SECESSION. 1860–61
1861 Jackson spent ten years at Lexington, and he was just
five-and-thirty when he left it. For ten years he had seen no more of
military service than the drills of the cadet battalion. He had lost
all touch with the army. His name had been forgotten, except by his
comrades of the Mexican campaign, and he had hardly seen a regular
soldier since he resigned his commission. But, even from a military
point of view, those ten years had not been wasted. His mind had a
wider grasp, and his brain was more active. Striving to fit himself for
such duties as might devolve on him, should he be summoned to the
field, like all great men and all practical men he had gone to the best
masters. In the campaigns of Napoleon he had found instruction in the
highest branch of his profession, and had made his own the methods of
war which the greatest of modern soldiers both preached and practised.
Maturer years and the search for wisdom had steadied his restless
daring; and his devotion to duty, always remarkable, had become a
second nature. His health, under careful and self-imposed treatment,
had much improved, and the year 1861 found him in the prime of physical
and mental vigour. Already it had become apparent that his life at
Lexington was soon to end. The Damascus blade was not to rust upon the
shelf. During the winter of 1860–61 the probability of a conflict
between the free and slave-holding States, that is, between North and
South, had become almost a certainty. South Carolina, Mississippi,
Alabama, Florida, Georgia,
Louisiana, and Texas, had formally seceded from the Union; and
establishing a Provisional Government, with Jefferson Davis as
President, at Montgomery in Alabama, had proclaimed a new Republic,
under the title of the Confederate States of America. In order to
explain Jackson’s attitude at this momentous crisis, it will be
necessary to discuss the action of Virginia, and to investigate the
motives which led her to take the side she did.
Forces which it was impossible to curb, and which but few detected,
were at the root of the secession movement. The ostensible cause was
the future status of the negro.
Slavery was recognised in fifteen States of the Union. In the North it
had long been abolished, but this made no difference to its existence
in the South. The States which composed the Union were semi-independent
communities, with their own legislatures, their own magistracies, their
own militia, and the power of the purse. How far their sovereign rights
extended was a matter of contention; but, under the terms of the
Constitution, slavery was a domestic institution, which each individual
State was at liberty to retain or discard at will, and over which the
Federal Government had no control whatever. Congress would have been no
more justified in declaring that the slaves in Virginia were free men
than in demanding that Russian conspirators should be tried by jury.
Nor was the philanthropy of the Northern people, generally speaking, of
an enthusiastic nature. The majority regarded slavery as a necessary
evil; and, if they deplored the reproach to the Republic, they made
little parade of their sentiments. A large number of Southerners
believed it to be the happiest condition for the African race; but the
best men, especially in the border States, of which Virginia was the
principal, would have welcomed emancipation. But neither Northerner nor
Southerner saw a practicable method of giving freedom to the negro.
Such a measure, if carried out in its entirety, meant ruin to the
South. Cotton and tobacco, the principal and most lucrative crops,
required an immense number of hands, and in those hands—his negro
slaves—the capital of the planter was locked up. Emancipation would
have swept the whole of this capital away. Compensation, the remedy
applied by England to Jamaica and South Africa, was hardly to be
thought of. Instead of twenty millions sterling, it would have cost
four hundred millions. It was doubtful, too, if compensation would have
staved off the ruin of the planters. The labour of the free negro,
naturally indolent and improvident, was well known to be most
inefficient as compared with that of the slave. For some years, to say
the least, after emancipation it would have been impossible to work the
plantations except at a heavy loss. Moreover, abolition, in the
judgment of all who knew him, meant ruin to the negro. Under the system
of the plantations, honesty and morality were being gradually instilled
into the coloured race. But these virtues had as yet made little
progress; the Christianity of the slaves was but skin-deep; and if all
restraint were removed, if the old ties were broken, and the influence
of the planter and his family should cease to operate, it was only too
probable that the four millions of Africans would relapse into the
barbaric vices of their original condition. The hideous massacres which
had followed emancipation in San Domingo had not yet been forgotten. It
is little wonder, then, that the majority shrank before a problem
involving such tremendous consequences.
A party, however, conspicuous both in New England and the West, had
taken abolition for its watchword. Small in numbers, but vehement in
denunciation, its voice was heard throughout the Union. Zeal for
universal liberty rose superior to the Constitution. That instrument
was repudiated as an iniquitous document. The sovereign rights of the
individual States were indignantly denied. Slavery was denounced as the
sum of all villainies, the slave-holder as the worst of tyrants; and no
concealment was made of the intention, should political power be
secured, of compelling the South to set the negroes free. In the autumn
of 1860 came the Presidential election. Hitherto, of the two great
political parties, the Democrats had long ruled the councils of the
nation, and nearly the
whole South was Democratic. The South, as regards population, was
numerically inferior to the North; but the Democratic party had more
than held its own at the ballot-boxes, for the reason that it had many
adherents in the North. So long as the Southern and Northern Democrats
held together, they far outnumbered the Republicans. In 1860, however,
the two sections of the Democratic party split asunder. The
Republicans, favoured by the schism, carried their own candidate, and
Abraham Lincoln became President. South Carolina at once seceded and
the Confederacy was soon afterwards established.
