Seward's much-denounced phrase in all the breadth of meaning he ever
meant to give it--is to take place in the South itself; because the
Slave System is one of those fearful blunders in political economy
which are sure, sooner or later, to work their own retribution. The
inevitable tendency of slavery is to concentrate in a few hands the
soil, the capital, and the power of the countries where it exists, to
reduce the non-slaveholding class to a continually lower and lower
level of property, intelligence, and enterprise,--their increase in
numbers adding much to the economical hardship of their position and
nothing to their political weight in the community. There is no
home-encouragement of varied agriculture,--for the wants of a slave
population are few in number and limited in kind; none of inland trade,
for that is developed only by communities where education induces
refinement, where facility of communication stimulates invention and
variety of enterprise, where newspapers make every man's improvement in
tools, machinery, or culture of the soil an incitement to all, and
bring all the thinkers of the world to teach in the cheap university of
the people. We do not, of course, mean to say that slaveholding States
may not and do not produce fine men; but they fail, by the inherent
vice of their constitution and its attendant consequences, to create
enlightened, powerful, and advancing communities of men, which is the
true object of all political organizations, and is essential to the
prolonged existence of all those whose life and spirit are derived
directly from the people. Every man who has dispassionately endeavored
to enlighten himself in the matter cannot but see, that, for the many,
the course of things in slaveholding States is substantially what we
have described, a downward one, more or less rapid, in civilization and
in all those results of material prosperity which in a free country
show themselves in the general advancement for the good of all, and
give a real meaning to the word Commonwealth. No matter how enormous
the wealth centred in the hands of a few, it has no longer the
conservative force or the beneficent influence which it exerts when
equably distributed,--even loses more of both where a system of
absenteeism prevails so largely as in the South. In such communities
the seeds of an "irrepressible conflict" are surely if slowly ripening,
and signs are daily multiplying that the true peril to their social
organization is looked for, less in a revolt of the owned labor than in
an insurrection of intelligence in the labor that owns itself and finds
itself none the richer for it. To multiply such communities is to
multiply weakness.
The election in November turns on the single and simple question,
Whether we shall consent to the indefinite multiplication of them; and
the only party which stands plainly and unequivocally pledged against
such a policy, nay, which is not either openly or impliedly in favor of
it,--is the Republican party. We are of those who at first regretted
that another candidate was not nominated at Chicago; but we confess
that we have ceased to regret it, for the magnanimity of Mr. Seward
since the result of the Convention was known has been a greater
ornament to him and a greater honor to his party than his election to
the Presidency would have been. We should have been pleased with Mr.
Seward's nomination, for the very reason we have seen assigned for
passing him by,--that he represented the most advanced doctrines of his
party. He, more than any other man, combined in himself the moralist's
oppugnancy to Slavery as a fact, the thinker's resentment of it as a
theory, and the statist's distrust of it as a policy,--thus summing up
the three efficient causes that have chiefly aroused and concentrated
the antagonism of the Free States. Not a brilliant man, he has that
best gift of Nature, which brilliant men commonly lack, of being always
able to do his best; and the very misrepresentation of his opinions
which was resorted to in order to neutralize the effect of his speeches
in the Senate and elsewhere was the best testimony to their power. Safe
from the prevailing epidemic of Congressional eloquence as if he had
been inoculated for it early in his career, he addresses himself to the
reason, and what he says sticks. It was assumed that his nomination
would have embittered the contest and tainted the Republican creed with
radicalism; but we doubt it. We cannot think that a party gains by not
hitting its hardest, or by sugaring its opinions. Republicanism is not
a conspiracy to obtain office under false pretences. It has a definite
aim, an earnest purpose, and the unflinching tenacity of profound
conviction. It was not called into being by a desire to reform the
pecuniary corruptions of the party now in power. Mr. Bell or Mr.
Breckinridge would do that, for no one doubts their honor or their
honesty. It is not unanimous about the Tariff, about State-Rights,
about many other questions of policy. What unites the Republicans is a
common faith in the early principles and practice of the Republic, a
common persuasion that slavery, as it cannot but be the natural foe of
the one, has been the chief debaser of the other, and a common resolve
to resist its encroachments everywhen and everywhere. They see no
reason to fear that the Constitution, which has shown such pliant
tenacity under the warps and twistings of a forty-years' pro-slavery
pressure, should be in danger of breaking, if bent backward again
gently to its original rectitude of fibre. "All forms of human
government," says Machiavelli, "have, like men, their natural term, and
those only are long-lived which possess in themselves the power of
returning to the principles on which they were originally founded."
