had been paid to the apostate. The political action and destroy the manufacturing interest, however, pre-existing order of things, Puritknew all about the man and all anism threw down a guantlet which about the bargain, and when the Conservatism was compelled to lift. occupants of the Puritan pulpits of Puritanism in the abstract-as conNew England were thundering their fined to the pulpit and the housedenunciations against the great hold-deserves to be spoken of senator, whose defection so tried with the respect due to all that is their souls, his friends drew up an earnest and conscientious. It may address of confidence, which was be, and doubtless is, a very good signed by 987 Bostonians (high- thing to those who believe in ittariff men and protectionists), and and no harm to any one else, proforwarded to him at Washington. vided always that its disciples keep The memorialists declared "that their faith to themselves, and do he had pointed out the path of not strive to enforce it by fire or duty, convinced the understanding, sword, or physical or legal compuland touched the conscience of the sion, upon the consciences of those nation;" and concluded by ex- who hold different opinions. But pressing their entire concurrence in this is not the character of Puritanthe sentiment of his speech, and ism in America. It appears to be their heartfelt thanks for the ines- of its essence that it shall persecute. timable aid it had afforded in the The Puritans love liberty for thempreservation of the Union. The selves; but if any one out of their protectionists, however, although pale shall presume to set a different they could bribe the greatest orator interpretation upon liberty, whether -and who, had he been honest, political, social, or religious, Puritanwould have been the greatest ism is up in arms to coerce him "for statesman of America-could not his soul's good." When Puritansilence the preachers, the lecturers, ism troubled England in the days of the strong-minded women, the Elizabeth, James, and Charles, none philanthropists, and the Puritans. was such a stickler for liberty as The intellect of the North accepted the Roundhead-the then repreprotection, but could not be brought sentative of a class of men who, to accept slavery. Mr. Webster's had they lived in Spain, would pleadings were in vain; and the South, disgusted with the uselessness of its alliance as well as with its allies, resolved to stand aloof from further parley, and have no more to do with "Yankee" advocates. con have been inquisitors, and demned heretics to the stake without compunction. Not even Pope Hildebrand himself was more of a pope, and more infallible in his own conceit, than the untitled popes who, in and out of the Puritanism, which defeated all pulpits of New England, dealt subsequent attempts to extend damnation upon the heads of all slavery into the territories of the who presumed they could go to Union, would not have been able heaven through some other wicket to provoke a disruption if it had than that which Puritanism had confined itself to the pulpit, or had set up and narrowed. When the discarded the notion that the union Roundhead grasped the power of the States rendered Massachu- which he had long desired, but setts or Connecticut responsible could not earlier obtain, he was a for the manners, the laws, or the tyrant of the strictest and most institutions of Mississippi and the odious type. When the _Puritan Carolinas. But when it avowed suffered for his religion in England, revolutionary principles, and estab- and resolved to shake off the dust lished a propaganda, with ramifica- of his natal earth from his defiled tions in every State, to produce shoes, liberty to worship God after his own fashion was his first demand, and the fundamental article of his creed. When he arrived in the New World, and founded colonies, of which he was the lord, with none to overmaster him, the inherent intolerance of his nature broke out; the persecuted became the persecutor, and the meek man of God the unrelenting enemy of every one's faith but his own. He excommunicated Quakers, he burned witches; he made it a sin to look happy or take rational pleasure on the Sunday, which he insisted, with the Jews, on calling the Sabbath. He enacted the famous Blue Laws" of Connecticut, and vied in the rigidity of his outward religion with the famous Cameronian, recorded in song, who solemnly put his cat to death 66 "For killing of the Lord's own mouse Upon the Sabbath day." Of the fourteen offences punishable with death by the Puritan "Blue Laws" of Connecticut, in addition to murder and such other offences as were liable to the same doom in civilised Europe, the following, derived from the Mosaic law, deserve record, as showing the utter intolerance of the Puritan mind:"First, If any man, after legal conviction, shall have or worship any other god but the Lord God, he shall be put to death. Second, If any person shall blaspheme the name of god the Father, Son, or Holy Ghost, with direct, express, or presumptuous blasphemy, or shall curse in the like manner, he shall be put to death. Third, If any person committeth adultery with a married or espoused wife, the adulterer and adulteress shall be put to death. Fourth, If any child or children, above sixteen years old, and of sufficient understanding, shall curse or smite their natural father, or mother, he or they shall be put to death. Fifth, If any man have a stubborn and rebellious son, of sufficient years and understanding -namely, sixteen years of age who will not obey the voice of his father or