part which Great Britain played in dissension, disunion, and war
between the States, the sections, and the political parties. Her
purpose has been accomplished. She has annihilated our foreign
ocean-carrying trade--once threatening her own supremacy--and has
thereby made us a third-rate naval power, for seamen, rather than
ships, make a navy.
"Will your people divide?" General Clingman was frequently asked
while in England in 1860. Never once was he asked if slavery would
be abolished. The form of the question, in a land where abolition
took its rise, struck him forcibly. Hear its explanation: "In this
connection I remember a statement made to me by the late American
Minister at Paris, Mr. Mason. He spoke of having had a conversation
with one whose name I do not feel at liberty to mention, but whose
influence on the opinion of continental Europe is considerable,
who declared to him that if the Union of our States continued at
no distant day we should control the world; and, therefore, as an
European, he felt it to be his duty to press anti-slavery views as
the only chance to divide us. I have many reasons to know that the
monarchies of Europe, threatened with downfall from revolutionary
movements, seek, through such channels as they control, to make
similar impressions."--_Speeches and Writings of T. L. Clingman_,
pp. 482, 483: extract from speech in United States Senate, delivered
January 16, 1860.
To prove that democracy is a failure is among the chief aims of
European monarchs.
Lloyd Garrison seems to have been a sincere fanatic, but all the
better may have served British policy. Listen to a group of facts
about him, appearing at random in a friendly encyclopedia: "In 1833"
[the year the stars fell] "he visited Great Britain, and on his
return organized 'The American Anti-slavery Society.' He visited
England again in 1846, 1848, and 1867, in which last year he was
publicly breakfasted in St. James' Hall."
An extract from the _London Telegraph_ of 1856 contains food
for thought: "The aggressive spirit of the people of the United
States requires an humbling, and it is for us to perform the task.
England's mission is to complete the great work commenced by her
in 1834, when she liberated her slaves. There are now over three
million human beings in cruel bondage in the United States. If,
therefore, the United States Government deny, and is resolved
to question the right of Great Britain to her Central American
possessions, we, the people of the British empire, are resolved to
strike off the shackles from the feet of her three million slaves."
The _London News_, also of about the same time, encouraging its
people against the possibility of rupture between England and this
country, said: "However strong is the unprincipled appeal at present
made to the anti-British feeling of the Northern States, that
feeling is counterbalanced by another which has grown up within the
last quarter of a century. _The abolitionists would be with us to a
man. The best of them are so now._"
In 1798 the federalistic school of tax-gatherers, under the guidance
of their founders, Rufus King and Hamilton, once actually lifted
their eyes from the plunder of their own countrymen long enough to
adopt an aggressive foreign policy, but it was a conspiracy with
England, called the "Mirandy Plot," by which they sought to despoil
our late allies in our war for independence, the French people, of
their territory beyond the Mississippi, the honest and honorable
purchase of which by Jefferson, a few years later, this school
denounced as unconstitutional and void.
Better than any American statesman, General Clingman seems to have
understood the motives and interests of Great Britain in fomenting
the slavery agitation and the estrangement of the sections. Hear
him, in his address to the people of the Eighth Congressional
District of North Carolina, March 16, 1856: "The United States
is the great republic of the earth, and the example of our free
institutions was shaking the foundations of the monarchical and
aristocratic governments of Europe. This was especially the case
as respects the political system of Great Britain, owing to our
common language, literature, and extended commercial intercourse.
The aristocracy there hold the mass of the people in subjection, and
under a condition so oppressive that large numbers of white men of
their own race are liable to perish miserably by famine in years of
scarcity. A knowledge of the successful working of our institutions
was increasing the discontent of the common people, and, fearing
the loss of its sway, the aristocracy, which controls the entire
power of the government, began a crusade for the abolition of
slavery in the United States. They expected, in the first place, by
affected sympathy for the negroes here, to divert the minds of the
people at home, to some extent, from the consideration of their own
sufferings, and to create the impression that other laborers were
much worse off than their own. And should they succeed in breaking
up our system they would exultingly point to it as an evidence
against the durability of free institutions.
"With a view, therefore, to effect these objects, more than twenty
years ago the British press, and book-makers generally were
stimulated to embark in a systematic war against negro slavery in
the United States. Abolition lecturers were sent over and money
furnished to establish papers and circulate pamphlets to inflame
the minds of the citizens of the Northern States.
"Looking far ahead, they sought to incorporate their doctrines into
the school-books and publications best calculated to influence the
minds of the young and ignorant. Their views were most readily
received in Massachusetts, where British influence has, for the last
half century, been greatest. From this State these doctrines were
gradually diffused to a great extent throughout the North."
