E-text prepared by Donald Lainson
and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
Editorial note:
Anthony Trollope travelled through the United States from
August, 1861, to May, 1862, visiting all the states that
did not secede except California. This book is partly a
journal of his travels and partly his description of American
customs and culture including industry, education, government,
military affairs, religion, transportation, and even
hotels. To an American of today it provides a revealing and
fascinating picture of life at the time.
The book was first published in two volumes by Chapman & Hall
in 1862.
Project Gutenberg has the other volume of this work.
Volume II: see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1866
NORTH AMERICA
by
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
In Two Volumes
VOL. I
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION.
II. NEWPORT--RHODE ISLAND.
III. MAINE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND VERMONT.
IV. LOWER CANADA.
V. UPPER CANADA.
VI. THE CONNEXION OF THE CANADAS WITH GREAT BRITAIN.
VII. NIAGARA.
VIII. NORTH AND WEST.
IX. FROM NIAGARA TO THE MISSISSIPPI.
X. THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.
XI. CERES AMERICANA.
XII. BUFFALO TO NEW YORK.
XIII. AN APOLOGY FOR THE WAR.
XIV. NEW YORK.
XV. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
XVI. BOSTON.
XVII. CAMBRIDGE AND LOWELL.
XVIII. THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.
XIX. EDUCATION AND RELIGION.
XX. FROM BOSTON TO WASHINGTON.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
It has been the ambition of my literary life to write a book about
the United States, and I had made up my mind to visit the country
with this object before the intestine troubles of the United States
Government had commenced. I have not allowed the division among
the States and the breaking out of civil war to interfere with my
intention; but I should not purposely have chosen this period either
for my book or for my visit. I say so much, in order that it may not
be supposed that it is my special purpose to write an account of the
struggle as far as it has yet been carried. My wish is to describe as
well as I can the present social and political state of the country.
This I should have attempted, with more personal satisfaction in the
work, had there been no disruption between the North and South; but I
have not allowed that disruption to deter me from an object which, if
it were delayed, might probably never be carried out. I am therefore
forced to take the subject in its present condition, and being so
forced I must write of the war, of the causes which have led to it,
and of its probable termination. But I wish it to be understood that
it was not my selected task to do so, and is not now my primary
object.
Thirty years ago my mother wrote a book about the Americans, to which
I believe I may allude as a well known and successful work without
being guilty of any undue family conceit. That was essentially a
woman's book. She saw with a woman's keen eye, and described with a
woman's light but graphic pen, the social defects and absurdities
which our near relatives had adopted into their domestic life.
All that she told was worth the telling, and the telling, if done
successfully, was sure to produce a good result. I am satisfied that
it did so. But she did not regard it as a part of her work to dilate
on the nature and operation of those political arrangements which had
produced the social absurdities which she saw, or to explain that
though such absurdities were the natural result of those arrangements
in their newness, the defects would certainly pass away, while the
political arrangements, if good, would remain. Such a work is fitter
for a man than for a woman. I am very far from thinking that it is
a task which I can perform with satisfaction either to myself or to
others. It is a work which some man will do who has earned a right
by education, study, and success to rank himself among the political
sages of his age. But I may perhaps be able to add something to the
familiarity of Englishmen with Americans. The writings which have
been most popular in England on the subject of the United States have
hitherto dealt chiefly with social details; and though in most cases
true and useful, have created laughter on one side of the Atlantic,
and soreness on the other. If I could do anything to mitigate the
soreness, if I could in any small degree add to the good feeling
which should exist between two nations which ought to love each other
so well, and which do hang upon each other so constantly, I should
think that I had cause to be proud of my work.
But it is very hard to write about any country a book that does
not represent the country described in a more or less ridiculous
point of view. It is hard at least to do so in such a book
as I must write. A De Tocqueville may do it. It may be done
by any philosophico-political or politico-statistical, or
statistico-scientific writer; but it can hardly be done by a man who
professes to use a light pen, and to manufacture his article for the
use of general readers. Such a writer may tell all that he sees of
the beautiful; but he must also tell, if not all that he sees of the
ludicrous, at any rate the most piquant part of it. How to do this
without being offensive is the problem which a man with such a task
before him has to solve. His first duty is owed to his readers, and
consists mainly in this: that he shall tell the truth, and shall
so tell that truth that what he has written may be readable. But
a second duty is due to those of whom he writes; and he does not
perform that duty well if he gives offence to those, as to whom, on
the summing up of the whole evidence for and against them in his own
mind, he intends to give a favourable verdict. There are of course
those against whom a writer does not intend to give a favourable
verdict;--people and places whom he desires to describe, on the peril
of his own judgment, as bad, ill-educated, ugly, and odious. In such
cases his course is straightforward enough. His judgment may be
in great peril, but his volume or chapter will be easily written.
Ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves
into sharp paragraphs which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas
eulogy is commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were
false. There is much difficulty in expressing a verdict which is
intended to be favourable; but which, though favourable, shall not be
falsely eulogistic; and though true, not offensive.
Who has ever travelled in foreign countries without meeting excellent
stories against the citizens of such countries? And how few can
travel without hearing such stories against themselves? It is
impossible for me to avoid telling of a very excellent gentleman whom
I met before I had been in the United States a week, and who asked me
whether lords in England ever spoke to men who were not lords. Nor
can I omit the opening address of another gentleman to my wife. "You
like our institutions, ma'am?" "Yes, indeed," said my wife,--not with
all that eagerness of assent which the occasion perhaps required.
"Ah," said he, "I never yet met the down-trodden subject of a despot
who did not hug his chains." The first gentleman was certainly
somewhat ignorant of our customs, and the second was rather abrupt in
his condemnation of the political principles of a person whom he only
first saw at that moment. It comes to me in the way of my trade to
repeat such incidents; but I can tell stories which are quite as good
against Englishmen. As for instance, when I was tapped on the back in
one of the galleries of Florence by a countryman of mine, and asked
to show him where stood the medical Venus. Nor is anything that one
can say of the inconveniences attendant upon travel in the United
States to be beaten by what foreigners might truly say of us. I shall
never forget the look of a Frenchman whom I found on a wet afternoon
in the best inn of a provincial town in the west of England. He was
seated on a horsehair-covered chair in the middle of a small dingy
ill-furnished private sitting-room. No eloquence of mine could make
intelligible to a Frenchman or an American the utter desolation of
such an apartment. The world as then seen by that Frenchman offered
him solace of no description. The air without was heavy, dull, and
thick. The street beyond the window was dark and narrow. The room
contained mahogany chairs covered with horsehair, a mahogany table
ricketty in its legs, and a mahogany sideboard ornamented with
inverted glasses and old cruet-stands. The Frenchman had come
to the house for shelter and food, and had been asked whether
he was commercial. Whereupon he shook his head. "Did he want a
sitting-room?" Yes, he did. "He was a leetle tired and vanted to
seet." Whereupon he was presumed to have ordered a private room,
and was shown up to the Eden I have described. I found him there at
death's door. Nothing that I can say with reference to the social
habits of the Americans can tell more against them than the story of
that Frenchman's fate tells against those of our country.
From which remarks I would wish to be understood as deprecating
offence from my American friends, if in the course of my book should
be found aught which may seem to argue against the excellence of
their institutions, and the grace of their social life. Of this at
any rate I can assure them in sober earnestness that I admire what
they have done in the world and for the world with a true and hearty
admiration; and that whether or no all their institutions be at
present excellent, and their social life all graceful, my wishes are
that they should be so, and my convictions are that that improvement
will come for which there may perhaps even yet be some little room.
And now touching this war which had broken out between the North and
South before I left England. I would wish to explain what my feelings
were; or rather what I believe the general feelings of England to
have been, before I found myself among the people by whom it was
being waged. It is very difficult for the people of any one nation to
realize the political relations of another, and to chew the cud and
digest the bearings of those external politics. But it is unjust in
the one to decide upon the political aspirations and doings of that
other without such understanding. Constantly as the name of France
is in our mouth, comparatively few Englishmen understand the way
in which France is governed;--that is, how far absolute despotism
prevails, and how far the power of the one ruler is tempered, or, as
it may be, hampered by the voices and influence of others. And as
regards England, how seldom is it that in common society a foreigner
is met who comprehends the nature of her political arrangements! To
a Frenchman,--I do not of course include great men who have made the
subject a study,--but to the ordinary intelligent Frenchman the thing
is altogether incomprehensible. Language, it may be said, has much
to do with that. But an American speaks English; and how often is an
American met, who has combined in his mind the idea of a monarch, so
called, with that of a republic, properly so named;--a combination of
ideas which I take to be necessary to the understanding of English
politics? The gentleman who scorned my wife for hugging her chains
had certainly not done so, and yet he conceived that he had studied
the subject. The matter is one most difficult of comprehension.