It is not at first sight apparent why a change of government should
have caused so sudden a disruption of the Union. The Republican party,
however, embraced sections of various shades of thought. One of these,
rising every day to greater prominence, was that which advocated
immediate abolition; and to this section, designated by the South as
“Black Republicans,” the new President was believed to belong. It is
possible that, on his advent to office, the political leaders of the
South, despite the safeguards of the Constitution, saw in the near
future the unconditional emancipation of the slaves; and not only this,
but that the emancipated slaves would receive the right of suffrage,
and be placed on a footing of complete equality with their former
masters.[1] As in many districts the whites were far outnumbered by the
negroes, this was tantamount to transferring all local government into
the hands of the latter, and surrendering the planters to the mercies
of their former bondsmen.
It is hardly necessary to say that an act of such gross injustice was
never contemplated, except by hysterical abolitionists and those who
truckled for their votes. It was certainly not contemplated by Mr.
Lincoln; and it was hardly likely that a President who had been elected
by a minority of the people would dare, even if he were so inclined, to
assume unconstitutional powers. The Democratic party, taking both
sections together, was still the stronger;
and the Northern Democrats, temporarily severed as they were from their
Southern brethren, would most assuredly have united with them in
resisting any unconstitutional action on the part of the Republicans.
If, then, it might be asked, slavery ran no risk of unconditional
abolition, why should the Southern political leaders have acted with
such extraordinary precipitation? Why, in a country in which, to all
appearances, the two sections had been cordially united, should the
advent to power of one political party have been the signal for so much
disquietude on the part of the other? Had the presidential seat been
suddenly usurped by an abolitionist tyrant of the type of Robespierre
the South could hardly have exhibited greater apprehension. Few
Americans denied that a permanent Union, such as had been designed by
the founders of the Republic, was the best guarantee of prosperity and
peace. And yet because a certain number of misguided if well-meaning
men clamoured for emancipation, the South chose to bring down in ruin
the splendid fabric which their forefathers had constructed. In thus
refusing to trust the good sense and fair dealing of the Republicans,
it would seem, at a superficial glance, that the course adopted by the
members of the new Confederacy, whether legitimate or not, could not
possibly be justified.[2]
Unfortunately, something more than mere political rancour was at work.
The areas of slave and of free labour were divided by an artificial
frontier. “Mason and
Dixon’s line,” originally fixed as the boundary between Pennsylvania on
the north and Virginia and Maryland on the south, cut the territory of
the United States into two distinct sections; and, little by little,
these two sections, geographically as well as politically severed, had
resolved themselves into what might almost be termed two distinct
nations.
Many circumstances tended to increase the cleavage. The South was
purely agricultural; the most prosperous part of the North was purely
industrial. In the South, the great planters formed a landed
aristocracy; the claims of birth were ungrudgingly admitted; class
barriers were, to a certain extent, a recognised part of the social
system, and the sons of the old houses were accepted as the natural
leaders of the people. In the North, on the contrary, the only
aristocracy was that of wealth; and even wealth, apart from merit, had
no hold on the respect of the community. The distinctions of caste were
slight in the extreme. The descendants of the Puritans, of those
English country gentlemen who had preferred to ride with Cromwell
rather than with Rupert, to pray with Baxter rather than with Laud,
made no parade of their ancestry; and among the extreme Republicans
existed an innate but decided aversion to the recognition of social
grades. Moreover, divergent interests demanded different fiscal
treatment. The cotton and tobacco of the South, monopolising the
markets of the world, asked for free trade. The manufacturers of New
England, struggling against foreign competition, were strong
protectionists, and they were powerful enough to enforce their will in
the shape of an oppressive tariff. Thus the planters of Virginia paid
high prices in order that mills might flourish in Connecticut; and the
sovereign States of the South, to their own detriment, were compelled
to contribute to the abundance of the wealthier North. The interests of
labour were not less conflicting. The competition between free and
forced labour, side by side on the same continent, was bound in itself,
sooner or later, to breed dissension; and if it had not yet reached an
acute stage, it had at least
created a certain degree of bitter feeling. But more than all—and the
fact must be borne in mind if the character of the Civil War is to be
fully appreciated—the natural ties which should have linked together
the States on either side of Mason and Dixon’s line had weakened to a
mere mechanical bond. The intercourse between North and South, social
or commercial, was hardly more than that which exists between two
foreign nations. The two sections knew but little of each other, and
that little was not the good points but the bad.
For more than fifty years after the election of the first President,
while as yet the crust of European tradition overlaid the young shoots
of democracy, the supremacy, social and political, of the great
landowners of the South had been practically undisputed. But when the
young Republic began to take its place amongst the nations, men found
that the wealth and talents which led it forward belonged as much to
the busy cities of New England as to the plantations of Virginia and
the Carolinas; and with the growing sentiment in favour of universal
equality began the revolt against the dominion of a caste. Those who
had carved out their own fortunes by sheer hard work and ability
questioned the superiority of men whose positions were no guarantee of
personal capacity, and whose wealth was not of their own making. Those
who had borne the heat and burden of the day deemed themselves the
equals and more than equals of those who had loitered in the shade;
and, esteeming men for their own worth and not for that of some
forgotten ancestor, they had come to despise those who toiled not
neither did they spin. Tenaciously the Southerners clung to the
supremacy they had inherited from a bygone age. The contempt of the
Northerner was repaid in kind. In the political arena the struggle was
fierce and keen. Mutual hatred, fanned by unscrupulous agitators,
increased in bitterness; and, hindering reconciliation, rose the fatal
barrier of slavery.