At the time that the British politicians were taking so much
interest in the slavery question of America, and deprecating with
many crocodile tears our treatment of the negroes they had sold
us, the _Edinburgh Review_ of January, 1856, charges the British
Government with collecting rents and taxes from its subjects in
India by means of the thumb-screw and other tortures as devilish
as ingenuity could devise. See _Speeches and Writings of T. L.
Clingman_.
According to some New England testimony, the work of the British
emissaries who had been sent out to divide the Union was uphill
at first. Hear the words of Representative Isaac Hill, from New
Hampshire, speaking in Congress in 1836: "I have said the people of
the North were more united in their opposition to the plans of the
advocates of anti-slavery than on any other subject. This opposition
is confined to no political party. It pervades every class of
the community. They deprecate all interference with the subject
of slavery because they believe such interference may involve
the existence and welfare of the Union itself, and because they
understand the obligations which the non-slaveholding States owe to
the slaveholding States by the compact of confederation. It is the
strong desire to perpetuate the Union; it is the determination which
every patriotic and virtuous citizen has made in no event to abandon
the 'ark of our safety' that now impels the united North to take
its stand against the agitators of the anti-slavery project. So
effectually has the strong public sentiment put down that agitation
in New England that it is now kept alive only by the power of money
which the agitators have collected and apply in the hiring of agents
and in the issue from presses that are kept in their employ.
"The anti-slavery movement which brings in petitions from various
parts of the country, asking Congress to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia, originates with a few persons who have been in
the habit of making charitable religious institutions subservient
to political purposes, and who have even controlled some of those
charitable associations.
"Many of the clergymen who have been the instruments of the
agitators have been such from no bad motive. Some of them,
discovering the purpose of the agitators, discovering that their
labors were calculated to make the condition of the slave worse,
and to create animosity between the people of the North and the
South, have paused in their course and desisted from the further
application of a mistaken philanthropy."
Even if it be admitted that, as early as the year 1836, the
strongest elements in New England were united against the South,
it is by no means true that they were then unanimous in selecting
slavery as the most advantageous ground of battle. A cry of distress
arose from Great Britain at the way some of the distributors of
her secret service money were being treated; a paragraph from an
English newspaper, the _Leeds Mercury_, read on the floor of the
House of Representatives by Mr. King, of Georgia, in corroboration
of what Mr. Hill had said, will serve as an illustration: "Letters
of the most distressing nature have been received from Mr. George
Thompson, the zealous and devoted missionary of slave emancipation,
who has gone from this country to the United States, and who writes
from Boston. He says that 'the North (that is, New England, where
slavery does not exist) has universally sympathized with the South
in opposition to the abolitionists; that the North has let fall the
mask; that the merchants and mechanics, priests and politicians
have alike stood forth the defenders of Southern despots and the
furious denouncers of Northern philanthropy'; that all parties of
politics, especially the supporters of the two rival candidates for
the Presidential office (Van Buren and Webster) vie with each other
in denouncing the abolitionists; and that even religious men shun
them, except when the abolitionists can fairly gain a hearing from
them. With regard to himself he speaks as follows: 'Rewards are
offered for my abduction and assassination; and, in every direction,
I meet with those who believe they would be doing God and their
country service by depriving me of life. I have appeared in public,
and some of my escapes from the hands of my foes have been truly
providential. On Friday last I narrowly escaped losing my life in
Concord, New Hampshire.' 'Boston, September 11.--This morning a
short gallows was found standing opposite the door of my house, 23
Bay street, in this city, now occupied by Garrison. Two halters hung
from the beam, with the words above them: By Order of Judge Lynch!'"
Responding to this, the New Hampshire Representative (Hill) said:
"The present agitation in the North is kept up by the application of
money; it is a state of things altogether forced. Agents are hired,
disguised in the character of ministers of the gospel, to preach
abolition of slavery where slavery does not exist; and presses
are kept in constant employment to scatter abolition publications
through the country."
Yes, and this constant "application" of money finally overcame the
Yankee. The love of it has been the root of much evil with him.
Then, too, eventually, his politicians and manufacturers found that
the best use they could make of the negro was to hold him betwixt
them and the fire of Southern indignation, kindled by their cupidity.
