American experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the
controversy now raging in England over the Irish question, both by way
of warning and of example. For instance, I have found in the _Times_ as
well as in other journals--the _Spectator_, I think, among the
number--very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a
government like that of an American State, on the ground that the
Americans are loyal to the central authority, while in Ireland there is
a strong feeling of hostility to it, which would probably increase under
Home Rule. The Queen's writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run
in large parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States the
Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of Federal
authority find ready aid and sympathy from the people. If I remember
rightly, the Duke of Argyll has been very emphatic in pointing out the
difference between giving local self-government to a community in which
the tendencies of popular feeling are "centrifugal," and giving it to
one in which these tendencies are "centripetal." The inference to be
drawn was, of course, that as long as Ireland disliked the Imperial
government the concession of Home Rule would be unsafe, and would only
become safe when the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of
affection for the English connection which the people of the State of
New York now feel for the Constitution of the United States.
Among the multitude of those who have taken part in the controversy on
one side or the other, no one has, so far as I have observed, pointed
out that the state of feeling in America toward the central government
with which the state of feeling in Ireland towards the British
Government is now compared, did not exist when the American Constitution
was set up; that the political tendencies in America at that time were
centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the extraordinary love and
admiration with which Americans now regard the Federal government are
the result of eighty years' experience of its working. The first
Confederation was as much as the people could bear in the way of
surrendering local powers when the War of Independence came to an end.
It was its hopeless failure to provide peace and security which led to
the framing of the present Constitution. But even with this experience
still fresh, the adoption of the Constitution was no easy matter. I
shall not burden this article with historical citations showing the very
great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution had in inducing
the various States to adopt it, or the magnitude and variety of the
fears and suspicions with which, many of the most influential men in all
parts of the country regarded it. Any one who wishes to know how
numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions were, cannot do
better than read the series of papers known as "The Federalist," written
mainly by Hamilton and Madison, to commend the new plan to the various
States. It was adopted almost as a matter of necessity, that is, as the
only way out of the Slough of Despond in which the Confederation had
plunged the union of the States; but the objections to it which were
felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial. Hamilton's two
colleagues, as delegates from New York, Yates and Lansing, withdrew in
disgust from the Convention, as soon as the Constitution was outlined,
and did not return. The notion that the Constitution was produced by the
craving of the American people for something of that sort to love and
revere, and that it was not bestowed on them until they had given ample
assurance that they would lavish affection on it, has no foundation
whatever in fact. The devotion of Americans to the Union is, indeed, as
clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political history.
They have learned to like the Constitution because the country has
prospered under it, and because it has given them all the benefits of
national life without interference with local liberties. If they had not
set up a central government until the centrifugal sentiment had
disappeared from the States, and the feeling of loyalty for a central
authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly never have set it
up at all.
Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption of the
Constitution did not involve the surrender of any local franchises, by
which the people of the various States set great store. The States
preserved fully four-fifths of their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of
it which closely concerned the daily lives of individuals. Set aside the
post-office, and a citizen of the State of New York, not engaged in
foreign trade, might, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, have passed
a long and busy life without once coming in contact with a United States
official, and without being made aware in any of his doings, by any
restriction or regulation, that he was living under any government but
that of his own State. If he went abroad he had to apply for a United
States passport. If he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with the citizen
of another State, he might be sued in the Federal Court. If he imported
foreign goods he had to pay duties to the collector of a Federal
Custom-house. If he invented something, or wrote a book, he had to
apply to the Department of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But
how few there were in the first seventy years of American history who
had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or has ever supposed,
that had the Federalists demanded any very large sacrifice of local
franchises, or attempted to set up even a close approach to a
centralized Government, the adoption of the Constitution would have been
possible. If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and
legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland after the
Union had been proposed, it would have been rejected with derision. You
will get no American to argue with you on this point. If you ask him
whether he thinks it likely that a highly centralized government could
have been created in 1879--such a one, for example, as Ireland has been
under since 1800--or whether if created it would by this time have won
the affection of the people, or filled them with centripetal tendencies,
he will answer you with a smile.