It is true that, prior to 1860, the abolitionists were not numerous in
the North; and it is equally true that by
many of the best men in the South the institution which had been
bequeathed to them was thoroughly detested. Looking back over the years
which have elapsed since the slaves were freed, the errors of the two
factions are sufficiently manifest. If, on the one hand, the
abolitionist, denouncing sternly, in season and out of season, the
existence of slavery on the free soil of America, was unjust and worse
to the slave-owner, who, to say the least, was in no way responsible
for the inhuman and shortsighted policy of a former generation; on the
other hand the high-principled Southerner, although in his heart
deploring the condition of the negro, and sometimes imitating the
example of Washington, whose dying bequest gave freedom to his slaves,
made no attempt to find a remedy.[3]
The latter had the better excuse. He knew, were emancipation granted,
that years must elapse before the negro could be trained to the
responsibilities of freedom, and that those years would impoverish the
South. It appears to have been forgotten by the abolitionists that all
races upon earth have required a protracted probation to fit them for
the rights of citizenship and the duties of free men. Here was a
people, hardly emerged from the grossest barbarism, and possibly, from
the very beginning,
of inferior natural endowment, on whom they proposed to confer the same
rights without any probation whatsoever. A glance at the world around
them should have induced reflection. The experience of other countries
was not encouraging. Hayti, where the blacks had long been masters of
the soil, was still a pandemonium; and in Jamaica and South Africa the
precipitate action of zealous but unpractical philanthropists had
wrought incalculable mischief. Even Lincoln himself, redemption by
purchase being impracticable, saw no other way out of the difficulty
than the wholesale deportation of the negroes to West Africa.
In time, perhaps, under the influence of such men as Lincoln and Lee,
the nation might have found a solution of the problem, and North and
South have combined to rid their common country of the curse of human
servitude. But between fanaticism on the one side and helplessness on
the other there was no common ground. The fierce invectives of the
reformers forbade all hope of temperate discussion, and their
unreasoning denunciations only provoked resentment. And this resentment
became the more bitter because in demanding emancipation, either by
fair means or forcible, and in expressing their intention of making it
a national question, the abolitionists were directly striking at a
right which the people of the South held sacred.
It had never been questioned, hitherto, that the several States of the
Union, so far at least as concerned their domestic institutions, were
each and all of them, under the Constitution, absolutely
self-governing. But the threats which the Black Republicans held out
were tantamount to a proposal to set the Constitution aside. It was
their charter of liberty, therefore, and not only their material
prosperity, which the States that first seceded believed to be
endangered by Lincoln’s election. Ignorant of the temper of the great
mass of the Northern people, as loyal in reality to the Constitution as
themselves, they were only too ready to be convinced that the
denunciations of the abolitionists were the first presage of the storm
that was presently to overwhelm them, to reduce their States to
provinces, to wrest from them the freedom they had
inherited, and to make them hewers of wood and drawers of water to the
detested plutocrats of New England.
But the gravamen of the indictment against the Southern people is not
that they seceded, but that they seceded in order to preserve and to
perpetuate slavery; or, to put it more forcibly, that the liberty to
enslave others was the right which most they valued. This charge, put
forward by the abolitionists in order to cloak their own revolt against
the Constitution, is true as regards a certain section, but as regards
the South as a nation it is quite untenable, for three-fourths of the
population derived rather injury than benefit from the presence in
their midst of four million serfs.[4] “Had slavery continued, the
system of labour,” says General Grant, “would soon have impoverished
the soil and left the country poor. The non-slave-holder must have left
the country, and the small slave-holder have sold out to his more
fortunate neighbour.”[5] The slaves neither bought nor sold. Their
wants were supplied almost entirely by their own labour; and the local
markets of the South would have drawn far larger profit from a few
thousand white labourers than they did from the multitude of negroes.
It is true that a party in the South, more numerous perhaps among the
political leaders than among the people at large, was averse to
emancipation under any form or shape. There were men who looked upon
their bondsmen as mere beasts of burden, more valuable but hardly more
human than the cattle in their fields, and who would not only have
perpetuated but have extended slavery. There were others who
conscientiously believed that the negro was unfit for freedom, that he
was incapable of self-improvement, and that he was far happier and more
contented as a slave. Among these were ministers of the Gospel, in no
small number, who, appealing to the Old Testament, preached boldly that
the institution was of divine origin, that the coloured race
had been created for servitude, and that to advocate emancipation was
to impugn the wisdom of the Almighty.