his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them, then may his father and mother lay hold of him, and bring him to the magistrates assembled in court, and testify that their son is stubborn and rebellious, and will not obey their voice and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a son shall be put to death." The other States of New England did not all go so far in their Draconic Puritanism as Connecticut; but they approached her very nearly, and enacted sundry laws of a nature which were never imitated by the Southern States of the Union. The slave-trade was not one of the offences at which the piety of New England was originally shocked; and these zealous pioneers of American liberty, who left England in the Mayflower, exterminated Red Indians, sold or bought slaves, and put adulterers to death with equal readiness. But this en passant. The object of this paper is not to depict the religious or moral, but the political character of the Puritans of America, and to show how their political action broke up for a time, if not for all time (which remains to be proved), the great American Republic, as it previously for a time, and happily not for all time, broke up the English monarchy. The "holier than thou" assumption, which lies at the bottom of their intolerance, may amuse the laughing or grieve the weeping philosopher, but is of no social or political moment when confined within the family, the place of worship, or even the public meeting; but when it wields political power, and makes laws beyond its own sphere, and enforces, or endeavours to enforce, those laws by the strong right hand of authority, its assumption becomes too great for endurance; and not only the instinct, but the reason of mankind revolts against it. The great political errors of American Puritanism were-interference with matters "Be as righteous as you please," beyond its scope, a perversion of the intent and meaning of the Union, and a course of political action on every subject inconsistent with republicanism, and certain, if carried out to victory, to replace the Republic by an imperial, or, worse still, by a theocratic despotism. That the Puritans should be the rulers of a continent in which every child should be taught to read the Bible with a Puritan interpretation; in which no man or woman should be allowed to absent him or her self from the conventicle on the "Sabbath" day, except in case of sickness, physical inability, or overpowering necessity; in which there should be no difference of social position or political right on account of the colour of the epidermis; in which, moreover, no one, young or old, should be allowed to drink fermented liquors, except under medical prescription, duly proved, -were but a few of the articles of the Puritan faith, as developed in America. Imagining erroneously that all which such a State as Connecticut or Maine could do within its own boundaries, if it had a majority of the people to support it, the Congress of the United States could do for the whole Union, Puritanism for many years devoted its extraneous energies to two of these favourite topics-the abolition of slavery, and the abolition of intemperance, throughout the whole of the United States. It agitated these questions systematically and pertinaciously, in and out of season, through evil and good repute. The much-drinking people of the Northern and Southern States resisted this usurpation of authority, and the attempt to make them temperate by Act of Congress; while the slaveholding people of the South met the proposal to abolish slavery, without their consent, by an opposition which the Puritans thought exceedingly wicked, but which everybody else thought exceedingly natural. said the South to the Northern made against him on its account. For a while the slaveholders seemed to have the best of the battle. A large portion of the non-slaveholding North took the Southern side-not, like Mr. Webster, for a fee, but because they did not desire the disruption of the Union, and because they thought it was and offensive by their iteration, the violent member of the Temperance South had its misgivings that sla- Society, the bottle dashed from the very was, to say the least of it, table, the wine spilled, and hima mistake that it did not pay self lectured and reprimanded for that it was a wasteful form of la- the enormous crime he was commitbour-that it might be good for ting, it is very likely that the inthe negro, but was incontrovertibly judicious apostle of temperance bad for the white man-and that would get his head punched for measures ought to be taken, and his insolence, and that the winewould in due time be taken, for its drinker would call for another gradual abolition. Many eminent bottle after he had ejected the Southern statesmen were of this philanthropist. So it was on the opinion, and, had the great funda- slavery question. The slaveholder mental doctrine of State rights was incensed, not convinced, by been respected in the matter, were humanitarian interference, and prepared to debate the question, clung all the more vehemently to not only as politicians and men of his peculiar institution," because business, but as philanthropists and of the undoubted illegality and Christians. But the threats of the unconstitutionality of the warfare ultra- abolitionists exasperated and disgusted them. Like Falstaff, who objected to being reasonable on compulsion, they objected to conform to the social and political economy of Puritanism on compulsion, and under the goad of constant aggression, not unattended, in their minds, with the imminent