_The Political History of Slavery in the United States._ By James Z.
George, formerly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi and
later United States Senator from that State. The Neale Publishing Company,
New York, 1915. Pp. xix, 342.
This is a discussion as well as the history of slavery and Reconstruction
from the time of the introduction of the slaves in 1619 to the break-up of
the carpet-bagger governments. "Considering the jealousies and even
animosities that are becoming more and more intensified between the North
and South, as well as the disposition that is ever increasing in the
stronger section to dominate the weaker," the author believes that "it is
becoming necessary to think over calmly and seriously the causes that have
produced these evils, and to ascertain, if we can, the remedy, if remedy
there be."
The work begins with a sketch of ancient slavery, showing that the
introduction of the institution into the Southern States was not
exceptional. He then gives an account of slavery in the colonies, and the
efforts to suppress the slave trade. The connection of slavery with the War
of 1812 and with the Hartford Convention is noted. He then takes up the
Missouri Compromise with some detail, giving almost verbatim the
proceedings of Congress relative thereto. In the same way he treats the
"Repudiation of the Missouri Compromise," the Annexation of Texas, the
Wilmot Proviso, the Kansas--Nebraska Affair, the Lincoln and Douglas
Debates, John Brown's Invasion, Secession, the Civil War, and
Reconstruction.
Throughout this treatise, he carefully notes the "jealousy of sectional
interest and power and the determination to maintain this power even at a
cost of a dissolution of the Union," In other words, the whole sectional
struggle grew out of what he calls the effort to maintain the balance of
power between two sections of the Union, with the slavery question
contributing thereto. Facts set forth bring out very clearly that the South
is not to be censured as being especially hostile to the Negro when on the
statute books of the North there are found numerous laws to show that
persons of color were not considered desirables in those States.
He raises the question as to whether the South violated the Missouri
Compromise and considers it a revolution that public functionaries
disregarded the rights of the owners of slave property when the highest
tribunal, the Supreme Court, had sanctioned these rights. The act of
secession is palliated too on the ground that the South had developed under
the influence of that peculiar political philosophy which produced there a
race that could never sanction passive obedience. In seceding the South was
not attempting to overturn the government of the United States. It was not
contemplated to interfere with the States adhering to the Union. They
sought merely to "withdraw themselves from subjection to a government which
they were convinced intended to overthrow their institutions."
The Civil War came in spite of the fact that the Convention that framed the
Constitution negatived the proposition to confer on the Federal Government
the authority to exert the force of the Union against a delinquent State.
It was, therefore, a mere act of coercing a section preparing for
self-defense. Reconstruction is treated very much in the same way. The laws
under which it was effected were unjust, the men who executed them were
harsh, and the weaker section had to pay the price.
The book cannot be classed as scientific work. The topics discussed are not
proportionately treated, the style is rendered dull by the incorporation of
undigested material, and the emphasis is placed on the political and legal
phases of history at the expense of the social and economic. In it we find
very little that is new. It merely presents the well-known political theory
of the Old South. The chief value of the work consists in its being an
expression of the opinion of a distinguished man who participated in many
of the events narrated.