But there were still others, including many of those who were not
slave-owners, who, while they acquiesced in the existence of an
institution for which they were not personally accountable, looked
forward to its ultimate extinction by the voluntary action of the
States concerned. It was impossible as yet to touch the question
openly, for the invectives and injustice of the abolitionists had so
wrought upon the Southern people, that such action would have been
deemed a base surrender to the dictation of the enemy; but they trusted
to time, to the spread of education, and to a feeling in favour of
emancipation which was gradually pervading the whole country.[6]
The opinions of this party, with which, it may be said, the bulk of the
Northern people was in close sympathy,[7] are perhaps best expressed in
a letter written by Colonel Robert Lee, the head of one of the oldest
families in Virginia, a large landed proprietor and slave-holder, and
the same officer who had won such well-deserved renown in Mexico. “In
this enlightened age,” wrote the future general-in-chief of the
Confederate army, “there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that
slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is useless
to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it a greater evil to the
white than to the coloured race, and while my feelings are strongly
interested in the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the
former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in
Africa—morally, socially, and physically. The painful discipline they
are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and, I
hope, will prepare them for better things. How long their subjection
may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their
emancipation will sooner result from the mild and
melting influence of Christianity than from the storms and contests of
fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines
and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to
convert but a small part of the human race, and even among Christian
nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the
final abolition of slavery is still onward, and we give it the aid of
our prayers and all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the
progress as well as the result in His hands, who sees the end and who
chooses to work by slow things, and with whom a thousand years are but
as a single day. The abolitionist must know this, and must see that he
has neither the right nor the power of operating except by moral means
and suasion; if he means well to the slave, he must not create angry
feelings in the master. Although he may not approve of the mode by
which it pleases Providence to accomplish its purposes, the result will
nevertheless be the same; and the reason he gives for interference in
what he has no concern holds good for every kind of interference with
our neighbours when we disapprove of their conduct.”
With this view of the question Jackson was in perfect agreement. “I am
very confident,” says his wife, “that he would never have fought for
the sole object of perpetuating slavery. . . . He found the institution
a responsible and troublesome one, and I have heard him say that he
would prefer to see the negroes free, but he believed that the Bible
taught that slavery was sanctioned by the Creator Himself, who maketh
all men to differ, and instituted laws for the bond and free. He
therefore accepted slavery, as it existed in the South, not as a thing
desirable in itself, but as allowed by Providence for ends which it was
not his business to determine.”
It may perhaps be maintained that to have had no dealings with “the
accursed thing,” and to have publicly advocated some process of gradual
emancipation, would have been the nobler course. But, setting aside the
teaching of the Churches, and the bitter temper of the time, it should
be remembered that slavery, although its
hardships were admitted, presented itself in no repulsive aspect to the
people of the Confederate States. They regarded it with feelings very
different from those of the abolitionists, whose acquaintance with the
condition they reprobated was small in the extreme. The lot of the
slaves, the Southerners were well aware, was far preferable to that of
the poor and the destitute of great cities, of the victims of the
sweater and the inmates of fever dens. The helpless negro had more
hands to succour him in Virginia than the starving white man in New
England. The children of the plantation enjoyed a far brighter
existence than the children of the slums. The worn and feeble were
maintained by their masters, and the black labourer, looking forward to
an old age of ease and comfort among his own people, was more fortunate
than many a Northern artisan. Moreover, the brutalities ascribed to the
slave-owners as a class were of rare occurrence. The people of the
South were neither less humane nor less moral than the people of the
North or of Europe, and it is absolutely inconceivable that men of high
character and women of gentle nature should have looked with leniency
on cruelty, or have failed to visit the offender with something more
than reprobation. Had the calumnies[8] which were scattered broadcast
by the abolitionists possessed more than a vestige of truth, men like
Lee and Jackson would never have remained silent. In the minds of the
Northern people slavery was associated with atrocious cruelty and
continual suffering. In the eyes of the Southerners, on the other hand,
it was associated with great kindness and the most affectionate
relations between the planters and their bondsmen. And if the
Southerners were blind, it is most difficult to explain the remarkable
fact that throughout the war, although thousands of plantations and
farms, together with thousands of women and children, all of whose male
relatives were in the Confederate armies, were left entirely to the
care of the negroes, both life and property were perfectly secure.
Such, then, was the attitude of the South towards
slavery. The institution had many advocates, uncompromising and
aggressive, but taking the people as a whole it was rather tolerated
than approved; and, even if no evidence to the contrary were
forthcoming, we should find it hard to believe that a civilised
community would have plunged into revolution in order to maintain it.
There can be no question but that secession was revolution; and
revolutions, as has been well said, are not made for the sake of
“greased cartridges”. To bring about such unanimity of purpose as took
possession of the whole South, such passionate loyalty to the new
Confederacy, such intense determination to resist coercion to the
bitter end, needed some motive of unusual potency, and the perpetuation
of slavery was not a sufficient motive. The great bulk of the
population neither owned slaves nor was connected with those who did;
many favoured emancipation; and the working men, a rapidly increasing
class, were distinctly antagonistic to slave-labour. Moreover, the
Southerners were not only warmly attached to the Union, which they had
done so much to establish, but their pride in their common country, in
its strength, its prestige, and its prosperity, was very great. Why,
then, should they break away? History supplies us with a pertinent
example.
Previous to 1765 the honour of England was dear to the people of the
American colonies. King George had no more devoted subjects; his
enemies no fiercer foes. And yet it required very little to reverse the
scroll. The right claimed by the Crown to tax the colonists hardly
menaced their material prosperity. A few shillings more or less would
neither have added to the burdens nor have diminished the comforts of a
well-to-do and thrifty people, and there was some justice in the demand
that they should contribute to the defence of the British Empire. But
the demand, as formulated by the Government, involved a principle which
they were unwilling to admit, and in defence of their birthright as
free citizens they flew to arms. So, in defence of the principle of
States’ Rights the Southern people resolved upon secession with all its
consequences.
