sometimes represented to be, if Time really dotes and repeats his old
stories, then ought students of history to be the best statesmen. Yet,
with Guizot for an adviser, Louis Philippe, himself the eyewitness of
two revolutions, became the easy victim of a third. Reasoning from what
has been to what will be is apt to be paralogistic at the best. Much
influence must still be left to chance, much accounted for by what
pagans called Fate, and we Providence. We can only say, _Victrix
causa diis placuit_, and Cato must make the best of it. What is
called poetical justice, that is, an exact subservience of human
fortunes to moral laws, so that the actual becomes the liege vassal of
the ideal, is so seldom seen in the events of real life that even the
gentile world felt the need of a future state of rewards and
punishments to make the scale of Divine justice even, and satisfy the
cravings of the soul. Our sense of right, or of what we believe to be
right, is so pleased with an example of retribution that a single
instance is allowed to outweigh the many in which wrong escapes
unwhipped. It was remarked that sudden death overtook the purchasers of
certain property bequeathed for pious uses in England, and sequestered
at the Reformation. Fuller tells of a Sir Miles Pateridge, who threw
dice with the king for Jesus' bells, and how "the ropes after catched
about his neck," he being hanged in the reign of Edward VI. But at
least a fifth of the land in England was held by suppressed
monasteries, and the metal for the victorious cannon of revolutionary
France once called to the service of the Prince of Peace from
consecrated spires. We err in looking for a visible and material
penalty, as if God imposed a fine of mishap for the breach of his
statutes. Seldom, says Horace, has penalty lost the scent of crime,
yet, on second thought, he makes the sleuth-hound lame. Slow seems the
sword of Divine justice, adds Dante, to him who longs to see it smite.
The cry of all generations has been, "How long, O Lord?" Where crime
has its root in weakness of character, that same weakness is likely to
play the avenger; but where it springs from that indifference as to
means and that contempt of consequences which are likely to be felt by
a strong nature, intent upon its end, it would be hardy to reckon on
the same dramatic result. And if we find this difficulty in the cases
of individual men, it is even more rash to personify nations, and deal
out to them our little vials of Divine retribution, as if we were the
general dispensaries of doom. Shall we lay to a nation the sins of a
line of despots whom it cannot shake off? If we accept too blindly the
theory of national responsibility, we ought, by parity of reason, to
admit success as a valid proof of right. The moralists of fifty years
ago, who saw the democratic orgies of France punished with Napoleon,
whose own crimes brought him in turn to the rock of Prometheus, how
would they explain the phenomenon of Napoleon III.? The readiness to
trace a too close and consequent relation between public delinquencies
and temporal judgments seems to us a superstition holding over from the
time when each race, each family even, had its private and tutelary
divinity,--a mere refinement of fetichism. The world has too often seen
"captive good attending captain ill" to believe in a providence that
sets man-traps and spring-guns for the trespassers on its domain, and
Christianity, perhaps, elevated man in no way so much as in making
every one personally, not gregariously, answerable for his doings or
not-doings, and thus inventing conscience, as we understand its
meaning. But just in proportion as the private citizen is enlightened
does he become capable of an influence on that manifold result of
thought, sentiment, reason, impulse, magnanimity, and meanness which,
as Public Opinion, has now so great a share in shaping the destiny of
nations. And in this sense does he become responsible, and out of the
aggregate of such individual responsibilities we can assume a common
complicity in the guilt of common wrongdoing.
