The Daily Dispatch: March 1, 1865., [Electronic resource]

A former Governor of Pennsylvania, afterwards a Minister at Foreign Court, told a story of an Indian boy who had been adopted into his father's family, and educated, dressed and trained in all respects like himself. The two boys separated, and some years after, this Governor, traveling through the Western wilds, encountered his old foster-brother, nearly as naked as the day he was born, an out and out savage. The Indian told him that, in the midst of his civilized pursuits, a sudden impulse came upon him for a wild life, and he could not resist it. Away went books and broadcloth, and, with a bound and a whoop, the original savage plunged into his native wilderness. We, who have been so long dressed in the outside clothing of what we call civilization, forget that we are all savages by nature; and when an impulse strong enough comes upon us, off come the clothes, out goes the gas, up come the railroads, and down go the ships that constitute what we call civilization. With a mighty leap and a defiant yell the tiger in human nature springs from its covert and leaps upon its prey.

It is but a few years ago that the people of New England, claimed to be the most civilized of human beings, invented all kinds of machinery for the reformation of mankind and the fabrication of cotton goods, organized Peace Societies, insisted that the millennium was at hand, and manifested such extreme aversion to the taking of human life that they were in favor of abolishing capital punishment for the greatest crimes. The Mexican war was an abomination in their nostrils. Their papers recorded with horror all the atrocities, real and imaginary, committed by American soldiers in Mexico. Their bards waxed witty and satirical over the cruel nonsense of war. What a run the following doggerel of a Yankee poet had in New England in those days:

‘ "The war candidate's a dreadful smart man,
He's been on all sides that gives place or pelf,
But consistency still was a part of his plan,
He's been true to one party, and that is himself.

"This old fellow he goes for the war,
He don't rally principle more'n an old cud;
What did God make us rational greeters for
But glory and gunpowder, plunder and blood?

"We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village,
With old-fashioned ideas of what's right and what ain't;
We thought that the Gospel went agin' war and pillage,
And that epaulette wan't the best mark of a saint.

"The side of our country must alters be took,
And the war man, you know, he is our country,
And the angel who writes all our sins in a book
Puts the debit to him, and to us the per contry.

"Parson Wilbur he calls all these arguments lies--
Says they're nothing on airth but just fee-fawfum,
And that all this big talk of our destinies
Is half on it ignorance and t'other half rum.

"Parson Wilbur says he never heard in his life
That the Apostles rigged up in swaller-tail coats
And marched round in front of a drum and a fife,
To git some on 'em office and some on 'em votes.

"Well, it's a mercy we've got folks to tell us
The rights and the wrongs of these matters, I vow;
That we've got country lawyers and other smart fellers,
To drive the world's team when it gets in a slough."

’

Now, who on "airth" would have dreamed, after that, that "Parson Wilbur" would have "rigged himself up in a swallow-tail coat and marched round in front of a fife and a drum?" Who would have imagined that the very people who sneered at the idea of "always taking the side of our country," who saw so clearly the difference between a country and its President, and were so disgusted with war and pillage, glory and gunpowder, plunder and blood, could, in the lapse of a few years, make such a revelation as Massachusetts has made of herself in this contest?

We conclude that all the civilization which railroads, steamboats, marble fronts, commerce, common schools and manufactures can put upon human nature is but the phosphorescent sparkle of the sea over unstable and treacherous depths, filled with slimy and voracious monsters. It is the growth of vines and olives upon the outside of an inextinguishable volcano. The eruptions may cease for a time, but the infernal fires within can never be put out by any human agency, and will ever and anon pour forth blazing streams of desolation, and shut out the stars with the smoke of the bottomless pit.