It might be said, however, that South Carolina and her
sister States seceded under the threat of a mere faction; that there
was nothing in the attitude of the Federal Government to justify the
apprehension that the Constitution would be set aside; and that their
action, therefore, was neither more nor less than rank rebellion. But,
whether their rights had been infringed or not, a large majority of the
Southern people believed that secession, at any moment and for any
cause, was perfectly legitimate. The several States of the Union,
according to their political creed, were each and all of them sovereign
and independent nations. The Constitution, they held, was nothing more
than a treaty which they had entered into for their own convenience,
and which, in the exercise of their sovereign powers, individually or
collectively, they might abrogate when they pleased. This
interpretation was not admitted in the North, either by Republicans or
Democrats; yet there was nothing in the letter of the Constitution
which denied it, and as regards the spirit of that covenant North and
South held opposite opinions. But both were perfectly sincere, and in
leaving the Union, therefore, and in creating for themselves a new
government, the people of the seceding States considered that they were
absolutely within their right.[9]
It must be admitted, at the same time, that the action of the States
which first seceded was marked by a petulant haste; and it is only too
probable that the people of these States suffered themselves to be too
easily persuaded that the North meant mischief. It is impossible to
determine how far the professional politician was responsible for the
Civil War. But when we recall the fact that secession followed close on
the overthrow of a faction which had long monopolised the spoils of
office, and that this faction found compensation in the establishment
of a new government, it is not easy to resist the suspicion that the
secession movement was neither more nor less than a conspiracy, hatched
by a clever and unscrupulous cabal.
It would be unwise, however, to brand the whole, or even the majority,
of the Southern leaders as selfish and
unprincipled. Unless he has real grievances on which to work, or unless
those who listen to him are supremely ignorant, the mere agitator is
powerless; and it is most assuredly incredible that seven millions of
Anglo-Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons of the purest strain—English, Lowland
Scottish, and North Irish—should have been beguiled by silver tongues
of a few ambitious or hare-brained demagogues. The latter undoubtedly
had a share in bringing matters to a crisis. But the South was ripe for
revolution long before the presidential election. The forces which were
at work needed no artificial impulse to propel them forward. It was
instinctively recognised that the nation had outgrown the Constitution;
and it was to this, and not to the attacks upon slavery, that secession
was really due. The North had come to regard the American people as one
nation, and the will of the majority as paramount.[10] The South, on
the other hand, holding, as it had always held, that each State was a
nation in itself, denied _in toto_ that the will of the majority,
except in certain specified cases, had any power whatever; and where
political creeds were in such direct antagonism no compromise was
possible. Moreover, as the action of the abolitionists very plainly
showed, there was a growing tendency in the North to disregard
altogether the rights of the minority. Secession, in fact, was a
protest against mob rule. The weaker community, hopeless of maintaining
its most cherished principles within the Union, was ready to seize the
first pretext for leaving it; and the strength of the popular sentiment
may be measured by the willingness of every class, gentle and simple,
rich and poor, to risk all and to suffer all, in order to free
themselves from bonds which must soon have become unbearable. It is
always difficult to analyse the motives of those by whom revolution is
provoked; but if a whole people acquiesce, it is a certain proof
of the existence of universal apprehension and deep-rooted discontent.
The spirit of self-sacrifice which animated the Confederate South has
been characteristic of every revolution which has been the expression
of a nation’s wrongs, but it has never yet accompanied mere factious
insurrection.
When, in process of time, the history of Secession comes to be viewed
with the same freedom from prejudice as the history of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, it will be clear that the fourth great
Revolution of the English-speaking race differs in no essential
characteristic from those which preceded it. It was not simply because
the five members were illegally impeached in 1642, the seven bishops
illegally tried in 1688, men shot at Lexington in 1775, or slavery
threatened in 1861, that the people rose. These were the occasions, not
the causes of revolt. In each case a great principle was at stake: in
1642 the liberty of the subject; in 1688 the integrity of the
Protestant faith; in 1775 taxation only with consent of the taxed; in
1861 the sovereignty of the individual States.[11]
The accuracy of this statement, as already suggested, has been
consistently denied. That the only principle involved in Secession was
the establishment of slavery on a firmer basis, and that the cry of
States’ Rights was raised only by way of securing sympathy, is a very
general opinion. But before it can be accepted, it is necessary to make
several admissions; first, that the Southerners were absolutely callous
to the evils produced by the institution they had determined to make
permanent; second, that they had persuaded themselves, in face of the
tendencies of civilisation, that it was possible to make it permanent;
and third, that they conscientiously held their progress and
prosperity to be dependent on its continued existence. Are we to
believe that the standard of morals and intelligence was so low as
these admissions would indicate? Are we to believe that if they had
been approached in a charitable spirit, that if the Republican party,
disclaiming all right of interference, had offered to aid them in
substituting, by some means which would have provided for the control
of the negro and, at the same time, have prevented an entire collapse
of the social fabric, a system more consonant with humanity, the
Southerners would have still preferred to leave the Union, and by
creating a great slave-power earn the execration of the Christian
world?
Unless the South be credited with an unusual measure of depravity and
of short-sightedness, the reply can hardly be in the affirmative. And
if it be otherwise, there remains but one explanation of the conduct of
the seceding States—namely the dread that if they remained in the Union
they would not be fairly treated.
It is futile to argue that the people were dragooned into secession by
the slave-holders. What power had the slave-holders over the great mass
of the population, over the professional classes, over the small
farmer, the mechanic, the tradesman, the labourer? Yet it is constantly
asserted by Northern writers, although the statement is virtually an
admission that only the few were prepared to fight for slavery, that
the Federal sentiment was so strong among the Southerners that
terrorism must have had a large share in turning them into Separatists.