It is in a moral aversion to slavery as a great wrong that the chief
strength of the Republican party lies. They believe as everybody
believed sixty years ago; and we are sorry to see what appears to be an
inclination in some quarters to blink this aspect of the case, lest the
party be charged with want of conservatism, or, what is worse, with
abolitionism. It is and will be charged with all kinds of dreadful
things, whatever it does, and it has nothing to fear from an upright
and downright declaration of its faith. One part of the grateful work
it has to do is to deliver us from the curse of perpetual concession
for the sake of a peace that never comes, and which, if it came, would
not be peace, but submission,--from that torpor and imbecility of faith
in God and man which have stolen the respectable name of Conservatism.
A question which cuts so deep as that which now divides the country
cannot be debated, much less settled, without excitement. Such
excitement is healthy, and is a sign that the ill humors of the body
politic are coming to the surface, where they are comparatively
harmless. It is the tendency of all creeds, opinions, and political
dogmas that have once defined themselves in institutions to become
inoperative. The vital and formative principle, which was active during
the process of crystallization into sects, or schools of thought, or
governments, ceases to act; and what was once a living emanation of the
Eternal Mind, organically operative in history, becomes the dead
formula on men's lips and the dry topic of the annalist. It has been
our good fortune that a question has been thrust upon us which has
forced us to reconsider the primal principles of government, which has
appealed to conscience as well as reason, and, by bringing the theories
of the Declaration of Independence to the test of experience in our
thought and life and action, has realized a tradition of the memory
into a conviction of the understanding and the soul. It will not do for
the Republicans to confine themselves to the mere political argument,
for the matter then becomes one of expediency, with two defensible
sides to it; they must go deeper, to the radical question of right and
wrong, or they surrender the chief advantage of their position. What
Spinoza says of laws is equally true of party platforms,--that those
are strong which appeal to reason, but those are impregnable which
compel the assent both of reason and the common affections of mankind.
No man pretends that under the Constitution there is any possibility of
interference with the domestic relations of the individual States; no
party has ever remotely hinted at any such interference; but what the
Republicans affirm is, that in every contingency where the Constitution
can be construed in favor of freedom, it ought to be and shall be so
construed. It is idle to talk of sectionalism, abolitionism, and
hostility to the laws. The principles of liberty and humanity cannot,
by virtue of their very nature, be sectional, any more than light and
heat. Prevention is not abolition, and unjust laws are the only serious
enemies that Law ever had. With history before us, it is no treason to
question the infallibility of a court; for courts are never wiser or
more venerable than the men composing them, and a decision that
reverses precedent cannot arrogate to itself any immunity from
reversal. Truth is the only unrepealable thing.
We are gravely requested to have no opinion, or, having one, to
suppress it, on the one topic that has occupied caucuses, newspapers,
Presidents' messages, and Congress for the last dozen years, lest we
endanger the safety of the Union. The true danger to popular forms of
government begins when public opinion ceases because the people are
incompetent or unwilling to think. In a democracy it is the duty of
every citizen to think; but unless the thinking result in a definite
opinion, and the opinion lead to considerate action, they are nothing.
If the people are assumed to be incapable of forming a judgment for
themselves, the men whose position enables them to guide the public
mind ought certainly to make good their want of intelligence. But on
this great question, the wise solution of which, we are every day
assured, is essential to the permanence of the Union, Mr. Bell has no
opinion at all, Mr. Douglas says it is of no consequence which opinion
prevails, and Mr. Breckinridge tells us vaguely that "all sections have
an equal right in the common Territories." The parties which support
these candidates, however, all agree in affirming that the election of
its special favorite is the one thing that can give back peace to the
distracted country. The distracted country will continue to take care
of itself, as it has done hitherto, and the only question that needs an
answer is, What policy will secure the most prosperous future to the
helpless Territories, which our decision is to make or mar for all
coming time? What will save the country from a Senate and Supreme Court
where freedom shall be forever at a disadvantage?
There is always a fallacy in the argument of the opponents of the
Republican party. They affirm that all the States and all the citizens
of the States ought to have equal rights in the Territories.
Undoubtedly. But the difficulty is that they cannot. The slaveholder
moves into a new Territory with his _institution_, and from that moment
the free white settler is virtually excluded. _His_ institutions he
cannot take with him; they refuse to root themselves in soil that is
cultivated by slave-labor. Speech is no longer free; the post-office is
Austrianized; the mere fact of Northern birth may be enough to hang
him. Even now in Texas, settlers from the Free States are being driven
out and murdered for pretended complicity in a plot the evidence for
the existence of which has been obtained by means without a parallel
since the trial of the Salem witches, and the stories about which are
as absurd and contradictory as the confessions of Goodwife Corey.
