THEIR CAUSE
INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO "THEIR CAUSE"
In no sense does the author offer the suggestions in this section as
an apology for the course of Southern women or men in the war between
the States. They are presented simply as a part of history, showing
the political principles which guided and moved the South in the
momentous struggle. They explain the lofty zeal and heroic fortitude
of the Confederate women. They cannot be attributed to partisanship or
sectional bias on the part of the author, for sufficient quotations
are herewith presented from well-known Northern, English, and
Continental public men to show that if there is an extreme Southern
view it is held by other people as well as by our own.
Right or wrong, each Southern man in the field and each woman at home,
toiled in that war with a _mens sibi conscia recti_. It was a movement
of the people. In the ranks of the army were found hundreds of college
graduates and men carrying muskets whose property was valued at a
hundred thousand dollars, and at home the rich and the poor women
toiled with equal zeal for the cause so dear to their hearts.
"WHEN THIS CRUEL WAR IS OVER"
Mrs. W. W. Gordon, of Savannah, the wife of the brave ex-Confederate
officer who was commissioned brigadier general by President McKinley,
and served with distinguished gallantry in the Spanish War, had
kindred in the Federal army, which under Sherman captured Savannah. As
the troops were entering the city she stood with her children watching
them as they marched under the windows of her Southern home. Just then
the splendid brass band at the head of one of the divisions began to
play the old familiar air, "When this cruel war is over." Just as soon
as the notes struck the ear of her little daughter this enthusiastic
young Confederate exclaimed, "Mamma, just listen to the Yankees. They
are playing, 'When this cruel war is over,' and they are just doing it
themselves."
NORTHERN MEN LEADERS OF DISUNION
In 1860 it was plain to the world that the people of the North were
determined to spurn the compact of union with the Southern States and
to deny to those States all right to control their own affairs. Here
are the sentiments of the Northern leaders:
"There is a higher law than the Constitution which regulates our
authority over the domain. Slavery must be abolished, and we must do
it."--_Wm. H. Seward._
"The time is fast approaching when the cry will become too overpowering
to resist. Rather than tolerate national slavery as it now exists, let
the Union be dissolved at once, and then the sin of slavery will rest
where it belongs."--_New York Tribune._
"The Union is a lie. The American Union is an imposture--a covenant
with death and an agreement with hell. We are for its overthrow! Up
with the flag of disunion, that we may have a free and glorious
republic of our own."--_Wm. Lloyd Garrison._
"I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection
in the South; when the black man, armed with British bayonets, and led
on by British officers, shall assert his freedom and wage a war of
extermination against his master. And, though we may not mock at their
calamity nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet we will hail it as the
dawn of a political millennium."--_Joshua Giddings._
"In the alternative being presented of the continuance of slavery or a
dissolution of the Union, we are for a dissolution, and we care not
how quick it comes."--_Rufus P. Spaulding._
"The fugitive-slave act is filled with horror; we are bound to disobey
this act."--_Charles Sumner._
"The _Advertiser_ has no hesitation in saying that it does not hold to
the faithful observance of the fugitive-slave law of 1850."--_Portland
Advertiser._
"I have no doubt but the free and slave States ought to be separated.
* * * The Union is not worth supporting in connection with the
South."--_Horace Greeley._
"The times demand and we must have an anti-slavery Constitution, an
anti-slavery Bible, and an anti-slavery God."--_Anson P. Burlingame._
"There is merit in the Republican party. It is this: It is the first
sectional party ever organized in this country. * * * It is not
national; it is sectional. It is the North arrayed against the South.
* * * The first crack in the iceberg is visible; you will yet hear it
go with a crack through the center."--_Wendell Phillips._
"The cure prescribed for slavery by Redpath is the only infallible
remedy, and men must foment insurrection among the slaves in order to
cure the evils. It can never be done by concessions and compromises.
It is a great evil, and must be extinguished by still greater ones. It
is positive and imperious in its approaches, and must be overcome with
equally positive forces. You must commit an assault to arrest a
burglar, and slavery is not arrested without a violation of law and
the cry of fire."--_Independent Democrat_, leading Republican paper in
New Hampshire.
THE UNION VS. A UNION
[J. L. Underwood.]
Early in the war a son of the Emerald Isle, but not himself green, was
taken prisoner not far from Manassas Junction. In a word, Pat was
taking a quiet nap in the shade; and was aroused from his slumber by a
Confederate scouting party. He wore no special uniform of either
army, but looked more like a spy than an alligator and on this was
arrested.
"Who are you?" "What is your name?" and "Where are you from?" were the
first questions put to him by the armed party.
Pat rubbed his eyes, scratched his head, and answered: "Be me faith,
gintlemen, them is ugly questions to answer, anyhow; and before I
answer any of them, I be after axing yo, by yer lave, the same
thing."
"Well," said the leader, "we are out of Scott's army and belong to
Washington."