The answer, putting aside the very patent fact that the Southerner was
not easily coerced, is very plain. Undoubtedly, throughout the South
there was much affection for the Union; but so in the first Revolution
there was much loyalty to the Crown, and yet it has never been asserted
that the people of Virginia or of New England were forced into sedition
against their will. The truth is that there were many Southerners who,
in the vain hope of compromise, would have postponed the rupture; but
when the right of secession was questioned, and the right of coercion
was proclaimed, all differences of opinion were swept away, and
the people, thenceforward, were of one heart and mind. The action of
Virginia is a striking illustration.
The great border State, the most important of those south of Mason and
Dixon’s line, was not a member of the Confederacy when the Provisional
Government was established at Montgomery. Nor did the secession
movement secure any strong measure of approval. In fact, the people of
Virginia, owing to their closer proximity to, and to their more
intimate knowledge of, the North, were by no means inclined to make of
the Black Republican President the bugbear he appeared to the States
which bordered on the Gulf of Mexico. Whilst acknowledging that the
South had grievances, they saw no reason to believe that redress might
not be obtained by constitutional means. At the same time, although
they questioned the expediency, they held no half-hearted opinion as to
the right, of secession, and in their particular case the right seems
undeniable. When the Constitution of the United States was ratified,
Virginia, by the mouth of its Legislature, had solemnly declared “that
the powers granted [to the Federal Government] under the Constitution,
being truly derived from the people of the United States, may be
resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury
and oppression.” And this declaration had been more than once
reaffirmed. As already stated, this view of the political status of the
Virginia citizen was not endorsed by the North. Nevertheless, it was
not definitely rejected. The majority of the Northern people held the
Federal Government paramount, but, at the same time, they held that it
had no power either to punish or coerce the individual States. This had
been the attitude of the founders of the Republic, and it is perfectly
clear that their interpretation of the Constitution was this: although
the several States were morally bound to maintain the compact into
which they had voluntarily entered, the obligation, if any one State
chose to repudiate it, could not be legally enforced. Their ideal was a
Union based upon fraternal affection; and in the halcyon days of
Washington’s first presidency, when the long and victorious struggle
against a common enemy was still fresh in men’s minds, and the sun of
liberty shone in an unclouded sky, a
vision so Utopian perhaps seemed capable of realisation. At all events,
the promise of a new era of unbroken peace and prosperity was not to be
sullied by cold precautions against civil dissensions and conflicting
interests. The new order, under which every man was his own sovereign,
would surely strengthen the links of kindly sympathy, and by those
links alone it was believed that the Union would be held together. Such
was the dream of the unselfish patriots who ruled the destinies of the
infant Republic. Such were the ideas that so far influenced their
deliberations that, with all their wisdom, they left a legacy to their
posterity which deluged the land in blood.
Mr. Lincoln’s predecessor in the presidential chair had publicly
proclaimed that coercion was both illegal and inexpedient; and for the
three months which intervened between the secession of South Carolina
and the inauguration of the Republican President, the Government made
not the slightest attempt to interfere with the peaceable establishment
of the new Confederacy. Not a single soldier reinforced the garrisons
of the military posts in the South. Not a single regiment was recalled
from the western frontiers; and the seceded States, without a word of
protest, were permitted to take possession, with few exceptions, of the
forts, arsenals, navy yards and custom houses which stood on their own
territory. It seemed that the Federal Government was only waiting until
an amicable arrangement might be arrived at as to the terms of
separation.
If, in addition to the words in which she had assented to the
Constitution, further justification were needed for the belief of
Virginia in the right of secession, it was assuredly to be found in the
apparent want of unanimity on so grave a question even in the
Republican party, and in the acquiescent attitude of the Federal
Government.
The people of Virginia, however, saw in the election of a Republican
President no immediate danger of the Constitution being “perverted to
their injury and oppression.” The North, generally speaking, regarded
the action of the secessionists with that strange and good-humoured
tolerance with which the American citizen too often regards internal
politics. The common sense of the nation asserted itself in all its
strength. A Union which could only be maintained by force was a strange
and obnoxious idea to the majority. Amid the storm of abuse and insult
in which the two extreme parties indulged, the abolitionists on the one
side, the politicians on the other, Lincoln,
“The still strong man in a blatant land,”
stood calm and steadfast, promising justice to the South, and eager for
reconciliation. And Lincoln represented the real temper of the Northern
people.
So, in the earlier months of 1861, there was no sign whatever that the
Old Dominion might be compelled to use the alternative her original
representatives had reserved. The question of slavery was no longer to
the fore. While reprobating the action of the Confederates, the
President, in his inaugural address (March 4, 1861), had declared that
the Government had no right to interfere with the domestic institutions
of the individual States; and throughout Virginia the feeling was
strong in favour of the Union. Earnest endeavours were made to effect a
compromise, under which the seceded communities might renew the Federal
compact. The Legislature called a Convention of the People to
deliberate on the part that the State should play, and the other States
were invited to join in a Peace Conference at Washington.
