Ending the Rebellion

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

[SEPTEMBER 21, 1861.

594

THE ARMY FORGE IN CAMP.

AMONG the many appliances necessary to a complete battery of artillery or corps of cavalry in the field, none is more interesting or picturesque than the ARMY FORGE, a drawing of which we give on the previous page. It consists of a four-wheel carriage, containing in its various compartments all the tools and implements necessary for the outfit of a blacksmith, and can be set up and made ready for operation in the time necessary to cut a block of wood large enough to answer the purpose of a base for the anvil. The front portion, or limber, is precisely the same as the limber of the cannon or caisson, being simply a box about four feet long by two in width, in which is carried the anvil, tongs, and other implements, together with a limited supply of iron, etc., necessary for immediate use. On the rear wheels is mounted a box, in which is contained the bellows, worked by a lever on the outside. In front of this, and on the same platform, is a cast-iron ash-pan for the fire, from which rises a sheet-iron apron or back. On the stock is a vice large enough and of sufficient strength for all ordinary purposes. Back of the box is a receptacle for coal, which is strapped fast, but can be removed at pleasure. The whole is arranged in a very compact form, and when on the road occupies no more space than a cannon or caisson, and is drawn by. four or six horses. The men ride upon the limber-box, and are members of the corps to which they are attached, being subject to the same discipline, and recipients of the same privileges and immunities. The convenience and advantage of such an attachment is obvious. Let us suppose that on the march a cannon, in crossing a ditch or traversing a rough road, is disabled by the breaking of some portion of the iron or wood work of the carriage. It is drawn to one side, the forge drives up, is unlimbered, and in less time than it takes to describe it, a smithy is improvised, a fire kindled, and the accident remedied without delay to the balance of the battery. When in camp a quiet sheltered spot is selected, and here the forge is unlimbered and the smiths set at work shoeing horses and repairing damages during the intervals of drill and discipline. In case of a sudden attack or the necessity of rapid movement the tools are gathered together, the forge limbered up and ready for the march as soon as any other carriage in the battery.

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1861.

THE WAY TO PUT DOWN THE
REBELLION.

THE effect produced by the capture of the Hatteras forts should teach us that this expedition has been a blow struck in the right quarter. It seems to have spread consternation throughout Virginia and North Carolina. The papers are frantic with terror, and urge their readers to lose not a moment in hurrying their "portable property," i. e., slaves, to the interior. It is very easy to advise this hegira, but it will be difficult to act on the advice. If the planters of the whole sea-board are to convey their " portable property" into the interior, it will be cheaper to give that "property" away. Slaves can not be conveniently fed away from the plantations ; and if they are idle, the agricultural system which rests on slave labor must go to the wall. Peace at any price would be better for the Southern slaveowners than such a disturbance of their homes.

But if the blow thus struck is to have this salutary effect, it must be followed up. There are other inlets—north of South Carolina—which should be occupied and closed up. Two or three points on the South Carolina coast invite early attention : a sharp blow struck at the mouth of the Port Royal River would be severely felt. The same is true of the coast of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. It is not necessary that permanent landings should be effected. A point might be occupied to-day, and evacuated as soon as the enemy had gathered in force to resist the occupation. All that is necessary is that the rebels should be convinced of the inconvenience of carrying on the war ; this can be best impressed on their minds by the manoevnres of a flying squadron, here to-day, elsewhere to-morrow, every where swift, resistless, terrible, and full of danger to "portable property." A few months of this regime would convince the substantial men of the South that they had gained nothing by throwing off their allegiance to the Union.

If our leaders are guided by the principles of common sense they will attack the enemy where they are weak and not where they are strong. To march against their entrenchments and expose our infantry to the murderous fire of the guns they have stolen from us, is to attack them where they are strong. To molest their homes and jeopard their "personal property" is to attack them where they are weak. The Administration has now to choose between the two methods.

THE NATIONAL LOAN.

By the time these lines are before the public the new United States Treasury Notes, bearing 7 3/10 per cent. annual interest, will be offered for sale throughout the loyal region. We expect that they will be freely subscribed for.

There are several reasons why these Treasury Notes should be liberally taken.

