網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

The New Books.

THE LAW AND LOGIC OF RECON-
STRUCTION.*

In the preface to his work on "Reconstruction during the Civil War," Mr. Scott informs his readers that he intends to write the political history of the period of Reconstruction, and that the present work is merely preliminary to that undertaking. It will be found an exceedingly suggestive and stimulating contribution to the study of American politics. In dealing with the colonies prior to the Revolution, the author shows how constantly they kept in view the idea of their absolute separateness and equality, and with what tenacity they clung to the principle of local self-government. These ideas continued to dominate them during the period of the Stamp Act and that which followed, covering the Congresses of 1774 and 1775. Prior to 1776, the idea of a union of the colonies found no favor whatever; and when the course of the mother country finally compelled them to consider the question of their common defense, the policy of surrendering their separateness and sovereignty in any degree to the necessity of union was accepted with manifest hesitation and reluctance. Mr. Scott shows the strength and persistency of this feeling in dealing with the Articles of Confederation, the Ordinance of 1787, the formation of the Constitution, and the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-9; and it now seems an accident that the Constitution was ever ratified. When adopted, it was everywhere understood to be a compact; and this word was not introduced by Calhoun at a later period, as asserted by Mr. Webster, but, like the term "confederacy," was a part of the current speech of the

time.

"One cannot read the writings of the days which followed the adoption of the Constitution," says Mr. Scott," and fail to see that secession from the Union, or rather the withdrawal and resumption of the states, of the delegated powers, was the remedy in contemplation of the generation which made the Constitution; that it was regarded as the logical and natural remedy, and as the only remedy." If the Constitution had been construed by the people as the creation of an indissoluble union, its ratification would have been impossible; and it is not surprising that from the beginning of

* RECONSTRUCTION DURING THE CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. By Eben Greenough Scott. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

the government to the year 1861 threats of disunion, sometimes in the North and sometimes in the South, were not unfrequently heard, and that at no time during this period was the public mind free from apprehension on the subject.

or

In dealing with the relation of the states to the general government, Mr. Scott devotes several chapters to the formation of parties and the strife between the Federalists and Republicans which resulted in the triumph of Jefferson. These chapters are particularly instructive and interesting; but the growth of the idea of union kept pace with that of state sovereignty. This is shown in his discussion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and in the great speech of Webster in reply to Hayne in 1830, which voiced the growing sentiment of union and gave it a fresh impulse by his masterly and eloquent presentation of the subject. In his inaugural address of 1861, anticipating the triumph of our arms, Mr. Lincoln declared that "no state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any state or states, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances." Mr. Scott quotes these words, and the resolution of July 22, 1861, that "this war is not waged in any spirit of oppression, for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease." The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, showed the irresistible march of events, and how completely the President yielded to the popular demand respecting the abolition of slavery. On the 8th of December following he issued his proclamation of amnesty, providing a plan of reconstruction by which any seceded state might be restored to its place in the Union through the action of one-tenth of of 1860. This became known as the presidenits voters, as shown by the presidential election tial plan of reconstruction, which Mr. Lincoln never relinquished, and which was afterwards followed by President Johnson. Mr. Scott gives an admirable sketch of the debates on this plan; on the bill that followed, which passed both Houses and embodied the congressional plan of reconstruction; and on the refusal of

the President to sign the bill, and the vigorous and incisive protest of Senator Wade and Henry Winter Davis against his action. These debates are now matters of history; but they awakened among the people at the time the most profound interest and solicitude, because they were understood to involve the vital issues of the war. That wide differences of opinion prevailed on the question of reconstruction was by no means surprising. It was a new question. Such a blending of the principle of local self-government and national union as was embodied in the Constitution of the United States had never been known. When its complicated mechanism was suddenly disrupted by an unexpected catastrophe, the minds of men were necessarily bewildered in dealing with the work of its restoration. It seemed as difficult as had been its formation, and a precedent for action was alike wanting in either case. But the question had to be met, and it demanded a solution in the midst of a terrific struggle involving the life of the nation.

Three distinct plans of reconstruction were submitted to Congress, the first of which was inaugurated by Lincoln and championed by him with zeal and pertinacity while he lived. Mr. Scott correctly says of it:

"It could not have had its origin in any provision of the Constitution, for a new government was to be imposed upon the state and not created by the people of the state; it was not therefore a popular government: it was to be created, ostensibly, by a small fraction of the people, one-tenth; it could not therefore be a gov

ernment of the majority, nor a republican form of gov

ernment: and it was to be inaugurated and indefinitely controlled by the army, and therefore was in violation of the Constitutional principle which subordinates the military to the civil power."