The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland, do people love
their Government from a sense of duty or because they crave an object of
political affection, or even because it exalts them in the eyes of
foreigners. They love it because they are happy or prosperous under it;
because it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes and
habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love. Loyalty to the
king as the Lord's anointed, without any sense either of favours
received or expected, has played a great part in European politics, I
admit; but, for reasons which I will not here take up space in stating,
a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a
constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts
except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well
as political philosophers, can see them and count them.
Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to the vigour with which
the United States Government put down the attempt made by the South to
break up the Union as an example of the American love of "imperial
unity," and of the spirit in which England should now meet the Irish
demands for local autonomy. This again is rather surprising, because you
will find no one in America who will maintain for one moment that troops
could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest of the South
for the purpose of setting up a centralized administration, or, in other
words, for the purpose of wiping out State lines, or diminishing State
authority. No man or party proposed anything of this kind at the
outbreak of the war, or would have dared to propose it. The object for
which the North rose in arms, and which Lincoln had in view when he
called for troops, was the restoration of the Union just as it was when
South Carolina seceded, barring the extension of slavery into the
territories. During the first year of the war, certainly, the revolted
States might at any time have had peace on the _status quo_ basis, that
is, without the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities under
the Constitution. It was only when it became evident that the war would
have to be fought out to a finish, as the pugilists say--that is, that
it would have to end in a complete conquest of the Southern
territory--that the question, what would become of the States as a
political organization after the struggle was over, began to be debated
at all. What did become of them? How did Americans deal with Home Rule,
after it had been used to set on foot against the central authority what
the newspapers used to delight in calling "the greatest rebellion the
world ever saw"? The answer to these questions is, it seems to me, a
contribution of some value to the discussion of the Irish problem in its
present stage, if American precedents can throw any light whatever on
it.
There was a Joint Committee of both Houses of Congress appointed in
1866 to consider the condition of the South with reference to the safety
or expediency of admitting the States lately in rebellion to their old
relations to the Union, including representation in Congress. It
contained, besides such fanatical enemies of the South as Thaddeus
Stevens, such very conservative men as Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Grimes, Mr.
Morrill, and Mr. Conkling. Here is the account they gave of the
condition of Southern feeling one year after Lee's surrender:--
"Examining the evidence taken by your committee still further, in
connection with facts too notorious to be disputed, it appears that the
Southern press, with few exceptions, and those mostly of newspapers
recently established by Northern men, abounds with weekly and daily
abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the
men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion; denounces
and reviles Southern men who adhered to the Union; and strives
constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep
alive the fire of hate and discord between the sections; calling upon
the President to violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by
force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their
seats in Congress. The national banner is openly insulted, and the
national airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at
public meetings, and once, among other notable instances, at a dinner
given in honour of a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and
abandoned his flag. The same individual is elected to an important
office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned rebel,
and so offensive that the President refuses to allow him to enter upon
his official duties. In another State the leading general of the rebel
armies is openly nominated for Governor by the Speaker of the House of
Delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of
satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press....
"The evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an
equally intense love of the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war is
decisive. While it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at
least for the time being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear
that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will
be derived from a representation in Congress. Officers of the Union army
on duty, and Northern men who go south to engage in business, are
generally detested and proscribed. Southern men who adhered to the Union
are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted. In some localities
prosecutions have been instituted in State courts against Union officers
for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions are
threatened elsewhere as soon as the United States troops are removed.
All such demonstrations show a state of feeling against which it is
unmistakably necessary to guard.
"The testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of the Confederacy
the feeling of the people of the rebellious States was that of abject
submission. Having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope
except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and
possibly their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the general
issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent in the rebellion, and
the feeling of kindliness and conciliation manifested by the Executive,
and very generally indicated through the Northern press, had the effect
to render whole communities forgetful of the crime they had committed,
defiant towards the Federal Government, and regardless of their duties
as citizens. The conciliatory measures of the Government do not seem to
have been met even half-way. The bitterness and defiance exhibited
towards the United States under such circumstances is without a parallel
in the history of the world. In return for our leniency we receive only
an insulting denial of our authority. In return for our kind desire for
the resumption of fraternal relations we receive only an insolent
assumption of rights and privileges long since forfeited. The crime we
have punished is paraded as a virtue, and the principles of republican
government which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced
as unjust and oppressive.