In the first place, patriotism requires it. The present atrocious rebellion can not be put down without money. Money can not be had except by general subscriptions to these Treasury Notes. If they are not taken, the republic is gone, and all the interests of which it is the safeguard are worthless. We have no country, in fact, unless this rebellion is suppressed, or, in other words, unless the means of suppressing it are provided by the people. Every man who loves the Union, who desires to see it last, who has any property to be injured by the prevalence of anarchy among us, or who has any love for the old memories, the old flag, and the old nation, will best testify his regard for them by subscribing—to the extent of his means—to the United States Treasury Notes.

And, secondly, interest prompts to the general investment of money in these Treasury Notes. They offer an income of 7 3/10 per cent. on the sum invested. Savings Banks offer 5 and 6 per cent. Such stocks as those of New York State, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York City, Boston, etc., offer only 5 1/2 or 6 per cent. The mortgage bonds (firsts) of such leading railways as the Central and Erie do not offer quite 6 per cent. First-class bonds and mortgages only offer 7, and if the creditor wants his money, he must wait till the bond matures, and then go through a long and expensive lawsuit to obtain it. There is no investment in the market which offers as large an income as 7 3/10 per cent., with a reasonable security.

If, therefore, the people of the United States are patriotic, or if they are thrifty, they will take the new Treasury Notes. We believe they are both, and we therefore expect that before the award of the second installment of fifty millions the whole of the first fifty will be placed.

THE LOUNGER.

POSTING THE BOOKS.

IF Jefferson Davis is dead, it is only one of many recent facts which must make sober men who are engaged in the rebellion sadly skeptical of their future.

The first is, that with such a tremendous start they have gone no further.

The second is, that their greatest success in the field was unknown to them at the time, so dearly did it cost them, and has not been of the slightest service since.

The third is, that the division at the North, upon which they securely counted, is more hopeless every day.

The fourth is, that the eager taking of the popular loan invests every man's private interest and the welfare of his family in the success of the Government.

The fifth is, that the Government becomes daily more vigorous, and is enabled to secure the triumph of every movement.

The sixth is, that the want of various necessities of life will pinch more sharply as the winter advances.

The seventh is, that the cotton is further from a market then ever.

The eighth is, the deep conviction of every thoughtful man who studies the facts and who knows human nature, that the longer the rebellion prolongs the war the more ruinous it will become to the vanquished party.

You may push on and name as many reasons as a Puritan preacher had heads to his discourse. But a very few are enough. The great body of the citizens who wish and mean that their Government shall be maintained have no intention of dividing the country or of yielding their constitutional rights to an armed faction. If that faction can overthrow the Government it will establish itself over the whole country. As that inevitable result becomes more and more evident, the rebels can easily understand the scope of the task they have set themselves. They can readily infer whether the loyal citizens of the land are likely to give it up without a struggle such as history does not record. They can see and feel whether there are any signs of fatigue or failure upon our side. They can ask themselves, if their victories are to be of the Bull Run kind, how soon they are like to succeed in ruining our system. With their coast closing—with our forces threatening and touching them upon the East and West—with their best privateers gone, and no more possible—with their leader dead (if it be so)—with the whole country unanimous and fully aroused against them—with the hope of English and French interference growing daily dimmer—with their resources of every kind constantly diminishing, their credit gone, their money spent, and winter settling upon them, they may post the Ledger of Rebellion for the year upon the 20th of December—the anniversary of South Carolina secession—or they may strike the balance for the half year since the President's proclamation to October 15, and even the famous financier Cobb would tell them, if he spoke truly, that the concern was bankrupt, dishonored, and dead.

A LETTER TO ENGLAND : NOT BY AN LL.D.

MY DEAR FRIEND,—I have at length succeeded in quietly staking up my mind that it is useless to expect any Englishman to understand our war. It would seem, at first blush, that people whose ancestors have always been engaged in civil war might easily see that a civil war here, of itself, neither proved nor disproved any thing. Your Jacobite troubles, the rising of '45, and the march of Prince Charlie upon Edinburgh, were not held, I believe, to prove the English system a failure, nor show that a monarchy is inadequate either to

prevent or repress disaffection, treason, and rebellion. Cromwell's absolute success might have been considered tolerably strong evidence-but King Charles came back again. The landing and march of Monmouth is not—in this country, at least—supposed to be a valid argument against monarchy; nor the expulsion of James, and happy coronation of the Dutch Prince as English King.

This nation is now, as yours has been constantly, engaged in civil war. The Government is maintaining itself against armed rebels, assisted by those who dare every thing but fighting against their country. You in England tranquilly sneer, and say to us, " Why don't you give it up ? Why don't you let them have their way ? Your principle is that people shall do as they want to."