The next plan of reconstruction was supported by those members of the Republican party in Congress who maintained that the states were in the Union in spite of secession, but that their people by secession had forfeited their federal rights, and were subject to the supreme authority of Congress. Of this plan of reconstruction Mr. Scott says that if its champions had followed it to its logical conclusion they would have had to concede that under any circumstances, those of reconstruction included, their right of self-government had survived inviolate, and therefore that their restoration depended upon themselves.

And

he shows that no help could be found in the clause of the Constitution declaring that "the United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government";

for a guarantee implies a pre-existing government which had ceased to be republican, while all the seceded states had governments republican in form, which had been recognized as such by the United States from the beginning. Of the third plan of reconstruction, which was finally adopted by Congress, Mr. Scott says:

"Much more manly and less dangerous were those who asserted that the seceded states, by the act of secession and by maintaining this secession by force of arms, had placed themselves outside of the Union, and had become mere territories over which the federal government might exercise the rights of conquest. They knew well that any policy which had for its foundations the inequality of the states, the interference of the federal government in the affairs of a state within the Union, the subordination of the civil to the military power, and th the abrogation of the rule of the majority, had no countenance from anything within the four corners of the Constitution, and was in violation of the spirit as well as of the tenor of the bond of union. . . . This view placed the states without the pale of the Union and the Constitution; it made their soil conquered territory, to be disposed of as the United States should think fit, and making the rebels belligerents, handed them over when conquered to the mercy of the federal government."

But Mr. Scott, nevertheless, condemns this plan quite as unsparingly as the two preceding ones. Taking his stand against all schemes of reconstruction as unwarranted by the Constitution, he believes the rebels, when conquered, had no duty to perform but to return to their allegiance, and that the government had no right to prescribe any conditions whatever. He emphasizes the words of Lincoln: "No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union." This is undoubtedly true; but he does not say that it cannot do this unlawfully. That an unlawful act cannot be done lawfully, is a simple truism; but the effect or consequence of such act presents another question. The saying, "Once a state, always a state," is a mere legal fiction, like the statement of Chief Justice Chase that the government is "an indissoluble union of indestructible states." The history of the world gives no account of an indestructible state, or an indissoluble confederacy of states. Time and chance pertain to everything that is human. Mr. Scott evidently agrees with a great party leader of the reconstruction period, that there was "no power in the federal government to punish the people of a state collectively, by reducing it to a territorial condition, since the crime of treason is individual, and can only be treated individually." A rebellious state would thus become independent. If her people could right

fully be overpowered by the national authority, that fact would at once re-clothe them with all their rights. Congress could prescribe no conditions, because this would be to recognize the states as territories, and violate the principle of state rights. This view made our war for the Union flagrantly unconstitutional; for if the crime of treason was "individual," and could only be treated "individually," the Federal government had no right to hold prisoners of war, seize property, and capture and confiscate vessels; for every rebel was in the full legal possession of his political rights, and could only be prevented from exercising them through a judicial conviction of treason in the district in which the overt act was committed.

Mr. Scott misconceives the character of the plan of reconstruction he so earnestly condemns. While it does not recognize the revolted districts or states in the Union, it deals with their people as subject to the authority of the United States. As citizens of the United States, they could no more escape their obligations than they could run away from their own shadows. Through their treason and rebellion they lost their rights under the Union, but the Union lost none of its rights over them. They did not and could not destroy the Union, or even abandon it, but simply forfeited their rights under it and thus subjected themselves to the coercive authority of the nation. When they ceased to be a mere mob, and became public enemies, this fact did not, as Mr. Scott supposes, "do away with their character as criminals and render punishment after subjection out of the question," because the law of nations determines the rights of nations in such cases, and one of these rights is the right of selfpreservation.

We admit that if the rebellion had been nipped in the bud, or had been abandoned before it assumed its gigantic proportions, no reconstruction of the government would have been necessary. The punishment of the leaders might have been demanded, but nothing else would have been required but the return of the people in revolt to their allegiance. But when the conflict ceased to be any longer a mere insurrection against the national authority, and took upon itself the character of a war with a foreign power, as the Supreme Court of the United States decided, the insurgents became public enemies, and when conquered were the conquered enemies of the United States and subject to the power of the conqueror, according to the laws of war applicable to such a con

flict. The nation had the right to prescribe just such conditions as it saw fit, looking to indemnity for the past and security for the future. In doing this it violated no article or clause of the Constitution, but was governed by the laws of war recognized by all civilized governments, and by the Constitution itself. Nobody violated it but the parties who defied its authority and compelled the nation to defend itself against the attempt upon its own life. To argue that the men who carried on this work of devastation for four years in the name of State Rights should be allowed at the end of the conflict to set up State Rights as a bar to their accountability and a reason for their unconditional restoration to power, was a mockery of justice and an affront to common sense.