Kansas was saved, it is true; but it was the experience of Kansas that
disgusted the South with Mr. Douglas's panacea of "Squatter
Sovereignty."
The claim of _equal_ rights in the Territories is a specious fallacy.
Concede the demand of the slavery-extensionists, and you give up every
inch of territory to slavery, to the absolute exclusion of freedom. For
what they ask (however they may disguise it) is simply this,--that
their _local law_ be made the law of the land, and coextensive with the
limits of the General Government. The Constitution acknowledges no
unqualified or interminable right of property in the labor of another;
and the plausible assertion, that "that is property which the law makes
property" (confounding _a_ law existing anywhere with _the_ law which
is binding everywhere), can deceive only those who have either never
read the Constitution, or are ignorant of the opinions and intentions
of those who framed it. It is true only of the States where slavery
already exists; and it is because the propagandists of slavery are well
aware of this, that they are so anxious to establish by positive
enactment the seemingly moderate title to a right of existence for
their institution in the Territories,--a title which they do not
possess, and the possession of which would give them the oyster and
the Free States the shells. Laws accordingly are asked for to protect
Southern property in the Territories,--that is, to protect the
inhabitants from deciding for themselves what their frame of government
shall be. Such laws will be passed, and the fairest portion of our
national domain irrevocably closed to free labor, if the on-slaveholding
States fail to do their duty in the present crisis.
But will the election of Mr. Lincoln endanger the Union? It is not a
little remarkable that, as the prospect of his success increases, the
menaces of secession grow fainter and less frequent. Mr. W. L. Yancey,
to be sure, threatens to secede; but the country can get along without
him, and we wish him a prosperous career in foreign parts. But Governor
Wise no longer proposes to seize the Treasury at Washington,--perhaps
because Mr. Buchanan has left so little in it. The old Mumbo-Jumbo is
occasionally paraded at the North, but, however many old women may be
frightened, the pulse of the stock-market remains provokingly calm.
General Cushing, infringing the patent-right of the late Mr. James, the
novelist, has seen a solitary horseman on the edge of the horizon. The
exegesis of the vision has been various, some thinking that it means a
Military Despot,--though in that case the force of cavalry would seem
to be inadequate,--and others the Pony Express. If it had been one
rider on two horses, the application would have been more general and
less obscure. In fact, the old cry of Disunion has lost its terrors, if
it ever had any, at the North. The South itself seems to have become
alarmed at its own scarecrow, and speakers there are beginning to
assure their hearers that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do them no
harm. We entirely agree with them, for it will save them from
themselves.
To believe any organized attempt by the Republican party to disturb the
existing internal policy of the Southern States possible presupposes a
manifest absurdity. Before anything of the kind could take place, the
country must be in a state of forcible revolution. But there is no
premonitory symptom of any such convulsion, unless we except Mr.
Yancey, and that gentleman's throwing a solitary somerset will hardly
turn the continent head over heels. The administration of Mr. Lincoln
will be conservative, because no government is ever intentionally
otherwise, and because power never knowingly undermines the foundation
on which it rests. All that the Free States demand is that influence in
the councils of the nation to which they are justly entitled by their
population, wealth, and intelligence. That these elements of prosperity
have increased more rapidly among them than in communities otherwise
organized, with greater advantages of soil, climate, and mineral
productions, is certainly no argument that they are incapable of the
duties of efficient and prudent administration, however strong a one it
may be for their endeavoring to secure for the Territories the single
superiority that has made themselves what they are. The object of the
Republican party is not the abolition of African slavery, but the utter
extirpation of dogmas which are the logical sequence of attempts to
establish its righteousness and wisdom, and which would serve equally
well to justify the enslavement of every white man unable to protect
himself. They believe that slavery is a wrong morally, a mistake
politically, and a misfortune practically, wherever it exists; that it
has nullified our influence abroad and forced us to compromise with our
better instincts at home; that it has perverted our government from its
legitimate objects, weakened the respect for the laws by making them
the tools of its purposes, and sapped the faith of men in any higher
political morality than interest or any better statesmanship than
chicane. They mean in every lawful way to hem it within its present
limits.
