PATRIOTIC MEN DELIBERATING.
At the hour of 3 p. m., in the early autumn of 186--, several
representative gentlemen met by previous agreement in the library of
Colonel Seymour. This congress of Southern leaders of the old school,
after the interchange of the usual courtesies, resolved themselves into
"A Committee of the Whole upon the state of the Union," with Judge
Bonham in the chair, and was addressed at length by Governor Ainsworth.
This gentleman had honored his state as one of its Senators in the
Federal Congress; again as Secretary of the Navy, and had filled by
successive elections the office of Governor for three terms. He had
reached that mellow age when the intellect becomes largely
retrospective. The manner of this distinguished statesman was singularly
individual. In early life strongly inclined to the contemplation of
perplexing political questions, he possessed a graphic, nervous force--a
kind of untamed vigor--a raciness of flavor in speech that belonged only
to the individual who thought for himself. There were few men more
richly endowed; his intellect was of the highest order--clear, rapid and
comprehensive--combined with an extraordinary facility of expressing and
illustrating his ideas, both in conversation and debate. He possessed a
rich imagination, a rare and delicate taste, a gentle and sportive wit,
and an uninterrupted flow of humor, that made him the delight of every
circle. Nor were his moral qualities less deserving of respect and
admiration. He was generous, brave, patriotic and independent. He was
the slave of no ambitious or selfish policy; the hunter of no
factitious or delusive popularity; he spoke the language of truth,
justice and wisdom. A "throb of gratitude beat in the hearts of the
people," and the sentiment of an affectionate respect glowed in their
bosoms for the "old man eloquent." His speeches, too, were essentially
characteristic, abounding in keen satire, humor, and frequently in the
most direct and idiomatic language. Given to intense conviction rather
than to subtle discernment, and devoting his unusual ability to studied
effort, he could, whenever he felt so inclined, "strip the mask from the
hypocrite, and the cowl from the bigot."
This was the man toward whom the patriotic sentiment of the country was
directed; the man who might, by possibility, lash the raging Hellespont
into submission. "But what avail," said he as he leaned heavily upon his
staff, "are arguments and protests? Can we charm the serpent into
harmlessness by the feeble chirping of the wren? Can we tranquilize the
country by indignant declamation?" Then with an effort he assumed a
poise still more dignified and serious, as he continued:
"Gentlemen, when the seas are lashed into a rage, no matter who are the
mad spirits of the storm, they cannot say to their tumultuous waters,
'thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, and here shalt thy proud waves
be stayed.' There are other powers in motion beneath its surface, which
they wist not of, and whose might they can neither direct or control. I
have stood upon the shores of the mighty ocean, and observed the
forerunners of the coming storm. I have heard the moan of its restless
waters in the caverns of the great deep, and have seen the upheaving of
the billows, which rose, and raged and tossed as foam from their bosoms,
the wild spirits that gendered the tempest. I envy not the triumph of
those who have troubled the waters; who have laid waste the South, who
have beggared her proud people. I had rather stand with my countrymen
powerless, but brave and unyielding, than to wield the thunderbolts of
Jove, if I must employ their power and resource in wrong and oppression.
When the last spark of Roman liberty was extinguished; when no voice but
that of Augustus was heard, and no power but that of Augustus was felt,
his venal flatterers vied with each other in deifying their god, and
degrading those firm, defiant spirits who stood for their country and
its tranquility. Cæsar had subjugated the world, all but the dark
unbending soul of Cato. In a catastrophe, such as this, let that band of
patriots to which it is my pride to belong, share in the spirit of the
last of the Romans; that spirit which scorns to bow before any earthly
power, save that of their beleaguered country.
The reconstruction government has purposely demoralized the economic
conditions which contributed to the prosperity of the South. Full well
it knew that the wealth of the people depended upon their labor. There
was a time when plunder was the great resource of the nations of the
earth. The first kingdom was sustained by pillage and conquest, and
great Babylon, the glory of the Chaldean empire, was adorned by the
spoils of all Asia; the Assyrian was plundered by the Persian, the
Persian by the Macedonian, and it at last devoured by the Roman power.
The wolf which nursed its founder, gave a hunger for prey insatiable to
the whole world. There was not a temple nor a shrine between the
Euphrates and the salted sea that was not pillaged by these marauders.