It is perhaps superfluous to say that the bias of this volume is Southern. This is shown in the author's treatment of the Missouri Compromise, of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-9, and the question of Reconstruction. The work, however, is written in a spirit of fairness, giving the argument on both sides of important questions, and thus helping the reader to a just conclusion. It will serve a good purpose in the political education of the people. GEORGE W. JULIAN.

THE PROCESSES OF CELL-LIFE.* Professor Patrick Geddes has lately proposed the name Bionomics to designate what has been vaguely termed the science of organic evolution. In this sense, Bionomics would be the science which treats of the changes and adaptations in living beings, and the laws that govern them. This term Bionomics seems to me a very desirable one, and the science which it covers is one that draws material from every conceivable source of human knowledge. The fact that all our knowledge is human, and must, if expressed at all, be stated in terms of human experience, brings all of it into some bionomic relation. The central question in Bionomics is that of the ancestry of the various groups, and the influences which have caused them to become what they are. The central idea in the study is that of life-adaptation; and no influ

*AN ATLAS OF THE FERTILIZATION AND KARYOKINESIS OF THE OVUM. By Edmund B. Wilson, Ph.D., Professor of Invertebrate Zoölogy in Columbia College; with the coöperation of Edward Leaming, M. D., F. R. P. S., Instructor in Photography at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia College. New York: Published for the Columbia University Press by Macmillan & Co.

ence which can affect life in any way falls outside the range of bionomic science.

For the last fifteen years the most fruitful line of research in the whole range of Bionomics has been that of the life processes of the cell, collectively known as Karyokinesis, and in the relation of the cell-structures and functions to the laws of heredity. For the last fifty years, since the discoveries of Schleiden and Schwann of the cellular structure of animals (1846), it has been recognized that the bodies of the higher animals, or metazoa, may be considered each as a colony or alliance of one-celled animals. These are bound together in relations of mutual help and mutual dependence. This alliance permits growth and specialization, increase in size and strength with a physiological division of labor among the different parts, each organ being made of coördinate cells gathered together into tissues. From each of these organized beings or aggregations of cells, single cells are thrown off for purposes of reproduction. These germ-cells (ovum, spermatozoön) are in origin and nature similar to the tissue cells of which the body is composed. Each, again, is essentially similar to the onecelled organisms, or Protozoa, the supposed ancestors of the many-celled types. The manycelled body is derived from the ovum by a series of successive divisions, or cleavages; the eggcell dividing into two, four, eight, and so on, until a very large number of cells is produced. These remain together, building up tissues and organs, until a period of maturity of the compound structure is reached. Then other germcells are detached, which pass through similar cycles of growth. Among the descendants of each egg-cell, as stated by Professor Wilson, 66 a certain number assume the character of the original egg-cell, are converted into ova, and thus form the point of departure for the following generation. Every egg is therefore derived by a continuous and unbroken series of celldivisions from the egg of the preceding generation, and so on backward through all preceding generations; it is normally destined to form the first term in the series of cell-divisions extending indefinitely forward into the future."

In this point of view, the egg and the compound individual into which it develops stand each as a link in an unbroken chain of life, extending backward to life's beginning, whatever that may have been. For as each living egg-cell is cast off from living cell-structures by processes of life, death has nowhere intervened in any series which is now extant. These

chains of life tend to diverge, one from another; while the destruction of those links in the chain of organisms not fitted to the conditions of life tends by exclusion toward the perpetuation of those better adapted.

In some low types, the egg is capable of celldivision and growth (Parthenogenesis) without the addition of the male element. Cross-fertilization (Amphimisis) with its mixture of hereditary materials derived from different sources, is so useful in evolution that it has virtually superseded Parthenogesis. Its importance lies in this: that it is the chief factor in promoting individual variation. Through the survival of favorable variations result higher adaptation and specialization. In most compound animals, the egg is incapable of division or cleavage until it has been fertilized by a germ-cell of the opposite sex, similarly derived from the tissues of a living body. Fundamentally, the egg and sperm-cell are alike in origin and character, and each bears the same relation to the phenomena of heredity. The ovum, by processes of adaptation, has become in the higher forms immovable, and charged with food substance. The sperm-cell is active, and carries only its hereditary material and the protoplasm necessary to its motion and main

tenance.