peril of a servile insurrection not a case in which the Federa. on their plantations, they ceased Government could interfere. It to palliate and find excuses was then that abolitionism and slavery, and began to speak of it secession were all but synonymous as something better than a neces- terms; that the abolitionists prosary evil-as a positive good in it- claimed the conflict between North self, and as a Divine institution and South to be "irrepressible;" sanctioned by the Old Testament, and that sincere opponents of and not forbidden by the New. slavery preferred to break up the It has often been asserted, and is Union rather than share the guilt in all probability true, that if it of countenancing what they consi had not been for the aggressive- dered a wrong and a crime against ness of Puritanism on this irrit- humanity. They did not want to ating subject, the border States fight. Their idea was that they of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, were the weaker party, and as such Tennessee, and even North Caro- they preferred to separate peacelina, would long before the elec- ably, and set up a new Republic on tion of Mr. Lincoln have abolished the Federal principle. "When the slavery, or sent their slaves south- disruption comes," said Mr. Seward wards, as Massachusetts, New to the writer less than three years York, and New Jersey had long before it did come, "we shall set previously done. But neither men the Old World a glorious example. nor States are to be. bullied into doing the right thing. If a gentleman, quietly sitting at his own dinner- table, drinking his pint of Chateau Margaux or Laffitte, were to have his door broken in by a for We shall show it the superiority of our Republican system over the effete monarchical governments of Europe. We shall do what they would never dream of doing-we shall separate without bloodshed." The amiable and well-meaning Se- arms of "Old" England, and join cretary neither knew himself nor her fortunes with those of Canada. his countrymen when he spoke. The Northern people did not like Nevertheless he but spoke the the prospect; the more earnestly general sentiment. The tiger was they looked at it, the more hideous in its infancy at that time-had it appeared. The dream of univernot tasted blood-and did not sal dominion as dear to democknow how it should come to relish racies as it has often been to kings the drink from which, in those in- and emperors-was not to be abannocent days, it would have turned doned without a struggle; and the its unpolluted lips in disgust. North, sorely miscalculating the To tell the sad story of the war, means, the effort, and the time reor even to epitomise its leading quired, resolved to fight. With events, is not the object of this what varying fortunes, with what paper. It may suffice for the pur- tenacity of purpose, with what fits poses of the argument to state that of occasional despondency, and the South-confident in the cor- with what ultimate success it strove rectness of its own interpretation and conquered, was for four long of the Constitution, and in the be- years, as it still is, the world's lief that the North, preferring se- wonder. By dint of obstinate encession to perpetual union with durance - by dint of illimitable slaveholders, would not attempt co- paper dollars and credit-by dint ercion-resolved, after earnest and of foreign soldiers from Ireland mature deliberation, to withdraw and Germany, who swarmed into from the Union. What a fearful the country, allured by bounties mistake it made in the calculation, on enlistment varying from £100 forms the basis of the most tragic to £200 sterling per head by dint history of our time! The South of sacrificing general after general, did not know the North. The however brave and able, who could North neither knew the South nor not gain a victory-by dint of a itself. It cared nothing for the blockade of the seaboard, producPuritans, unless to scorn them; it ing in due time a famine, or somecared nothing for the negroes, un- thing very like it, through the most less to dislike them; it cared fertile portions of the South; and nothing for the Abolitionists, un- last, but by no means least, by dint less to wish they would hold their of the cowardice or incapacity of tongues and stay their pens, or the British Government, that retransport themselves en masse to fused to unite with that of France Exeter Hall, never to return to in acknowledging the independence America. The secession which it of the South-the Northern people had sometimes threatened to effect conquered their Southern brethren, against the South, was no sooner and, as they hope and think, reeffected by the South against the stored the Union. The restoration, North than the North became as yet, is one in name only, and not alarmed lest the West should imi- in fact. The Northern armies made tate the example-lest California a desolation, and Northern statesand Oregon, and the States beyond men called it peace. The North the Rocky Mountains, should throw off their allegiance to the Federal Government, and form themselves into the "Republic of the Pacific;" and lest "New" England-troublesome and cantankerous, and hated by all the other States of the Unionshould, in view of the approaching danger, throw herself into the reduced the South to the condition of a conquered dependency, and announced to the world that the United States were once again an indivisible and adhesive unity-the first Power on the earth, able and willing to take advantage of any European complication that might arise to punish her only rival, |