The Sun.
London, England, 1866-01-02 00:00:00

SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 2, 1866.

Peace on Earth."

BY THOMAS HIIGIES97 M.P. FOR LAMBETH.

The last time that the season of "peace on earth and
good will to men" came round, the great struggle between
the free and slave powers in America had not yet come to
death-grips. Here, at least, many people still believed
that the Southern States would. not be subdued, and were
sooner or later to establish their independence, and a
new polity which would act for the rest of time as a
healthy corrective to the dangerously popular institutions
and ideas of New England. The year has passed, and the
great revolutionary epic of our time has closed. Perhaps
some of us may still stop short of Mr. Seward's triumphant
summing up:—" Death," he says in his yearly address to
his fellow-citizens at Auburn, "death has removed his
victims ; liberty has crowned her heroes ; humanity has
crowned her martyrs ; the sick and the stricken are cured ;
the surviving combatants are fraternizing ; and the coun-
try—the object of our just pride, and lawful affection—
once more stands collected and composed, firmer, stronger,
and more majestic than ever before, without one cause of
dangerous discontent at home, and without any enemy in
the world." We may think him somewhat too hopeful in
the breadth of his assertion; and may have our fears that
it may take a generation yet to weld again into one brother-
hood all the ;states of the Union. But, when he predicts
so fearlessly that "under next October's sun he shall be
able, with his fellow-townsmen in Auburn, to rejoice in
the restoration of peace, harmony, and union throughout
the land," wo cannot but own that earlier prophecies of his
which seemed at least as rash, have been fulfilled almost
to the letter. In any case, we do all willingly now admit,
and honour, the marvellous energy and constancy with
which the great game has been played out by the
American people. As one of the many Englishmen
whose faith in that people never faltered during the. con-
test, I do most heartily rejoice to see that all classes of my
countrymen are at last not only ready to appreciate, but
hearty in their appreciation of, what has been done for
freedom in America in this revolutionary war. lam sure
that we now only want further knowledge of facts to
honour our kith and kin across the Atlantic as they de-
serve to be honoured, for the glorious sacrifices which
they made of all that was most precious and dearest to
them in a struggle upon whicli not only their own life as
a nation, but the future of at least one-third of the world,
was at stake.
In this belief, I think that Christmas is the right time
for bringing out into somewhat clearer light a side of the
drama which has not been as yet fairly presented to us
here—l mean, first, the strain on the resources of the
Northern States while the war lasted; and, secondly, the
heroism of the men of gentle birth and nurture, who, so
far from shrinking from the work, and fighting by sub-
stitute (as was asserted by some of our leading journals),
took at least their fair share of all the dangers and miseries
and toils of those dark years.
First then, as to the people's work ; and, highly as we
may value the men who have come to the front, and
whose names as soldiers and statesmen are now known
over the whole world, we must acknowledge that the true
hero of the war is, after all, the American people. In
proof of this I will take one or two instances of the
Northern States, and look for a moment at what the call
was which was made on them, and how they answered to
it. Let us look, as a first instance, at the smallest in area
of all the States, and the smallest in population of all the
free States. Little Rhode Island, at the census of 1860,
just before the breaking out of the war, contained a popu-
lation of 174,620. As usual in the Eastern States, the
females considerably exceeded the males, and of the
latter there were 82,304 altogether. Up to December Ist,
1862—that is to say, in less than two years from the first
call of the President for troops—Rhode Island furnished
14,626 men to the army, and 1,400 to the navy, or almost
1 in 5 of her total male population, and, of course, far
more than that proportion of her men of fighting age,
between 18 and 45. In the first enthusiasm, when the call
for 500,000 men came in the summer of 1861, the quota of
Rhode Island was 4,037, and she furnished 5,124. Ido
not give the later return; because there appears to have
been a large number of substitutes amongst her recruits
after 1862, and I have no means of knowing whether these