But surely the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth; and though we do not
believe in his so immediate interference in events as would satisfy our
impatience of injustice, yet he achieves his ends and brings about his
compensations by having made Good infinitely and eternally lovely to
the soul of man, while the beauty of Evil is but a brief cheat, which
their own lusts put upon the senses of her victims. And it is surely
fixed as the foundations of the earth that faithfulness to right and
duty, self-sacrifice, loyalty to that service whose visible reward is
often but suffering and baffled hope, draw strength and succor from
exhaustless springs far up in those Delectable Mountains of trial which
the All-knowing has set between us and the achievement of every noble
purpose. History teaches, at least, that wrong can reckon on no
alliance with the diviner part of man, while every high example of
virtue, though it led to the stake or the scaffold, becomes a part of
the reserved force of humanity, and from generation to generation
summons kindred natures to the standard of righteousness as with the
sound of a trumpet. There is no such reinforcement as faith in God, and
that faith is impossible till we have squared our policy and conduct
with our highest instincts. In the loom of time, though the woof be
divinely foreordained, yet man supplies the weft, and the figures of
the endless web are shaped and colored by our own wisdom or folly. Let
no nation think itself safe in being merely right, unless its captains
are inspired and sustained by a sense thereof.
We do not believe that history supplies any trustworthy data for
casting the horoscope of our war. America is something without
precedent Moreover, such changes have been going on in the social and
moral condition of nations as to make the lessons of even comparatively
recent times of little import in forming conclusions on contemporary
affairs. Formerly a fact, not yet forgetful of its etymology, was a
thing done, a deed, and in a certain sense implied, truly enough, the
predominance of individual actors and prevailing characters. But
powerful personalities are becoming of less and less account, when
facility of communication has given both force and the means of
exerting it to the sentiment of civilized mankind, and when commerce
has made the banker's strong-box a true temple of Janus, the shutting
or opening of which means peace or war. Battles are decisive now not so
much by the destruction of armies as by the defeat of public spirit,
and a something that has actually happened may be a less important
fact, either in conjecturing probabilities or determining policy, than
the indefinable progress of change, not marked on any dial, but
instinctively divined, that is taking place in the general thought.
The history of no civil war can be written without bias, scarcely
without passionate prejudice. It is always hard for men to conceive the
honesty or intelligence of those who hold other opinions, or indeed to
allow them the _right_ to think for themselves; but in troubled
times the blood mounts to the head, and colors the judgment, giving to
suspicions and fancies the force of realities, and intensifying
personal predilections, till they seem the pith and substance of
national duties. Even where the office of historian is assumed in the
fairest temper, it is impossible that the narrative of events whose
bearing is so momentous should not insensibly take somewhat the form of
an argument,--that the political sympathies of the author should not
affect his judgment of men and measures. And in such conflicts, far
more than in ordinary times, as the stake at issue is more absorbing
and appeals more directly to every private interest and patriotic
sentiment, so men, as they become prominent, and more or less
identified with this or that policy, at last take the place of
principles with the majority of minds. To agree with us is to be a
great commander, a prudent administrator, a politician without private
ends.
The contrast between the works of Mr. Pollard[2] and Mr. Greeley[3] is
very striking. Though coincident in design, they are the antipodes of
each other in treatment. Mr. Greeley, finding a country beyond measure
prosperous suddenly assailed by rebellion, is naturally led to seek an
adequate cause for so abnormal an effect. Mr. Pollard, formerly an
office-holder under the United States, and now the editor of a Richmond
newspaper, is struck by the same reflection, and, unwilling to state
the true cause, or unable to find a plausible reason, is driven to hunt
up an excuse for what strikes ordinary people as one of the greatest
crimes in history. The difference is instructive.
[2] _The Southern History of the War. The First Year of the
War._ By Edward A. Pollard.
[3] _The American Conflict._ By Horace Greeley. Vol. I.
Mr. Pollard's book, however, is well worth reading by those who wish to
learn something of the motives which originally led the Southern States
into rebellion, and still actuate them in their obstinate resistance.
To any one familiar with the history of the last thirty years, it would
almost seem that Mr. Pollard's object had been to expose the futility
of the pretences set up by the originators of Secession, so utterly
does he fail in showing any adequate grounds for that desperate
measure. As a history, the book is of little value, except as giving us
here and there a hint by which we can guess something of the state of
mind prevailing at the South. In point of style it is a curious jumble
of American sense and Southern _highfaluting_. One might fancy it
written by a schoolmaster, whose boys had got hold of the manuscript,
and inserted here and there passages taken at random from the _Gems
of Irish Oratory_. Mr. Pollard's notions of the "Yankees," and the
condition of things among them, would be creditable to a Chinaman from
pretty well up in the back country. No society could hold together for
a moment in the condition of moral decay which he attributes to the
Northern States. Before writing his next volume he should read Charles
Lamb's advice "to those who have the framing of advertisements for the
apprehension of offenders." We must do him the justice to say, however,
that he writes no nonsense about difference of races, and that, of all
"Yankees," he most thoroughly despises the Northern snob who professes
a sympathy for "Southern institutions" because he believes that a
slaveholder is a better man than himself.
