ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS
For a long while opposition to slavery was moderate and not unreasoning.
The first actual quarrel over it between the sections was when Missouri
applied for admission to the union in 1818. That was settled by the famous
compromise of 1820. The most of the anti-slavery men of that day stood
only against the extension of slavery. While many a one of them believed
his conviction was dictated, independently and entirely, by his
conscience, it was in fact given him because of his relation to the
free-labor nationalization claiming the public lands for itself. That was
also true of the great mass of northerners opposed to slavery down to the
very beginning of the war. They wanted the Territories for themselves. The
contest between the United States and England for Oregon is a parallel
case. The American felt, if this territory falls to the United States, I
and my children and children's children can get cheap land somewhere in
it; but if it falls to England, I and they are forever shut out. In the
intersectional contest over the public lands northerners felt that they
would be practically excluded from any part of them into which slavery was
carried; for infinitely preferring, as they did, the free-labor system, to
which they had been bred, to the slavery system, of which they had no
experience, and against which they were prejudiced, they would never
voluntarily settle where it obtained. This, the prevalent view, brought
about the compromise of 1820, by which all the territory north of 36 deg. 30'
was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the north, not because its
inhabitants were burning with zeal to repress the spread of what they
thought to be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they purposed
thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their own children.
So much for what we have called the first quarrel between the sections
over slavery. Let us now glance at the stages following until the
root-and-branch abolitionist shows himself.
For some twenty years after the Missouri compromise was made there was
hardly any public agitation at all as to slavery. In 1840 an abolition
ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much
smaller than had been currently predicted. It is not until January, 1836,
when, upon Calhoun's motion in the senate of the United States to reject
two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
there ensued a prolonged and passionate discussion, that we can say that
the old free-soil practically begins to pass into an abolition movement.
Here moral attack upon slavery seriously begins. If we think but a moment
we will understand it too well to explain it as an arousal of conscience,
which ought to have been aroused many years before if slavery was indeed
the terrible sin the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. The
agitation of 1830, the year that Webster replied to Hayne, and that of
1833, when he and Calhoun crossed swords over nullification, mark a great
advance of intersectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the
Missouri compromise. We can see now as we look back what contemporaries
could not see, that is, that the two were _avant couriers_ of the southern
confederacy. But some of the contemporaries did discern the fact--not
consciously, but instinctively. With these there was, in subliminal
ratiocination, a process somewhat as follows: The southern confederacy, if
it does come, will disrupt the union, which assures, while it lasts,
immunity of our country from frequent wars upon its own soil, and from the
heavy load of great armies kept up even in the intervals of peace. This
disruption will establish in America all the evil conditions of Europe
from which our fathers fled hither. Slavery is the _vis matrix_, the sole
developing force, the life of this menaced confederacy. Let us abolish
slavery, and preserve the union.
How accurately the common instincts--especially those protecting our
private interests--discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes
more of a marvel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally right,
the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter threatens great injury, they
excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. How else
can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ and
worshipping the same God, were at last divided, the northern churches
impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. Dwell upon this
fact until you interpret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and
the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the
other the most conscientious and best of the south unanimous that it is
morally right. Then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists,
and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire
people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that
of the other did the same things against it. When you do this, you must
admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are
members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions.
The economic interest of the north was against slavery. It was her
interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free
workers. It was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there
be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put
thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army.
On the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so
great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to
preserve slavery, if that should be necessary. Each side feels deeply and
more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of
production and subsistence--the property to which of all it believes its
title most indefeasible. It required some years to bring affairs to this
point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the
root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course
all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of
the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to
masquerade as characters widely different from the true. When these
servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not
that of their masters, how the directors must smile. They have guaranteed
animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a
supreme momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically recognizes
in his _dux vitae dia voluptas_. The passion of anger is the converse of
that of love. When consent cannot settle some great controversy that must
be settled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation
of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. In
the ripeness of time the Ransy Sniffleses[38] come forth. They say and do
everything possible to bring on the impending mortal combat. They never
grasp the essence of the contention, for it is their mission to arouse
feeling, passion, anger. They are resistlessly--most conscientiously and
honestly--impelled to make the other side appear detestable and
insultingly offensive in heinous wrong-doing. The most zealous and the
most influential of the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they
vaulted into the arena. Garrison was twenty-six when he started the
"Liberator" in 1831, Wendell Phillips was some six years younger than
Garrison, and he was about twenty-six when he made his debut with a
powerful impromptu in Boston, in 1837. Whittier was two years younger than
Garrison, and he was early a co-worker in the "Liberator." It is
demonstrated by everything they said that they were entirely ignorant of
the south and its people, of the average condition of the slave in the
south, and especially of the negro's grade of humanity. They never studied
and investigated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to
ascertain the truth. They assumed the facts to be as it suited their
purposes, given them by the directors, of exciting hatred of their
opponents,--and it added greatly to their efficiency that they fully
believed their assumptions. Knowing really nothing of the negro except
that he was a man, it was natural for them to believe, as they did, that
the typical, average negro slave of the south was in all the essentials of
good citizenship just such a human being as the typical, average white. If
they did not go quite so far, they surely claimed for him something so
near to it that it is practically the same. We shall, as suggested above,
treat this pernicious error more fully in later chapters.