"All right," said Pat. "I knowed ye was a gintleman, for I am that
same. Long life to General Scott."
"Ah ha!" replied the scout. "Now you rascal, you are our prisoner,"
and seized him by the shoulder.
"How is that," inquired Pat, "are we not friends?"
"No," was the answer; "we belong to General Beauregard's army."
"Then ye tould me a lie, me boys, and thinking it might be so, I told
you another. An' now tell me the truth, an' I'll tell you the truth
too."
"Well, we belong to the State of South Carolina."
"So do I," promptly responded Pat, "and to all the other States uv the
country, too, and there I am thinking, I hate the whole uv ye. Do ye
think I would come all the way from Ireland to belong to one State
when I have a right to belong to the whole of 'em?"
This logic was rather a stumper; but they took him up, as before said,
and carried him for further examination.
This Irishman's unionism is a fair sample of what sometimes passes in
this country as broad patriotism. "We don't believe in so much State
and State's right. We want a nation and we want it spelt with a big
N." This is the merest twaddle. From the very nature of the formation
of our government there can be no organized Nation. Alexander Hamilton
wrote, "The State governments are essentially necessary to the form
and spirit of the general system. * * * They can never lose their
powers till the whole of America are robbed of their liberties." It is
a Union of States and can be made nothing else. Bancroft, the great
historian, says: "But for Staterights the Union would perish from the
paralysis of its limbs. The States, as they gave life to the Union,
are necessary to the continuance of that life."
Madison wrote as follows: "The assent and ratification of the people,
not as individuals composing the entire nation, but as composing the
distinct and independent States to which they belong, are the sources
of the Constitution. It is therefore not a National but a Federal
compact."
The Irishman could only belong to the "whole of 'em" by belonging to
one of them. No man can love all the other States without loving his
own State. A Swiss loves Schwyz or Unterwalden or some other canton
before he loves the Confederation of Cantons. The loyal Scotchmen love
Scotland before they love the British Empire. The Union man loves the
Union through his immediate part of Union. Daniel Webster loved the
Union, but his speeches show how he loved Massachusetts first. Calhoun
loved the Union, but he loved it as a Federal Union with his beloved
Carolina. Many of the best people of the North loved their several
States and in loyalty to them took sides against the South.
The Southern people, Whigs and Democrats, were devoted to the Union of
the fathers as long as it was a reality. But as soon as they realized
that it had become only a confederation of the Northern majority
States, with the protecting features of the old Constitution directly
discarded, the love for their own States led them heart and soul into
the Confederate cause. Our Irishman might be satisfied with A Union,
but nothing but THE Union of the fathers could satisfy Southern men.
They loved the definite Union of 1789; they fought the indefinite
Union of 1861. The former was a union on a Constitution without a
flag; the latter was a mere sentimental union under a flag without a
Constitution. The Constitution had been thrown away.
The writer's father, a plain old farmer-merchant of Alabama, was a
fair specimen of the staunchest Southern Union man. A Whig all his
life, he almost adored Henry Clay and idolized the Union. The great
old Union paper, the _National Intelligencer_, of Washington City, was
his political Bible, and he made it follow his son all through school
and college. Like all other Whigs, he believed in the right of
secession, but did not think the time had come for such a step. He
opposed with all his might the secession of Alabama. But when it was
an accomplished fact, he wrote sadly to his son, who was then a
student in a foreign land:
Alabama has seceded. She has the right to do so, but I didn't want
her to exercise it. I belong to my State, and I secede with her.
And I know the other States have no right to coerce her. My son,
your old father is like a Tennessee hog, he can be tolled, but he
can't be driven.
Savoyard tells us truly that no State embraced secession with more
reluctance than North Carolina, and yet no State supported the
Southern cause with more heroism or fortitude. When the news flashed
over the wires that President Lincoln had issued a call for volunteers
to coerce the sovereign Southern States, Zebulon B. Vance was
addressing an immense audience, pleading for the Union and opposing
the Confederacy. His hand was raised aloft in appealing gesture when
the fatal tidings came, and in relating the incident to a New England
audience a quarter of a century later, he said:
When my hand came down from that impassioned gesticulation it fell
slowly and sadly by the side of a secessionist. I immediately,
with altered voice and manner, called upon the assembled multitude
to volunteer, not to fight against but for South Carolina. If war
must come, I preferred to be with my own people. If we had to shed
blood I preferred to shed Northern rather than Southern blood.
North Carolina took her favorite son at his word, turned secessionist
with him, and volunteered for the conflict.
Robert E. Lee felt in Virginia just like Zeb Vance felt in North
Carolina. The women of the South were the women of Lee and Vance and
Alex. Stephens and Judah P. Benjamin, Charles J. Jenkins and Ben
Hill. They loved the Union, but when it was gone, they, with their
States, opposed what, to them, was only a Union of invading, coercing
States.
"We were not the first to break the peace
That blessed our happy land;
We loved the quiet calm and ease,
Too well to raise a hand,
Till fierce oppression stronger grew,
And bitter were your sneers.