All cells, whether germ-cells or not, consist, omitting minor details, of protoplasm and nucleus. In the protoplasm-a network of jellylike substance in a fluid - the actions of celllife take place; while the nucleus, itself inert, presides over or directs the results of these actions. Both Protoplasm and Nucleus are elaborate structures, not mere chemical compounds, and in each the function depends upon structure and not on chemical composition. In the loops and bands of the chromatin, the essential part of the nucleus, rests in some way the plan of the growing organism, the ancestral directive force, according to which the organism must develop. In each case of celldivision, an elaborate mechanism (centrosome, asters, etc.) is developed in the protoplasm, by means of which the chromatin is subdivided, each of its elaborate loops and tangles being equally shared between the two daughter cells formed by self-cleavage. By this means each resultant cell is like its mother cell in essential respects. But again, as an absolutely equal division is unknown in nature, each daughtercell has in some minute degree its own peculiarities, its own individuality, apparently resulting from inequalities in the chromatin.

These individual qualities, hidden in the determining chromatin, will reappear in the compound animal or individual into which the germ-cell develops.

When the egg or sperm cell is mature and ready for fertilization, it differs from the ordinary cells from which it is derived by containing only half the usual amount of chromatin or hereditary material. It is, therefore, so far as heredity goes, a half-cell, containing only half the architect's plan, or hereditary directive force, according to which its development is to be governed. The process of fertilization is the union of two half-cells, by which each half contributes its share of hereditary material. These become mingled together in the nucleus of the fertilized ovum, or cleavage-cell. This is then a new individual, and in its development it proceeds along the lines indicated by the mixed chromatin, and the forces of heredity somehow resident in this. This mixture of characters shows itself in the resultant individual. In this sense, the individual begins life as a mosaic of ancestral fragments, diverse and sometimes contradictory as to details, with a fundamental basis of unity in the traits of species and race which have come down from many ancestors unchanged, and changeable only by very slow accretions or modifications.

Professor Edmund B. Wilson has rendered a great service to teachers and students in the publication of the splendid series of microphotographs of these different processes. Hitherto the student has had access only to descriptions and diagrams. The latter are always too explicit for his best uses, inasmuch as they go beyond nature to someone's theory of what nature should be. In the forty photographic plates in Professor Wilson's atlas, all phases of changes in the ovum are shown as they appear in fact, with only the small source of error arising from the processes of staining. These are accompanied by an admirably lucid text with many diagrammatic figures explanatory of the plates. DAVID STARR Jordan.

FOLK SONGS AND STORIES OF THE
BAHAMAS.*

To expect the American Folk-Lore Society to actually maintain the high standard set by its first memoir would be unreasonable; and it is not unkind criticism to say of its third vol

*BAHAMA SONGS AND STORIES. A Contribution to Folklore. By Charles L. Edwards. Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, No. III. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

ume, "Bahama Songs and Stories," that it is not at all the equal of Heli Chatelain's "Angola Tales." It is, however, an interesting and valuable contribution to folk-lore.

The lovely Bahamas are, strangely, but little known. They comprise more than three thousand islands, most of which are very small. The Main Island is from fifty to one hundred miles long and from one to ten miles wide, with little hills that rise to one hundred feet in height covered with pine-trees of great size. Seaward from it are the cays, a chain of islets, repetitions in miniature of the main island, with smaller hills and stunted growth of shrubs and little trees, and with cocoa palms. Beyond them lies the reef. them lies the reef. Island, cays, reef, all are coralline in origin. Color abounds everywhere: the vegetation is intensely green, the sea deeply blue, the coral sand dazzling white. And here there lives a curious population, pretty equally composed of blacks and whites, with the former slowly but constantly gaining. Thus our author describes the land and the people. After a brief but helpful sketch of their life and their ways, he presents their songs and their stories, -songs and stories of negroes, negroes speaking English, but English of a quaint cockney sort, quite unlike the dialects among our Southern negroes. Funny indeed is it to find these descendants of Africans dropping and misplacing their h as if London born and bred. "Hall right, 'e 'as 'is 'ogs 'ere," would be quite a possible sentence among the Jamaica blacks. And their "vwas," "vw'en," "vwalk" are quite Wellerian.

Of songs, our author has collected forty specimens, presenting music with the words. All of the pieces are religious in sentiment, more or less sombre in sentiment and rendition, more or less grotesque in form and verbal content. Common among these negroes is the practice of sitting up all night to sing, the occasion being either joyous or doleful. Mr. Edwards describes the service of song.

"Held on the night when some friend is supposed to be dying. If the patient does not die, they come again the next night, and between the disease and the hymns the poor negro is pretty sure to succumb. The singers, men, women, and children, sit around on the floor of the larger room of the hut and stand outside at the doors and windows, while the invalid lies upon the floor in the smaller room. Long into the night they sing their most mournful hymns and anthems,' and only in the light of dawn do those who are left as chief mourners silently disperse. . . . Each one of the dusky group, as if by intuition, takes some part in the melody and the blending of all tone colors in the soprano, tenor, alto, and bass, without reference to the fixed laws of har

[ocr errors]
« 上一頁繼續 »