"If we add to this evidence the fact that, although peace has been
declared by the President, he has not, to this day, deemed it safe to
restore the writ of _habeas corpus_, to relieve the insurrectionary
States of martial law, nor to withdraw the troops from many localities,
and that the commanding general deems an increase of the army
indispensable to the preservation of order and the protection of loyal
and well-disposed people in the South, the proof of a condition of
feeling hostile to the Union and dangerous to the Government throughout
the insurrectionary States would seem to be overwhelming."
This Committee recommended a series of coercive measures, the first of
which was the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution,
which disqualified for all office, either under the United States or
under any State, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath of
allegiance to the United States afterwards engaged in rebellion or gave
aid and comfort to the rebels. This denied the _jus honorum_ to all the
leading men at the South who had survived the war. In addition to it, an
Act was passed in March, 1867, which put all the rebel States under
military rule until a constitution should have been framed by a
Convention elected by all males over twenty-one, except such as would be
excluded from office by the above-named constitutional amendment if it
were adopted, which at that time it had not been. Another Act was passed
three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the States lately in
rebellion, what was known as the "ironclad oath," which excluded from
the franchise not only all who had borne arms against the United States,
but all who, having ever held any office for which the taking an oath of
allegiance to the United States was a qualification, had afterwards ever
given "aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." This practically
disfranchised all the white men of the South over twenty-five years old.
On this legislation there grew up, as all the world now knows, what was
called the "carpet-bag" _regime_. Swarms of Northern adventurers went
down to the Southern States, organized the ignorant negro voters,
constructed State constitutions to suit themselves, got themselves
elected to all the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries,
contracted huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with
legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most intelligent
and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters. In some of the
States, such as South Carolina and Mississippi, in which the negro
population were in the majority, the government became a mere
caricature. I was in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in 1872,
during the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the passage
of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment--at that time seven
hundred dollars--to an old negro preacher who controlled the coloured
majority. Under the pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private
lodging-rooms at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in many
instances, were extravagantly furnished with Wilton and Brussels
carpets, mirrors, and sofas. A thousand dollars were expended for two
hundred elegant imported china spittoons. There were only one hundred
and twenty-three members in the House of Representatives, but the
residue were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the
legislators.
Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of things? Well, I
am sorry to say they manifested their discontent very much in the way
in which the Irish have for the last hundred years been manifesting
theirs. If, as the English opponents of Home Rule seem to think,
readiness to commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims
of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the South
showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they were utterly
unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government. They could not
rise openly in revolt because the United States troops were everywhere
at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed
resistance. They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to
the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings. They simply
formed a huge secret society on the model of the "Molly Maguires" or
"Moonlighters," whose special function was to intimidate, flog,
mutilate, or murder political opponents in the night time. This society
was called the "Ku-Klux Klan." Let me give some account of its
operation, and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had become so
powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to
Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the
States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the
carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A
Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in
1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late
insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the laws and
the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United
States." Its report now lies before me, and it reads uncommonly like the
speech of an Irish Secretary in the House of Commons bringing in a
"Suppression of Crime Bill." The Committee say--
"There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the effect that, in
those of the late rebellious States into whose condition we have
examined, the courts and juries administer justice between man and man
in all ordinary cases, civil and criminal; and while there is this
concurrence on this point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress
cannot be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise and at
night. The reasons assigned are that identification is difficult, almost
impossible; that, when this is attempted, the combinations and oaths of
the order come in and release the culprit by perjury, either upon the
witness-stand or in the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their
acts, as well as the public sentiment in their favour in many
localities, paralyzes the arm of civil power.
