The New Secession

I

FAVORED many years ago by an invitation to dine with the Round Table, a club in New York, composed in the main of men who had in some way distinguished themselves, I found my undistinguished self in a seat with John La Farge on my right and a man whose name was as yet unknown to me on my left. Of this gentleman I observed only that he had marked features, and spoke in a low voice.

La Farge, I imagine, put all young men at their ease, especially so if they were ambitious beginners in some art. Accordingly, I enjoyed his talk, and even after these years recall the substance of what he said. Presently, however, I spoke to my unknown neighbor on the left, and in so doing could not but feel — it was apparent in his glance — that he was a man of natural and profound reserve. He listened, indeed, seemingly with the best will in the world to his youthful neighbor, but there was all the while a something withdrawn in his eyes, something impenetrable. Prompted, I feel sure, by him, I found myself discussing the relation which education holds to politics. I cannot pretend to recall his words, save only the substance of his opinions in a single phrase as it was spoken. He said that in his opinion it was unfortunate that Americans, the mass of them, did not much dwell on their historic past; did not make use of it; ‘did not draw on their pasts for present counsel.’

I was told, in the course of the evening, that my unknown table companion was Mr. Woodrow Wilson of the University of Princeton.

I am sure that I did not hazard the suggestion, as I should now, that history has become stiff reading, and is so because the spirit of science, and research, has taken it over. Thus the modern historian is first a scholar, and then an artist, if indeed he is an artist at all. No doubt there is something inevitable in this; no doubt it answers to some necessity of the times. But, whether easy or hard, we are all, I feel sure, agreed that historical reading is not one of the pleasures our citizens frequently give themselves, and that if our countrymen, taking them in the mass, can become wise only through the perusal of Mr. Rhodes, or Henry Adams, they will likely remain foolish for a very long time to come. It will be said, however, that editors, clergymen, and statesmen read; and that,as these men are those who enlighten and direct public opinion, this is enough. But even these gentlemen dwell none too frequently in the region of history, and certainly draw very seldom on it for present counsel.

And yet, clearly, we Americans need more than most people to be conversant with our own past. We need it more, for example, than the English, because of the number of the foreignborn we have invited to live with us. For we are all pretty well of one mind about it, that we must either Americanize these foreigners, or else, as Jefferson himself said, submit to foreignization at their hands.

And, aside from the Americanization of Europeans, we have our own people to think of. This consideration comes to us as a matter of some gravity, since, in these last years, great numbers of our native-born Americans seem to have lost their hold on American principles. The thing has been spoken of so much that it seems hardly necessary to mention these sinners by name, or to recall the occasions when they lapsed from the grace of a true Americanism. For, without entering on the delicate task of defining what we mean by the word ‘Americanism,’ we are all, I imagine, of the opinion that justice and moderation are, or have been, dear to the American heart. And, without describing the interplay of these two forces, we know they are both necessary to the life of the Republic: justice as an end, and moderation as a temper of mind qualifying the means to be employed in attaining that end. but justice and moderation have, of late, been apparently so little in evidence that even our President has seen fit to upbraid us for our intolerance.

I do not know what, especially, Mr. Coolidge had in mind, but certainly expressions of a very intolerant sort are much in use. We are even getting accustomed to them. So that it may be as well for us to ask ourselves what tolerance really is, and why we are become intolerant.

The latter of these questions is, unfortunately, easy to answer. We are no longer a homogeneous people. There are some fourteen millions of foreignborn among us, whose ideals are not ours. Where we seek to Americanize them, they tell us in their foreign tongues that the country is as much theirs as ours, and that they propose to remain themselves, to remain European, and even to Europeanize our social, moral, and political state of affairs. When we protest, these people accuse us of intolerance. And they are not beside the mark in doing so, for clearly we do not tolerate them as they are. But, on the other hand, — a thing not so often mentioned, — they do not tolerate us: our literature, art, morals, habits of life, our ideals, religion, traditions, and the Republic we have created. There is no mistaking their feelings in the matter, for they tell us in plain words, in editorials, in books, in plays, in political addresses, that they don’t like us and our ways. We reply in as plain. And, as I have indicated, this growth of mutual intolerance has come about because our fundamental ideals are at variance.

