THE BROTHERS ON EACH SIDE WERE TRUE PATRIOTS AND MORALLY RIGHT--BOTH THOSE
WHO FOUGHT FOR THE UNION, AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR THE CONFEDERACY
The proposition of the heading has really been demonstrated in the
foregoing chapters. I feel that the demonstration should have impressive
enforcement. It will surely be for the great good of our country if the
brothers of each section be truly convinced that those of the other were
morally right in the slavery struggle from beginning to end.
Let us begin by noting the ambiguity of the word "right." Something may be
right in expediency, policy, or reason, and yet wrong ethically. Likewise
something may be a mistake and wrong in policy while it is right in
morals. General Sherman was a conspicuous example of the almost universal
proneness to confound right in the sense first mentioned above with it in
the other. The two are widely different--not merely in degree, but in
kind. That which is right or wrong in expediency is decided by the
understanding--by the head; that which is right or wrong ethically is
decided for every human being by his own conscience--by his heart. To try
with all my might to do a particular thing may be my highest moral duty;
to try with all your might to keep me from doing it may be yours. The
brothers who set up the southern confederacy and defended it, the brothers
who warred upon it and overturned it--they were on each side sublimely
conscientious; for every one--to use the high word of Lincoln--was doing
the right as God gave him to see it. No people ever waged a war with
deeper and more solemn conviction of duty than did our northern brothers.
Rome, rising unvanquished from every great victory of Hannibal, much as
she has been most justly lauded by foremost historians, fell behind them
in supreme effort--in undaunted perseverance in spite of disaster after
disaster until the difficulty insuperable was overcome. We of the south
should be proud of this unparalleled achievement of our brothers. Most of
all should we be proud of the complete self-abnegation and unwavering
obedience to conscience with which they waded a sea of blood, for the
welfare of future generations rather than their own. I am glad to observe
that many who most affectionately remember the lost cause have come at
last to concede without qualification that the restoration of the union by
force of arms was morally right. But I note that as yet only a few at the
north--men like Dr. Lyman Abbott, Mr. Charles F. Adams, and Professor
Wendell--have learned that the south, in all that she did in "The Great
War,"[144] was likewise morally right. To show that the confederates were
exemplary champions of a legitimate government, I need not repeat what I
have said above when I told how southern nationalization had given them a
country of their own as dear to them and as much mistress of their
consciences as the union was to the northern people. If there are those
who cannot bring themselves to allow the all-potent coercion of the
nationalization mentioned as justification, and who still think of us as
traitors and rebels, I beg them to give due consideration to the feelings
with which the southerner now looks back upon his life in the confederate
army. I call a most convincing witness to testify. I do not know a man who
ever followed what his conscience pronounced right more faithfully, who
was truer to the better traditions of the old south, and who was a more
devoted soldier in the brothers' war, nor do I know another who now draws
from every class in his community more respect for real manhood and
honesty. All who know him will believe his word against an oracle or an
angel. Here is what he said thirty-seven years after the close of the war:
"That period of my life is the one with which I am the most nearly
satisfied. A persistent, steady effort to do my duty--an effort
persevered in in the midst of privation, hardship, and danger. If ever
I was unselfish, it was then. If ever I was capable of self-denial, it
was then. If ever I was able to trample on self-indulgence, it was
then. If ever I was strong to make sacrifices, even unto death, it was
in those days; and if I were called upon to say on the peril of my
soul, when it lived its highest life, when it was least faithless to
true manhood, when it was most loyal to the best part of man's nature,
I would answer, 'It was when I followed a battle-torn flag through its
shifting fortune of victory and defeat.'
My comrades, how easy it is to name the word that characterizes and
strikes the keynote of that time and should explain our pride to all
the world--self sacrifice--that spirit and that conduct which raise
poor mortals nearest to divinity. Oh, God in heaven, what sacrifices
did we not make! How our very heart strings were torn as we turned
from our home, our parents, our children!... How poor we were! How
ragged! How hungry! When I recall the light-heartedness, the courage,
the cheerfulness, the fidelity to duty which lived and flourished
under such circumstances, from the bottom of my heart I thank God that
for four long years I wore, if not brilliantly, at least faithfully
and steadfastly, in camp and bivouac, in advance and retreat, on the
march and on the battlefield, the uniform of a confederate
soldier."[145]
The passage just quoted most truly expresses the feelings with which the
southern people stood by their cause and now look back upon the support
which they gave it. In this matter their word will be taken by everybody.
