246 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Septembee 1, 1887. 



both have neither more nor less claim to objective reality 

 than matter. And as science tends to the conclusion that all 

 kinds of matter are modifications of one primal element, and 

 that all modes of motion are varied operations of one power, 

 perchance these three — Matter, Force, and Energy — are one. 



But into these and like speculative topics Evolution does 

 not intrude. Dealing with processes, and not with the 

 nature of things in tliemselves, it is silent concerning any 

 theories that may be formulated to gratify man's insatiate 

 curiosity about the whence and whither. And since it can 

 throw no light on the genesis of matter, or on the origination 

 of motion, or on the beginnings of life or of mind, it leaves 

 great and small alike a centre of impenetrable mystery. It 

 may correct, yet it does not curb, the imagination ; it has no 

 shibboleths the surrender of which can awaken dread ; its 

 temper is not aggi-essive, it seeks to inform the life with 

 the love of truth, and to let the facts which it reve;xls win 

 their way on their own merits ; since " a dogma learned is 

 only a new error — the old one was perhaps as good ; whereas 

 a spu-it communicated is a perpetual possession." Our sense 

 of the beauty of nature is not dimmed by fuller and truer 

 knowledge of her works and ways, while all that it really 

 suffices us to know for the discharge of life's duties, and all 

 the motive that is needed to impel us thereto, is supplied in 

 the theory which has so profoundly and permanently affected 

 every department of human thought. 



Note. — After the needful revision incident to their serial 

 issue, these papers will be published, with illustrations, in 

 book form. 



THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.* 



ONSIDERING that the fighting tendencies 

 of man are among his least noble qualities, 

 and are certainly those most obviously 

 suggestive of his descent through savage 

 ancestors from brute progenitors, there is 

 something painfully suggestive in the tone 

 in which the writer of the following matter 

 glorifies the biggest but most senseless war 

 the world has yet known. Had the North really fought, as 

 has been pretended in the face of all the facts, to free the 

 slave, and had that cause been as good as the liberty-loving 

 Englishman is apt to believe, the whole of the Soutli would 

 have been degraded by their share in the war, and the 

 United States could not have felt free of the shame thus 

 falling on a most important section of the nation. As a 

 mere matter of fact, however, the w;u' only indirectly 

 depended on the question of slavery, the differences really at 

 issue being political, and, in the main, most unworthy of 

 the sacrifices made on both sides during the four years of 

 fighting. As for the slavery of the coloured people, there 

 were, undoubtedly, shameful abuses in the system, and 

 these North and South were alike bound in duty to remove. 

 But no one who has ever lived among the coloured people 

 can doubt for a moment that general emancipation came a 

 great deal too soon. The race was and is utterly unfit for 

 independence within any civilised community, however 

 fully entitled to the freedom of savagery in the countries 

 from which they were wrongfully stolen. Freeing them 

 en masse was about as wise as turning loose all our domestic 

 animals would be. Giving them the franchise was simply 

 madness. Meant, however, as a deadly insult to the 

 defeated Southernei-s, it has enabled them (showing in this 

 characteristic cleverness) to get the dead weight of numbers 

 they before wanted, the whole black vote going now 

 (practically) with the former mastei's of the coloured race. 



* The quoted matter is from the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. 



" Official returns show that about 2,653,000 soldiers 

 enlisted during the war in response to the successive calls 

 of President Lincoln, and that of this number 186,097 were 

 coloured troops. 



" Reports show that the Northern and Southern armies 

 met in over two thousand skirmishes and battles. In 148 

 of these conflicts the loss on the Federal side was over 500 

 men, and in at least ten battles over 10,000 men were 

 reported lost on each side. The appended table shows that 

 the combined losses of the Federal and Confederate forces 

 in killed, wounded, and missing in the following engage- 

 ments were : — 



" Shiloh, 24,000 ; Antietam, 18,000 ; Stone River, 22,000; 

 Chickamauga, 33,000 ; McClellan's Peninsula campaign, 

 50,000; Grant's Peninsula campaign, 140,000; and Sher- 

 man's campaign, 80,000. 



" Official statistics show that of the 2,653,000 men en- 

 listed, there were killed in battle 44,238 ; died of wounds, 

 49,205; died of disease, 186,216 ; died of unknown causes, 

 24,184 ; total, 303,843. This includes only tho.se whose 

 death while in the army had been actually proved. To this 

 number should be added, fir.st, 26,000 men who are known 

 to have died while in the hands of the enemy as prisoners of 

 war, and many others in the same manner whose deaths are 

 unrecorded; second, a fair percentage of the 205,794 men 

 who are put down on the official reports as desei'ters and 

 missing in action, for those who participated in the war 

 know that men frequently disappear who, it was certain, 

 had not deserted, yet could not be otherwise officially 

 accounted for ; third, thousands who are buried in private 

 cemeteries all over the North who died while at home on 

 furlough. 



" The dead are buried in seventy-three National ceme- 

 teries, of which only twelve are in the Northern States. 

 Amongst the principal ones in the North are Cypress Hill, 

 with its 3,786 dead ; Finn's Point, N..J., which contains the 

 remains of 2,644 unknown dead; Gettysburg, Pa., with its 

 1,967 known and l,6(i8 unknown dead; Mound City, 111., 

 with 2,505 known and 2,721 unknown graves ; Philadelphia, 

 with 1,909 dead; and Woodlawn, Elmira, N.Y., with its 

 3,900 dead. 



" In the South, near the scenes of terrible conflicts, are 

 located the largest depositories of the slain : — Arlington, 

 Va., 16,264, of which 4,319 are unknown; Beaufort, S.C., 

 9,241, of which 4,493 are unknown; Chalmettee, La, 

 12,511, of which 5,674 are unknown; Chattanooga, Tenn., 

 12,962, of which 4,963 are unknown ; Fredericksburg, Va., 

 15,257, of which 12,770 are unknown ; Jefferson Barracks, 

 Mo., 11,490, of which 2,900 are unknown; Little Rock, 

 Ark., 5,602, of which 2,337 are unknown ; City Point, Va., 

 5,122, of which 1,374 are unknown ; Marietta, Ga., 10,151, 

 of which 2,963 are unknown; Memphis, Tenn., 13,997, of 

 which 8,817 are unknown; Nashville, Tenn., 16,526, of 

 which 4,700 are unknown; Poplar Grove, Va., 6,190, of 

 which 4,001 are unknown; Richmond, V., 6,542, of which 

 5,700 are unknown; Salisbury, N.C., 12,126, of which 

 12,032 are unknown; Stone River, Tenn., 5,602, of which 

 288 are unknown; Vicksburg, Miss., 16,600, of which 

 12,704 are unknown; Antietam, Va., 4,671, of which 1,818 

 are unknown ; Winchester, Va., 4,559, of which 2,365 are 

 unknown. 



'■ In all, the remains of 300,000 men who fought for the 

 stars and stripes find guarded graves in our national ceme- 

 teries. Two cemeteries are mainly devoted to the men who 

 perished in the prisons of the same name — Andei-sonville, 

 Ga., which contains 13,714 graves, and Salisbury, with its 

 12,126 dead, among which 12,032 are unknown. 



" Of the vast number who are interred in oui- national 

 cemeteries, 275,000 .sleep beneath the soil of the Southern 