were or were not natives of the State. There is no need
to overstate the case, and Lshould, on every account,
shrink from doing so. Rhode Island, though the smallest,
is tenth in rank of all the States as a producer, and her
people are consequently rich and prosperous. If, in the
later years of the war, they found substitutes in large
numbers, it must be, at the same time, remembered, that
they contributed more largely than any other State, in pro-
portion to numbers, to that noblest of all charities—the
Sanitary Commission.
But Englishmen will very likely say, "Give us an
instance of any but a New England State; they are ex-
ceptional." Let us take Indiana, then, one of the mighty
young Western sisters, a community scarce half a century
old. A stronger contrast to Rhode Island could scarcely
have been found. Indiana, in 1860, possessed 8,161,717
acres of improved farming land ; Rhode Island but 329,884.
Indiana was fifth of all the States in agricultural pro-
duction, and thirteenth in manufacture—Rhode Island
standing tenth, or three higher than her gigantic
younger sister. Yet we find the same readiness of re-
sponse to the President's call to arms amongst Western
farmers as amongst New England mechanics and mer-
chants. The population of Indiana is returned in the
census of 1860 at 1,350,428, and her males at 693,469.
On the 31st of December, 1862, she had furnished 102,698
soldiers, besides a militia home-guard when her frontiers
were threatened. When Morgan made his raid into the
state, 60,000 tendered their services within twenty-four
hours, and nearly 20,000 were on his track within three
days. I do not happen in this case to have the later
returns, and so must turn back to New England, to the
old Puritan Bay state, to give one perfect example of what
the American people did in the great struggle.
Massachusetts, at the outbreak of the war, held a
population of 1,230,000 or thereabout; out of which there
were 257,833 males between the ages of 15 and 40. The
first blood shed in the war against the slave power, as in
the Revolutionary war against England, was Massachu-
setts blood. The 6th Massachusetts was fired on in tho
streets of Baltimore on April 19th, 1861, and had to fight
its way through the town, losing 4 killed and 30 wounded
in the operation. Well, the number of men demanded
of Massachusetis during the war was 117,624. The
number furnished by her (reducing all to the throe years'
standard) was 125,437, being a surplus over all calls of
7,813. Besides these 6,670 were mustered in answer to
a call for three months' men in 1864, which were never
credited to her by the Government. Look at the meaning
now of this other fact, that she has actually sent more
men to the war than are now to be found in the State
liable to do military duty. How does this tell as to wear and
tear of the human material in those Southern campaigns ?
The last assessors' return gave these at 133,767 ; while the
total number who served (including three and nine months'
men, and not adhering to the three years' standard) was
153,486. Out of these, how many does the reader (who
has probably heard more or less of "stopping the war by
prohibiting emigration from Ireland," and of " New
England hiring foreign mercenaries to do the fighting")
think were foreign recruits? Just 907. This does not
include men born out of the State, but resident or natural-
ized there before the war broke out. These latter, how-
ever, I suppose, could not come within the definition of
foreign mercenaries ; and, of
.foreigners arriving in
America during the war, Massachusetts enlisted, as I have
said, 907 out of 150,000. While on this point, I may add
that the most reliable statistics as to the whole forces of
the North show that the native-born Americans there
were nearly 80 per cent., of naturalized Americans 15, and
of foreigners 5 per cent, only, in the ranks.
I can honestly say that I have chosen these States at
hazard, and that a scrutiny of the remaining free States
would give a very similar result. And now let us con-
sider what that result is. Rhode Island, Indiana, and
Massachusetts may perhaps equal in proportion this me-
tropolis with its immediate suburbs ; while one of them
alone actually sent to active service, in the four years of
the war, an army equal in numbers to the total volunteer
force now under arms in Great Britain. Rhode Island is
not so populous as Sheffield ; and in eighteen months she
armed and sent South 15,000 of her citizens. I know that
England in like need would be equal to a like effort. Let
us honour, then, as they deserve, the people of our own
lineage to whom the call has come, and who have met it.