In narrating the causes which brought about the present state of
things, Mr. Pollard arranges matters to suit his own convenience,
constantly reversing the relations of cause and effect, and forgetting
that the order of events is of every importance in estimating their
moral bearing. The only theoretic reason he gives for Secession is the
desire to escape from the tyranny of a "numerical majority." Yet it was
by precisely such a majority, and that attained by force or fraud, that
the seceding States were taken out of the Union. We entirely agree with
Mr. Pollard that a show of hands is no test of truth; but he seems to
forget that, except under a despotism, a numerical majority of some
sort or other is sure to govern. No man capable of thought, as Mr.
Pollard certainly is, would admit that a majority was any more likely
to be right under a system of limited than under one of universal
suffrage, always provided the said majority did not express his own
opinions. The majority always governs in the long run, because it comes
gradually round to the side of what is just and for the common
interest, and the only dangerous majority is that of a mob unchecked by
the delay for reflection which all constitutional government
interposes. The constitutions of most of the Slave States, so far as
white men are concerned, are of the most intensely democratic type.
Would Mr. Pollard consolidate them all under one strong government, or
does he believe that to be good for a single State which is bad for
many united? It is curious to see, in his own intense antipathy to a
slaveholding aristocracy, how purely American he is in spite of his
theories; and, bitterly hostile as he is to the Davis administration,
he may chance on the reflection that a majority is pretty much the same
thing in one parallel of latitude as another. Of one thing he may be
assured,--that we of the North do not understand by republic a
government of the better and more intelligent class by the worse and
more ignorant, and accordingly are doing our best by education to
abolish the distinction between the two.
The fact that no adequate reasons for Secession have ever been brought
forward, either by the seceding States at the time, or by their
apologists since, can only be explained on the theory that nothing more
than a _coup d'etat_ was intended, which should put the South in
possession of the government. Owing to the wretched policy (if
supineness deserve the name) largely prevalent in the North, of sending
to the lower house of Congress the men who needed rather than those who
ought to go there,--men without the responsibility or the independence
which only established reputation, social position, long converse with
great questions, or native strength of character can give,--and to the
habit of looking on a seat in the national legislature more as the
reward for partisan activity than as imposing a service of the highest
nature, so that representatives were changed as often as there were new
political debts to pay or cliques to be conciliated,--owing to these
things, the South maintained an easy superiority at Washington, and
learned to measure the Free States by men who represented their
weakest, and sometimes their least honorable, characteristics. We doubt
if the Slave States have sent many men to the Capitol who could be
bought, while it is notorious that from the north of Mason and Dixon's
line many an M.C. has cleared, like a ship, for Washington and a
market. Southern politicians judge the North by men without courage and
without principle, who would consent to any measure if it could be
becomingly draped in generalities, or if they could evade the pillory
of the yeas and nays. The increasing drain of forensic ability toward
the large cities, with the mistaken theory that residence in the
district was a necessary qualification in candidates, tended still more
to bring down the average of Northern representation. The "claims" of a
section of the State, or even part of a district, have been allowed to
have weight, as if square miles or acres were to be weighed against
capacity and experience. We attached too little importance to the
social prestige which the South acquired and maintained at the seat of
government, forgetting the necessary influence it would exert upon the
independence of many of our own members. These in turn brought home the
new impressions they had acquired, till the fallacy gradually became
conviction of a general superiority in the South, though it had only so
much truth in it as this, that the people of that section sent their
men of character and position to Washington, and kept them there till
every year of experience added an efficiency which more than made up
for their numerical inferiority. Meanwhile, our thinking men allowed,
whether from timidity or contempt, certain demagogic fallacies to
become axioms by dint of repetition, chief among which was the notion
that a man was the better representative of the democratic principle
who had contrived to push himself forward to popularity by whatever
means, and who represented the average instead of the highest culture