No, my friend, you mistake. Your principle in England, I believe, is that every body shall do as he wants to, subject to the Constitution of England. Ours in America is precisely the same: with this advantage, that we know what our Constitution is, and you do not know what yours is, for it is only a series of precedents. The American principle is not individual license, it is Constitutional liberty; and we had always supposed that of England to be the same. We had supposed, farther, that that community of political faith and practice was the deepest bond, with our community of race, between us. We have learned that it is no bond whatever, and there is not a thoughtful or humane man in the country who does not deeply regret it.

You ask, why we don't give it up? For the same reason that England didn't give it up in any of her civil wars—the necessity of national unity.

You ask, why we don't let the rebels go? For the same reason that you would not let London go, or Wales, or the County of Kent, even if a majority of those parts of England should seriously wish to go. For the same reason, nationally, that would prevent you, individually, from suffering your body to be cut into two, or three, or thirty-four pieces.

If London or Yorkshire should defy the English Government, we should do exactly what you have done, if we should declare you and those rebels equally belligerents, and hold ourselves neutral, and in every way sneer at the blundering crash of the impossible English monarchy, which from its beginning has been only awaiting this day. We might have sent sensation reporters to describe battles they did not see. We might have jeered that, if the English Government were waging a war for the miners or the factory operatives, we could have had some sympathy, but a purely political war was perfectly dreary, and futile, and stupid. If you said to us that the surest and most radical reforms of every kind were dependent upon order and government, while every man's life, liberty, and property were imperiled by anarchy, we might have stared at you, and said : " I dare say ; but you've made your bed, and you mustn't squirm at lying in it."

These things, mutatis mutandis, you have done and do. Of course it is not every Englishman who says or thinks so. It is not every newspaper ; for your Daily News, and Star, and others have been no less eloquent in their statement than just in their appreciation of the case. But the great mass of the journals that we see in this country, and the official voice of your Government, all speak in this strain. We are painfully sensitive, I allow, to English criticism. Mr. Roebuck's late sneer at us is not without reason. But I think that you, or any other intelligent man, will not, upon reflection, find it to be altogether an ignoble susceptibility.

This younger nation, striking for liberty under law, had hoped for your sympathy. Doubtless we forgot that you might be unable at first to understand the bearings of the contest ; and many of us were sure that, when you saw just how it was, your hesitating, deprecating, or worse tone would change. In that we have been disappointed. But I think that you are the losers. I think that you must feel very rich when you can afford to lose so lightly the treasure of a nation's sympathy and good-will. Good-by.

A NEW COMEDIAN.

IT is interesting to step out of the whirl of public affairs and look into an entirely different world, as one could in the last fortnight, by stepping out of Broadway into the Winter Garden. Mr. Clarke has been playing there. You do not know the name of course. But had you passed an hour in the theatre you would never have forgotten it.

Mr. Clarke is a dramatic artist of unquestionable genius. He is a comic actor ; but it is not genteel comedy, nor broad comedy, nor grotesque comedy, nor farcical comedy that he plays, but joyous comedy; joyous, elegant, intellectual, and of the most delicate, sensitive, pure humor. The purity of his comedy is as remarkable as the same quality in Dickens or Irving. It is not clouded with a moral purpose : it is fun for the sake of fun ; but so human that the moral effect is sure.

Our late great comedian, Mr. Burton, was properly a farceur. He was grotesque. He was, in the good sense, a clown. He was one of the drollest men possible. No "Toodles" will ever excite so much and so continued laughter as Burton's. But he was not a consummate artist. You did not have that rare, intellectual delight in seeing him which is the greatest charm whether of tragic or comic acting. There was sometimes almost an after-taste of disgust. Yet he was one of the most truly amusing actors who has ever played in New York; and he may be mentioned with Mr. Clarke simply to indicate a difference.

The remarkable quality of this gentleman's acting is its naturalness. Of course it is the naturalness of genius, but a genius of acute perception. No part could prove it more than that of Toodles. There are but two scenes in that sketch. The first is the interview between Mr. and Mrs. Toodles and the sailor; the other is the drunken scene. In the first you, who have been used to Burton's unctuous extravaganza, will be so surprised and delighted to find that it is possible to give an equally good and entirely new rendering of the flimsy part,

will look on with sober and incredulous amusement. The famous P in Thompson passes unseen; but when Mrs. Toodles begins to tell the story " he had a brother," and proceeds to hang him upon the fore-yard of the rudder, Mr. Clarke's Toodles is unspeakably droll. The aching agony of merriment which overpowers him—which makes him bend and double himself with his back to the audience, while every particle of his frame is as drunk with laughter as it is in the next scene with liquor, is one of the most comical scenes conceivable.