1 need scarcely pause to note how the Northern people
have paid in purse as well as in person. Let one instance
suffice. In 1864 the assessment of Massachusetts for
taxes to support the general Government amounted to four-
teen millions, every fraction of which was collected with-
out impediment or delay. Add to this the State taxation,
and the amounts contributed to the Sanitary Commission,
and other organisations for distributing voluntary contri-
butions in support of the war, and we should reach a figure
almost exceeding belief. I have no means of stating it
accurately, but am quite safe in putting it as high as
525,000,000, actually raised and paid, by a State with a
population less than half of that of our metropolis, in one
twelvemonth.

And now for my second point—the example set by the
men of birth, wealth, and high position. Here, too, I feel
sure that a few simple facts, taken at hazard from the mass
which I have under my hand, will be more than enough
to satisfy every just and generous man amongst my
countrymen ; and I am proud to believe that, whatever
our prejudices may be, there are few indeed amongst us to
whom such an appeal will be made in vain.
I have said above that the mass of materials is large ; I
might have said unmanageable. It is, indeed, impossible
to take more than au example hero and there, and to bring
these out as clearly as one can in the limits of an article.
Let me take as mine a family or two, with some one or
more of whose members I have the honour of friendship
or acquaintance. And, first, that of J. Russell Howell, the
man to whose works I owe more, personally, than to those
of any other American. It would be hard to find a nobler
record. The young men of this stock seem to have been
all of high mark, distinguished specially for intellectual
power and attainments. Surely the sickle of war has
never been put more unsparingly into any field ! First in
order comes Willie Putnam, age 21, the sole surviving son
of Lowell's sister, a boy of the highest culture and promise
mortally wounded at Ball's Bluff, in October, 1861, in tht;
first months of the war, while in the act of going to the

help of a wounded companion. At the same bitter fight
his cousin, James Jackson Lowell, aged 24, was badly
hurt; but, after a short absence to recruit, joined his regi-
ment again, and fell on June 30th, 1862. " Tell my father
I was dressing the line of my company when I was hit,"
was his last message home. He had been first in his year
at Harvard, and was taking private pupils in the law
school when the war broke out. Warren Russell fell at
Bull's Run, in August, 1862. Many of us here may remem-
ber the account, which was reprinted in the Times and
other papers, of the presentation of colours to the 2d
Massachusetts Infantry, by Mr. Motley, at Boston, in the
summer of 1861. It attracted special notice from the fact
that the author of the "History of the Dutch Republic"
had been so lately living amongst us, and was so well
known and liked here. The group of officers who received
those colours were the very jeunesse doree of Massachu-
setts—Quincy, Dwight, Abbott, Robeson, Russell, Shaw,
Gordon, Savage, Perkins. Such a roll will speak volumes
to all who have any acquaintance with New England
history. Those colours have come home riddled, tattered,
blackened ; but five-sixths of the young officers have given
their lives for them, and of the 1,000 rank and file who
then surrounded them scarcely 150 survive. This by the
way. I refer to the muster, because Robert Shaw was
amongst those officers—a name already honoured in these
pages, and another nephew of Lowell's. Shaw's sister
married Charles Lowell, of whom more presently. We
all know how Robert Shaw, after two years' gallant service,
accepted the command of the first black regiment raised in
Massachusetts (the 54th); how ho led them in the opera-
tions before Charleston, and was buried with his "niggers''
in the pit under Fort Wagner—the grandest sepulture
earned by any soldier of this century. By his side fought
and died Cabot Russell, the third of Lowell's nephews,
then a captain of a black company. Stephen George
Perkins, another nephew, was killed at Cedar Creek ; and
Francis Dutton Russell at one of the innumerable Vir•
ginian battles.