Then to our land we must be true,
Or show a coward's fears!
We loved our banner while it waved
An emblem of our Union.
The fiercest dangers we had braved
To guard that sweet communion.
But when it proved that 'stripes' alone
Were for our Sunny South,
And all the 'stars' in triumph shone
Above the chilly North,
Then, not till then, our voices rose
In one tumultuous wave:
'We will the tyranny oppose,
Or find a bloody grave.'"
It was Southern devotion to the Union which led so many men of
Kentucky and Tennessee into the Federal army. It was the same
traditional love for the Union of the fathers that held back Virginia
and the other border States from secession too long. It led them to
make the mistake of the crisis. The writer, like nearly all the
Southern men of his ultra Unionism, at the time thought South Carolina
made the mistake of too much haste in her secession. He does not think
so now. He has not thought so since calmly and thoroughly studying the
history of those times.
The new party in the North was in a triumphant majority and was
determined to deprive the minority States of the South of their share
in the government. Delay on the part of Southern border States did no
good. It did harm. It misled the Northern people as to the true
feeling in Virginia and the other border States. Had they all seceded
on the same day with South Carolina there would have been no war.
Now that the Northern people, through the broad, patriotic
administrations of Cleveland, McKinley and Roosevelt, have restored
the Union, and Florida is again a coequal State with New York, and
Texans once more fellow-citizens with Pennsylvanians, what section
shows more loyalty to the Union and the common country than the
South?
Our patriot mothers and grandmothers of 1860 loved the Union. Those
who yet survive, and their children, love the Union in 1905. No State
is under the ban now. The captured battle flags of Confederate States
have been restored to the States by a Republican Congress. The Federal
government volunteers to take care of Confederate soldiers' graves.
President, and Congress and Army and Navy follow General Wheeler's
coffin to an honored grave. A Republican President publicly avows his
attachment to Confederate veterans and shows his faith by his
appointments. Thank God, our Union to-day is again _the_ Union of
equal States.
THE NORTHERN STATES SECEDE FROM THE UNION
[By J. L. Underwood.]
The denial of the equal rights of the Southern States in the public
territorial domain, and the nullification by the Northern States of
the acts of Congress and the decisions of the Supreme Court on
territorial questions, and the formation and triumph of a party
pledged to hostility to the South, were not the only considerations
that convinced the Southern States that their only honorable course
lay in secession. The compact of the written Constitution was the only
Union that had existed. A breach or repudiation of that compact was a
breach of the Union. It was secession without its name.
In 1850, after a violent sectional agitation, which shook the country,
over the admission of California as a free State, a compromise
measure, proposed by Mr. Clay and advocated by Webster and Calhoun,
was adopted by Congress. It was known as the "omnibus bill." It
provided, among other things, that California should be a free State;
that the slave trade should be abolished in the District of Columbia,
and that slaves escaping from their owners, from one State into
another, could be arrested anywhere and returned to their owners.
Article four, section two of the Federal Constitution makes this
provision in the plainest of terms. It was similar to the New England
Fugitive Slave law of 1643 enacted by Massachusetts, Connecticut,
Plymouth and New Haven. Mr. Webster in his great speech in Faneuil
Hall in Boston, in defense of his vote for the "omnibus bill," read
the words of the Constitution and showed that the fugitive slave
section of the omnibus bill was almost a literal reiteration of the
constitutional provision.
The majority of the Northern States repudiated this feature of the act
of Congress and declared that it should not be enforced. Here was the
boldest nullification, the most direct breaking up of the old Union.
Here was the arch rebellion of the century. The question was not what
should be done with the fugitive slaves, but whether the Northern
States would do what, in the Constitution, they had agreed to do. The
South waited for the Northern States to revoke such a flagrant
disregard of their rights under the Constitution and such a bold
repudiation of the original terms of Union. Patriotic little Rhode
Island did rescind her action in the matter, but she was alone. Most
of the other States had become desperate in their hostility to the
South and, when the South, seeing all hope of justice, all vestige of
the old Union, all prospect of peace, hopelessly gone, resorted to
quiet, peaceable withdrawal from these domineering States, the
resolution was formed and carried out by the party in power, to
subjugate the Southern States to the will of the majority States, and
keep them in what was called the Union against their will.