Their actions before, during, and ever since the war speak louder than
their word. There can be no doubt that in founding the Confederate States
and waging the resulting war everything they did was counselled by the
most tender and enlightened conscience. Bear in mind how they clung to
Davis and how they still remember him, winning the precious eulogy
"--he that can endure
To follow with allegiance a fallen lord
Does conquer him that did his master conquer,
And earns a place i' the story."
Bear in mind how truly they keep Memorial Day. The love which the south
gives Davis and her dead soldiers protests to all the earth and heaven the
righteousness of her lost cause. Calmly, serenely, confidently she awaits
future judgment upon her love. It needs that all the north appreciate this
fealty as the height of heaven-climbing virtue.
The real soldiers of each section--those who--to use a confederate
saying--were "in the bullet department," and fighting every day, learned
great regard for their foes; and when the war ended they became at once
advocates of speedy reconciliation. And the non-combatants on each side
felt far less resentment towards the actual fighters of the other than
they did towards its political leaders. It is a common error to overrate
the accomplishment of potent and ambitious men in tumultuous times. As the
world long ascribed meteorological phenomena to the mutations of the moon,
conspicuous above all things else as the apparent cause, so most people
now believe that revolutions are caused by the men who appear to be
leading. We have explained above that the only effective leaders--even of
revolutions--are those who are the most completely led by the people. To
lead, the leader must keep on the tide and let it lead him. If he makes
serious effort to balk it, he is at once stranded as a piece of drift
thrown out of the current. All of us--both those north and those south of
Mason and Dixon's line--ought to learn this truth thoroughly. The former
should correct their false judgments as to Calhoun, Toombs, Yancey, and
Davis; the latter as to Sumner, Garrison, and Phillips. It was but to be
expected that these false judgments would be cherished all through what we
may call the era of civil fury. That begins with the excitement over the
admission of California and extends to the time after the war when the
project of giving a negro constituency the balance of political power in
each southern State was abandoned. But now as the brothers can look back
upon those evil days with at least the beginning of dispassionate
calmness, the task of convincing the whole people of each section that the
more prominent figures of the other in the era mentioned were all true men
and patriots, should be pushed forward with his whole might by every one
who loves his country. It is not demanded that we claim too much for them.
To begin illustrating: Toombs's Tremont Temple lecture on slavery is such
an able and powerful defence of the south that its reputation must forever
increase. Yet as we consider it now we see that what he believed with all
his heart to be the perpetual pillar and weal of his community was in fact
its woe and ruin. We see, as to Calhoun, that if he had but given the
resources of southern slavery against the implacable oppugnancy of free
labor, roused for decisive combat, the sure and marvellous vision with
which he searched the innermost nature of money, he would have had to
acknowledge that the proud structure of southern society was wholly
builded upon sands. The rains descended and the floods beat, and we saw
the great fall. Of course we must admit that had our leaders been endowed
with unerring prescience they ought to have warned us, and striven heart
and soul for compensated emancipation. I need merely allude to State
sovereignty, treated fully above. We of the south now see that though in
advocating it we showed that the fathers were with us, and thus got the
better of the argument, yet that the north was right in historical fact,
and right also as to the true interest and welfare of America. Thus I have
indicated some important acknowledgments which we of the south must make
to our brothers of the north. Now I must state some that they must make to
us.
The root-and-branch abolitionists and many following their lead
interpreted the statement in the declaration of independence that all men
are created equal and with inalienable liberty as both intentional and
actual condemnation of the slavery then existing in our country. They shut
their eyes to the significant fact that the same document published to the
world, as one of the causes justifying the solemn act therein proclaimed,
that the king had "excited domestic insurrections amongst us"; which means
he had instigated the slaves to rise against their masters. Many of the
signers owned slaves then and to the end of their lives afterwards.
Palpably the declaration did not mean to say that the negroes in America
were unjustly held in slavery, but did mean to say that inciting them--as
John Brown with the approval of Phillips, Garrison, and such, afterwards
sought to do--to gain their liberty by insurrection was inhuman and
atrocious. These root-and-branch abolitionists confidently alleged that
slavery in America was proscribed by the christian religion. Yet Jesus,
the founder, who definitely reprehended every particular sin, never once
denounced slavery. Paul, or some one else, whom the canon accepts as
speaking with the authority of Jesus, says: "All who are in the position
of slaves should regard their masters as deserving of the greatest
respect, so that the name of God, and our teaching may not be maligned.