It need hardly be said that during the period of negotiation excitement
rose to the highest pitch. The political situation was the sole theme
of discussion. In Lexington as elsewhere the one absorbing topic ousted
all others, and in Lexington as elsewhere there was much difference of
opinion. But the general sentiment was strongly Unionist, and in the
election of members of the Convention an overwhelming majority had
pronounced against secession. Between the two parties, however, there
were sharp conflicts. A flagstaff flying the national ensign had been
erected in Main Street, Lexington. The cadets fired on the flag,
and substituting the State colours placed a guard over them. Next
morning a report reached the Institute that the local company of
volunteers had driven off the guard, and were about to restore the
Stars and Stripes. It was a holiday, and there were no officers
present. The drums beat to arms. The boys rushed down to their
parade-ground, buckling on their belts, and carrying their rifles.
Ammunition was distributed, and the whole battalion, under the cadet
officers, marched out of the Institute gates, determined to lower the
emblem of Northern tyranny and drive away the volunteers. A collision
would certainly have ensued had not the attacking column been met by
the Commandant.
In every discussion on the action of the State Jackson had spoken
strongly on the side of the majority. In terse phrase he had summed up
his view of the situation. He was no advocate of secession. He
deprecated the hasty action of South Carolina. “It is better,” he said,
“for the South to fight for her rights in the Union than out of it.”
But much as they loved the Union, the people of Virginia revered still
more the principles inculcated by their forefathers, the right of
secession and the illegality of coercion. And when the proposals of the
Peace Conference came to nothing, when all hope of compromise died
away, and the Federal Government showed no sign of recognising the
Provisional Government, it became evident even to the staunchest
Unionist that civil war could no longer be postponed. From the very
first no shadow of a doubt had existed in Jackson’s mind as to the side
he should espouse, or the course he should pursue. “If I know myself,”
he wrote, “all I am and all I have is at the service of my country.”
According to his political creed his country was his native State, and
such was the creed of the whole South. In conforming to the Ordinance
of Secession enacted by the legislatures of their own States, the
people, according to their reading of the Constitution, acted as loyal
and patriotic citizens; to resist that ordinance was treason and
rebellion; and in taking up arms “they were not, in their own opinion,
rebels at all; they were defending
their States—that is, the nations to which they conceived themselves to
belong, from invasion and conquest.”[12]
When, after the incident described above, the cadets marched back to
barracks, it was already so certain that the Stars and Stripes would
soon be torn down from every flagstaff in Virginia that their breach of
discipline was easily condoned. They were addressed by the Commandant,
and amid growing excitement officer after officer, hardly concealing
his sympathy with their action, gave vent to his opinions on the
approaching crisis. Jackson was silent. At length, perhaps in
anticipation of some amusement, for he was known to be a stumbling
speaker, the cadets called on him by name. In answer to the summons he
stood before them, not, as was his wont in public assemblies, with
ill-dissembled shyness and awkward gesture, but with body erect and
eyes sparkling. “Soldiers,” he said, “when they make speeches should
say but few words, and speak them to the point, and I admire, young
gentlemen, the spirit you have shown in rushing to the defence of your
comrades; but I must commend you particularly for the readiness with
which you listened to the counsel and obeyed the commands of your
superior officer. The time may come,” he continued, and the deep tones,
vibrating with unsuspected resolution, held his audience spellbound,
“when your State will need your services; and if that time does come,
then draw your swords and throw away the scabbards.”
The crisis was not long postponed. Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbour,
the port of South Carolina, was held by a Federal garrison. The State
had demanded its surrender, but no reply had been vouchsafed by
Lincoln. On April 8 a message was conveyed to the Governor of the State
that an attempt would be made to supply the troops with provisions.
This message was telegraphed to Montgomery, still the capital of the
Confederacy, and the Government ordered the reduction of the fort. On
the morning of April 12 the Southern batteries opened fire, and the
next day, when the flames were already scorching the doors
of the magazine, the standard of the Union was hauled down.
Two days later Lincoln spoke with no uncertain voice. 75,000 militia
were called out to suppress the “rebellion.” The North gave the
President loyal support. The insult to the flag set the blood of the
nation, of Democrat and Republican, aflame. The time for reconciliation
was passed. The Confederates had committed an unpardonable crime. They
had forfeited all title to consideration; and even in the minds of
those Northerners who had shared their political creed the memory of
their grievances was obliterated.
So far Virginia had given no overt sign of sympathy with the
revolution. But she was now called upon to furnish her quota of
regiments for the Federal army. To have acceded to the demand would
have been to abjure the most cherished principles of her political
existence. As the Federal Government, according to her political faith,
had no jurisdiction whatever within the boundaries of States which had
chosen to secede, it had not the slightest right to maintain a garrison
in Fort Sumter. The action of the Confederacy in enforcing the
withdrawal of the troops was not generally approved of, but it was held
to be perfectly legitimate; and Mr. Lincoln’s appeal to arms, for the
purpose of suppressing what, in the opinion of Virginia, was a strictly
constitutional movement, was instantly and fiercely challenged.