To show the dangerous reciprocity of feeling between old and New
England long before it was intensified as it now is by the community
of interest in untold millions of investments, the words uttered
by John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States,
fall with the weight of state's evidence: "That their object (_i.
e._ that of the New England States) was, and had been for several
years, a dissolution of the Union and the establishment of a
separate confederation, he knew from unequivocal evidence, although
not provable in a court of law; and that in case of a civil war
the aid of Great Britain to effect that purpose would as assuredly
be resorted to as it would be indispensably necessary to their
design."--_Adams' letter in reply to Harrison Gray Otis and others_,
December 28, 1828, quoted by Raphael Semmes in his _Memoirs of
Service Afloat_, p. 43. This attachment to British interests was so
pronounced in 1812 that the New England States refused to furnish
their quota of troops to help conduct our defense; and, while the
nation was locked in deadly conflict with the ruthless invader,
these States actually held a convention at Hartford looking to
secession. The Governor of Massachusetts proclaimed a public fast
day for deploring a war against a nation which had long been "the
bulwark of the religion we profess"; its Supreme Court decided
that neither the President nor Congress could control its State
troops in time of war, and the Legislature declared the war to be
unholy, and urged its people to do what they could to thwart it.
These States forced a treaty of peace in which Great Britain was
not even required to cease the outrages on account of which the
war was undertaken--outrages which might have been begun again but
for Jackson's victory with the Southern soldiers at New Orleans.
Jefferson, in a letter to Lafayette, says: "During that war four
of the Eastern States were only attached to the Union like so many
inanimate bodies to living men."
That will be the saddest chapter of American history which
faithfully compares the treasonable obstruction of these States to
this war with their Cain-like swiftness to shed their brothers'
blood because of an alleged difference of opinion on a question
of constitutional law. It will be remembered, in this connection,
that these States had their troops mobilized and waiting for the
President's call before Fort Sumter was fired on. In four days after
the call the troops of Massachusetts (the most protected State save
one) had invaded the State of Maryland and were shooting down the
astonished and outraged citizens of Baltimore.
The next saddest chapter of our national history will show that
the section which has been greediest to gain power from the States
and revenues from the people has been the readiest to use these
powers and revenues against those from whom they were stolen, and
the most reluctant to use them to defend the nation against foreign
aggressions. "It is a principle of human nature," remarks Tacitus,
"to hate those we have injured more than those who have injured us."
And who, now, but the beneficiaries of implied powers (which they
fought a civil war to preserve and maintain in all their latitude),
under real or affected dread of a foreign war, are zealous for
the late proposed bondholders' treaty with England? As though
that nation could afford to kill or even injure the goose which
lays the golden egg in the shape of four hundred million dollars
annual interest on British investments in this country! The sole
purpose of this treaty is that this egg shall be _golden_ and not
_bimetallic_; and instead of preventing, it may be the cause of war,
as soon as the people resume control of their government and feel
the effects of an arbitration judgment on the financial question.
I pause to remark, in this connection, that many well-meaning
people who petitioned the Senate for the confirmation of this treaty
had not read it with sufficient care to observe that it delegated
to a commission, composed partly of foreigners and to a majority
of the Senate, powers which have heretofore been only exercised
by two-thirds of the Senate, as the Constitution provides. And
this apparently slight though subtle change in the conduct of our
government was sought to be inaugurated in the name of peace!
What a Southern statesman exclaimed, arguing against the adoption of
the Federal Constitution, in 1787, may be appositely repeated here:
"But the character of the partners (meaning the Northern States)
causes me more alarm than the terms of the partnership." England's
partnership with Australia, South Africa, and India has spread such
a pall of universal indebtedness over the fairest portions of the
globe that we may well hesitate before we make more permanent the
stipulations in the "bond" of her blighting friendship.
Undoubtedly the seeds of the War of 1812 were sown by the treaty
of 1794, negotiated by John Jay, who took "a mild and conciliatory
part in the Revolutionary war," and by Lord Grenville, the son of
the author of the Stamp Act. The "Jay treaty," as it was called,
provided for the shameful curtailment of the American ocean-carrying
trade, and for the free navigation of the Mississippi for Great
Britain. And if the proposed arbitration treaty is not finally
rejected by the Senate, the prominence given to the present British
Minister at McKinley's inauguration, accidental though it may have
been, will serve as a fine prototype of British influence in the
administration of our government.
"Woe to the nation that trusts England's friendship," exclaimed the
thoughtful Pettigrew, after studying her national character on the
narrow island where it grew. What he says, given under the sketch
of him in this book, is a valuable side-light upon the suggestion
that her influence more than any other (except original sin)
has changed the half of our nation nearest to her into a race of
"dollar-hunters and breeders of dollar-hunters." The way to make
England our ally is to show her that we are able to take care of
ourselves. Her government fears nothing so much as the democratic
spirit of America, and would fain bind that down by treaty; but
when it serves her purposes, Old England, like New England, finds
a "higher law" than a contract. Unity of interest and of purpose
unites peoples--compacts often unite governments in a conspiracy to
plunder.