* * * * *
"The murders and outrages which have been perpetrated in many counties
of Middle and West Tennessee, during the past few months, have been so
numerous, and of such an aggravated character, as almost baffles
investigation. In these counties a reign of terror exists which is so
absolute in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling
to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired by the
secret organization known as the Ku-Klux Klan is so great, that the
officers of the law are powerless to execute its provisions, to
discharge their duties, or to bring the guilty perpetrators of these
outrages to the punishment they deserve. Their stealthy movements are
generally made under cover of night, and under masks and disguises,
which render their identification difficult, if not impossible. To add
to the secrecy which envelops their operations, is the fact that no
information of their murderous acts can be obtained without the greatest
difficulty and danger in the localities where they are committed. No one
dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring them to
punishment, because no one can tell but that he may be the next victim
of their hostility or animosity. The members of this organization, with
their friends, aiders, and abettors, take especial pains to conceal all
their operations.
* * * * *
"Your committee believe that during the past six months, the murders--to
say nothing of other outrages--would average one a day, or one for every
twenty-four hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have
been perpetrated by the Ku-Klux above referred to, and few, if any, have
been brought to punishment. A number of the counties of this State
(Tennessee) are entirely at the mercy of this organization, and roving
bands of nightly marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and
threaten to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit to
their arbitrary dictation. To add to the general lawlessness of these
communities, bad men of every description take advantage of the
circumstances surrounding them, and perpetrate acts of violence, from
personal or pecuniary motives, under the plea of political necessity."
Here is some of the evidence on which the report was based.
A complaint of outrages committed in Georgia was referred by the general
of the army, in June, 1869, to the general of the Department of the
South for thorough investigation and report. General Terry, in his
report, made August 14, 1869, says[2]--
"In many parts of the State there is practically no government. The
worst of crimes are committed, and no attempt is made to punish those
who commit them. Murders have been and are frequent; the abuse, in
various ways, of the blacks is too common to excite notice. There can be
no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary organizations
known as 'Ku-Klux Klans,' who, shielded by their disguise, by the
secrecy of their movements, and by the terror which they inspire,
perpetrate crime with impunity. There is great reason to believe that in
some cases local magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these
organizations. In many places they are overawed by them and dare not
attempt to punish them. To punish such offenders by civil proceedings
would be a difficult task, even were magistrates in all cases disposed
and had they the courage to do their duty, for the same influences which
govern them equally affect juries and witnesses."
Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Merrill, who assumed command (in Louisiana) on
the 26th of March, and commenced investigation into the state of
affairs, says (p. 1465)--
"From the best information I can get, I estimate the number of cases of
whipping, beating, and personal violence of various grades, in this
county, since the first of last November, at between three and four
hundred, excluding numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse,
and small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol or gun, etc.
The more serious outrages, exclusive of murders and whippings, noted
hereafter, have been the following:--"
He then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases, giving the names
of the parties injured, white and black, and including the tearing up of
the railway, on the night before a raid was made by the Ku-Klux on the
county treasury building. The rails were taken up, to prevent the
arrival of the United States troops, who, it was known, were to come on
Sunday morning. The raid was made on that Sunday night while the troops
were lying at Chester, twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach
Yorkville, because of the rails being torn up.
Another witness said: "To give the details of the whipping of men to
compel them to change their mode of voting, the tearing of them away
from their families at night, accompanied with insults and outrage, and
followed by their murder, would be but repeating what has been described
in other States, showing that it is the same organization in all,
working by the same means for the same end. Five murders are shown to
have been committed in Monroe County, fifteen in Noxubee, one in
Lowndes, by the testimony taken in the city of Washington; but the
extent to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and outrages
committed in this State, cannot be fully given until the testimony taken
by the sub-committee shall have been printed and made ready to report."
There are about eighty, closely printed, large octavo pages of this kind
of testimony given by sufferers from the outrages.
Something was done to suppress the Ku-Klux by a Federal Act passed in
1871, which made offences of this kind punishable in the Federal Courts.