To cover the whole immense and complicated state of affairs with a word, we are no longer ‘like-minded.’ And this, I take it, is the gravest mischance which can befall a people. Hence, and quite inevitably, the spirit of extremism, of unrest, of dissension, of dislocation, which, under a calm surface, is continually in evidence.

These various foreign races, often greatly gifted, and gifted in ways other than our own, — peoples, therefore, that we like, or certainly admire, — have really created, in their mass, a spirit which is in no wise different from the spirit of Secession. They are here; they are with us; we have one State and one Fate; but they have seceded in spirit, and they think it as right and reasonable as did John C. Calhoun.

I am not now accusing or blaming anybody. I seek merely to describe a state of things, a state of feeling, a clash of human wills, and to account for the intolerance, not of the foreignborn for us, but of the old-stock American for the ideals, aims, and activities of these foreign-born.

But what is tolerance? It is founded, no doubt, on a sense of justice and the spirit of moderation. Things, it will be agreed, dear enough to the American heart of the past. But the word and what it represents are not very accurately understood. It must be remembered that tolerance is not indifference. It is not the spirit that permits any and every thing because it values nothing. Tolerance has its limits. We do not call a man intolerant who refuses to have his house burned down or his wife taken from him. And just so we Americans have in the past been intolerant of some things. When our deeper ideals were violated we took action. For example, we did not tolerate the practice of polygamy. Perhaps this was unjust; but clearly it was intolerant. There was a clash of ideals, and, deciding for our own, we forced the Mormons to be monogamous.

In the late war the Government and the people were both intolerant of the refusal to bear arms. And if to-day any large body of our citizens should set about doing away with the State we should not tolerate it. Again, we will stomach a deal of tyranny, of interference with our personal habits, but not beyond a certain point, be the reformers never so native-born. It may be said that when a people is likeminded, the ideal aims not being too far apart, it tolerates much, though not all. But we are no longer likeminded. We are at variance. And accordingly the wise and the moderate among our native-born people are themselves forced into intolerance. They are ready, or not far from being ready, for extreme action. So that, at last, we are somewhat in the situation of continental Europe, where moderation is not popular, not expected, not a tradition; where now one extreme is followed by another; and where it is possible that at any moment force shall be employed, whether to wreck or to save from wreck the Government or the State involved. It is useless to wring our hands and ask how it happened. Useless to blame ourselves or the stranger within our gates. We have simply to admit that this is the state of affairs and apply what remedy we may be able to apply.

But will history, our own history, avail us in the matter? Will it, that is, help the few who read it to help those who do not? Will it incline us to be more like-minded? And, since individual character is so deeply involved, we may even ask the larger question: Will the reading of any portion of our historic annals awaken in the foreigner and reawaken in us the love of those virtues which are Roman, constructive, unifying, and upbuilding? will it make young men more eager to serve the State? Will it indeed make them feel that the State is a worthy object of effort, and that not to save it is, at least in some degree, a betrayal of their race? Will such reading teach us any possible lesson, other than that of the uniform folly of mankind? In short, what counsel can we draw from any portion of our past for the present emergency ?

The answer comes readily enough: there are a thousand pages of our history, a thousand events, which teach us, if at all we can be taught, the immense value, the imperative necessity for a people, or nation, of like-mindedness. We may be too full of irritation and wrath, too eager in disagreement, to be willing to agree. We may want to disagree, and be resolved to do it. But if we do not close our minds to the lessons of events, and the teachings of facts, we can hardly avoid learning that only by and through like-mindedness can a nation and culture flourish and remain one.

