Complete Prose Works
tumors and abscesses of the land; from the skeletons and skulls in the
vaults of the federal almshouses; and from the running sores of the
great cities. Such, I say, form'd, or absolutely controll'd the forming
of, the entire personnel, the atmosphere, nutriment and chyle, of our
municipal, State, and National politics--substantially permeating,
handling, deciding, and wielding everything--legislation, nominations,
elections, "public sentiment," &c.--while the great masses of the
people, farmers, mechanics, and traders, were helpless in their gripe.
These conditions were mostly prevalent in the north and west, and
especially in New York and Philadelphia cities; and the southern
leaders, (bad enough, but of a far higher order,) struck hands and
affiliated with, and used them. Is it strange that a thunder-storm
follow'd such morbid and stifling cloud-strata?
I say then, that what, as just outlined, heralded, and made the ground
ready for secession revolt, ought to be held up, through all the future,
as the most instructive lesson in American political history--the most
significant warning and beacon-light to coming generations. I say
that the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth terms of the American
Presidency have shown that the villainy and shallowness of rulers
(back'd by the machinery of great parties) are just as eligible to these
States as to any foreign despotism, kingdom, or empire--there is not a
bit of difference. History is to record those three Presidentiads, and
especially the administrations of Fillmore and Buchanan, as so far our
topmost warning and shame. Never were publicly display'd more deform'd,
mediocre, snivelling, unreliable, false-hearted men. Never were these
States so insulted, and attempted to be betray'd. All the main purposes
for which the government was establish'd were openly denied. The
perfect equality of slavery with freedom was flauntingly preach'd in the
north--nay, the superiority of slavery. The slave trade was proposed
to be renew'd. Everywhere frowns and misunderstandings--everywhere
exasperations and humiliations. (The slavery contest is settled--and the
war is long over--yet do not those putrid conditions, too many of them,
still exist? still result in diseases, fevers, wounds--not of war and
army hospitals--but the wounds and diseases of peace?)
Out of those generic influences, mainly in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
&c., arose the attempt at disunion. To philosophical examination,
the malignant fever of that war shows its embryonic sources, and
the original nourishment of its life and growth, in the north. I say
secession, below the surface, originated and was brought to maturity
in the free States. I allude to the score of years preceding 1860. My
deliberate opinion is now, that if at the opening of the contest
the abstract duality-question of _slavery and quiet_ could have been
submitted to a direct popular vote, as against their opposite, they
would have triumphantly carried the day in a majority of the northern
States--in the large cities, leading off with New York and Philadelphia,
by tremendous majorities. The events of '61 amazed everybody north and
south, and burst all prophecies and calculations like bubbles. But even
then, and during the whole war, the stern fact remains that (not only
did the north put it down, but) _the secession cause had numerically
just as many sympathizers in the free as in the rebel States_.
As to slavery, abstractly and practically, (its idea, and the
determination to establish and expand it, especially in the new
territories, the future America,) it is too common, I repeat, to
identify it exclusively with the south. In fact down to the opening of
the war, the whole country had about an equal hand in it. The north had
at least been just as guilty, if not more guilty; and the east and west
had. The former Presidents and Congresses had been guilty--the governors
and legislatures of every northern State had been guilty, and the mayors
of New York and other northern cities had all been guilty--their hands
were all stain'd. And as the conflict took decided shape, it is hard
to tell which class, the leading southern or northern disunionists,
was more stunn'd and disappointed at the non-action of the free-State
secession element, so largely existing and counted on by those leaders,
both sections.
So much for that point, and for the north. As to the inception and
direct instigation of the war, in the south itself, I shall not attempt
interiors or complications. Behind all, the idea that it was from
a resolute and arrogant determination on the part of the extreme
slaveholders, the Calhounites, to carry the States-rights' portion
of the constitutional compact to its farthest verge, and nationalize
slavery, or else disrupt the Union, and found a new empire, with slavery
for its corner-stone, was and is undoubtedly the true theory. (If
successful, this attempt might--I am not sure, but it might--have
destroy'd not only our American republic, in anything like first-class
proportions, in itself and its prestige, but for ages at least, the
cause of Liberty and Equality everywhere--and would have been the
greatest triumph of reaction, and the severest blow to political and
every other freedom, possible to conceive. Its worst result would have
inured to the southern States themselves.) That our national democratic
experiment, principle, and machinery, could triumphantly sustain such a
shock, and that the Constitution could weather it, like a ship a storm,
and come out of it as sound and whole as before, is by far the most
signal proof yet of the stability of that experiment, Democracy, and of
those principles, and that Constitution.