Considerable numbers of them were arrested, tried, and convicted, and
sent to undergo their punishment in the Northern jails. But there was no
complete pacification of the South until the carpet-bag governments were
refused the support of the Federal troops by President Hayes, on his
accession to power in 1876. Then the carpet-bag _régime_ disappeared
like a house of cards. The chief carpet-baggers fled, and the government
passed at once into the hands of the native whites. I do not propose to
defend or explain the way in which they have since then kept it in their
hands, by suppressing or controlling the negro vote. This is not
necessary to my purpose.
What I seek to show is that the Irish are not peculiar in their manner
of expressing their discontent with a government directed or controlled
by the public opinion of another indifferent or semi-hostile community
which it is impossible to resist in open warfare; that Anglo-Saxons
resort to somewhat the same methods under similar circumstances, and
that lawlessness and cruelty, considered as expressions of political
animosity, do not necessarily argue any incapacity for the conduct of an
orderly and efficient government, although I admit freely that they do
argue a low state of civilization.
I will add one more illustration which, although more remote than those
which I have taken from the Southern States during the reconstruction
period, is not too remote for my purpose, and is in some respects
stronger than any of them. I do not know a more orderly community in the
world, or one which, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, when
manufactures began to multiply, and the Irish immigration began to pour
in, had a higher average of intelligence than the State of Connecticut.
Down to 1818 all voters in that State had to be members of the
Congregational Church. It had no large cities, and this, with the aid of
its seat of learning, Yale College, preserved in it, I think, in greater
purity than even Massachusetts, the old Puritan simplicity of manners,
the Puritan spirit of order and thrift, and the business-like view of
government which grew out of the practice of town government. A less
sentimental community, I do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which
the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion is less
cultivated or viewed with less favour. In the matter of managing their
own political affairs in peace or war, I do not expect the Irish to
equal the Connecticut people for a hundred years to come, no matter how
much practice they may have in the interval, and I think that fifty
years ago it was only picked bodies of Englishmen who could do so. Yet,
in 1833, in the town of Canterbury, one of the most orderly and
intelligent in the State, an estimable and much-esteemed lady, Miss
Prudence Crandall, was carrying on a girls' school, when something
happened to touch her conscience about the condition of the free negroes
of the North. She resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to undertake the
education of negro girls only. What follows forms one of the most famous
episodes in the anti-slavery struggle in America, and is possibly
familiar to many of the older readers of this article. I shall extract
the account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of
William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons. Some of the details are much worse
than is here described.
"The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued here except in
brief.... It will be enough to say that the struggle between the modest
and heroic young Quaker woman and the town lasted for nearly two years;
that the school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately made
under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine Miss Crandall for
harbouring them; that in May an Act prohibiting private schools for
non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of the
latter, was procured from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing
in Canterbury (even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this
Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily imprisoned in
the county jail, twice tried (August and October) and convicted; that
her case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors, and her
persecutors defeated on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending
this litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
isolate the school from the countenance and even the physical support of
the townspeople. The shops and the meeting-house were closed against
teacher and pupils, carriage in the public conveyances was denied them,
physicians would not wait upon them, Miss Crandall's own family and
friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy fines, to visit her, the
well was filled with manure and water from other sources refused, the
house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and
stones, and finally set on fire" (vol. i. p. 321).
Miss Crandall is still living in the West, in extreme old age, and the
Connecticut legislature voted her a small pension two years ago, as a
slight expiation of the ignominy and injustice from which she had
suffered at the hands of a past generation.
The _Spectator_ frequently refers to the ferocious hatred displayed
toward the widow of Curtin, the man who was cruelly murdered by
moonlighters somewhere in Kerry, as an evidence of barbarism which
almost, if not quite, justifies the denial of self-government to a
people capable of producing such monsters in one spot and on one
occasion. Let me match this from Mississippi with a case which I
produce, not because it was singular, but because it was notorious at
the North, where it occurred, in 1877. One Chisholm, a native of the
State, and a man of good standing and character, became a Republican
after the war, and was somewhat active in organizing the negro voters in
his district. He was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours to
desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely on his course. A
mob, composed of many of the leading men in the town, then attacked him
in his house. He made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and
son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail. His assailants broke the jail open,
and killed him and his son, and desperately wounded the daughter. The
poor lad received such a volley of bullets, that his blood went in one
rush to the floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling
of the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an eye-witness
told me, as an illustration of the callousness of the jailer. The
leading murderers were tried. They had no defence. The facts were not
disputed. The judge and the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted
the prisoners without leaving their seats. Mrs. Chisholm, the widow,
found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the tragedy. She had
to leave the State, and found refuge in Washington, where she now holds
a clerkship in the Treasury department.