I am not unaware that many readers will doubt the actuality of any grave disagreement among the masses of our people. Others will hold that the views I advance on the whole matter of the divergency of ideal aims are ludicrous and of no value. And yet others will insist that a little easy kindness and a display of understanding will set the whole thing right. The end I have in view is, indeed, not the bringing forward of some proof that we differ profoundly and dangerously among ourselves. My purpose is simply and solely to attract attention to the virtue, the value, the necessity of like-mindedness. And to compass this I propose to put aside the polemical spirit, with all argument; and, leaving the irritating and dubious present, to seek in a period of the past a time and place, a state and city, where men lived and thought and felt as one — where their agreements were profound, and where, accordingly, they were enabled to govern themselves well, and at the same time to erect a state of civilization and culture of no inconsiderable sort. And, even though we shall be so unfortunate as to be able to draw no counsel from such a study of former times, something may still accrue to us; something of pleasure in the presence of a high degree of spiritual concord; something, too, of that serene delight with which we contemplate beauty, when it is no longer subject to change. For the past, when it is reviewed in the recorded word or action; when we do not throw upon it the light, or it may be the darkness, of our own minds; when we take it as it stands, and without interpretation — the past, or at least the nobler passages of it, so come upon, possesses the charm of art, the appeal of what is finished and permanent. The disputative spirit dies in its presence. There is no question of fact; argument is not in point. These things were; these inspiring words were said; this noble death was died, this life well lived. We see and hear, as it were, in a vision; we contemplate and are satisfied. And all the more are we satisfied if some art of the time has wrought upon the transiency of things; has taken over the words spoken, the feelings felt, the deeds done, and has added to them, not nobility or grace or beauty, but the permanence which comes of perfection. For the past is then, I repeat, like a statue or picture: authentic, stable, secure, changeless, and changelessly calm. And, it being so, we are enabled to look upon it with a pure mind.

II

As I copy these words at an open window, the bells of St. Michael’s sound softly against the incoming sea air — for I write in the city of Charleston, in South Carolina.

The bells of the old church ring their distant peal, as I say, with an astonishing softness; the waves glitter and wash upon the wall of the Battery; the strong, fresh south wind blows; the palmettos toss their green spiked fans of foliage and rustle, loud and dry; and under the dark green of Live Oaks, on the Battery, I see and hear young people, laughing, teasing, and talking. Faint odors of acacia and orange blossoms are in the air, the flowers themselves unseen behind the high-walled gardens of those houses which are so irritating to the inquisitive Northern tourist; since, being of another time and taste than ours, they are built sideways to the street, almost as if the owners actually dared wish not to be seen by every passer-by in the most intimate moments of their leisure. But nowadays the clean, sunny streets of this end of the town are little troubled with passers-by, and less with the noise of traction engines or motors. Indeed, the quiet is such that the whistling of a distant mocking bird floats in at the window. And what a grace and dignity the town has, with its wide bay — to the south the lowwooded shore of the Isle of Pines, and to the northeast Sumter, looming over the turbid water, darkly blue in the haze of an April sea.

Very natural, it may be thought, in Charleston and with Fort Sumter in full view, to have fallen into a train of reflection on that spirit of extremism which follows on unlike-mindedness. Natural, with these surroundings, to dwell on the political fanaticism of the South, comparing it with the same spirit in the North.

But happily the world is full of surprises; and what I now seek to lay before the reader, and to interest him in, is a number of local and littleknown records which in their sense are the reverse of everything extreme, bigoted, fanatical. These records are in the main memorial inscriptions and, displaying, as they do, a spirit of moderation and a great love of political justice, lead up inevitably to an historic scene which for a certain greatness of feeling would, I believe, be hard to parallel.