How many Englishmen have failed to understand accurately their own
constitution, or the true bearing of their own politics! But when
this knowledge has been attained, it has generally been filtered into
the mind slowly, and has come from the unconscious study of many
years. An Englishman handles a newspaper for a quarter of an hour
daily, and daily exchanges some few words in politics with those
around him, till drop by drop the pleasant springs of his liberty
creep into his mind and water his heart; and thus, earlier or later
in life according to the nature of his intelligence, he understands
why it is that he is at all points a free man. But if this be so of
our own politics; if it be so rare a thing to find a foreigner who
understands them in all their niceties, why is it that we are so
confident in our remarks on all the niceties of those of other
nations?
I hope that I may not be misunderstood as saying that we should not
discuss foreign politics in our press, our parliament, our public
meetings, or our private houses. No man could be mad enough to preach
such a doctrine. As regards our Parliament, that is probably the best
British school of foreign politics, seeing that the subject is not
there often taken up by men who are absolutely ignorant, and that
mistakes when made are subject to a correction which is both rough
and ready. The press, though very liable to error, labours hard at
its vocation in teaching foreign politics, and spares no expense
in letting in daylight. If the light let in be sometimes moonshine,
excuse may easily be made. Where so much is attempted, there must
necessarily be some failure. But even the moonshine does good, if it
be not offensive moonshine. What I would deprecate is, that aptness
at reproach which we assume;--the readiness with scorn, the quiet
words of insult, the instant judgment and condemnation with which we
are so inclined to visit, not the great outward acts, but the smaller
inward politics of our neighbours.
And do others spare us, will be the instant reply of all who may read
this. In my counter reply I make bold to place myself and my country
on very high ground, and to say that we, the older and therefore
more experienced people as regards the United States, and the better
governed as regards France, and the stronger as regards all the world
beyond, should not throw mud again even though mud be thrown at us.
I yield the path to a small chimney-sweeper as readily as to a lady;
and forbear from an interchange of courtesies with a Billingsgate
heroine, even though at heart I may have a proud consciousness that
I should not altogether go to the wall in such an encounter.
I left England in August last--August 1861. At that time, and for
some months previous, I think that the general English feeling on
the American question was as follows. "This wide-spread nationality
of the United States, with its enormous territorial possessions and
increasing population, has fallen asunder, torn to pieces by the
weight of its own discordant parts,--as a congregation when its
size has become unwieldy will separate, and reform itself into two
wholesome wholes. It is well that this should be so, for the people
are not homogeneous, as a people should be who are called to live
together as one nation. They have attempted to combine free-soil
sentiments with the practice of slavery, and to make these two
antagonists live together in peace and unity under the same roof;
but, as we have long expected, they have failed. Now has come the
period for separation; and if the people would only see this, and
act in accordance with the circumstances which Providence and the
inevitable hand of the world's ruler has prepared for them, all
would be well. But they will not do this. They will go to war with
each other. The South will make her demands for secession with an
arrogance and instant pressure which exasperates the North; and the
North, forgetting that an equable temper in such matters is the most
powerful of all weapons, will not recognize the strength of its own
position. It allows itself to be exasperated, and goes to war for
that which if regained would only be injurious to it. Thus millions
on millions sterling will be spent. A heavy debt will be incurred;
and the North, which divided from the South might take its place
among the greatest of nations, will throw itself back for half a
century, and perhaps injure the splendour of its ultimate prospects.
If only they would be wise, throw down their arms, and agree to part!
But they will not."
This was, I think, the general opinion when I left England. It would
not, however, be necessary to go back many months to reach the time
when Englishmen were saying how impossible it was that so great a
national power should ignore its own greatness, and destroy its own
power by an internecine separation. But in August last all that had
gone by, and we in England had realized the probability of actual
secession.