Let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in which popular
discontent may find expression in communities whose political capacity
and general respect for the law and its officers, as well as for the
sanctity of contracts, have never been questioned. Large tracts of land
were formerly held along the Hudson river in the State of New York, by a
few families, of which the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons were the
chief, either under grants from the Dutch at the first settlement of the
colony, or from the English Crown after the conquest. That known as the
"Manor of Rensselaerwick," held by the Van Rensselaers, comprised a
tract of country extending twenty-four miles north and south, and
forty-eight miles east and west, lying on each side of the Hudson river.
It was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. The rents were, on the
Van Rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of wheat for each hundred acres,
and four fat hens, and one day's service with a carriage and horses, to
each farm of one hundred and sixty acres. Besides this, there was a fine
on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. The Livingston
estates were let in much the same way.
In 1839, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the proprietor, or "Patroon" as he was
called, died, with $400,000 due to him as arrears from the tenants, for
which, being a man of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. But he
left the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts, and
his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the attempt during
the ensuing seven years. What then happened I shall describe in the
words of Mr. John Bigelow. Mr. Tilden was a member of the State
Legislature in 1846, and was appointed Chairman of a Committee to
investigate the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the
basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently settled. Mr.
Bigelow, who has edited Mr. Tilden's _Public Writings and Speeches_,
prefaces the report with the following explanatory note:--
"Attempts were made to enforce the collection of these rents. The
tenants resisted. They established armed patrols, and, by the adoption
of various disguises, were enabled successfully to defy the civil
authorities. Eventually it became necessary to call out the military,
but the result was only partially satisfactory. These demonstrations of
authority provoked the formation of 'anti-rent clubs' throughout the
manorial district, with a view of acquiring a controlling influence in
the legislature. Small bands, armed and disguised as Indians, were also
formed to hold themselves in readiness at all times to resist the
officers of the law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal
process upon the tenants. The principal roads throughout the infected
district were guarded by the bands so carefully, and the animosity
between the tenants and the civil authorities was so intense, that at
last it became dangerous for any one not an anti-renter to be found in
these neighbourhoods. It was equally dangerous for the landlords to make
any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for protection
of their persons. When Governor Wright entered upon his duties in Albany
in 1845, he found that the anti-rent party had a formidable
representation in the legislature, and that the questions involved were
assuming an almost national importance."
The sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law, but his deputies
were killed, and a legal investigation in which two hundred persons were
examined, failed to reveal the perpetrators of the crime. The militia
were called out, but they were no more successful than the sheriff. In
the case of one murder committed in Delaware County in 1845, however,
two persons were convicted, but their sentence was commuted to
imprisonment for life. Various others concerned in the disturbances were
convicted of minor offences, but when Governor Young succeeded Governor
Seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed considerable
voting strength, he pardoned them all on the ground that their crimes
were political. The dispute was finally settled by a compromise--that
is, the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons both sold their estates,
giving quit-claim deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and
the granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve years
was forbidden by the State Constitution of 1846.
This anti-rent agitation is described by Professor Johnston of
Princeton, in the _Cyclopædia of Political Science_, as "a reign of
terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law
and the payment of rent throughout the district." Suppose all the land
of the State had been held under similar tenures; that the controversy
had lasted one hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the
Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons had had the aid of the Federal army
in enforcing distraints and evictions, and in enabling them to set local
opinion at defiance, what do you suppose the state of morals and manners
would have been in New York by this time? What would have been the
feelings of the people towards the Federal authority had the matter been
finally adjusted with the strong hand, in accordance, not with the views
of the people of the State, but of the landholders of South Carolina or
of the district of Columbia? I am afraid they would have been terribly
Irish.