These records, epitaphs, and inscriptions are, many of them, composed upon obscure or forgotten men. They are, however, all of a public nature, and possess the interest which attached to public memorials. And, as the reader will at once discover, they are composed in an admirable literary style. Let me dwell for a moment on the unique quality of their style, and the cause of this. It must be remembered that the art of laudation in stone is not the art of the novelist or the lyrist. Where a man graves words on marble, or incises them on granite, he must, first of all, be brief. If the lines are to have force, their felicity must consist in the ‘much in little’ of the Roman phrase; the writer must say the main thing and have done. Furthermore, if he is celebrating public men or public events, the tone of his celebration must itself be public, He must be general, downright, plain, and to the point. And as he is writing for those who stand, if they do not run, he will be unwise if he shall venture to be eccentric or obscure, or shall venture on what is too novel to be taken in at a glance. He must speak the language of the day. And clearly he cannot be subjective, intimate, and full of his own ego, however much his own ego may interest him. In short, the nature of the material on which the words are to be written, and the public occasion to which they are dedicated, condition his style — color, or even, it may be said, create it.

It must be further remembered that this art of epitaph — the art of laudation on stone—is highly traditional, replete with reminiscence, and special to its occasion. Thus, in the things I have such pleasure in presenting to the reader, there are whole or half lines from Simonides of Amorgos, or echoes of the great Roman memorials in prose. I must, however, not fail to add that, as we read, we feel that much of what is written is conventional; that the praise is given in such way, for such qualities, as that expectation shall be gratified. On the other hand, the extraordinary and abiding interest of these memorial words I shall now beg to quote lies herein, that they convey the feelings of a time and a people with a great degree of felicity.

It must be understood that I am not setting out to praise the people of that period as being greater or wiser or nobler than the people of to-day. But they were in some sort different. And this difference is full of instruction, and even of inspiration. Thus, the Southerners of that time display a profound enthusiasm for the State as a necessary and ideal agent. Again, they express their relish of manly virtue in the most open and candid way, reminding one in this of no one so much as Plutarch. And they lay a special emphasis of praise on habits or virtues which it would seem odd, or certainly old-fashioned, to mention in our day, let alone cut into the cold and permanent face of a piece of marble. For example, if the president of the Connecticut Coal and Iron Company died, and, having a stone on his grave, we read on it that ’throughout his life he displayed the manly Virtues,’ the casual reader would feel it to be strangely said. Or if on the tombstone of an unknown youth, dying, let us say in Newark, in his twenty-second year, we read that ’Integrity, candour, and courtesy uniformly characterized his life and conduct,’ we should, I think, pause in mild wonder at these citizens of Newark who think so loftily of courtesy that they praise the youthful possessor of it on his very tombstone.

No doubt, as I have said, these expressions are, in a measure, conventional, and conventions change. But, on the other hand, —and this is the vital point, — taken as praise, and when evidently sincere, these things indicate a certain general preference, in the scale of moral values, of the men who composed them, and for whom they were composed. Above all, they bear witness to the amazing like-mindedness of the Carolinians of that day.

III

Turning directly to the records themselves, we learn at once, and from the least important of them, that a young man was, in those remote times, expected to have a public career, not solely a business one. On one humble stone we read, ‘Devoted to the State: untiring in his Labours for His Townsmen.’ On another, ’His Country was his first Thought’; on a third, ‘ Successful in his Career as a Merchant, he was Liberal to the Arts, and eager in the Service of his State.’ Simple and conventional enough; yet clearly the words reveal the general expectation that a man shall devote some measure of his time and energy to the service of the Commonwealth.

In reading these epitaphs, I could not but recall the words of a Southern statesman, words spoken many years ago. He was referring to the time previous to the Civil War. ‘South Carolina and Massachusetts produced so many great public men,’ he said, ‘so many more than did the other states, because in those two states young men were encouraged on all hands to aspire to a public career. It was not thought very well of a youth if he evinced no public concern. So, as soon as a young man showed he was something more or better than the rest of us, the rest of us made much of him.’ It would be easy to quote a dozen epitaphs exemplifying and supporting the sense of these words. ‘He was not False to the Expectation of his People’; ‘Urged by all who knew him, he accepted Office to the detriment of his Private Fortune’; ‘Fell in defence of his Country, Christ’s faithful Soldier and Servant.’ But let me turn to something larger and more important, only asking the reader to remember that he is in the presence of one of the arts, even if a lesser art; and that these words so carefully selected, so brief and succinct, are really a sort of free verse in prose form; or, at all events, a prose of a highly condensed sort — a prose from which every vague and useless word has been deleted.

Dying in his ninetieth year, John Julius Pringle was, in his day, a man of some note and performance in his city and state. Printed as they actually stand on the stone, the lines read, in part, as follows: —

This, if conventional in form and phrase, is at all events modest, collected, and succinct — a man’s character in brief, and chiefly his public service. The felicity of phrase is sufficiently apparent, and with this that public tone of which I have spoken.

On another stone, and in a churchyard distant from Charleston, there are the following few plain and feeling words, but this time not of a man who could be active for his people or the state. The words are in remembrance of a Negro slave whose Christian name was John — this name being the only one on the tombstone, since his surname was that of his owner.

And, a little removed from and lower than this epitaph itself: —

A monument above Trumbull’s grave in Charleston has, with much else, the following words: —

Of another public man, whose name I omit, but a man of the same period, it is written: —

We can hardly fail to feel that the man who lies in that quiet grave possessed the quality of heroic persistence; but we must remark, too, that his fellow citizens honored him for what he possessed. And with what becoming sobriety they expressed this publicpraise! ’The Hour of Conflict, the Day of Defeat.’ It would have been easy for a conquered people, prostrate and yet indignant, to have qualified ‘conflict’ and ‘defeat’ with two violent and enfeebling adjectives — easy to have been what is called flowery. Instead of which we have it as it stands — brief, solid, weighty, strongly felt, well composed, and with sufficient dignity and point. It would naturally occur to a Northerner to wonder what these Southern men would have to say of less public characters. Well, the South Carolinians had a poet; his name was Timrod — reckoned to-day, I imagine, as a very minor poet, and accordingly in the North known chiefly to literary students. His bust stands in a square of Charleston, and beneath it is this inscription: —

It is, I feel, not without interest that nothing is said of his poetry as achievement, nothing of his private life; that no mention is made of fame; that no complaint is leveled and that nothing is mourned. And how much at home we feel with these words. How much we feel that we are in the presence of a great people. It is, after all, not unworthy of remark that a people should praise its poets for their courage.

In the portico of St. Michael’s Church you have on the wall: —

Facing this there is a tablet upon which the lettering runs as quoted below. The author of the couplet is unknown to me.

A little below this are the following words: —

When Robert Young Hayne died, Charleston celebrated her great protagonist with this inscription: —

There follow the many and important offices he held. South Carolina is then spoken of, and so, again, to the epitaph itself: —

This, again, is in the conventional phraseology of the period, and yet it is not too much to say that the spirit of a whole people lives in the words. The character of a man is suggested; a race is portrayed. And, once more, how much at home we feel with these lines. How inevitably they appeal to us. There is, too, that certain sobriety of statement, which I feel we cannot too much admire; and with this sobriety there is a great degree of moderation in the praise accorded. And yet what ardor of feeling for the Commonwealth in the quotation, ‘Having lived long enough for his own Fame: having died too soon for his country’s Good.’ Eloquent and able a creature as Hayne was, we cannot continue or revive his reputation to-day. But, for selfevident reasons, one sentence of his remains in the public memory: ‘The greatest of all evils is a government of unlimited powers.’