The tide of ages, century after century, had rolled over the last
fragment of Roman power; the light of science had broken upon the world,
before mankind seemed to realize that our Creator, dead aeons ago had
said: 'By the sweat of his brow man should eat his bread all the days of
his life.'
Wealth is power, and the wealth of a nation is its labor, its abundant
control of all the great agencies of nature employed in production. The
products of human labor, its food and clothing, like the fruits of the
earth are annual, and God in his wisdom has adjusted human wants to
their power of production. Like the bread from heaven the dews of every
night produce the crops, and the labors of every day gather the harvest.
What, but an almost boundless power of consumption and reproduction has
given to the South its athletic vigor, and yet the enfranchisement of
the negroes has been a fatal blow to every industrial interest. It has
left our plows to rot in the furrow, and our plantations to grow up in
briers and brambles.
That liberty, which ranks in our organic law next to life, is subjected
to the caprice of those who happen in the ever varying conditions of
human affairs to be placed over us as masters. The South believed that
the theory of the government derived its chiefest captivation from its
regard to the equal rights of all its citizens and from its pledge to
maintain and preserve those rights. It assumed to proclaim the happiness
of the people to have been the object of its institution, and to
guarantee to each and to all without limitation the enjoyment of life,
liberty, and property.
It has been reserved for the power of oppression, in its active and
diffused state, to give effect to the unhallowed innovation upon the
rights of the South.
Reconstruction is the Gethsemane of southern life. God's law is higher
than man's law. Man's feeble statutes cannot annul the immutable
ordinances of the Almighty. Those whom God has put asunder, let no man
join together.
Who could have foreseen that in the first century of our existence
African freedmen would rule sovereign commonwealths, and become the
judges of the rights and property of a race who had ruled the destinies
of the world since governments--patriarchal, monarchical or
constitutional--was known to man?
The true, sincere and rational humanitarian looks with sorrow upon the
future state of the misguided negroes; for when this institutional age
shall have passed away, he sees the exodus or extirpation of this
disturbing element in the social and political conditions of the more
powerful sovereign race. The authors of the infamous policy have written
their _hic jacet_ against our civilization.
No where can there be found in the history of any country where the
civil and military policy have been so basely prostituted, or where the
safeguards of liberty, life and property were ever entrusted to freed
slaves--human chattels; slaves who never for a moment have been in a
state of pupilage. It is an epoch that marks the decadence of the
manhood and civilization of a great nation--homogeneous, prosperous,
enlightened and happy. The nearest approximation to this era of ruin--of
social degradation--was when the slaves in Rome were enfranchised by
order of the emperor, and conditions there were totally dissimilar.
Whilst they enjoyed certain rights and prerogatives of manumission, they
were still held to duties of obedience and gratitude. Whatever were the
fruits of their toil and industry, their patrons shared or inherited the
third part, or even the whole of their acquisitions. In the decline of
this great empire, the proud mistress of the world, we are told that
hereditary distinctions were gradually abolished, and the reason or
instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy.
In the eye of the law all Romans were equal and all subjects were
citizens. The inestimable character was degraded to an obsolete and
empty name. The voice of a Roman could no longer enact laws or create
the annual ministers of his power.
"It may take many generations perhaps, for moral changes are slow, to
put out all our lights of knowledge that are now beaming from every
cottage in the South; but one after another they will be extinguished,
and with them the beacon torch of liberty. When the white men of the
South shall come to see how things are, and to realize the downward
tendency, physical, intellectual manhood will make a throe to regain the
height it has lost, and if it fails, a storm will arise from the
elements they are compounding, that will break somewhere and spend
itself with desolating fury. They cannot degrade a people who have been
enlightened and free, prosperous and happy, without igniting a mass
which they can no more control, than they can the central fires of
Vesuvius.