I know very well the risk I run, in citing all these precedents and
parallels, of seeming to justify, or at all events to palliate, Irish
lawlessness. But I am not doing anything of the kind. I am trying to
illustrate a somewhat trite remark which I recently made: "that
government is a very practical business, and that those succeed best in
it who bring least sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct of their
affairs." The government of Ireland, like the government of all other
countries, is a piece of business--a very difficult piece of business, I
admit--and therefore horror over Irish doings, and the natural and human
desire to "get even with" murderers and moonlighters, by denying the
community which produces them something it would like much to possess,
should have no influence with those who are charged with Irish
government. It is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give
offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they have
furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. Rulers of men have to
occupy themselves mainly with the question of drying up the sources of
crime, and often, in order to accomplish this, to let much crime and
disorder go unwhipped of justice.
With the state of mind which cannot bear to see any concessions made to
the Irish Nationalists because they are such wicked men, in which so
many excellent Englishmen, whom we used to think genuine political
philosophers, are now living, we are very familiar in the United States.
It is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party with
regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and found constant
expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in
political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." It showed itself after
the war in unwillingness to release the South from military rule; then
in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to
withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the military support
without which they could not have existed for a day; and, last of all,
in dread of the advent of a Democratic Federal Administration in which
Southerners or "ex-rebels" would be likely to hold office. At first the
whole Republican party was more or less permeated by these ideas; but
the number of those who held them gradually diminished, until in 1884 it
was at last possible to elect a Democratic President. Nevertheless a
great multitude witnessed the entrance into the White House of a
President who is indebted for his election mainly to the States formerly
in rebellion, with genuine alarm. They feared from it something
dreadful, in the shape either of a violation of the rights of the
freedmen, or of an assault on the credit and stability of the Federal
Government. Nothing but actual experiment would have disabused them.
I am very familiar with the controversy with them, for I have taken some
part in it ever since the passage of the reconstruction Acts, and I know
very well how they felt, and am sometimes greatly impressed by the
similarity between their arguments and those of the opponents of Irish
Home Rule. One of their fixed beliefs for many years, though it is now
extinct, was that Southerners were so bent on rebelling again, and were
generally so prone to rebellion, that the awful consequences of their
last attempt in the loss of life and property, had made absolutely no
impression on them. The Southerner was, in fact, in their eyes, what Mr.
Gladstone says the Irishman is in the eyes of some Englishmen: "A _lusus
naturæ_; that justice, common sense, moderation, national prosperity had
no meaning for him; that all he could appreciate was strife and
perpetual dissension. It was for many years useless to point out to them
the severity of the lesson taught by the Civil War as to the physical
superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable
the new generation of Southerners to restore their fortunes, or even
gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to impress them with the
inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made Southerners what
they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that
the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners,
ideas, or opinions. All this they answered by pointing to speeches
delivered by some fiery adorer of "the lost cause," to the Ku-Klux
outrages, to political murders, like that of Chisholm, to the building
of monuments to the Confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of
reverence for Confederate nationality. In fact, for fully ten years
after the close of the war the collection of Southern "outrages" and
their display before Northern audiences, was the chief work of
Republican politicians. In 1876, during the Hayes-Tilden canvass, the
opening speech which furnished what is called "the key-note of the
campaign" was made by Mr. Wheeler, the Republican candidate for the
Vice-Presidency, and his advice to the Vermonters, to whom it was
delivered, was "to vote as they shot," that is, to go to the polls with
the same feelings and aims as those with which they enlisted in the war.
I need hardly tell English readers how all this has ended. The
withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South by President Hayes, and
the consequent complete restoration of the State governments to the
discontented whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who
maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics, that if
you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect will surely
disappear. It is true, at least in the Western world, that if you give
communities in a reasonable degree the management of their own affairs,
the love of material comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among
all civilized, and even partially civilized men, is sure in the long run
to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or, as Mr. Gladstone
has expressed it, in setting up a government, "the best and surest
foundation we can find to build on is the foundation afforded by the
affections, the convictions, and the will of men."