To desert Charleston for a moment, there is in Warrenton, Virginia, a monument to a general of the Confederacy. This soldier is spoken of as having labored and fought, ‘not for Empire and Renown: but for Right and Commonwealth.’ A stone’s throw from this grave there is a granite shaft, and on one face of it are the lines: —

On another face is an adaptation of the famous line of Simonides: ‘Go tell the Southerners we lie here for the rights of their States.’ Following this is a line from Byron: ‘They never fail who die in a great cause,’ and on the fourth face of the stone: ‘ God will judge the Right.’ The lines speak for themselves, but it may not be superfluous to indicate in passing that there is no argument about States’ rights. The fact that these six hundred men died for these rights is stated simply as a fact; and we who read are touched. We may disbelieve in the advisability of the States having any rights whatever, and yet feel that a high and pure taste dictated the words. So a Frenchman standing on the Heights of Abraham may regret the loss of Canada; but if he is a man of feeling he will hardly fail to be moved, and even a good deal moved, by the brief sentence which, on that pillar of stone, celebrates at once the heroic death and the great achievement of Wolfe: —

The Southern people, as is well known, made up their minds after the war was over that the cause for which their soldiers had fought and died was a lost cause, and was not something which could be revived. It was done with. After Appomattox, General Lee could not be described as anything but a Union man; and he carried the South with him. The velocity and completeness of the change were astounding, and testified to the immense common sense, the political and moral wisdom, of the people as a whole. I am frank to say I know nothing like it in history. For the Southern people did not cease to believe in the right of secession — they simply faced the fact that they were beaten, and therefore they must be true to the Union. And they were so. Accordingly, when they first began to raise monuments to their dead, they praised them, not for the cause they had espoused, but in the main, as we have seen, for their heroism, their sense of duty. There is, however, a monument in Columbus, upon which the words inscribed do speak of that cause, and speak of it with admirable self-restraint and dignity.

The traditional style of these memorials— that something of Roman which they have, or even, though more rarely, of Greek —is plain enough. But there is an example, and an extraordinary one, of an epitaph deriving from another source. This occurs in the city of Savannah. There is, in one of the public squares of that beautiful and now prosperous town, a shaft of stone dedicated, once more, to the men who gave their lives to the Confederacy, on which there is a simple and brief quotation from the Bible, the words being a part of the thirty-sseventh chapter of Ezekiel — that astonishing chapter in which the Hebrew Prophet endeavors to prove to the people of Israel that nothing is impossible to God, not even that He should raise the dead. The words thus quoted and engraved on the granite are these: —

COME FROM THE FOUR WINDS, O BREATH!
AND BREATHE UPON THESE SLAIN,
THAT THEY MAY LIVE.

In order to appreciate these words, we have, of course, to recall that they were inscribed many years ago, at a time when the Southern States were wrecked; their economic structure shattered, their young men dead in battle; their civilization overthrown, and their hopes defeated — at a time, therefore, when men’s hearts were burning, when there must have been every temptation to say much more than the brief, poignant, and imaginative sentence which the men and women of that period actually preferred.

But even to-day the Southern people continues to abound in its tradition, composing its inscriptions with much the same self-restraint, much the same dignity. Its epitaphs — in many examples, at least — are as impersonal, as public in tone, and as concise as those of seventy years ago. And this is not without a degree of interest, since so much of the writing in the South has been done in a florid and Corinthian tone. The words I shall now quote are modern, and were composed, I am told, within the decade. The monument which bears them stands in the cemetery at Arlington, commemorating once more the Confederate dead in battle.

IV

The historic event of which I spoke earlier, and to which these inscriptions very naturally lead up, was one which occurred in Charleston in the spring of that year which saw the battles of Fredericks-burg and Chancellorsville. But previous to the narration of it I must speak of the man whose death was the occasion of it, and quote the lines placed upon his tombstone.

