(From the _Liverpool Daily Post_, Feb. 3, 1863.)
The following article appeared as a "Leader" in the _Times_ on the 7th of
January, 1861:--
"The State of South Carolina has seceded from the Union by a unanimous
vote of her legislature, and it now remains to be seen whether any of the
other Southern States will follow her example, and what course the Federal
authorities will pursue under the circumstances. While we wait for further
information on these points, it may be well to consider once again the
cause of quarrel which has thus begun to rend asunder the mightiest
confederation which the world has yet beheld. One of the prevalent
delusions of the age in which we live is to regard democracy as equivalent
to liberty, and the attribution of power to the poorest and worst educated
citizens of the State as a certain way to promote the purest liberality of
thought and the most beneficial course of action. Let those who hold this
opinion examine the quarrel at present raging in the United States, and
they will be aware that democracy, like other forms of government, may
co-exist with any course of action or any set of principles. Between North
and South there is at this moment raging a controversy which goes as deep
as any controversy can into the elementary principles of human nature and
the sympathies and antipathies which in so many men supply the place of
reason and reflection. The North is for freedom, the South is for slavery.
The North is for freedom of discussion, the South represses freedom of
discussion with the tar-brush and the pine fagot. Yet the North and South
are both democracies--nay, possess almost exactly similar institutions,
with this enormous divergence in theory and practice. It is not democracy
that has made the North the advocate of freedom, or the South the advocate
of slavery. Democracy is a quality which appears on both sides, and may
therefore be rejected, as having no influence over the result. From the
sketch of the history of slavery which was furnished us by our
correspondent in New York last week, we learn that at the time of the
American Revolution slavery existed in every State in the Union except
Massachusetts; but we also learn that the great men who directed that
revolution--Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry, and
Hamilton--were unanimous in execrating the practice of slavery, and looked
forward to the time when it would cease to contaminate the soil of free
America. The abolition of the slave trade, which subsequently followed,
was regarded by its warmest advocates as not only beneficial in itself,
but as a long step towards the extinction of slavery altogether, it was
not foreseen that certain free and democratic communities would arise
which would apply themselves to the honourable office of breeding slaves,
to be consumed on the free and democratic plantations of the South, and of
thus replacing the African slave trade by an internal traffic in human
flesh, carried on under circumstances of almost equal atrocity through the
heart of a free and democratic nation. Democracy has verily a strong
digestion, and one not to be interfered with by trifles.
"But the most melancholy part of the matter is, that during the seventy
years for which the American confederacy has existed, the whole tone of
sentiment with regard to slavery has, in the Southern States at least,
undergone a remarkable change. Slavery used to be treated as a thoroughly
exceptional institution--as an evil legacy of evil times--as a disgrace to
a constitution founded on the natural freedom and independence of mankind.
There was hardly a political leader of any note who had not some plan for
its abolition. Jefferson himself, the greatest chief of the democracy, had
in the early part of this century speculated deeply on the subject; but
the United States became possessed of Louisiana and Florida, they have
conquered Texas, they have made Arkansas and Missouri into States; and
these successive acquisitions have altered entirely the view with which
slavery is regarded. Perhaps as much as anything, from the long license
enjoyed by the editors of the South of writing what they pleased in favour
of slavery, with the absolute certainty that no one would be found bold
enough to write anything on the other side, and thus make himself a mark
for popular vengeance, the subject has come to be written on in a tone of
ferocious and cynical extravagance, which is to an European eye absolutely
appalling. The South has become enamoured of her shame. Free labour is
denounced as degrading and disgraceful; the honest triumphs of the poor
man who works his way to independence are treated with scorn and contempt.
It is asserted that what we are in the habit of regarding as the honorable
pursuits of industry incapacitate a nation for civilisation and
refinement, and that no institutions can be really free and democratic
which do not rest, like those of Athens and of Rome, on a broad substratum
of slavery. So far from treating slavery as an exceptional institution, it
is regarded by these Democratic philosophers as the natural state of a
great portion of the human race; and, so far from admitting that America
ought to look forward to its extinction, it is contended that the property
in human creatures ought to be as universal as the property in land or in
tame animals.
"Nor have these principles been merely inert or speculative. For the last
ten or twelve years slavery has altered her tactics, and from a defensive
she has become an aggressive power. Every compromise which the moderation
of former times had erected to stem the course of this monster evil has
been swept away, and that not by the encroachments of the North, but by
the aggressive ambition of the South. With a majority in Congress and in
the Supreme Court of the United States, the advocates of slavery have
entered on a career the object of which would seem to be to make their
favourite institution conterminous with the limits of the Republic. They
have swept away the Missouri compromise, which limited slavery to the
tract south of 36 degrees of north latitude. They have forced upon the
North, in the Fugitive Slave Bill, a measure which compels them to lend
their assistance to the South in the recovery of their bondmen. In the
case of Kansas they have sought by force of arms to assert the right of
bringing slaves into a free territory, and in the Dred Scott case they
obtained an extrajudicial opinion from the Supreme Court, which would have
placed all the territories at their disposal. All this while the North has
been resisting, feebly and ineffectually, this succession of Southern
aggressions. All that was desired was peace, and that peace could not be
obtained.
"While these things were done the South continued violently to upbraid the
Abolitionists of the North as the cause of all their troubles, and the
ladies of South Carolina showered presents and caresses on the brutal
assailant of Mr. Sumner. In 1856 the North endeavoured to elect a
President who though fully recognising the right of the South to its slave
property, was opposed to its extension in the territories. The North were
defeated, and submitted almost without a murmur to the result. On the
present occasion the South has submitted to the same ordeal, but not with
the same success. They have taken their chance of electing a President of
their own views, but they have failed. Mr. Lincoln, like Colonel Freemont,
fully recognises the right of the South to the institution of slavery,
but, like him, he is opposed to its extension. This cannot be endured.
With a majority in both houses of Congress and in the Supreme Court of the
United States, the South cannot submit to a President who is not their
devoted servant. Unless every power in the constitution is to be strained
in order to promote the progress of slavery, they will not remain in the
Union; they will not wait to see whether they are injured, but resent the
first check to their onward progress as an intolerable injury. This, then,
is the result of the history of slavery. It began as a tolerated, it has
ended as an aggressive institution, and if it now threatens to dissolve
the Union, it is not because it has anything to fear for that which it
possesses already, but because it has received a check to its hopes of
future acquisition."
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