To these feelings on the subject may be added another, which was
natural enough though perhaps not noble. "These western cocks have
crowed loudly," we said; "too loudly for the comfort of those who
live after all at no such great distance from them. It is well that
their combs should be clipped. Cocks who crow so very loudly are a
nuisance. It might have gone so far that the clipping would become a
work necessarily to be done from without. But it is ten times better
for all parties that it should be done from within; and as the cocks
are now clipping their own combs, in God's name let them do it
and the whole world will be the quieter." That, I say, was not a
very noble idea; but it was natural enough, and certainly has done
somewhat in mitigating that grief which the horrors of civil war and
the want of cotton have caused to us in England.
Such certainly had been my belief as to the country. I speak here of
my opinion as to the ultimate success of secession and the folly of
the war,--repudiating any concurrence of my own in the ignoble but
natural sentiment alluded to in the last paragraph. I certainly did
think that the Northern States, if wise, would have let the Southern
States go. I had blamed Buchanan as a traitor for allowing the germ
of secession to make any growth;--and as I thought him a traitor
then, so do I think him a traitor now. But I had also blamed Lincoln,
or rather the government of which Mr. Lincoln in this matter is
no more than the exponent, for his efforts to avoid that which is
inevitable. In this I think that I--or as I believe I may say we, we
Englishmen--were wrong. I do not see how the North, treated as it was
and had been, could have submitted to secession without resistance.
We all remember what Shakespere says of the great armies which were
led out to fight for a piece of ground not large enough to cover
the bodies of those who would be slain in the battle; but I do not
remember that Shakespere says that the battle was on this account
necessarily unreasonable. It is the old point of honour, which, till
it had been made absurd by certain changes of circumstances, was
always grand and usually beneficent. These changes of circumstances
have altered the manner in which appeal may be made, but have not
altered the point of honour. Had the Southern States sought to obtain
secession by constitutional means, they might or might not have been
successful; but if successful there would have been no war. I do not
mean to brand all the Southern States with treason, nor do I intend
to say that having secession at heart they could have obtained it
by constitutional means. But I do intend to say that acting as they
did, demanding secession not constitutionally but in opposition to
the constitution, taking upon themselves the right of breaking up a
nationality of which they formed only a part, and doing that without
consent of the other part, opposition from the North and war was an
inevitable consequence.
It is, I think, only necessary to look back to the revolution by
which the United States separated themselves from England to see
this. There is hardly to be met, here and there, an Englishman who
now regrets the loss of the revolted American colonies;--who now
thinks that civilization was retarded and the world injured by that
revolt; who now conceives that England should have expended more
treasure and more lives in the hope of retaining those colonies. It
is agreed that the revolt was a good thing; that those who were then
rebels became patriots by success, and that they deserved well of all
coming ages of mankind. But not the less absolutely necessary was it
that England should endeavour to hold her own. She was as the mother
bird when the young bird will fly alone. She suffered those pangs
which Nature calls upon mothers to endure.
As was the necessity of British opposition to American independence,
so was the necessity of Northern opposition to Southern secession.
I do not say that in other respects the two cases were parallel.
The States separated from us because they would not endure taxation
without representation--in other words because they were old enough
and big enough to go alone. The South is seceding from the North
because the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts,
different appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is
well for one man to say that slavery has caused the separation; and
for another to say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying
speaks the truth. Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the
great point on which the two have agreed to differ. But slavery has
not caused it, seeing that other points of difference are to be found
in every circumstance and feature of the two people. The North and
the South must ever be dissimilar. In the North labour will always
be honourable, and because honourable successful. In the South
labour has ever been servile,--at least in some sense, and therefore
dishonourable; and because dishonourable has not, to itself, been
successful. In the South, I say, labour ever has been dishonourable;
and I am driven to confess that I have not hitherto seen a sign of
any change in the Creator's fiat on this matter. That labour will be
honourable all the world over, as years advance and the millennium
draws nigh, I for one never doubt.