I pass to the last on the list, and the most remarkable.
Charles Russell Lowell, the only brother of the James who
died' " dressing his line," was also the first scholar of his
year (1854) at Harvard. He had visited Europe for health,
and made long riding tours in Spain and Algeria, where
he became a consummate horseman. On the day after the
6th Massachusetts were fired on in Baltimore streets
Charles Lowell heard of it, and started by the next train
to Washington, passing through Baltimore. All com-
munication between the two cities was suspended, but he
arrived on foot at Washington in forty eight hours. In
those first days of confusion, ho became agent for Massa-
chusetts at Washington, mid brought order out of chaos
for his own State before joining the army. His powers of
command and organisation gained him rapid promotion.
He served with distinction in the Peninsula campaign of
M'Clellan, and, after Antietam, was selected to carry the
captured standards to Washington. He raised a second
cavalry regiment at home in the winter of 1862. Ho was
placed in command of the cavalry force which protected
Washington during the dark days of 1863. In Sheridan's
brilliant campaign of 1864, he commanded the cavalry
brigade, of four regular regiments, and the 2nd Massa-
chusetts volunteer cavalry. He had thirteen horses shot
under him before the battle of Cedar Creek, on October
19th ; was badly wounded early in that day, and lifted on
to his fourteenth horse to lead the final charge, so faint
that he had to give his orders in a whisper. Urged by
those around him to leave the field, he pressed on to the
critical point of attack, and himself led the last charge
which ended one of the most obstinate battles of the war.
It is the death of this nephew which wrung from his uncle
the lines which occur in one of the Ist winter's numbers
of the Atlantic Magazine—
" Wut's words to them whose faith and truth
On War's red techstone rang true metal ;
Who ventured life, an' love, an' youth
For the gret prize o'deth in battle ?
To him who, deadly hurt, agen
Flashed on afore the charge's thunder,
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men
That rived the rebel line asunder ?