There lived in Charleston before and during the first years of the Civil War a certain James Lewis Pettigru, a lawyer and a public man. Knowledge of him has for a long time been confined to the South, or to students of history. His grave is in the yard of St. Michael’s Church; and, the epitaph on the stone at the head of it — an epitaph which, I understand, has long been known and admired by the few — awakening the interest of the present writer, he sought out among his older acquaintances in Charleston those who should give him a first-hand account of the gentleman who was the subject of it. Some few persons have seen the man in their boyhood, seen him on the street and in court; their fathers were his personal friends. But, apart from these intimate narratives of eyewitnesses, the man’s memory floated in the general atmosphere.

This could hardly be otherwise, since for more than thirty years Pettigru was active in all matters of common interest. Standing high at the bar, he spoke on almost all public occasions. In a time of eloquent men he was among the most eloquent. His probity, industry, and the powers of his mind were of such a nature that there was no office to which he could not have aspired. Office appears to have been little to his taste; but he was a leader in his own way, popular with all classes in the community, rich and poor, black and white — in short, with the whole town and state.

And this is the more remarkable in that Pettigru was a wit; and, as we all know, the power of illuminating the folly and unreason of mankind by those flashes of pure rationality which we call wit is not ordinarily a popular trait. Such men are more feared than loved, more admired than trusted. There was, however, that in this man’s make-up which brought men to his feet, and kept them there. Perhaps it was that Pettigru’s nature was open, ardent, and generous to a fault. He was outgoing and warm-hearted; and, though he knew men for what they are, he loved them and showed it. There was, in short, nothing of repression or restraint about the man. He expressed himself, his views and his emotions, freely, and with force. And at times, his mind overcast and dark with apprehension for the future of his country, and his whole being in a storm, he loosed the powers of his invective — those powers of irony, sarcasm, and intellectual contempt of which I made mention.

Such was this man, and such his popularity. But popularity is a flower that withers overnight. Mankind in the gross mass is fickle: if the object of its liking pursues a course opposed to its ideas, its interests as it conceives them, he is reprobate and to be discarded.

Not without amazement, therefore, we learn that, living and working in the very seat of Secessionist feeling, and supporting throughout his entire career, as he did, the Federal Union, Pettigru yet lost nothing of the abundant and glowing regard in which he was held by the people of his state.

There were, to be sure, other men, a small but capable company of them, who were Unionists on principle and labored unceasingly for their cause. Pettigru was, however, decidedly the leader of the movement; and he led it with all his mind and all his heart. To specify his opinions, it appears that he held slavery to be wrong, and a grave misfortune to the South; but he was not for that reason an abolitionist. He thought, apparently, that these sudden drastic and unconsidered solutions of a problem at once moral and economic create as much evil as they abolish, saddling aftertimes with a problem different, indeed, from the original one, but no less fraught with evil. He seems to have cherished a truly Anglo-Saxon respect for justice, law, precedent, and custom, and to have held the opinion that if slavery were left alone it would, in the end, abolish itself.

But he was utterly opposed to the extension of the system. He spoke in public and in private, again and again, of the madness of Secession, and the infatuation of the people of his state. It is said that on the occasion of a political dinner he was imprudently asked to drink a toast to South Carolina, and replied, in no very pacific tone, as he rose, ‘Certainly. To South Carolina: and may she recover her senses! ’

Passion, it need hardly be said, ran high at the time — the years between 1840 and the outbreak of war. Great financial interests were involved; the system of slavery; the fate of the Union; the future of the South — its prosperity, the form and character of its civilization. It might readily be imagined that such a man, a man so opposed to the popular feeling of the day, would sooner or later have been stoned in the streets of Charleston, as Whittier was in those of Boston. Not a few of the Southern sympathizers in the North — the gentlemen called Copperheads — suffered at the hands of their fellow citizens of the opposite, the Union party. And Pettigru was, relatively, in the same position in South Carolina. He was, so to say, a Southern Copperhead. His sympathies were with the Union men.

It might naturally be imagined that he would be deprived of office, or certainly that he would not have had office thrust upon him, previous to the outbreak of war, and assuredly not after that event. We should guess that he would live under a shadow and die neglected; and, if he died before the close of the conflict, that his funeral would be private, and some degree of obloquy would follow him to his grave.