The South in seceding made no threat, and contemplated no attempt to
invade a Northern State in pursuit of slaves, but simply sought to
sever all connection with the States and people who were so determined
to ignore her rights, and who nullified their own plighted terms of
union. She did not secede in the interest of slavery nor for the
purpose of war. The Southern States seceded to take care of the
fragments of a broken Union. Slavery, it is true, was the occasion of
the rupture. Peaceable secession on the one hand and coercion on the
other was the issue of the war. Emancipation was adopted as a war
measure two years later by the Northern administration and finally
consummated in 1865 as a punitive measure to further crush the
conquered South. Such was the public opinion at the time of the fall
of Fort Sumter that not a regiment could have been raised at the North
to invade Virginia if it had been distinctly called out for the
purpose of setting the negroes free. Fanatics by the thousands made a
demigod of the murderous John Brown, but it was not fanatics who were
in control at Washington. It was the politicians, not working from
humanitarian sentiment, true or false, but impelled by a determination
to cripple the South and break up her controlling influence in
national politics,--a preeminence which had existed from the first
days of the government. The politicians shrewdly employed the
anti-slavery excitement to gain power for themselves and especially to
aggravate the South into secession, and then, smothering every whisper
of war for the freedom of the negroes, they raised the rallying cry of
"Save the Union" and marshalled the Northern hosts for subjugation.
President Davis justly said to a self-constituted umpire visiting him
in Richmond, "We are not fighting for slavery; we are fighting for
independence. The war will go on unless you acknowledge our right to
self-government."
FRENZIED FINANCE AND THE WAR OF 1861
[By J. L. Underwood.]
Was the war between the States in 1861 a war in behalf of slavery on
the one side and freedom on the other? Not at all. After all the noisy
and fanatical agitation on the subject, only a small minority of the
Northern people had expressed any desire to have the negroes of the
South emancipated at that time, and no State nor people of the South
had said that slavery should be perpetual. All the parties which in
1860 cast any electoral votes distinctly disavowed any intention to
interfere with slavery where it existed. This was the declaration even
of the Republican party which was triumphant and was now in power. Mr.
Lincoln, the President-elect, repeatedly declared that slavery was not
to be disturbed in the States, although he said the country could not
remain "half slave and half free." Here, then, the North and the South
were thoroughly agreed that slavery within the States should continue
undisturbed. As to emancipation, both sections of the country and all
parties except the ultra-Abolitionists were pro-slavery. The
Abolitionists admitted that under the Federal Constitution there could
be no power in the national government to free the slaves. They cursed
and burned the Constitution as "a compact with the devil and a league
with hell," and defiantly repudiated all laws which carried out its
provisions. Under the plea of what they called "higher law," they
defied law. They were really anarchists. The Free Soil party, which
had assumed the name of Republican for party purposes, secretly
encouraged the Abolitionists in their mad crusade and welcomed their
votes, but persistently disavowed their aims. All rational men knew
that the time had not come to turn loose millions of half-civilized
Africans in this country; while many, North and South, deplored the
existence of slavery and would not advocate it in the abstract, yet
they believed that emancipation was not best for the negro and would
be accompanied by tremendous peril to the white people. The truth is
that the Abolitionists of the North kept up such a blatant and
fanatical agitation against the South that it was out of the question,
in the excitement of the times, for conservative men, North or South,
to think or speak of such an alternative as the immediate freedom of
the negroes.
The Republican party, now the dominant party, and its leader, Mr.
Lincoln, stood against the immediate freedom of the slaves. But this
party had come into power on two ground principles which made its
triumph a direct attack on the rights and interests of the Southern
States in the Territories.
It gloried in its free-soil doctrine, which was a declaration that
the Southern States should no longer enjoy their share in the
Territories of the government. It never mounted the steed of
abolitionism until 1862 when the emancipation of the slaves was
adopted as a war measure, and was so declared by Mr. Lincoln
himself. In defiance of the decisions of the Supreme Court, the
triumphant party held that Congress should not allow the Southern
people the right to take their slave property, although distinctly
recognized as property by the Constitution, into the Territories.
The Northern legislatures deliberately defied the Supreme Court and
its people denounced it and reiterated their free soil demand. Of
course this was a direct insult to the South and a public outlawry
of the South that no self-respecting people ought to submit to. The
Territories were common property to all the States. The South held
that while they were Territories the Southern people had as much
right to enter and enjoy them as the people of the North, but the
South was always willing that the people of the Territory, in
organizing a State government, should decide for themselves as a
State whether it should be admitted as a slave or free State. The
new party declared that under no circumstances should another slave
State be admitted. The territorial demands of the new party had
been endorsed by the formal acts of a majority of Northern States in
their legislatures. The catch-word of the new party was "no more
extension of slavery." The South had never brought a slave into
the country, and never did propose to add another slave to it, but
its rights in the common property of the Union it could not surrender
to the dictation of the more numerous and populous Northern States.
Then what? Declare war? No. Simply fall back on the right of original
sovereignty, on their several Constitutional rights, as the people of
New England, when they were in the minority, had threatened to do, and
withdraw from the Union with States who declared so distinctly a
purpose not to abide by the terms of Union. Then came secession, the
only peaceable remedy. In it the South made no claim on territorial or
other property. In fact, it was a voluntary surrender of everything
not on its own soil to the remaining States. It was old Abraham's
alternative to Lot. "Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me
and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen, for we be
brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray
thee, from me; If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the
right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the
left." Then why should there be war? Indeed, why?
