while their lightness and fluency of melody
belong to the present day. There must be anthems and chants, and there
must be a clear and thorough exposition of the elements of vocal music
to help on the tyros who aspire to join the choir.
The work of which we are writing answers these requirements well. Its
editors are practical men; they have not only taught music to city
pupils, but they have conducted choirs and singing-schools, and have
discovered the wants of ordinary singers by much experience in normal
schools and musical conventions.
"The Tabernacle" contains the fruits of their observation and
experience, and will be found to meet the requirements of many singers
who have hitherto been unsatisfied. It commences with the rudiments of
music and a glossary of technical terms, to which is appended a good
collection of part-songs, especially prepared for social and festival
occasions. Then follow the hymn-tunes, which are adapted not only to the
ordinary metres, but also to all the irregular metres which are to be
found in any collection of hymns which is known to be used in the
country. Next come the chants and anthems: among these are arrangements
from Mozart, Beethoven, Chapple, Rossini, (the "Inflammatus" from the
"Stabat Mater"), Curschmann, (the celebrated trio, "Ti prego,")
Lambillote, and other standard authors. Indices, remarkably full, and
prepared upon an ingenious system, by which the metre and rhythm of
every tune are indicated, conclude the volume.
We are confident that choristers will find "The Tabernacle" to be just
such a book as they like to use in instructing and leading their choirs,
and that choirs will consider it to be one of the books from which they
are best pleased to sing.
_The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, with Documents,
Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, etc_. Edited by FRANK MOORE,
Author of "Diary of the American Revolution." New York: G.P. Putnam.
Charles T. Evans, General Agent.
Three large volumes of this valuable record of the momentous events now
transpiring on this continent have been published. The maps, diagrams,
and portraits are excellent in their way. No fuller documentary history
of the Great Rebellion could be desired; and as every detail is given
from day-to-day's journals, the "Record" of Mr. Moore must always stand
a comprehensive and accurate cyclopedia of the War. For the public and
household library it is a work of sterling interest, for it gathers up
every important fact connected with the struggle now pending, and
presents it in a form easy to be examined. It begins as far back as
December 17, 1860, and the third volume ends with the events of 1861.
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Footnotes:
1: The original of the leaf copied on the next page was picked from such
a pile.
2: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 498.
3: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 499.
4: _Medical Statistics of the United States Army_, 1839-54, p.625.
5: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army.
_6: _Ibid.
_7: _Traite de Geographie et de Statistique Medicales_, Tom. II. p. 289.
8: _Ibid_. p. 286.
9: _Traite de Geographie et de Statistique Medicales_, Tom. II. p. 284.
10: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_.
11: Medical Statistics U.S. Army, 1839-54, p. 491, etc.
12: Observations on the Diseases of the Army, p. 51.
13: Ib., p. 53.
14: Observations on the Diseases of the Army, p. 59.
15: London Statistical Journal, Vol. XIX. p. 247.
16: Edmonds in _London Lancet_, Vol. XXXVI. p. 143.
17: _Despatches_.
18: Edmonds in _London Lancet_, Vol. XXXVI. p. 145.
19: Edmonds in _London Lancet_, Vol. XXXVI. p. 148.
20: _Ib_., p. 219.
21: Boudin, _Traite de Geographie et de Statistique Medicales_, Tom. II.
p. 289, etc., quoted by him from Major Moltka.
22: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 524.
23: _Medical Sketches_, p. 39.
24: _Ib_., p. 204.
25: _Ib_., p. 66.
26: _Medical Sketches_, p. 119.
27: _Ib_., p. 199.
28: _On Epidemics_, p. 70.
29: _United States Documents_, 1814.
30: _Ib_., 1814.
31: _Executive Documents, U.S._, 1847-48, Vol. VII. p. 1013.
32: _Ib_., p. 1033.
33: _Ib_., p. 1185.
34: _MS. Letter of Mr. Elliott_, Actuary of the Sanitary Commission.
35: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 180.
36: Ib., 525.
37: _Medical and Surgical History of the War in the East_, Vol. II. p.
252.
38: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 377.
39: _Medical Sketches_, p. 246.
40: _Medical Sketches_, p. 66.
41: Boudin, _Traite de Geographie et de Statistique Medicales_, Tom.
II., p. 289.
42: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 180.
43: _Medical and Surgical History of the British Army in the East_, Vol.
II. p. 227.
44: _British and Foreign Medical and Surgical Journal_, Vol. XXI.
45: _MS. Letter of Mr. Elliott.
_46: _Medico-Chirurgical Transactions_, Vol. VI. p.478, etc.
47: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p.
525.--_Medical and Surgical History of the War in the East_.
48: Calculated from the _Eighteenth Registration Report_.
49: Calculated from _Twenty-First Report of Registrar General_.
50: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 212.
Colonel Tulloch.
51: _Diseases of the Army_, p. 50.
52: _Despatches_.
53: Boudin, _Traite de Geographie et de Statistique Medicales_, Tom. II.
p. 289.
54: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 178.
55: _Report of the Sanitary Commission.--Report on the Sanitary
Condition of the British Army_, p. 335.
56: _Report of the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p 97.
57: _Ib._, p. 334.
58: _Ib._, p. 365.
59: _Ib._, p. 524.
60: Dr. Mann, _Medical Sketches_, p. 64.
61: Dr. Lovell, quoted by Mann, _Medical Sketches_, p. 119.
62: Mann, _Medical Sketches_, pp. 120, 121.
63: _Ib._, p. 78.
64: _Ib._, p. 92.
65: _Ib._, p. 124.
66: _Ib._, p. 204.
67: _Executive Documents, U.S._, 1848, Vol. VII. p. 1224.
68: Mann, _Medical Sketches_, p. 66.
69: _Ib._, p. 39.
70: p. 23.
71: Report of the Sanitary Commission, No. 41.
72: Report of the Sanitary Commission, No. 41.
73: _Report of Barrack Commission_, p. 160.
74: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 439.
75: Dr. Farr, in _Journal of the London Statistical Society_, Vol. XXIV.
p. 472.
76: _Ibid_.
77: _MS. Letter of Dr. Sutherland.
_78: Section Dr. Farr, _ubi supra_.
79: _Army Medical Regulations_, p. 27, etc.
80: _Report of the Army Medical Department for 1859_.
81: _Army Medical Regulations_, p. 29.
82: _Army Medical Regulations_, p. 83.
83: _Ib_., p. 84.
84: _Army Medical Regulations_, p. 93.
85: _Report of the Army Medical Department for 1859_, p. 6.
86: _Report of the Army Medical Department for_ 1859, p. 10.
87: _Ibid_.
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