of the community, thus establishing an aristocracy of mediocrity, nay,
even of vulgarity, in some less intelligent constituencies. The one
great strength of democracy is, that it opens all the highways of power
and station to the better man, that it gives every man the chance of
rising to his natural level; and its great weakness is in its tendency
to urge this principle to a vicious excess, by pushing men forward into
positions for which they are unfit, not so much because they deserve to
rise, or because they have risen by great qualities, as because they
began low. Our quadrennial change of offices, which turns public
service into a matter of bargain and sale instead of the reward of
merit and capacity, which sends men to Congress to represent private
interests in the sharing of plunder, without regard to any claims of
statesmanship or questions of national policy, as if the ship of state
were periodically captured by privateers, has hastened our downward
progress in the evil way. By making the administration prominent at the
cost of the government, and by its constant lesson of scramble and
vicissitude, almost obliterating the idea of orderly permanence, it has
tended in no small measure to make disruption possible, for Mr.
Lincoln's election threw the weight of every office-holder in the South
into the scale of Secession. The war, however, has proved that the core
of Democracy was sound; that the people, if they had been neglectful of
their duties, or had misapprehended them, had not become corrupt.
Mr. Greeley's volume is a valuable contribution to our political
history. Though for many years well known as an ardent politician, and
associated by popular prejudice with that class of untried social
theories which are known by the name of _isms_, his tone is
singularly calm and dispassionate. Disfigured here and there by a
vulgarism which adds nothing to its point, while it detracts from its
purity, his style is clear, straightforward, and masculine,--a good
business style, at once bare of ornament and undiluted with eloquence.
Mr. Greeley's intimate knowledge of our politics and instinctive
sympathy with the far-reaching scope of our institutions (for, as
Beranger said of himself, he is _tout peuple_) admirably fitted
him for his task. He is clear, concise, and accurate, honestly striving
after the truth, while his judicious Preface shows that he appreciates
fully the difficulties that beset whoever seeks to find it. If none of
his readers will be surprised to find his work that of an able man,
there are many who would not expect it to be, as it is, that of a
fair-minded one. He writes without passion, making due allowance for
human nature in the South as well as the North, and does not waste his
strength, as is the manner of fanatics, in fighting imaginary giants
while a real enemy is in the field. Tracing Secession to its twin
sources in slavery and the doctrine of State Rights, and amply
sustaining his statements of fact by citations from contemporary
documents and speeches, he has made the plainest, and for that very
reason, we think, the strongest, argument that has been put forth on
the national side of the question at issue in our civil war. Above all,
he is ready to allow those virtues in the character of the Southern
people whose existence alone makes reunion desirable or possible. We
should not forget that the Negro is at least no more our brother than
they, for if he have fallen among thieves who have robbed him of his
manhood, they have been equally enslaved by prejudice, ignorance, and
social inferiority.
It is not a little singular that, while slavery has been for nearly
eighty years the one root of bitterness in our politics, the general
knowledge of its history should be so superficial. Abolitionism has
been so persistently represented as the disturbing element which
threatened the permanence of our Union, that mere repetition has at
last become conviction with that large class of minds with which a
conclusion is valuable exactly in proportion as it saves mental labor.
Mr. Greeley's chronological narrative is an excellent corrective of
this delusion, and his tough little facts, driven firmly home, will
serve to spike this parrot battery, and render it harmless for the
future. A consecutive statement of such of the events in our history as
bear directly on the question of slavery, separated from all secondary
circumstances, shows two things clearly: first, that the doctrine that
there was any national obligation to consider slaves as merely
property, or to hold our tongues about slavery, is of comparatively
recent origin; and, second, that there was a pretty uniform ebb of
anti-slavery sentiment for nearly sixty years after the adoption of the
Constitution, the young flood beginning to set strongly in again after
the full meaning of the annexation of Texas began to be understood at
the North, but not fairly filling up again even its own deserted
channels till the Southern party succeeded in cutting the embankment of
the Missouri Compromise. Then at last it became evident that the real
danger to be guarded against was the abolition of Freedom, and the
reaction was as violent as it was sudden.