In dwelling specially upon the main cause of our civil war, because
of attempts to ignore it, I do not mean to encourage the student
to neglect the other causes: the control by the Confederacy of the
lower Mississippi--the ocean outlet of its headwater States; the
fear of protected labor that the slaves would learn to manufacture,
and reduce wages; the jealousy and friction in the newly-settled
West, caused by the actual contact of the two systems of labor
(for slavery was a practical and serious question there); the
belief that slavery was at the bottom of the forty-four years of
sectional political wrangling, and that this must cease or the
Union be dissolved; the honest and the prejudiced opposition to the
institution itself; the zeal and ambition of machine politicians, in
both sections, anxious to get in "on the ground floor" of personal
advantage--these together, acted on by the main cause, and reacting
on each other, constitute the causes of the war.
And it must not be forgotten, too, that Calhoun, for the South,
accepted the slavery issue as the gage of battle, though he knew
for what purpose it was manufactured. Unity of the South against
Northern aggression was what he was fighting for; and, having
failed to present a solid front against the tariff because Clay's
ambition and Louisiana's influence disintegrated his forces in the
Southwest, he was the more easily betrayed into adopting a temporary
expedient--the policy of shifting the issue from its high ground.
In this way, too, he got "hay and stubble" in his foundation, and
gave the enemies of civil liberty among the whites a chance to pose
as the friends of civil liberty among the blacks.
* * * * *
Standing among the statutes at large, with but a page between,
is the proclamation of Thomas Jefferson, thundering against the
aggressions of Great Britain, and the proclamation of John Adams,
breathing out threatenings and slaughter against his own countrymen
for resisting the plunder of an unjust revenue tax. These two
proclamations, looming up in the horizon of American history
like the Mountains of Blessing and Cursing, are the embodiment
of the two spirits which are contending for the mastery of this
nation--the one the source of our independence gained by a foreign
war and the territory on this side of the Mississippi, and of our
independence maintained by a foreign war and the territory beyond
the Mississippi--the other the source of our national debt in
its monstrous cumulation, of Federal extravagance, of sectional
expenditures of public funds, of class legislation for protected
industries, of unequal taxes, and of a frightful civil war,
unlawfully begun to collect them.
"To do justice" is the only way to "insure domestic tranquillity."
A government is "strong" only when its foundations are laid deep in
the affections and best interests of the people who support it and
for whose benefit it was created. God's government is strong and
will last forever because it is based upon the eternal principle of
mutual affinity.
* * * * *
Through the long mystery of prehistoric ages the spirit of God's
love brooded over the desolation of a void and formless world;
continents laden with life were born out of the womb of the
great deep--Life which still lives in the love of its Infinite
Author--and the great deep which still with measured pulse is
beating out the changes of our times and booming in our ears the
faith that we, too, are somewhere in the sweep of Nature's mighty
moving heart. So, statesmen and philosophers, deeply pondering in
love of country over the dreary waste of failures and disasters
lying thick along the track of History and Experience, have wrought
out for us wise laws and constitutions, have rescued from the
"bottomless deep of theory and possibility" the institutions under
which we live, but the virtue to interpret and maintain them is not
transmitted nor transmissible--that we must gain, as they did, from
Heaven.
* * * * *
Sloping in a long, gradual sweep of undulating hills and valleys,
overspread with the silver network of her myriad streams, from
her lofty green-bannered battlements, erected by God, down to her
shifting shore, where Hatteras lies in wait for her enemies by sea,
North Carolina spreads out the peaceful lap of her bounteous land
for her children and for all who cherish her.
Born before the Union, which is but an offspring of the States, and
surviving disunion, the child of sectional advantage, unbroken by
the shock of radical changes in the Constitutions of the State and
nation, North Carolina stands among the firmest of the forty-five
pillars of the national superstructure, will sustain it as long as
it answers the purposes of its creation, and, if greed or necessity
or the will of Heaven should destroy it, will stand above its wreck,
the sure foundation and protection of her people's liberties and the
sure support of a more perfect Union of the States which have been
purified in the crucible of disaster.
W. J. PEELE.
LIVES OF DISTINGUISHED NORTH CAROLINIANS.
WILLIAM R. DAVIE.
BY WALTER CLARK.