Neutrality was impossible. She was bound to furnish her tale of troops,
and thus belie her principles; or to secede at once, and reject with a
clean conscience the President’s mandate. On April 17 she chose the
latter, deliberately and with her eyes open, knowing that war would be
the result, and knowing the vast resources of the North. She was
followed by Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.[13]
The world has long since done justice to the motives of Cromwell and of
Washington, and signs are not wanting
that before many years have passed it will do justice to the motives of
the Southern people. They were true to their interpretation of the
Constitution; and if the morality of secession may be questioned, if
South Carolina acted with undue haste and without sufficient
provocation, if certain of the Southern politicians desired
emancipation for themselves that they might continue to enslave others,
it can hardly be denied that the action of Virginia was not only fully
justified, but beyond suspicion. The wildest threats of the Black
Republicans, their loudly expressed determination, in defiance of the
Constitution, to abolish slavery, if necessary by the bullet and the
sabre, shook in no degree whatever her loyalty to the Union. Her best
endeavours were exerted to maintain the peace between the hostile
sections; and not till her liberties were menaced did she repudiate a
compact which had become intolerable. It was to preserve the freedom
which her forefathers had bequeathed her, and which she desired to hand
down unsullied to future generations, that she acquiesced in the
revolution.
The North, in resolving to maintain the Union by force of arms, was
upheld by the belief that she was acting in accordance with the
Constitution. The South, in asserting her independence and resisting
coercion, found moral support in the same conviction, and the
patriotism of those who fought for the Union was neither purer nor more
ardent than the patriotism of those who fought for States’ Rights. Long
ago, a parliament of that nation to which Jackson and so many of his
compatriots owed their origin made petition to the Pope that he should
require the English king “to respect the independence of Scotland, and
to mind his own affairs. So long as a hundred of us are left alive,”
said the signatories, “we will never in any degree be subjected to the
English. It is not for glory, or for riches, or for honour that we
fight, but for liberty alone, which no good man loses but with his
life.” More than five hundred years later, for the same noble cause and
in the same uncompromising spirit, the people of Virginia made appeal
to the God of battles.
[1] Grant’s _Memoirs,_ vol. i, p. 214.
[2] I have been somewhat severely taken to task for attaching the
epithets “misguided,” “unpractical,” “fanatical,’ to the
abolitionists. I see no reason, however, to modify my language. It is
too often the case that men of the loftiest ideals seek to attain them
by the most objectionable means, and the maxim “Fiat justitia ruat
cœlum” cannot be literally applied to great affairs. The conversion of
the Mahomedan world to Christianity would be a nobler work than even
the emancipation of the negro, but the missionary who began with
reviling the faithful, and then proceeded to threaten them with fire
and the sword unless they changed their creed, would justly be called
a fanatic. Yet the abolitionists did worse than this, for they incited
the negroes to insurrection. Nor do I think that the question is
affected by the fact that many of the abolitionists were upright,
earnest, and devout. A good man is not necessarily a wise man, and I
remember that Samuel Johnson and John Wesley supported King George
against the American colonists.
[3] On the publication of the first edition my views on the action of
the abolitionists were traversed by critics whose opinions demand
consideration. They implied that in condemning the unwisdom and
violence of the anti-slavery party, I had not taken into account the
aggressive tendencies of the Southern politicians from 1850 onwards,
that I had ignored the attempts to extend slavery to the Territories,
and that I had overlooked the effect of the Fugitive Slave Law. A
close study of abolitionist literature, however, had made it very
clear to me that the advocates of emancipation, although actuated by
the highest motives, never at any time approached the question in a
conciliatory spirit; and that long before 1850 their fierce cries for
vengeance had roused the very bitterest feelings in the South. In fact
they had already made war inevitable. Draper, the Northern historian,
admits that so early as 1844 “the contest between the abolitionists on
one side and the slave-holders on the other hand had become _a mortal
duel_.” It may be argued, perhaps, that the abolitionists saw that the
slave-power would never yield except to armed force, and that they
therefore showed good judgment in provoking the South into secession
and civil war. But forcing the hand of the Almighty is something more
than a questionable doctrine.
[4] Of 8.3 million whites in the fifteen slave-holding States, only
346,000 were slave-holders, and of these 69,000 owned only one negro.
[5] _Battles and Leaders,_ vol. iii, p. 689.
[6] There is no doubt that a feeling of aversion to slavery was fast
spreading among a numerous and powerful class in the South. In
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri the number of slaves was decreasing,
and in Delaware the institution had almost disappeared.
[7] Grant’s _Memoirs,_ p. 214.
[8] _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ to wit.
[9] For an admirable statement of the Southern doctrine, see Ropes’
_History of the Civil War,_ vol. i, chap. i.
[10] “The Government had been Federal under the Articles of
Confederation (1781), but the [Northern] people quickly recognised
that that relation was changing under the Constitution (1789). They
began to discern that the power they thought they had delegated was in
fact surrendered, and that henceforth no single State could meet the
general Government as sovereign and equal.” Draper’s _History of the
American Civil War,_ vol. i, p. 286.
[11] It has been remarked that States’ Rights, as a political
principle, cannot be placed on the same plane as those with which it
is here grouped. History, however, proves conclusively that, although
it may be less vital to the common weal, the right of self-government
is just as deeply cherished. A people that has once enjoyed
independence can seldom be brought to admit that a Union with others
deprives it of the prerogatives of sovereignty, and it would seem that
the treatment of this instinct of nationality is one of the most
delicate and important tasks of statesmanship.
[12] _History of the Civil War,_ Ropes, chap. i, p. 3.
[13] Kentucky and Missouri attempted to remain neutral. Maryland was
held in check by the Federal Government, and Delaware sided with the
North. The first three, however, supplied large contingents to the
Confederate armies.