In the early days of the Republic, slavery was admitted to be a social
and moral evil, only to be justified by necessity; and we think it more
than doubtful if South Carolina and Georgia could have procured an
extension of the slave-trade, had there not been a general persuasion
that the whole system could not long maintain itself against the growth
of intelligence and humanity. As early as 1786 a resident of South
Carolina wrote: "In countries where slavery is encouraged, the ideas of
the people are of a peculiar cast; the soul becomes dark and narrow,
and assumes a tone of savage brutality.... The most elevated and
liberal Carolinians abhor slavery; they will not debase themselves by
attempting to vindicate it." In 1789 William Pinckney said, in the
Maryland Assembly: "Sir, by the eternal principles of natural justice,
no master in the State has a right to hold his slave in bondage for a
single hour." And he went on to speak of slavery in a way which, fifty
years later, would have earned him a coat of tar and feathers, if not a
halter, in any of the Slave States, and in some of the Free. In 1787
Delaware passed an act forbidding the importation of "negro or mulatto
slaves into the State for sale or otherwise;" and three years later her
courts declared a slave, hired in Maryland and brought over the border,
free under this statute. In 1790 there were Abolition societies in
Maryland and Virginia. In 1787 the Synod of the Presbyterian Church
(since called the General Assembly), in their pastoral letter,
"strongly recommended the abolition of slavery, with the instruction of
the negroes in literature and religion." We cite these instances to
show that the sacredness of slavery from discussion was a discovery of
much later date. So also was the theory of its divine origin,--a
theological slough in which, we are sorry to say, Northern men have
shown themselves readiest to bemire themselves. It was when slave labor
and slave breeding began to bring large and rapid profits, by the
extension of cotton-culture consequent on the invention of Whitney's
gin, and the purchase of Louisiana, that slavery was found to be
identical with religion, and, like Duty, a "daughter of the voice of
God." Till it became rich, it had been content with claiming the
municipal law for its parent, but now it was easy to find heralds who
could blazon for it a nobler pedigree. Men who looked upon dancing as
sinful could see the very beauty of holiness in a system like this! It
is consoling to think that, even in England, it is little more than a
century since the divine right of kings ceased to be defended in the
same way, by making the narrative portions of Scripture doctrinal. Such
strange things have been found in the Bible that we are not without
hope of the discovery of Christianity there, one of these days.
The influence of the Southern States in the national politics was due
mainly to the fact of their having a single interest on which they were
all united, and, though fond of contrasting their more chivalric
character with the commercial spirit of the North, it will be found
that profit has been the motive to all the encroachments of slavery.
These encroachments first assumed the offensive with the annexation of
Texas. In the admission of Missouri, though the Free States might
justly claim a right to fix the political destiny of half the
territory, bought with the common money of the nation, and though
events have since proved that the compromise of 1820 was a fatal
mistake, yet, as slavery was already established there, the South
might, with some show of reason, claim to be on the defensive. In one
sense, it is true, every enlargement of the boundaries of slavery has
been an aggression. For it cannot with any fairness be assumed that the
framers of the Constitution intended to foreordain a perpetual balance
of power between the Free and the Slave States. If they had, it is
morally certain that they would not so have arranged the basis of
representation as to secure to the South an unfair preponderance, to be
increased with every addition of territory. It is much more probable
that they expected the Southern States to fall more and more into a
minority of population and wealth, and were willing to strengthen this
minority by yielding it somewhat more than its just share of power in
Congress. Indeed, it was mainly on the ground of the undue advantage
which the South would gain, politically, that the admission of Missouri
was distasteful to the North.