Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)

Summary

New York Times, 27 August 1866.

Herman Melville evidently has not the fear of the Radicals before his eyes, for he frankly states in a chapter supplementary to these poems, that he has been tempted to withdraw or modify some of the battle pieces, lest he might, in presenting the passages and epithets of a civil war, be contributing to a bitterness which every sensible American must wish at an end. He explicitly declares his unwillingness to act on paper a part any way akin to that of the live dog toward the dead lion, and he even plainly advises, to use his own language, “that in our national solicitude to confirm the benefit of liberty to the blacks, we should forbear from measures of dubious constitutional rightfulness toward our white countrymen-measures of a nature to provoke, among other of the last evils, exterminating hatred of race toward race.” Then, there is a hint thrown out that it might be profitable for us to place ourselves in imagination “in the unprecedented position of the Southerners-their position as regards the millions of ignorant, manumitted slaves in their midst, for whom some of us now claim the suffrage;” and, further than all, Mr. MELVILLE ventures to advise that we should “be Christians toward our fellow whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks, our fellow men;” that “something may well be left to the graduated care of future legislation, and to heaven;” and, he adds, that “in all things, and toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by.”