So much for English opinion about America in August last. And now I
will venture to say a word or two as to American feeling respecting
this English opinion at that period. It will of course be remembered
by all my readers that at the beginning of the war Lord Russell, who
was then in the lower house, declared as Foreign Secretary of State
that England would regard the North and South as belligerents, and
would remain neutral as to both of them. This declaration gave
violent offence to the North, and has been taken as indicating
British sympathy with the cause of the seceders. I am not going
to explain--indeed it would be necessary that I should first
understand--the laws of nations with regard to blockaded ports,
privateering, ships and men and goods contraband of war, and all
those semi-nautical semi-military rules and axioms which it is
necessary that all Attorneys-General and such like should at the
present moment have at their fingers' end. But it must be evident
to the most ignorant in those matters, among which large crowd I
certainly include myself, that it was essentially necessary that Lord
John Russell should at that time declare openly what England intended
to do. It was essential that our seamen should know where they would
be protected and where not, and that the course to be taken by
England should be defined. Reticence in the matter was not within the
power of the British Government. It behoved the Foreign Secretary of
State to declare openly that England intended to side either with one
party or with the other, or else to remain neutral between them.
I had heard this matter discussed by Americans before I left England,
and I have of course heard it discussed very frequently in America.
There can be no doubt that the front of the offence given by England
to the Northern States was this declaration of Lord John Russell's.
But it has been always made evident to me that the sin did not
consist in the fact of England's neutrality,--in the fact of
her regarding the two parties as belligerents,--but in the open
declaration made to the world by a Secretary of State that she did
intend so to regard them. If another proof were wanting, this would
afford another proof of the immense weight attached in America to all
the proceedings and to all the feelings of England on this matter.
The very anger of the North is a compliment paid by the North to
England. But not the less is that anger unreasonable. To those in
America who understand our constitution, it must be evident that our
Government cannot take official measures without a public avowal of
such measures. France can do so. Russia can do so. The Government
of the United States can do so, and could do so even before this
rupture. But the Government of England cannot do so. All men
connected with the Government in England have felt themselves from
time to time more or less hampered by the necessity of publicity.
Our statesmen have been forced to fight their battles with the plan
of their tactics open before their adversaries. But we, in England,
are inclined to believe, that the general result is good, and that
battles so fought and so won will be fought with the honestest blows,
and won with the surest results. Reticence in this matter was not
possible, and Lord John Russell in making the open avowal which gave
such offence to the Northern States only did that which, as a servant
of England, England required him to do.
"What would you in England have thought," a gentleman of much weight
in Boston said to me, "if when you were in trouble in India, we had
openly declared that we regarded your opponents there as belligerents
on equal terms with yourselves?" I was forced to say that, as far as
I could see, there was no analogy between the two cases. In India an
army had mutinied, and that an army composed of a subdued, if not a
servile race. The analogy would have been fairer had it referred to
any sympathy shown by us to insurgent negroes. But, nevertheless,
had the army which mutinied in India been in possession of ports and
sea-board; had they held in their hands vast commercial cities and
great agricultural districts; had they owned ships and been masters
of a wide-spread trade, America could have done nothing better
towards us than have remained neutral in such a conflict, and have
regarded the parties as belligerents. The only question is whether
she would have done so well by us. "But," said my friend in answer
to all this, "we should not have proclaimed to the world that we
regarded you and them as standing on an equal footing." There again
appeared the true gist of the offence. A word from England such as
that spoken by Lord John Russell was of such weight to the South,
that the North could not endure to have it spoken. I did not say to
that gentleman,--but here I may say, that had such circumstances
arisen as those conjectured, and had America spoken such a word,
England would not have felt herself called upon to resent it.
But the fairer analogy lies between Ireland and the Southern States.
The monster meetings and O'Connell's triumphs are not so long gone by
but that many of us can remember the first demand for secession made
by Ireland, and the line which was then taken by American sympathies.
It is not too much to say that America then believed that Ireland
would secure secession, and that the great trust of the Irish
repealers was in the moral aid which she did and would receive from
America. "But our Government proclaimed no sympathy with Ireland,"
said my friend. No. The American Government is not called on to make
such proclamations; nor had Ireland ever taken upon herself the
nature and labours of a belligerent.
That this anger on the part of the North is unreasonable I cannot
doubt. That it is unfortunate, grievous, and very bitter I am quite
sure. But I do not think that it is in any degree surprising. I am
inclined to think that did I belong to Boston as I do belong to
London, I should share in the feeling, and rave as loudly as all men
there have raved against the coldness of England. When men have on
hand such a job of work as the North has now undertaken they are
always guided by their feelings rather than their reason. What two
men ever had a quarrel in which each did not think that all the
world, if just, would espouse his own side of the dispute? The North
feels that it has been more than loyal to the South, and that the
South has taken advantage of that over-loyalty to betray the North.