" 'Ta'n't right to hey the young go lust,
All throbbin' full o' gifts and graces,
Leaving life's paupers dry and dust
To try and make blieve fill their places ;
Nothin' but tells us wut we miss ;
Ther's gaps our lives can't never say in,
An' that world seems so fur from this,
Lef' for us loafers to grow grey in."
He died next day of his wounds, leaving a widow of
twenty, himself not thirty. The Gazette, in which his
commission as.:general was published, did not reach the
army till after his death. Sheridan, with the generosity
which most of the groat Northern captains have shown,
declared that the country could better have spared himself,
and that there was no one quality of a soldier which he
could have wished added to Charles Lowell.
My first example, then, gives us one family, in which
there was no soldier in 1860, losing eight young men under
thirty in little more than three years' fighting.
I have mentioned the name of Motley above. Let us
see how it fared with his circle. He has assured me more
than once, that of his own "immediate family there were
fewer than the average in the ranks ; but ho had at least
five near relatives serving—three Lothrops, one of whom
was killed in Louisiana; Major Motley, badly wounded
in Virginia, early in 1861; and Major Stackpole, another
highly distinguished gr►.duate of lltuward, who served
through the whole war, and has now resumed his practice
as barrister. Miss Motley married Captain Ives, a gentleman
of fortune in Rhode Island, who was travelling in Europe
when the war broke out. He volunteered in the navy,
commanded the Potomac flotilla, and accompanied Burn-
side's expedition to S. Carolina, where he contracted the
illness of which he has since died. His cousin Robert
Ives, also a man of large fortune, volunteered into the army
and was killed at Antietam. I believe they were the two
last men who bore the name of Ives in their State.
The name of Wadsworth is better known here than
most American names in consequence of its English con-
nexion. The head of the family was a country gentleman
living on his estates Geneses, in Now York State, up to
1860, with a family of three sons and three daughters.
At the news of the attack on the Union troops in Balti-
more he instantly chartered a steamer, loaded her with
provisions, and sent her up the Potomac—a most timely
aid to the capital. He acted as aide-de camp to M'Dowell,
and was his right-hand man in the Bull Run campaign,
his ;" youngest as well as his oldest aide ;" was made a
general soon afterwards; and, after several campaigns,
was placed in command at Washington. His reputation
as an officer had now become such that at the beginning of
the last campaign every corps commander of the army of the
Potomac applied to the War Department to have him with
them as brigadier. He was killed in the wilderness in the
last advance on Richmond. His three sons have all
served, the youngest having enlisted at sixteen. Thus
every man in the family served; and the only married
daughter is the widow of Colonel Montgomery Ritchie,
one of two brothers, both of whom served with distinction,
one to the sacrifice of his life by the same subtle disease
which struck down Captain Ives.
I could go to any length, for my acquaintance with
Americans is large, and I scarcely know a man who has
not lost some relative in the war. But, apart from one's
own acquaintance, there is scarcely one of the famous
colonial and revolutionary names which has not been re-
presented. The Jays, Adamses, Schuylers, Livingstones,
Van Reugselaers, have not failed their country in her
second great need ; and have fought well, and worked
hard, though the present holders of these honoured names,
mostly quite young men, have not had time to reach their
ancestors' places. The bearers of great names, I take it,
do not get such a star t in the States as with us at home.
A descendant (grandson, I believe) of Alexander Hamilton,
however, became a general, while several of his cousins
remained in lower ranks. Colonel Fletcher Webster, only
surviving son of Daniel Webster, was killed in Virginia.
Perhaps the man who excited most the hopes and martial
enthusiasm of Americans in the first months of the war
was Major Theodore Winthrop, grandson of the famous
Governor John Winthrop, scholar, traveller, poet, athlete,
who was killed at the disastrous battle of Great Bethel,
June 10th, 1861. A son of General Porter, who was dis-
tinguished in the last war with us, fell as a colonel in the
spring campaign of 1864. Even the families famous, as
yet, for wealth only have not shrunk from fighting ; one
Astor at least, and Cuttings, Schermerhorns, Lydigs, and
others, having held their own in the volunteer ranks.
Or, let us come to names more familiar than any other
Transatlantic ones to us—the Boston group. Longfellow's
young son (Charlie, as I hear all men call him) has
managed to fight a campaign, and get badly hit in
Louisiana, at an ago when our boys are thinking of their
freshman's term at Oxford. Oliver Wendell Holmes
(junior), poet, artist, Greek scholar, virtuoso, has been
twice--I was going to say killed—well, shot through tho
body and neck, and again in the heel ; and, having fought
through all to the end of the war, is again busy with
brush and pen. Olmstead has fought, with mightier
weapons than rifled cannon, at the head of the Sanitary
Commission. Of four brothers Dwight, two were killed,
and a third fought his way to general. Whittiers, Apple-
tons, Lorings, Crowningshields, Dehons—but I will tax
my readers' patience no longer with rolls of names which,
perhaps, to most of them, will be names, and nothing
more ! Let this last summing up of the work of men of
birth and position in ono State suffice :—(I choose Massa-
chusetts again, because, thanks to Governor Andrew, we
have more accurate returns as to her, than as to any other
State). Since the declaration of war, 434 officers from
Massachusetts have been killed-9 generals, 16 colonels,
17 lieutenant-colonels, 20 majors, 15 surgeons, 2 chaplains,
110 captains, and 245 lieutenants. Of the 35 general
officers from that State, 10 only have escaped wounds.
Of all the living graduates of Harvard (the university
of highest repute in America), one-fifth, or, to be as accu-
rate as possible, nineteen and some fraction per cent.,
have served with the army. At Yale College, the
percentage has been even higher. Conceive a struggle
which should bring one in every five of men who have
taken degrees at Oxford and Cambridge under fire, and
which should call on us, besides our regular army, to keep
on -foot and recruit for three years a volunteer army five
times as large as our present ono !
Such plain facts and returns as these will, lam sure,
convince the last sceptic if there be one left amongst us
at this Yule tide, 1865,—that Now England has not spared