"Up to the commencement of hostilities between the North and the South,
there were in the South millions of people employed directly or
indirectly in the honest and wholesome avocation of agriculture, and by
its great encouraging system, sustained in a condition of existence,
both moral and physical, equally as prosperous and independent as any
other agricultural people in any other region of the earth. They were
white men who piece by piece built up the whole superstructure, and
thereby reinforced the country with so much labor and skill; furnished
so much mutual employment for that skill and labor, aided as they were
by so many instrumentalities of toil and agents of production. What a
country it was--supplied by this system from the labor of our own hands
and workshops, with all the machinery, fruits of the earth, and all the
needful fabrics of human skill. This great system comprehended every
class and every source of material wealth. Under this system our people
prospered. The white population of the South came by descent from a
parent stock, that from the foundation of society had governed in wisdom
and moderation the most enlightened countries of the world; who had
written every constitution, fought every battle, endowed every charity,
established every government, introduced every reform that has given to
the world its christian development and progress.
"When these extra-hazardous reconstruction acts were submitted to the
Legislature of the South, they refused to "chop logic" with the
Reconstruction party. It would have been contrary to the experience of
mankind, and an exception to all the teachings of history, if in the
high excitement then prevailing--the exasperation of the people--the
outrages threatened and inflicted, the South had yielded one jot or
tittle or swerved from its honest, patriotic convictions. The transition
was from a state in which the integrity and intelligence of the white
race, ennobled by centuries of meritorious service, had ruled; to a
government by a black race that less than five generations before had
been hunted like wild beasts in the jungles of the dark continent; who
were handcuffed and decoyed into slave ships, and who had been slaves
until the proclamation of President Lincoln emancipated them in the
territory protected by the U. S. Army. The transition was to a condition
of things in which white men to the number of three hundred thousand
were disfranchised and deprived of the right to vote and to hold office,
and the enfranchisement of more than a corresponding number of benighted
negroes with the right to vote and hold office. The transition of the
slave, was too sudden--too alarming--too degrading. No people who were
proud of their traditions, their institutions, could have looked upon
such a change with complacency; nor seen their local government pass
into the hands of their slaves--irresponsible, illiterate, brutish,
rapacious, without being goaded into violent resistance.
"It has been remarked 'Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy
name.' If the gift of the elective franchise enabled the negro to
protect himself in his rights of person and property, the denial of it
to the white man took away from him that protection and that right. They
went even to lower depths, and by the election and registration laws
basely surrendered into the hands of the carpet-baggers all power. The
judiciary, the last refuge of the unfortunate and oppressed is stricken
down and stripped of both ermine and respectability. The ballot box--the
sanctuary of freedom--the ballot box--the only secure refuge of
liberty--the ballot box, the armory where freedom's weapons are wont to
terrify tyrants, is made the charnel house in which the assassinated
liberties of a defenceless, prostrated people are buried; is made the
dice box in which are staked and played for by the freedmen of the South
the revenues of plundered commonwealths. What wonder in this lust for
power men should become strangers to the people they govern, outlaws to
honesty and patriotism.
"They know no law but that of force, and no God but Mammon. They ply
their theft upon every citizen, enthrall him with taxation, deny him the
right to be seen or heard or felt at the ballot box or before the court.
In the train of these outrages and indignities came a flood of
unwholesome oppressive laws, creating new offices, increasing the
salaries of incompetent and truculent officials, multiplying the cost
and expenditures of government, and correspondingly increasing the
burdens of taxation. Then came martial law, militia campaigns, loyal
leagues, murders, arsons, burglaries, rapes, and a reign of terror and
intimidation to make the way for the easy perpetration of the most
monstrous and unparallelled wrongs, frauds and outrages that ever cursed
the earth. The South, like a beautiful captive, was turned over to be
deflowered and defiled. She could only cry in her desperation--"I am
within your brutal power, and gagged and pinioned must submit."
"Our elective judiciary has contributed immeasurably to the vicious,
demoralizing spirit of the age." The intelligent and upright judge is
the representative of the law in its simplicity, sufficiency and
learning. He is the living exponent of its justice. Whatever the law is
will appear in him, and whatever it does will be done through him. The
different departments of industrial activity center in him. The plowman
in the field, the smith at his anvil, the miner in the earth, the
operative in the factory, the banker at his desk, are all a vital part
of his being. He is the foremost agent of providence in keeping up the
natural distinction of race and position. His creed is that men are not
to be antagonists, but friends. Differ they must in usages and
institutions, in habits and pursuits; but in his opinion they differ,
not that they may be separated, but for a truer sympathy and a compacter
union. Mountains and seas insulate, language and religion differentiate
men, but the law in its economical administration corrects these things
into the elements of a genuine brotherhood. The fortunes of the world,
so far as they are delegated to human care, are in his hands. The
peaceful progress of society is blended with his personal integrity.
