The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 6, December 1863

Continental Monthly , Vol IV,
Issue VI,
by Various

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Title: Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 Devoted
to Literature and National Policy.
Author: Various
Release Date: July 30, 2006 [EBook #18946]
Language: English
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THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
VOL. IV.--DECEMBER, 1863.--No. VI.

THE NATION.
We are of the race of the Empire Builders. Some races have been sent
into the world to destroy. Ours has been sent to create. It was needed
that the blunders of ten centuries and more, across the water, should be
given a chance for amendment. On virgin soil, the European races
might cure themselves of the fever pains of ages. So they were called
here to try. There was no rubbish to sweep away. The mere destructive
had no occupation. The builder and creator was the man wanted. In the
full glow of civilization, with the accumulated experience of the toiling
generations, with all the wealth of the fruitful past, we, 'the foremost in
the files of time,' have been called to this business of nation making.
The men of our blood, they say, are given to boasting. America adds
flashing nerve fire to the dull muscle of Europe. That is the fact. But
the tendency to boasting is an honest inheritance. We can hardly boast
louder than our fathers across the sea have taught us. The boasting of
New York can scarcely drown the boasting of London. Jonathan thinks
highly of himself, but, certainly, John Bull is not behind him in
self-esteem.
But, after all, what wonder? Ten centuries of victory over nature and
over men may give a race the right to boast--ten centuries of victory
with never a defeat! The English tongue is an arrogant tongue, we grant.
Command, mastery, lordliness, are bred into its tones. The old tongue
of the Romans was never deeper marked in those respects than our own.
It is a freeman's speech, this mother language. A slave can never speak

it. He garbles, clips, and mumbles it, makes 'quarter talk' of it. The hour
he learns to speak English he is spoiled for a slave. It is the tongue of
conquerors, the language of imperial will, of self-asserting individuality,
of courage, masterhood, and freedom. There is no need of being
thin-skinned under the charge of boasting. A man cannot very well
learn, in his cradle, 'the tongue that Shakspeare spake,' without talking
sometimes as if he and his owned creation.
For the tongue is the representative of the speaker. A people embodies
its soul in its language. And the people who inherit English have done
work enough in this little world to give them a right to do some talking.
They, at least, can speak their boast, and hear it seconded, in the bold
accents their mothers taught them, on every shore and on every sea.
They have been the world's day-laborers now for some centuries. They
have felled its forests, drained its marshes, dug in its mines, ploughed
its wastes, built its cities. They have done rough pioneer work over all
its surface. They have done it, too, as it never was done before. They
have made it stay done. They have never given up one inch of
conquered ground. They have never yielded back one square foot to
barbarism. Won once to civilization, under their leadership, and your
square mile of savage waste and jungle is won forever.
We are inclined to think the world might bear with us. We talk a great
deal about ourselves, perhaps; but, on the whole, are we not buying the
privilege? Did a race ever buckle to its business in this world in more
splendid style than our own? With both hands clenched, stripped to the
waist, blackened and begrimed and sweat bathed, this race takes its
place in the vanguard of the world and bends to its chosen toil. The
grand, patient, hopeful people, how they grasp blind brute nature, and
tame her, and use her at their word! How they challenge and defeat in
the death grapple the grim giants of the waste and the storm--fever,
famine, and the frost!
You will find them down, to-day, among the