The root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever since the
emancipation proclamation became effective that the overthrow of slavery
was brought about by them; and thousands upon thousands believing it sing
them hosannas. But it is an undeniable fact that the superior power of
free labor in its irreconcilable conflict with slavery was bound to do in
America what it had done everywhere else. And without the abolitionist at
all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were few even if there had
been no secession, and very few if secession had triumphed. For free
labor--its fell and implacable foe--was on the outside steadily and surely
encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the extension that was a
condition of its life; and within its ring fence necessarily it was
rapidly exhausting all of its resources. It was the mighty counteraction
of free labor that crushed slavery. The root-and-branch abolitionist
thrown up by this movement which had set forward irresistibly, long before
he was ever heard of, and who believed that he started it and was guiding
it, strikingly examples the proverb
"Er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben."
I believe that future history will give him credit only for having a
little hastened forward the inevitable.
Another abolition misstatement ought to be corrected. Sumner fulminated
against what he called the oligarchs of slavery. And it was common at the
north to speak of southern aristocracy and southern aristocratic
institutions. Of course the slaves had no political privileges, no more
than they had in Athens, which has always been deemed the most genuine
republic ever known. There was in the old south no oligarch, or anything
like him, unless you choose to call such a man as Calhoun an oligarch,
whose influence over his State was entirely from the good opinion and
unexampled confidence of the free citizens of all classes, which he had
won. There was no aristocracy, except such a natural one as can be found
in every one of our States, as is illustrated by the Adamses in
Massachusetts, the Lees in Virginia, and the Cobbs in Georgia. In those
days property was much more equally distributed than now; and it was easy
for the energetic and saving poor young man, of the humblest origin, to
make his way up. In all my day there was universal suffrage, and it was
political death to propose any modification. I explained nearly thirty
years ago how southern conditions prevented the development of anything
like the beneficent New England town-meeting system.[39] But for all of
that the entire spirit of southern society was democratic in the extreme,
far more so than it is now with the nominating machinery everywhere in the
south except South Carolina, controlled by corporation oligarchs. When the
root-and-branch abolitionist inveighed against oligarchy and aristocracy,
and aristocratic institutions in the south, he was just as mistaken as he
was in denouncing what he asserted to be the guilt in morals of
slaveholding.
The more I study the abolitionists whom I distinguish as root-and-branch,
the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and more
emotional I find them to be. I have just mentioned some of their
misrepresentations; and in later chapters I shall dwell upon their
cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the human scale. I have
not sufficient space for more of these things. I will give just one
example of their wildness. They put in circulation that Toombs had said he
expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker
Hill monument,--a slander which they persisted in renewing after he had
solemnly and publicly denied it.[40] In their excited imaginations they
were sure that the south was cherishing a scheme by which, under the help
of the court that made the Dred Scott decision, slavery was to be
established and protected by law everywhere in the north. The only
parallel I can think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some
poor souls in the Confederate ranks in front of Richmond in 1862, who,
when they learned that Jackson had got in the enemy's rear, expressed
lively fears that he was going to drive McClellan's army over them.
And the fire-eaters,--how they got important facts wrong! They habitually
said that the northern masses were too untruthful and dishonest for us of
the south to stay in the partnership without disgrace and loss of
self-respect. I heard of one who was wont gravely to assert that
prostitutes and ice were all that the south was dependent upon the north
for; and these were only luxuries which it was better to do without.
Perhaps the height of falsification by the hotspurs was the assertion,
made everywhere again and again, that northerners were such cowards that,
even if they were spurred into a war in defence of the union, any one
average southerner would prove an overmatch for any five of them.
It is now high time that each section turn resolutely away from these
fanatics, and the literature which they have made or informed, to seek
right instruction as to slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of
the masses on each side and of their leaders, and all other belonging
details, in the real facts. Especially must we understand the internecine
duel between free labor and slavery, and what was the purpose of the
directors of evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the
fire-eater upon the stage. When we grasp that purpose clearly, how
pretentious do we understand their claims and self-laudation to be, and
how clearly we see that they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that
became so vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the little
fice egging on the big dogs to do their fighting. I have still vivid
recollections of hearing in amicable interviews of hostile pickets these
characters denounced for keeping out of the war which, as was then said,
they had caused,--the fanatical abolitionists denounced by the federals,
the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the blue cockade wearers, by the
confederates.