Pettigru did indeed die before the war was ended, though not before the Secessionist Legislature had elected and appointed him, the implacable foe of Secession, to digest and codify the laws of the state. And this legislature renewed the appointment the following year.

He lies, as I have said, in the yard of St. Michael’s, the stone at the head of his grave bearing the epitaph mentioned— the spelling a little difficult to decipher now, as the years have obscured the lettering with green lichen.

The epitaph reads as follows: —

This inscription was, I learned, composed by several hands, and in part, at least, by Northern admirers of Pettigru. As it was set up shortly after the close of the war, we may suppose that partisan passion had somewhat cooled; and thus our wonder that such words could be placed on any stone of that city, at that time, may be somewhat diminished. Doubting a little, then, whether the lassitude and indifference of after-war days were not the cause of this permission rather than a sense of justice or a continuing, obstinate regard for the dead man, we naturally ask ourselves what happened. How was he regarded at the time of his death and funeral? His death occurred, as his epitaph tells us, in the thick of the war, the funeral taking place March 10, 1863. His body was, I understand, laid out in the Court House, the face being uncovered. An immense crowd gathered and viewed the corpse. Men and women, and among them many slaves, attended the service, following the body to its grave. The only business of the day, in Charleston, was this funeral. The shops were closed. Nothing further was done.

Some weeks later the Charleston bar held a memorial meeting. Once more there was a great concourse of his former fellow citizens. As the room would hold but a few, the people thronged the steps of the building and extended, in their mass, into the street. The leading men of the city and state — lawyers, statesmen, soldiers, orators — were within doors, and spoke in praise of Pettigru. And their eulogies appear to have been as open, sincere, and unstrained as we should have expected them to be the reverse. Yet among those who spoke there must have been men pledged to the doctrine of Secession — life-long, bitter opponents of the man they mourned, who, doubtless, had received hard blows at his capable hands.

Recalling those things which would unavoidably affect the temper and mood of the men who thus celebrated Pettigru, we must not forget that there was almost immediate danger threatening their city. A fleet of ironclads was at that moment anchored in Northern waters, preparing to bombard and reduce Charleston. Had the speakers of the occasion delayed but a few weeks, the town would have been on fire from shells thrown into it; and the ringing gallop of mounted infantry detailed to extinguish the flames, with the reverberations of the concussion of bombs, would have drowned the voice of their praise. But if they were safe for the moment, and perhaps not fully informed, there were other considerations which must have saddened and embittered their minds and which could very easily have rendered them intolerant. There was no speaker present who did not well know that the issue of the prolonged struggle was uncertain. Hardly a man of them but had lost some youthful member of his family. All Charleston was in mourning, severely impoverished, cruelly anxious, straining nerve and courage to meet the prolonged trial of war and the agonies of personal loss. These were the circumstances of the time and the inevitable emotions of the hour. But the meeting took place. The enemies of Pettigru spoke. The dead leader of a militant minority against Secession was eulogized by the supporters of Secession. His enemies expressed their admiration and their grief.

The scene is surely not lacking in greatness and magnanimity. It could, however, hardly have taken place except at a time and in a place where the people, all classes of them, cherished the same moral and political ideals. There was doubtless no one present who did not admire eloquence and value probity; who did not believe in the State and in service to the State; or who could find anything strange in the phrase, ‘He confronted Life with antique courage and Death with Christian Hope.’ There were none there who did not believe in patriotism as they understood it; none, doubtless, who did not respond to the sentiment, ‘His People did homage to the Man who held his Conscience higher than their Praise.’

That time is long past. Pettigru is a name. But, misty and remote as it all is, we cannot, I think, escape the feeling that a people flourishes and becomes great only when its moral unity is intact; only, or most, when its citizens are in a high degree like-minded.