So natural and just was the step of secession that the more
enlightened and conscientious Abolitionists conceded the right of
South Carolina to withdraw from the Union. Horace Greeley, the
powerful editor of the great Abolition organ, the New York _Tribune_,
boldly protested against any interference with her departure. Wendell
Phillips, the great lawyer and Abolition orator of Boston, said in a
public speech: "Deck her brow with flowers, pave her way with gold,
and let her go." But Greeley and Phillips were not the politicians nor
the party in control of the country. We have shown how the Free Soil
aim of the triumphant party led the Northern States to adopt such a
course as really to drive the Southern States into secession. What was
the main spring of the Free Soil crusade? This brings us to tell in
one word what brought on the war. What was the ground issue which held
the Northern States so desperately on their crusade against the South?
It was the "tariff." New England ideas dominated the thought of the
North and Northwest, and it was always a ruling New England idea to
get all money possible from the government. New England never lost
sight of business, and especially her own business interests. It was
only by Virginia's surrender of her vast territories that New England
could be brought into the Union and it took subsidies, appropriations
for internal improvement, and fishing and tariff bounties to keep her
in it.
Very soon she set up a persistent demand for high duties on imports to
assist in building up her increasing manufactures. The moderate
protective tariffs of the twenties, the tariff of Henry Clay, did not
satisfy her. Her cry up to the final passage of the trust-breeding
Dingley tariff bill of our day has been that of the horse leech,
"Give! give!" The Southern States were agricultural and the prevailing
doctrine as to tariff duties was a "tariff for revenue only." The old
Southern Whigs, like Clay, only favored a moderate protective tariff
as a compromise sop to New England in behalf of her infant industries.
But New England was not satisfied with the tariff of the twenties. A
little taste of incidental protection had only increased her greed. In
the thirties she demanded more. The tariff of 1832 was enacted and
proved such a heavy tax on the consumers for the benefit of the
manufacturers that South Carolina took the bold stand of nullification
against it. By the combined efforts of Clay and Calhoun a compromise
was effected and the tariff modified and the country saved. In 1846
the moderate Walker tariff, the "free-trade tariff," was adopted and
under it the people of all classes and all sections enjoyed more
general prosperity up to 1861 than the country has ever before or
since seen.
But New England "frenzied finance" was at work. The taste for public
pap had grown by what it fed on. The "almighty dollar" idea in
politics was sweeping the North. The _auri sacra fames_ had formed a
league with a fanatical sectional party. The seed sowing was over; the
harvest of financial politics had come. New England must have a higher
tariff and votes from agricultural States meant more anti-tariff votes
and the tariff advocates decreed that there should be no slave States
carved out of the Territories. To secure this the Southern people with
their property must be excluded from the occupancy of the Territorial
soil. Frenzied finance triumphed, and in the election of Mr. Lincoln
the North declared the national territory forbidden ground to the
South. Free soil exclusion from their property was openly flaunted in
the face of the slave States.
What could the Southern States do under such an insulting ultimatum
from the triumphant North? What did they do? Why, they simply fell
back on their original right of State sovereignty and, as the North
had already broken the Union, peaceably seceded from it.
Then why not, as Greeley and Phillips and thousands of Northern
patriots urged, why not let these States go? Frenzied Finance replied
in the words of Mr. Lincoln, "If we let the South go, where will we
get our revenues?" There it is. They were needed to furnish their
cotton and their trade to support the North. It was the frenzied
Pharoah of finance that refused to let tribute-paying, brick-making
Israel go. Hence the war of subjugation.
It is a grotesque and sad bit of history that while patriots like
Crittenden, of Kentucky, Bayard, of Delaware, Black, of Pennsylvania
and Seymour, of New York, were anxiously trying to avert war and save
the old Union, while the whole world was watching with bated breath
the storm gathering around Fort Sumter, the party of frenzied finance,
now in control of Congress, defiantly discarded all propositions of
peace compromise and concentrated all its mighty energies on the
passage of its darling Morrill Tariff Bill. The Morrill tariff bill
was enacted April 2, 1861. Fort Sumter fell April 14, 1861. There is
the record of cold-blood-money worship. It was not Nero "fiddling
while Rome was burning" but it was the legislators of the great
American Republic fiddling on a scheme for the financial gain of
private business while the glorious Union that we loved and our
fathers loved was falling to pieces! The laborer's groans, the widow's
sobs, the roar of cannon and the crash of States could not drown the
mad New England cry for private subsidy from the public treasury.
THE RIGHT OF SECESSION
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 31, pages 87-88.]
It may not be amiss, however, to call attention to the fact that the
North already admits that the people of the South were honest in
their contentions, and that they at least thought they were right.
Furthermore, it is even conceded that the South was not without great
support for its contentions from legal, moral and historical points of
view. For instance, Professor Goldwin, of Canada, an Englishman, a
distinguished historian, resident of and sympathizing with the North
during the civil war, recently said:
Few who have looked into the history can doubt that the Union
originally was, and was generally taken by the parties to it to
be, a compact; dissoluble, perhaps most of them would have said,
at pleasure, dissoluble certainly on breach of the articles of
Union.