Then he is the best drunken man that was ever seen. There is a law even in the whim and incapacity of intoxication, and Mr. Clarke's Toodles is strictly bound by it. The deliciously funny drunkenness of Burton was directly addressed to the spectator. He poked the fun at you. Clarke's is in the nature of things. He is too drunk to have any consciousness of observation, except the glimmering sense of absurdity and strain at dignity which a drunken man, who is not a mere sot, always has. It is not so laughable as it is true. Therefore, as a drunken man is not, with all the involuntary ludicrousness of his conduct, altogether funny, but rather the cause of sobriety in the spectator, so you look at this man with a smile in your eves, indeed, but a tear and sense of shame close behind. Burton's Toodles made believe drunk ; but Clarke's is drunkenness itself. It beats the eloquent Gough with his own weapons. It is holding the mirror up to nature so exactly that you get just the impression nature means you shall have of drunkenness ; and if the spectacle can do you any good-voila!

The same evening he played the farmer in "Speed the Plough." Supposing that he would not appear until the after-piece, we, who had no bills of the play, looked on incuriously, until the hearty, joyous repose and completeness of the personation showed that a most excellent artist was before us. With his shrewd instinct, infinite play of humor, intellectual perception, and natural elegance, Mr. Clarke is a comedian of the best and purest school, and by far the finest artist that has been seen upon those boards since Rachel.

THE IFS IN THE WAY.

IF the late Democratic Convention at Syracuse had adopted as its platform the first three resolutions of its committee;

If it had not elaborately destroyed all their force by the resolutions that follow;

If it had nominated a ticket of men of all parties, who would gladly stand upon those resolutions; If it had given no countenance to treason, and no sympathy and moral aid to rebellion, as it did in several of its resolutions;

If Mr. Redfield had made such a speech as Mr. Ogden made ;

If it had for one moment forgotten party in devotion to the country;

If the great mass of thoughtful citizens in the State had profound confidence in the leaders who manipulated the Convention;

If they could forget why these same leaders have lost the political control of the State;

If they could forget that these same leaders are using the war to play a desperate game for the ascendency of their party at the very moment that the existence of the Government is threatened;

If the great mass of the people of this State had not resolved to repudiate all party purpose, postpone all party action, and renounce every party name; and,

If those people had not made up their minds to intrust the government of this State at the next election to men who believe that traitors are the worst of enemies, not friends in disguise, and who are therefore bent upon repressing the rebellion unconditionally and finally, why then there might be some chance that the purely partisan ticket of the late Democratic Convention would get several

votes.

SELECT VARIETIES OF TREASON.

THAT Governor Magoffin, of Kentucky, is a friend of Mr. Breckinridge of the same State, is fully proved by the message the former has recently sent to the Legislature. The principle which controls the action of both of them is that you must serve the enemy in the best way that circumstances allow.

If, for instance, you are an editor in New York, you must fill your paper with a loud outcry over the horrors of war, omitting to mention what and who began war, and so enforced either submission or resistance. If you are a Senator in Congress, you are to remember that you can help the conspiracy more by remaining and denouncing the motives of those who are defending their Government from destruction, than you can by packing up and going to Richmond where you belong. If you are Governor of a State, you are to refuse the requisitions of the National Administration because you call them unconstitutional. You are to declare your State neutral, while you give all possible sympathy and aid to the rebellion; and, finally, you are to assume and state the essential absurdity of secession, that a State is sovereign against the United States.

These are the parts for traitors within our lines to play. These are the parts they are playing and have played. This is the Maryland philosophy which assumes that the rebellion is successful, that the Union is gone, that every State may follow when and where it pleases (which is a logical and undeniable consequence of the other two positions), and that Maryland, to secure the commercial supremacy to which Baltimore is entitled, ought to go with the rebels.

They are assertions which force upon every honest mind the conviction that the National Government, within its sphere, is absolutely supreme over all the citizens, or it is not. If it be so, there is no such thing as State independence and neutrality, any more than county, or town, or individual neutrality. If it be not, the laws of the United States are waste paper and its Government moonshine.