Those who have christian masters should not think less of them because
they are brothers, but on the contrary they should serve them all the
better, because those who are to benefit by their good work are dear to
them as their fellow-christians. Those are the things to insist upon in
your teaching. Any one who teaches otherwise, and refuses his assent to
sound instruction--_the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ_--and to the
teaching of religion, is puffed up with conceit, not really knowing
anything, but having a morbid craving for discussions and arguments."[146]
The passage last quoted--to which several others from the new testament,
almost as strong, can be added--demonstrates that christianity did not
disapprove of slavery. Further, as I have already suggested, the slavery
not rebuked by Jesus and his apostles was mainly that of kin in blood and
race, of those who had been in a measure free themselves or descendants of
the free. The slaves of the south were far remote in blood, and their
native condition so bad that American slavery was for them elevation and
great improvement.
The new testament, the declaration of independence, and the federal
constitution--surely three very respectable authorities, in America at
least--stand together in solid phalanx. They clearly demonstrate that the
charge that southern slavery was heinously wrong in itself, and that the
masters were wicked man-stealers and kidnappers, made for a long while in
every corner of the north, was mere opprobrium and abuse. Both sections
ought to learn that there was nothing in negro slavery to shock the moral
sense, but that on the contrary it was in its general effect of the utmost
beneficence to the slave. Both ought to learn also that the white-hot zeal
with which the institution was fought was due mainly to these things:
1. Free labor had long been in an uncompromising hand-to-hand struggle
with slave labor. Years before this commenced the employing class had
subconsciously divined it was far more profitable to hire the laborer only
when his work was needed, and then let him go until he was needed again.
The worker with the advance of democracy had become more and more hostile
to a system coercing his labor and denying him all political and civil
rights. The co-operation of employer and laborer had expelled slavery of
white men from Europe. The feeling towards slavery had become one of
decided opposition.
2. In America the opposition to slavery was powerfully re-enforced, first,
by the new cause the latter gave in competing with free labor for the
unsettled public domain, and then in its operation to nationalize the
south into a separate federation. With this combined the growing
conception among the northern people of the negro as a man who had reached
the stage of development characterizing the typical white. This huge
mistake, hugged to their bosoms and championed with unflagging zeal by the
ablest and most influential root-and-branch abolitionists, had a
prodigious propagandic effect. It identified the cause of the negro slave,
whom evolution had not yet made ready for liberty, with that of the
oppressed European who had been long ready for it; and consequently that
cause was continuously advocated with the passion which the French
revolution had started against human inequality. The root-and-branch
abolitionists at last excited a pseudo-moral paroxysm among thousands at
the north and kept it increasing for a long while.
Facts which cannot now be gainsaid plainly justify me in denying that
conscientious conviction was the real primary motive. The northern and
southern churches split, all the wisest and best of the former standing
against, all those of the latter for slavery. You must see that their
moral convictions were secondary, not primary motives; that some superior
power had given to one side to regard slavery as wrong and to the other to
regard it as right; that it really had given the two sides differing
consciences. If you but invoke the universal history of mankind this fact
now under consideration will cease to appear marvellous. You will find it
to be the rule that the struggle for existence develops in every community
an instinct which resistlessly prompts to the maintenance of its great
economic interest. This instinct is the special preserver of the family,
of the neighborhood, of the country. It is not strange that that which
gives sustenance and comfort to one's family, and what he sees all the
best of his neighbors using as he does, will seem unquestionably right to
him. It is not strange that, in such a serious conflict of interest as the
intersectional one of dividing a vast empire between such fell
competitors as free labor and slave labor, each side will differ
diametrically in conscience as to right and wrong. Also it is not strange
that they should lose temper, shower abuse upon their opponents, and fill
the land with mutual accusations of heinous moral offences.
It is just as far wrong to regard the controversy between anti- and
pro-slavery men--which was at bottom but a quarrel between north and south
at first over the division of the Territories between the free labor
system and the slave labor system, and later over the other question
whether a slave republic should divide the continent with the United
States--as a contest over a moral question, as it would be to make either
the American or the French revolution such a contest. All three--the
intersectional struggle as to slavery and the two revolutions--were mainly
impelled by a desire of each side in every one to better or hold on to its
material resources--that is, the leading impulsion was economic. Of course
the combatants on each side claimed that they themselves were right and
their adversaries wrong in morals. The rencounter between free labor and
slave labor was very much like that now on between capitalists and labor
organizations. Note how each side denounces the conduct of the other,
alleging it to be against moral justice. The most superficial observer
discerns that the real cause of difference between them is not one of
conscience, but one of interest. We ought to understand that the
crimination of the root-and-branch abolitionist and the recrimination of
the fire-eater were each but stage thunder. The southern master must be
wholly exonerated from the charge that in working his slave he committed
moral offence against the dearest American rights; the claim for the
African, who was in a far lower circle of development, of equal civil and
political privileges with the white must be disallowed; and it be fully
conceded that the southern people, leaders and all, were but doing their
conscience-commanded duty throughout. Also we of the south must learn that
the root-and-branch abolitionist, even in his wildest moments--Sumner
refusing in the United States senate to show respect to Butler's gray
hairs, Wendell Phillips degrading Washington below Toussaint, Garrison
denouncing the slavery-protecting constitution as a covenant with death
and an agreement with hell, John Brown's raid into Virginia--was just as
conscientious as Robert Lee was when he was defending the soil of his
native State. They were each irresistibly constrained by the powers
working to save the union to think his particular action right and the
highest patriotism.