Of the war itself, we know in the ostent what has been done. The numbers
of the dead and wounded can be told or approximated, the debt posted and
put on record, the material events narrated, &c. Meantime, elections go
on, laws are pass'd, political parties struggle, issue their platforms,
&c., just the same as before. But immensest results, not only in
politics, but in literature, poems, and sociology, are doubtless waiting
yet unform'd in the future. How long they will wait I cannot tell.
The pageant of history's retrospect shows us, ages since, all Europe
marching on the crusades, those arm'd uprisings of the people, stirr'd
by a mere idea, to grandest attempt--and, when once baffled in it,
returning, at intervals, twice, thrice, and again. An unsurpass'd series
of revolutionary events, influences. Yet it took over two hundred years
for the seeds of the crusades to germinate, before beginning even to
sprout. Two hundred years they lay, sleeping, not dead, but dormant in
the ground. Then, out of them, unerringly, arts, travel, navigation,
politics, literature, freedom, the spirit of adventure, inquiry, all
arose, grew, and steadily sped on to what we see at present. Far
back there, that huge agitation-struggle of the crusades stands,
as undoubtedly the embryo, the start, of the high preeminence of
experiment, civilization and enterprise which the European nations have
since sustain'd, and of which these States are the heirs.
Another illustration--(history is full of them, although the war itself,
the victory of the Union, and the relations of our equal States, present
features of which there are no precedents in the past.) The conquest of
England eight centuries ago, by the Franco-Normans--the obliteration of
the old, (in many respects so needing obliteration)--the Domesday Book,
and the repartition of the land--the old impedimenta removed, even by
blood and ruthless violence, and a new, progressive genesis establish'd,
new seeds sown--time has proved plain enough that, bitter as they
were, all these were the most salutary series of revolutions that could
possibly have happen'd. Out of them, and by them mainly, have come,
out of Albic, Roman and Saxon England--and without them could not have
come--not only the England of the 500 years down to the present, and of
the present--but these States. Nor, except for that terrible dislocation
and overturn, would these States, as they are, exist to-day.
It is certain to me that the United States, by virtue of that war and
its results, and through that and them only, are now ready to enter, and
must certainly enter, upon their genuine career in history, as no more
torn and divided in their spinal requisites, but a great homogeneous
Nation--free States all--a moral and political unity in variety, such
as Nature shows in her grandest physical works, and as much greater than
any mere work of Nature, as the moral and political, the work of man,
his mind, his soul, are, in their loftiest sense, greater than the
merely physical. Out of that war not only has the nationality of the
States escaped from being strangled, but more than any of the rest, and,
in my opinion, more than the north itself, the vital heart and breath of
the south have escaped as from the pressure of a general nightmare,
and are henceforth to enter on a life, development, and active freedom,
whose realities are certain in the future, notwithstanding all the
southern vexations of the hour--a development which could not possibly
have been achiev'd on any less terms, or by any other means than that
grim lesson, or something equivalent to it. And I predict that the south
is yet to outstrip the north.
PREFACES TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"
PREFACE, 1855 To first issue of Leaves of Grass. _Brooklyn, N.Y._
America does not repel the past, or what the past has produced under
its forms, or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the old
religions--accepts the lesson with calmness--is not impatient because
the slough still sticks to opinions and manners in literature, while the
life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the
new forms--perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and
sleeping rooms of the house--perceives that it waits a little while
in the door--that it was fittest for its days--that its action has
descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches--and that
he shall be fittest for his days.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have
probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are
essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto,
the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler
largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that
corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here
is action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and
details, magnificently moving in masses. Here is the hospitality which
for ever indicates heroes. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial,
unapproach'd in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings, and
the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing breadth,
and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must
indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be
bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or the orchards drop apples,
or the bays contain fish, or men beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies--but the genius of
the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures,
nor in its ambassadors or authors, or colleges or churches or parlors,
nor even in its newspapers or inventors--but always most in the common
people, south, north, west, east, in all its States, through all its
mighty amplitude. The largeness of the nation, however, were monstrous
without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the
citizen. Not swarming states, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous