Aggressiveness of Slavery--The Cotton States and Border States--The
Fugitive Slave Law--Nullified in the North--Negroes Imported from
Africa--The Struggle in Kansas--John Brown--Abraham Lincoln Pleads for
Human Rights--Treason in Buchanan's Cabinet--Citizens Stop Guns at
Pittsburg--Conditions at the Beginning of the Struggle--Southern
Advantages--The Soldiers of Both Armies Compared--Conscription in the
Confederacy--Southern Resources Limited--The North at a Disadvantage at
First, but Its Resources Inexhaustible--Conscription in the North--
Popular Support of the War--Unfriendliness of Great Britain and
France--Why They Did Not Interfere.
Slavery could not stand still. The Cotton States, so-called, which
suffered least from the escape of slaves were the most aggressive in
demanding a Fugitive Slave Law, while the Border States, where escapes
were frequent, were not nearly as aggressive as their Southern neighbors.
Attachment to slavery in the Cotton States had become a passion,
springing from self-interest, but stronger than self-interest; while in
the Border States the slaveholders were affected by propinquity to free
communities, and the calculations of self-interest were softened by their
surroundings; which shows, like many another chapter in history, that in
the mighty impulses which guide the destinies of nations, the heart is
above the head. The advocates of slavery felt insecure because they knew
that even if legally right they were divinely and humanly wrong. They
were not satisfied to have the Free States acquiescent and even
submissive; they were determined, in their fever of unrest, to drive
freedom to the wall, and to make the people of the North slave-catchers,
if they would not consent to be slave-owners.
The South had the Constitution on its side, and the Fugitive Slave Law
could be met only by obedience or nullification. The Northern people
simply decided to nullify the law. They did not meet in State
conventions--like South Carolina in 1832--and declare the law void and of
no effect. They were too sensible for that; but they would not obey the
law. It was nullified in various ways. In Rhode Island, for instance, it
was made a crime for an officer of the State to arrest a fugitive slave;
in Ohio the ordinary statute against kidnappers was used to punish
Federal officers and others attempting to carry slaves back into bondage,
and in New York and other States mob law interfered to rescue and
liberate the victims. The Fugitive Slave Law roused the spirit of
freedom, and Northern defiance of the law inflamed the slaveholders. The
Kansas-Nebraska bill, menacing the free States with a slave barrier West
as well as South, and stretching to the Pacific as well as the Gulf, made
civil war almost inevitable. Compromise became cowardice, and everyone
who was not for freedom was against it. The Supreme Court of the United
States supported the contentions of the slaveholders, but in vain for
their cause. That higher tribunal--the conscience of a free and
intelligent people--arraigned slavery as a crime against God and man, the
Constitution and the Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding. When
Chief Justice Taney held that Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri,
but a thing, and could be carried by his master from one State to
another, like a dog or a watch, and still be a slave, the Chief Justice
only immortalized his own infamy; he did not immortalize slavery. Still
greater was the shock when in defiance of the Constitution and the laws
the foreign slave trade was resumed, and negroes imported from Africa to
the South. It is only just to state that, according to recently published
narratives of these slave importations, with details that could not have
been related at the time with safety for the parties concerned, the
Federal authorities in the South seem to have made a sincere effort to
bring the slave-traders to justice, and the planters apparently did not
welcome the traffic.
The pioneers of the great struggle to come met on the plains of Kansas
and several years of fierce border strife ended in victory for freedom.
John Brown, whom the world calls a fanatic, perished on the scaffold at
Harper's Ferry in a vain attempt to liberate the slaves, and while
editors vacillated and quibbled, and fawning time servers applauded,
Thoreau, from his hermitage in the New England woods, paid eloquent
tribute to the man who dared to die for the truth. Away in the West a
figure was looming up, a gaunt, homely figure, born in and nurtured in
hardship, but endowed as no other man of his age was endowed, with the
ability to guide his country through the awful ordeal to come. He
perceived the right, and he boldly declared it. "If it is decreed that I
should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to the
truth--let me die in the advocacy of what is just and right," said
Abraham Lincoln to the friends who disapproved his celebrated declaration
that the government could not endure half slave, half free. "In the right
to eat the bread without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand
earns, he (the negro) is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and
the equal of every living man"--was another sterling utterance which
struck home to the North.
While Lincoln was pleading the cause of human rights, and asserting that
the Declaration of Independence was meant for black as well as white,
members of President Buchanan's cabinet, holding in their grasp the reins
of National Government, were plotting the nation's overthrow. Even down
to the very moment that John B. Floyd left the War Office, and when South
Carolina was already in rebellion, this plotting was continued. As late
as the beginning of January, 1861, an attempt was made under an order
from Floyd to remove one hundred and fifty cannon from the Allegheny
Arsenal, at Pittsburg, to the South, to be used against the Union. "Our
people are a unit that not a gun shall be shipped South," said the
_Dispatch_ of that city, and without violence, without the shedding of a
drop of blood or the drawing of a weapon against national authority, the
citizens obtained the reversal of the order, and the guns, some of which
were already under convoy to the wharf, were returned to the arsenal. The
"Rebellion Records," published by the government, should not begin with
1861. They should go back to the time when the plot originated to strip
the national arsenals for the benefit of the nation's enemies, to disarm
the Union that it might fall a prey to secession. This was the treason
which should never be forgotten. The men who fought bravely and openly in
the field for the Confederate cause can be respected for their sincerity
and honored for their valor; but not so with the men who before the war
violated their trust as guardians and armor bearers of the Union to
betray the nation to its conspiring foes.