When the quarrel is over, when the broil and the feud have been fought out
and the survivors have shaken hands, when the lawsuit has become a thing
of the past and the litigants have renewed their old relations, no wise
and good man keeps repeating the accusations of bad faith and of
unrighteous conduct which he passionately hurled against his adversary
during the variance. Rather he confesses to himself, "I wronged him when I
said those hot words;" and his repentance does not bring complete peace
until he has found his brother and taken all of them back.
If it only could be, the nation ought to have a great reunion, a feast of
reconcilement, where, with proper solemnities, the people of each section,
with their forefathers and leaders, should be fully and finally exculpated
as to everything done for or against slavery by the people of the other
section. It is plain that both ought to forget and forgive. They ought to
do still more. They ought to compete each in utmost effort to vindicate
the favorites and loved ones of the other the more intelligently, and to
admire and praise them the more enthusiastically. This would be to bring
the millennium nearer, and give our country "a nobleness in record upon"
all others. It only needs for this consummation to cast aside the remnant
of greatly diminished prejudice, and make a brief study of a small volume
of material evidence and of the ordinary principles which guide the
conduct of the good citizen. Such study will show that southerner and
northerner throughout their fell encounter have each the very highest
claims to the respect and love of the entire nation.
What a golden deed it was of President McKinley when, December 14, 1898,
fully using a rare opportunity, he spake in his high place to the members
of the Georgia legislature this message of reunion:
"Sectional lines no longer mar the map of the United States. Sectional
feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other. Fraternity
is the national anthem, sung by a chorus of forty-five States and our
Territories at home and beyond the seas. The union is once more the
common altar of our love and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice. The
old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories, which your
sons and ours have this year added to its sacred folds. What cause we
have for rejoicing, saddened only because so many of our brave men
fell on the field or sickened and died from hardship and exposure, and
others returning bring wounds and disease from which they will long
suffer. The memory of the dead will be a precious legacy, and the
disabled will be the nation's care.
Every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a
tribute to American valor. And while when those graves were made we
differed widely about the nature of this government, these differences
have been settled by the arbitrament of arms. The time has now come,
in the evolution of sentiment and feeling, under the providence of
God, when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you the
care of the graves of the confederate soldiers. The cordial feeling
now happily existing between the north and south prompts this
gracious act. If it needs further justification, it is found in the
gallant loyalty to the union and the flag so conspicuously shown in
the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of these heroic dead."
By the favor given Fitzhugh Lee, Joe Wheeler, and other old confederates,
and his earnest and successful efforts for universal amnesty to all who
had helped our cause, Mr. McKinley had already won the hearts of the
southern people. This speech increased our love a hundred fold. We
repeated the "soft words" over and over, companioning them with
"O they banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead."
On each one of our three subsequent Memorial Days during his life he was
thought of as tenderly as the precious dead. And since the death of
Jefferson Davis there has been no sorrow of the south equal to that over
his assassination. This is the age of funerals that crown with supreme
popular honor the doers of high deeds for country and race. The imposing
obsequies given the president, the demonstrations in his own section, and
those in foreign lands, have rarely been outdone. But he had a greater
glory. It was the genuine lamentation over him that day by reconciled
brothers and sisters in every southern household. You that know history
better, tell me when and where a whiter and sweeter flower was ever laid
upon a coffin.
Let all of us on each side of the old dividing line strive without ceasing
to give the good work which the great peacemaker begun so well its fit
consummation.
And replacing hate and anger with love, fiction with fact, and false
doctrine with true, let the people of the north and the people of the
south join heads, consciences, and hearts to ascertain what is our duty
both to negro and white, and then join hands and do that duty.