To the same effect, but in even stronger terms, are the words of Mr.
Henry Cabot Lodge, now a Senator from Massachusetts, who said in one
of his historic works:
When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of States at
Philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of States in popular
conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the
country from Washington and Hamilton on the one side to George
Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded the new system
as anything but an experiment entered upon by the States and from
which each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw, a
right which was very likely to be exercised.
As far back as 1887, General Thomas C. Ewing, of Ohio, said in a
speech in New York:
The North craves a living and lasting peace with the South; it
also asks no humiliating conditions; it recognizes the fact that
the proximate cause of the war was the constitutional question of
the right of secession--a question which, until it was settled by
the war, had neither a right side nor a wrong side to it. Our
forefathers in framing the Constitution purposely left the
question unsettled; to have settled it distinctly in the
Constitution would have been to prevent the formation of the Union
of the thirteen States. They, therefore, committed that question
to the future, and the war came on and settled it forever. And,
right here, let me say that the South has accepted that settlement
in good faith, and will forever abide by it as loyally as the
North, although we will never admit that our people were wrong in
making the contest.
This question was calmly and logically discussed by Mr. Charles
Francis Adams in a late speech delivered in Charleston, S. C., when he
said:
When the Federal Constitution was framed and adopted, "an
indestructible union of imperishable States," what was the law of
treason, to what or to whom in case of final issue did the average
citizen own allegiance? Was it to the Union or to his State? As a
practical question, seeing things as they were then--sweeping
aside all incontrovertible legal arguments and metaphysical
disquisitions--I do not think the answer admits of doubt. If put
in 1788, or indeed at any time anterior to 1825, the immediate
reply of nine men out of ten in the Northern States, and
ninety-nine out of a hundred in the Southern States, would have
been that, as between the Union and the State, ultimate allegiance
was due to the State.
THE CAUSE NOT LOST
[From Memorial Day, pages 30-31.]
A few weeks ago Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, president of Brown
University, a leading institution of learning in a New England State,
in a lecture delivered in the city of New Orleans upon the life and
character of the General of the Confederate armies, uttered this
language:
People are prone to allude to all Lee fought for as the "Lost
Cause." Yet, like Oliver Cromwell, Lee has accomplished what he
fought for, and more than could have been accomplished had he been
victorious. At the close of the war we find the Supreme Court of
the United States deciding the status of individual States, and
the result is found to be that while the Union is declared to be
indestructible, each State is regarded as an indestructible unit
of that nation. Who would dare to wipe out to-day a State's
individuality? And do we not find to-day, instead of centralized
power in Congress adjudicating things pertaining to the States,
the States themselves settling these matters?
Inasmuch as the war brought out these utterances with regard to
the States of the Union upon matters then in question, who can say
that Lee fought in vain?
SLAVERY AS THE SOUTH SAW IT
[Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, in War Between the States, page
539.]
The matter of slavery, so called, which was the proximate cause of
these irregular movements on both sides, and which ended in the
general collision of war, was of infinitely less importance to the
seceding States than the recognition of the great principles of
constitutional liberty. There was with us no such thing as slavery in
the true and proper sense of that word. No people ever lived more
devoted to the principles of liberty, secured by free democratic
institutions, than were the people of the South. None had ever given
stronger proofs of this than they had done. What was called slavery
amongst us was but a legal subordination of the African to the
Caucasian race. This relation was so regulated by law as to promote,
according to the intent and design of the system, the best interests
of both races, the black as well as the white, the inferior as well as
the superior. Both had rights secured and both had duties imposed. It
was a system of reciprocal service and mutual bonds. But even the two
thousand million dollars invested in the relations thus established
between private capital and the labor of this class of population
under system, was but the dust in the balance compared with the vital
attributes of the rights of independence and sovereignty on the part
of the several States.
VINDICATION OF SOUTHERN CAUSE
[In Southern Historical Papers, pages 332-336.]
Mr. Percy Greg, the justly famous English historian, says: "If the
Colonies were entitled to judge their own cause, much more were the
Southern States. Their rights--not implied, assumed, or traditional,
like those of the Colonies, but expressly defined and solemnly
guaranteed by law--had been flagrantly violated; the compact which
alone bound them, had beyond question been systematically broken for
more than forty years by the States which appealed to it."
After showing the perfect regularity and legality of the secession
movement, he then says: "It was in defence of this that the people of
the South sprang to arms 'to defend their homes and families, their
property and their rights, the honor and independence of their States
to the last, against five fold numbers and resources a hundred fold
greater than theirs.'"
He says of the cause of the North: "The cause seems to me as bad as it
well could be--the determination of a mere numerical majority to
enforce a bond, which they themselves had flagrantly violated, to
impose their own mere arbitrary will, their idea of national
greatness, upon a distinct, independent, determined, and almost
unanimous people."
And then he says as Lord Russell did: "The North fought for empire
which was not and never had been hers; the South for an independence
she had won by the sword, and had enjoyed in law and fact ever since
the recognition of the thirteen sovereign and independent States, if
not since the foundation of Virginia. Slavery was but the occasion of
the rupture, in no sense the object of the war."
Let me add a statement which will be confirmed by every veteran before
me--no man ever saw a Virginia soldier who was fighting for slavery.
This letter then speaks of the conduct of the Northern people as
"unjust, aggressive, contemptuous of law and right," and as presenting
a striking contrast to the "boundless devotion, uncalculating
sacrifice, magnificent heroism, and unrivalled endurance of the
Southern people."
But I must pass on to what a distinguished Northern writer has to say
of the people of the South, and their cause, twenty-one years after
the close of the war. The writer is Benjamin J. Williams, Esq., of
Lowell, Mass., and the occasion which brought forth this paper
(addressed to the Lowell _Sun_) was the demonstration to President
Davis when he went to assist in the dedication of a Confederate
monument at Montgomery, Ala. He says of Mr. Davis:
"Everywhere he receives from the people the most overwhelming
manifestations of heartfelt affection, devotion, and reverence,
exceeding even any of which he was the recipient in the time of its
power; such manifestations as no existing ruler in the world can
obtain from his people, and such as probably were never given before
to a public man, old, out of office, with no favors to dispense, and
disfranchised. Such homage is significant; it is startling. It is
given, as Mr. Davis himself has recognized, not to him alone, but to
the cause whose chief representative he is, and it is useless to
attempt to deny, disguise, or evade the conclusion that there must be
something great and noble and true in him and in the cause to evoke
this homage."
Mr. Davis, in his speech on the occasion referred to, alluded to the
fact that the monument then being erected was to commemorate the deeds
of those "who gave their lives a free-will offering in defence of the
rights of their sires, won in the war of the Revolution, the State
sovereignty, freedom and independence which were left to us as an
inheritance to their posterity forever."
Mr. Williams says of this definition: "These masterful words, 'the
rights of their sires, won in the war of the Revolution, the State
sovereignty, freedom and independence which were left to us an
inheritance to their posterity forever,' are the whole case, and they
are not only a statement but a complete justification of the
Confederate cause to all who are acquainted with the origin and
character of the American Union."
He then proceeds to tell how the Constitution was adopted and the
government formed by the individual States, each acting for itself,
separately and independently of the others, and then says:
"It appears, then, from this view of the origin and character of
the American Union, that when the Southern States, deeming the
constitutional compact broken, and their own safety and happiness in
imminent danger in the Union, withdrew therefrom and organized their
new Confederacy, they but asserted, in the language of Mr. Davis, the
rights of their sires, won in the war of the Revolution, the State
sovereignty, freedom, and independence, which were left to us as an
inheritance to their posterity forever,' and it was in defence of this
high and sacred cause that the Confederate soldiers sacrificed their
lives. There was no need of war. The action of the Southern States was
legal and constitutional, and history will attest that it was
reluctantly taken in the extremity."
He now goes on to show how Mr. Lincoln precipitated the war, and
describes the unequal struggle in which the South was engaged in these
words: "After a glorious four years' struggle against such odds as
have been depicted, during which independence was often almost
secured, where successive levies of armies, amounting in all to nearly
three millions of men, had been hurled against her, the South, shut
off from all the world, wasted, rent, and desolate, bruised and
bleeding, was at last overpowered by main strength; out-fought, never;
for from first to last, she everywhere out-fought the foe. The
Confederacy fell, but she fell not until she had achieved immortal
fame. Few great established nations in all time have ever exhibited
capacity and direction in government equal to hers, sustained as she
was by the iron will and fixed persistence of the extraordinary man
who was her chief; and few have ever won such a series of brilliant
victories as that which illuminates forever the annals of her splendid
armies, while the fortitude and patience of her people, and
particularly of her noble women, under almost incredible trials and
sufferings, have never been surpassed in the history of the world."
And then he adds: "Such exalted character and achievement are not all
in vain. Though the Confederacy fell, as an actual physical power, she
lives, illustrated by them, eternally in her just cause--the cause of
constitutional liberty."
NORTHERN VIEW OF SECESSION
[Charles L. C. Minor's Real Lincoln.]
W. H. Russell, the famous correspondent of the _London Times_, in
his diary (page 13) quotes Bancroft, the historian, afterwards
Minister to England, for the opinion, in 1860, that the United
States had no authority to coerce the people of the South; and
Russell reports the same opinion prevailing in March, 1861, in New
York and in Washington.
The life of Charles Francis Adams, Lincoln's Minister to England, says
that up to the very day of the firing on the flag the attitude of the
Northern States, even in case of hostilities, was open to grave
question, while that of the border States did not admit of a doubt;
that Mr. Seward, the member of the President's Cabinet, repudiated not
only the right but the wish even to use armed force in subjugating the
Southern States.
Morse's Lincoln (Volume I, page 131) makes the following remarkable
statement: "Greeley and Seward and Wendell Phillips, representative
men, were little better than secessionists. The statement sounds
ridiculous, yet the proof against each one comes from his own mouth.
The _Tribune_ had retracted none of these disunion sentiments of which
examples have been given."
Even so late as April 10, 1861, Seward wrote officially to Charles
Francis Adams, Minister to England:
"Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly
disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State."
On April 9th, the rumor of a fight at Sumter being spread abroad,
Wendell Phillips said:
"Here are a series of States girding the gulf who think that their
peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate
government; they have a right to decide the question without appealing
to you and to me. * * * Standing with the principles of '76 behind us,
who can deny them that right?"
Woodrow Wilson's Division and Reunion says (page 214) that President
Buchanan agreed with the Attorney General (Hon. Jere Black, of
Pennsylvania) that there was no constitutional means for coercing a
State (as his last message shows beyond a doubt) and adds that such
for the time seemed to be the general opinion of the country.
MAJOR J. SCHEIBERT (OF THE PRUSSIAN ARMY) ON CONFEDERATE HISTORY
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 18, pages 425-428.]
_Tariff_
Besides the differences of race and religion, nature itself, through
the varied geographical position of the States, had created relations
of varied character that not only must conflict ensue, but the least
law affecting the whole Union often aroused diametrically and sharply
opposed interests; the consequences of which were to embitter
sectional opinions to an intolerable degree.
When the North demanded tariff protection for their industries as
against European competition, the Southern States insisted upon free
trade, so as not to be compelled to buy costly products of the North.
The New England States strove for concentration of power in the
national government; the Southerners believed that the independence of
the individual States must be maintained, and when the Southerners
demanded protection for their labor, which was performed by imported
negroes, the North answered with evasion of the laws, while, in direct
opposition to these laws, it denied to the master the right to his
escaped negroes. From any point of view, there existed, and exist
to-day, interests almost irreconcilably opposed, which make it
difficult for the most earnest student of American affairs to find a
clew in such a tangled labyrinth. The difficulty in the present
undertaking is to make good the fact that the so-called Confederates,
who have been by almost all the German writers represented as
"Rebels," stood firm upon a ground of right of law.
If the central government at Washington was the sovereign power, then
the (Southern) States were in the wrong, and their citizens were
simply rebels. If, on the other hand, the individual States were
separate and sovereign political bodies, then their secession,
independent of consideration of expediency or selfishness, was a
politically justifiable withdrawal from a previous limited alliance;
and in this case it was the duty of citizens of the States to go with
their States. As a proper consequence of these different views, the
Federals considered as a traitor every citizen who opposed the central
government, however his individual State may have determined; while
the Confederates, after the declaration of war on the part of the
Union, looked on the Federalists indeed as enemies, but considered as
traitors only those citizens who, in opposition to the vote of their
States, yet adhered to the Union. * * * * Instead of inquiring into
emotion and sympathies, the question is an historical one as to the
origin of the Union; that is, to seek in the founding of the United
States in what relation,--at that time, the States stood to the
central government, the mode of their covenant, and how the relation
of the several States to the common union was developed. The colonies,
therefore, united not because the citizens in general were oppressed
by the British Government, but because one colony felt, whether
rightly or not, that it was oppressed and insulted as an independent
political body. In the first movement of independence was exhibited
clearly the consciousness that the colonies felt themselves separate
political bodies. Even at that time the assembly of delegates
designated itself "as a congress of twelve independent political
bodies," and in the Union each of the colonies issued its separate
declaration. When the delegates of the thirteen colonies met in their
first Congress the first permanent Union was founded; which was
ratified by each colony as a separate body, as one by one they entered
the Union.
_Slavery_
With the question as to the origin of the war, the enemies of the
South have mingled another--the slavery question--which strictly
does not belong to it. This slavery question was inscribed on the
banners of the war when it was seen that thereby could be enlisted
on the side of the North the sympathies of the old world, and of a
great part of their own inhabitants, especially of the German
immigrants. This question could never legally be the cause of the
war, for the Constitution expressly says that the question of
slavery should be regulated by the State legislatures. * * * * At the
time of the founding of the Union, eleven of the thirteen States
were slave-holding, and it is a remarkable fact that it then
occurred to no writer nor humanitarian in America or Europe even to
think that this ownership (of slaves) was a wrong or a crime. It
is enough to say that the institution was accepted not only as a
matter of course, but that it was also especially protected, the
farming interest being granted an increased suffrage in proportion
to the number of negroes on their plantations. * * * * * Even in
the last days, before the outbreak of war, when the press and
demagogues raised the slavery question in order to inflame the
masses, the statesman (of the North) carefully avoided such a
blunder, since the slavery question was not the ground of the war, and
could not be proclaimed as such.