"We have worked for them, and fought for them, and paid for them,"
says the North. "By our labour we have raised their indolence to a
par with our energy. While we have worked like men, we have allowed
them to talk and bluster. We have warmed them in our bosom, and now
they turn against us and sting us. The world sees that this is so.
England, above all, must see it, and seeing it should speak out her
true opinion." The North is hot with such thoughts as these, and
one cannot wonder that she should be angry with her friend, when
her friend, with an expression of certain easy good wishes, bids
her fight out her own battles. The North has been unreasonable with
England;--but I believe that every reader of this page would have
been as unreasonable had that reader been born in Massachusetts.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones are the dearly beloved friends of my family. My
wife and I have lived with Mrs. Jones on terms of intimacy which have
been quite endearing. Jones has had the run of my house with perfect
freedom, and in Mrs. Jones' drawing-room I have always had my own
arm-chair, and have been regaled with large breakfast-cups of tea,
quite as though I were at home. But of a sudden Jones and his wife
have fallen out, and there is for a while in Jones' Hall a cat and
dog life that may end--in one hardly dare to surmise what calamity.
Mrs. Jones begs that I will interfere with her husband, and Jones
entreats the good offices of my wife in moderating the hot temper of
his own. But we know better than that. If we interfere, the chances
are that my dear friends will make it up and turn upon us. I grieve
beyond measure in a general way at the temporary break up of the
Jones' Hall happiness. I express general wishes that it may be
temporary. But as for saying which is right or which is wrong,--as
to expressing special sympathy on either side in such a quarrel,--it
is out of the question. "My dear Jones, you must excuse me. Any news
in the City to-day? Sugars have fell; how are teas?" Of course Jones
thinks that I'm a brute; but what can I do?
I have been somewhat surprised to find the trouble that has been
taken by American orators, statesmen, and logicians to prove that
this secession on the part of the South has been revolutionary;--that
is to say, that it has been undertaken and carried on not in
compliance with the constitution of the United States, but in
defiance of it. This has been done over and over again by some of
the greatest men of the North, and has been done most successfully.
But what then? Of course the movement has been revolutionary and
anti-constitutional. Nobody, no single Southerner, can really believe
that the Constitution of the United States as framed in 1787, or
altered since, intended to give to the separate States the power of
seceding as they pleased. It is surely useless going through long
arguments to prove this, seeing that it is absolutely proved by the
absence of any clause giving such licence to the separate States.
Such licence would have been destructive to the very idea of a great
nationality. Where would New England have been as a part of the
United States, if New York, which stretches from the Atlantic to the
borders of Canada, had been endowed with the power of cutting off the
six Northern States from the rest of the Union? No one will for a
moment doubt that the movement was revolutionary, and yet infinite
pains are taken to prove a fact that is patent to every one.
It is revolutionary, but what then? Have the Northern States of
the American Union taken upon themselves in 1861 to proclaim their
opinion that revolution is a sin? Are they going back to the divine
right of any sovereignty? Are they going to tell the world that
a nation or a people is bound to remain in any political status,
because that status is the recognized form of government under which
such a people have lived? Is this to be the doctrine of United
States' citizens,--of all people? And is this the doctrine preached
now, of all times, when the King of Naples and the Italian dukes
have just been dismissed from their thrones with such enchanting
nonchalance, because their people have not chosen to keep them? Of
course the movement is revolutionary; and why not? It is agreed now
among all men and all nations that any people may change its form of
government to any other, if it wills to do so,--and if it can do so.
There are two other points on which these Northern statesmen and
logicians also insist, and these two other points are at any rate
better worth an argument than that which touches the question of
revolution. It being settled that secession on the part of the
Southerners is revolution, it is argued, firstly, that no occasion
for revolution had been given by the North to the South; and,
secondly, that the South has been dishonest in its revolutionary
tactics. Men certainly should not raise a revolution for nothing; and
it may certainly be declared that whatever men do, they should do
honestly.
But in that matter of the cause and ground for revolution, it
is so very easy for either party to put in a plea that shall be
satisfactory to itself! Mr. and Mrs. Jones each had a separate story.