Commonwealths, corporations and individuals vest their wealth, their
reputation, their security in him, and if any one man more than another
is under the most sacred of earthly obligations to be an example of the
highest integrity, the most exact justice, the noblest virtue of
thought, word and action, it is the judge of our courts of record. No
feudal baron--no courtly knight--ever had the power that may now be
exercised by him.
"Our civilization pledges us to the sway of moral principles; its rule
is imperative, because we have assumed the title of men, domesticated
our hearts, and accepted the religion of Jesus Christ. Judicial life, by
the earnestness with which it has acted in the past crisis of our state
and national history, by the patriotic devotion and interpretation of
the constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof, by its
conservative temper in resisting fanaticism, vice, corruption and fraud
has shown itself a watchful guardian of the momentous trusts confided to
its keeping. The honest, learned judge has pledged himself for the faith
of contracts and treaties; he has jealously guarded the institutions of
the country and bravely upheld them as the embodiment of our doctrines
and our hopes. The traditions, laws and customs of the country have been
committed to him, and with the ever active jealousy of encroachment, he
has not disguised his fears of centralization or oppression. Hitherto,
irrespective of all party relations, the judicial system was slowly but
surely working out the great problems of domestic prosperity. Times have
changed, however, and we have changed with them. Our present elective
judiciary is indeed the black vomit of reconstruction.
"It may be seriously questioned whether under any circumstances the
elective system is adequate for the purpose designed. All classes, high
and low, sooner or later come before the tribunal of justice. Its
judgments and decrees affect the humblest, as well as the most powerful
individual and control the strongest combinations of men. We know that
it is utterly impossible to keep the nomination and election clear of
mere political influences and those of the worst kind. It is said that
revolutions never go backward; nevertheless in the teeth of the adage I
confess that I can see no better way of selecting judges than the mode
pointed out by the unamended constitutions and the laws and by the
general good sense of mankind. I believe that this method is wise and
conservative, in harmony with our institutions and sufficiently
democratic to satisfy the people. All the rest is faction, demagogism
and cabal. The judge should represent no interest, no party, only the
law; he is an umpire between man and man, between the individual and the
body social.
"What is required in the judge is ability, learning, integrity. In
public station it is as necessary to be thought honest as to be so, and
the moment the popular mind once takes in the true position of the
elective judge, the moment that it perceives the magistrate to be
possessed of neither true power nor real dignity, and exposed
perpetually to temptation, that moment the influence and usefulness of
the judge will be destroyed. Their judgments in such cases will be
received without respect and obeyed only so far as they can be enforced,
and if the people shall ever break down and trample under foot the
defences of unpopular power; the Judiciary will be scouted from their
seats, their filthy and tattered ermine will be torn from their backs,
and they will be driven out into hopeless ignominy as the meanest of
sycophants, and the most truculent of demagogues.... A hundred and
eighty years ago the English parliament, sick of the miseries resulting
from a corrupt judiciary, changed the tenure of the office, abolished
their dependence on the sovereign and made the tenure of their
existence dependent on their good behavior alone. From that time to this
the English judiciary has risen in character and influence. With us the
system is elective. The judicial candidate, like a fish monger, goes
with his wares into a market overt. He advertises his opinions--his
promises, he makes his pledges, he puts a premium upon the ballot, he
weighs to a nicety the purchasable value of negro electors. The rival
candidate does the same, and hence the office is purchasable at the
price of manhood, integrity, learning and capacity. Thus the whole
machinery of the courts is run with an eye single to making political
capital for the radical party and intensifying their hatred toward the
South.
"And now gentlemen," the governor said in conclusion, "our meeting here
to-day will be without its influence upon a power that can 'kill and
make alive.'"
At the conclusion of the speech of the governor, it was resolved that
messengers should be sent to the president with full power to enter into
any treaty or compact for the maintenance of peace and order, and that
Governor Ainsworth and Colonel Seymour shall be charged with the
execution of the mission.