We are persuaded that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do more than
anything else to appease the excitement of the country. He has proved
both his ability and his integrity; he has had experience enough in
public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a
politician. That he has not had more will be no objection to him in the
eyes of those who have seen the administration of the experienced
public functionary whose term of office is just drawing to a close. He
represents a party who know that true policy is gradual in its
advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, that it must deal
with facts and not with sentiments, but who know also that it is wiser
to stamp out evil in the spark than to wait till there is no help but
in fighting fire with fire. They are the only conservative party,
because they are the only one based on an enduring principle, the only
one that is not willing to pawn to-morrow for the means to gamble with
to-day. They have no hostility to the South, but a determined one to
doctrines of whose ruinous tendency every day more and more convinces
them.
The encroachments of Slavery upon our national policy have been like
those of a glacier in a Swiss valley. Inch by inch, the huge dragon
with its glittering scales and crests of ice coils itself onward, an
anachronism of summer, the relic of a by-gone world where such monsters
swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work
against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old,
fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous
devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant
sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no
trace, but here and there the scratches of their talons, and the gnawed
boulders scattered where they made their lair. We have entire faith in
the benignant influence of Truth, the sunlight of the moral world, and
believe that slavery, like other worn-out systems, will melt gradually
before it. "All the earth cries out upon Truth, and the heaven blesseth
it; ill works shake and tremble at it, and with it is no unrighteous
thing."
E PLURIBUS UNUM
1861
We do not believe that any government--no, not the Rump Parliament on
its last legs--ever showed such pitiful inadequacy as our own during
the past two months. Helpless beyond measure in all the duties of
practical statesmanship, its members or their dependants have given
proof of remarkable energy in the single department of peculation; and
there, not content with the slow methods of the old-fashioned
defaulter, who helped himself only to what there was, they have
contrived to steal what there was going to be, and have peculated in
advance by a kind of official post-obit. So thoroughly has the credit
of the most solvent nation in the world been shaken, that an
administration which still talks of paying a hundred millions for Cuba
is unable to raise a loan of five millions for the current expenses of
government. Nor is this the worst: the moral bankruptcy at Washington
is more complete and disastrous than the financial, and for the first
time in our history the Executive is suspected of complicity in a
treasonable plot against the very life of the nation.
Our material prosperity for nearly half a century has been so
unparalleled that the minds of men have become gradually more and more
absorbed in matters of personal concern; and our institutions have
practically worked so well and so easily that we have learned to trust
in our luck, and to take the permanence of our government for granted.
The country has been divided on questions of temporary policy, and the
people have been drilled to a wonderful discipline in the manoeuvres
of party tactics; but no crisis has arisen to force upon them a
consideration of the fundamental principles of our system, or to arouse
in them a sense of national unity, and make them feel that patriotism
was anything more than a pleasant sentiment,--half Fourth of July and
half Eighth of January,--a feeble reminiscence, rather than a living
fact with a direct bearing on the national well-being. We have had long
experience of that unmemorable felicity which consists in having no
history, so far as history is made up of battles, revolutions, and
changes of dynasty; but the present generation has never been called
upon to learn that deepest lesson of polities which is taught by a
common danger, throwing the people back on their national instincts,
and superseding party-leaders, the peddlers of chicane, with men
adequate to great occasions and dealers in destiny. Such a crisis is
now upon us; and if the virtue of the people make up for the imbecility
of the Executive, as we have little doubt that it will, if the public
spirit of the whole country be awakened in time by the common peril,
the present trial will leave the nation stronger than ever, and more
alive to its privileges and the duties they imply. We shall have
learned what is meant by a government of laws, and that allegiance to
the sober will of the majority, concentrated in established forms and
distributed by legitimate channels, is all that renders democracy
possible, is its only conservative principle, the only thing that has
made and can keep us a powerful nation instead of a brawling mob.
The theory that the best government is that which governs least seems
to have been accepted literally by Mr. Buchanan, without considering
the qualifications to which all general propositions are subject. His
course of conduct has shown up its absurdity, in cases where prompt
action is required, as effectually as Buckingham turned into ridicule
the famous verse,--
"My wound is great, because it is so small,"
by instantly adding,--
"Then it were greater, were it none at all."
Mr. Buchanan seems to have thought, that, if to govern little was to
govern well, then to do nothing was the perfection of policy. But there
is a vast difference between letting well alone and allowing bad to
become worse by a want of firmness at the outset. If Mr. Buchanan,
instead of admitting the right of secession, had declared it to be, as
it plainly is, rebellion, he would not only have received the unanimous
support of the Free States, but would have given confidence to the
loyal, reclaimed the wavering, and disconcerted the plotters of treason
in the South.