Mr. Jones was sure that the right lay with him: but Mrs. Jones was
no less sure. No doubt the North had done much for the South;--had
earned money for it; had fed it;--and had moreover in a great measure
fostered all its bad habits. It had not only been generous to the
South, but over-indulgent. But also it had continually irritated the
South by meddling with that which the Southerners believed to be a
question absolutely private to themselves. The matter was illustrated
to me by a New Hampshire man who was conversant with black bears. At
the hotels in the New Hampshire mountains it is customary to find
black bears chained to poles. These bears are caught among the hills,
and are thus imprisoned for the amusement of the hotel guests. "Them
Southerners," said my friend, "are jist as one as that 'ere bear. We
feeds him and gives him a house and his belly is ollers full. But
then, jist becase he's a black bear, we're ollers a poking him with
sticks, and a' course the beast is kinder riled. He wants to be back
to the mountains. He wouldn't have his belly filled, but he'd have
his own way. It's jist so with them Southerners."
It is of no use proving to any man or to any nation that they have
got all they should want, if they have not got all that they do want.
If a servant desires to go, it is of no avail to show him that he
has all he can desire in his present place. The Northerners say that
they have given no offence to the Southerners, and that therefore the
South is wrong to raise a revolution. The very fact that the North is
the North, is an offence to the South. As long as Mr. and Mrs. Jones
were one in heart and one in feeling, having the same hopes and the
same joys, it was well that they should remain together. But when it
is proved that they cannot so live without tearing out each other's
eyes, Sir Cresswell Cresswell, the revolutionary institution of
domestic life, interferes and separates them. This is the age of such
separations. I do not wonder that the North should use its logic to
show that it has received cause of offence but given none. But I
do think that such logic is thrown away. The matter is not one for
argument. The South has thought that it can do better without the
North than with it; and if it has the power to separate itself, it
must be conceded that it has the right.
And then as to that question of honesty. Whatever men do they
certainly should do honestly. Speaking broadly one may say that the
rule applies to nations as strongly as to individuals, and should
be observed in politics as accurately as in other matters. We must,
however, confess that men who are scrupulous in their private
dealings do too constantly drop those scruples when they handle
public affairs,--and especially when they handle them at stirring
moments of great national changes. The name of Napoleon III. stands
fair now before Europe, and yet he filched the French empire with a
falsehood. The union of England and Ireland is a successful fact, but
nevertheless it can hardly be said that it was honestly achieved. I
heartily believe that the whole of Texas is improved in every sense
by having been taken from Mexico and added to the Southern States,
but I much doubt whether that annexation was accomplished with
absolute honesty. We all reverence the name of Cavour, but Cavour did
not consent to abandon Nice to France with clean hands. When men have
political ends to gain they regard their opponents as adversaries,
and then that old rule of war is brought to bear, Deceit or
valour,--either may be used against a foe. Would it were not so! The
rascally rule--rascally in reference to all political contests--is
becoming less universal than it was. But it still exists with
sufficient force to be urged as an excuse; and while it does exist it
seems almost needless to show that a certain amount of fraud has been
used by a certain party in a revolution. If the South be ultimately
successful, the fraud of which it may have been guilty will be
condoned by the world.
The Southern or democratic party of the United States had, as all
men know, been in power for many years. Either Southern Presidents
had been elected, or Northern Presidents with Southern politics. The
South for many years had had the disposition of military matters, and
the power of distributing military appliances of all descriptions. It
is now alleged by the North that a conspiracy had long been hatching
in the South with the view of giving to the Southern States the power
of secession whenever they might think fit to secede; and it is
further alleged that President after President for years back has
unduly sent the military treasure of the nation away from the North
down to the South, in order that the South might be prepared when
the day should come. That a President with Southern instincts should
unduly favour the South, that he should strengthen the South, and
feel that arms and ammunition were stored there with better effect
than they could be stored in the North, is very probable. We all
understand what is the bias of a man's mind, and how strong that
bias may become when the man is not especially scrupulous. But I do
not believe that any President previous to Buchanan sent military
materials to the South with the self-acknowledged purpose of using
them against the Union. That Buchanan did so, or knowingly allowed
this to be done, I do believe, and I think that Buchanan was a
traitor to the country whose servant he was and whose pay he
received.
And now, having said so much in the way of introduction, I will begin
my journey.