* * *
The conditions at the beginning of the war were much more favorable to
the South than a mere comparison of population would indicate. The loyal
States had a population of 23,000,000; the seceded States 8,000,000, of
whom about one-half were slaves. These slaves counted, however, for about
as much effective strength as if they had been whites, for the soil had
to be cultivated, the armies fed, fortifications built and other
necessary services performed, and the negroes, while all who were bright
enough to understand the situation wished for the success of the Union,
worked for their masters faithfully, as a rule, until the approach of the
national armies gave an opportunity to escape. Besides, the negroes in
attendance on the Confederate troops performed many duties to which on
the Northern side soldiers were assigned, and in this way the blacks were
useful in even a strictly military sense. In short, the negroes did
everything for the Confederacy but fight for it, and this, too, although
they loved the blue uniform, and gave loyal assistance to the Union
troops whenever occasion offered. The Southern forces, it should also be
remembered, were on their own ground. They knew every thicket and road
and stream; they had the sympathy of the white, as well as the service of
the black inhabitants. They were led by a brilliant group of commanders
whom Jefferson Davis, when Secretary of War, had brought together
probably with this object in view, and they were thoroughly armed and
equipped at the expense of the very government against which they were
contending. It is needless to say that no better soldiers ever bore rifle
or sabre than the men of the Southern Confederacy. They were, like most
of their northern antagonists, Americans of the same blood as those who
carried the redoubts at Yorktown and stormed the hill of Chapultepec, and
their courage in the Civil War fully maintained the prestige gained in
battle against alien foes. In intelligence, or at least in education,
however, the rank and file of the Confederate armies were inferior to the
native Americans in the Union armies. The Confederate troops captured at
Vicksburg were no doubt equal to the average, and of the 27,000 men then
made prisoners and paroled two-thirds made their marks, not being able to
write their names. This is not so surprising when it is remembered that
there was no common school system in the South before the war, and that
the "twenty-negro law," exempting the owner of twenty negroes from
conscription, excused from military service the class which had an
opportunity to be educated, and which also had most at stake in the
contest.
Before the close of the war, however, all exemptions in the Confederacy
were virtually swept away, and the government enlisted every one able to
bear a musket, from the boy hardly in his teens to the old man tottering
to the grave. Those not able to go to the front did duty in the rear, and
the whole male population, excepting cripples and children, was in the
ranks, or the civil service. If any escaped the net of conscription they
were likely to be caught in the round-up made every now and then after
the fashion of the old English press-gang, when all who happened to be in
sight were gathered in, and sent to the army, unless they clearly proved
a title to freedom. In one of these round-ups, says Jones, in his "Diary
of a Rebel War Clerk"--the Postmaster-General of the Confederacy, John H.
Reagan, was carried along with the rest, and detained for some time
before released. Thus the prophecy of Houston was strikingly fulfilled.
Of course, the refugees and deserters, of whom there were a very large
number in the swamps and woods of the South, are excepted from the
statement that the whole population was in arms for the Confederate
cause.
* * *
In the beginning of the war the North was at a disadvantage. Mr. Lincoln
found the little army of the United States scattered and disorganized,
the navy sent to distant quarters of the globe, the treasury bankrupt and
the public service demoralized. Floyd and his fellow-conspirators had
done their work thoroughly. It did not take long for the people of the
North to rally to the defence of the government, and for an army to be
formed capable not only of defending the loyal States, but of striking a
blow at the Confederacy. With the National credit restored, an abundance
of currency provided for national needs, and the public departments
cleared of Southern sympathizers, the North entered upon a conflict which
could have but one ending should the North remain steadfast.
The weakness of the South, from a military standpoint, was in the fact
that men lost could not be replaced. The North could replenish its
depleted armies; the South could not. With men therefore of the same race
and equal in soldierly qualities arrayed against each other, one side
within measurable distance of exhaustion and the other with inexhaustible
human resources to draw upon, the war became an easy sum in arithmetic,
provided the stronger party should not cry "enough" before the weaker had
reached the exhaustion point. The battles on comparatively equal terms
were fought, therefore, in the early part of the war, the decisive
battles in 1863, and the closing struggle between the gasping Confederacy
and the Union stronger than ever, in the last fifteen months of the
conflict.
In the North, notwithstanding the immense armies put in the field, there
never was a time except in brief periods of riot and disorder, when the
usual bustle of humanity was absent from the cities and towns. Commerce
and industry went on with accustomed activity. While Southern cities
looked like garrisoned graveyards the North had never worn a busier or
more prosperous appearance. With such a large population there should
have been no reason for conscription, but when conscription was deemed
requisite, there ought to have been no exemption on the ground of wealth.
Every able-bodied drafted man ought to have been obliged to serve,
without the privilege of a substitute, and no money payment should have
secured release from service. The obligation to defend the country rests
upon all, but if there is any distinction, the rich man has more interest
in protecting the government which shields him and his possessions from
danger than the poor man. European nations make no exemption on account
of wealth or position, and the American Republic certainly should not
have given such an example.
The people of the North, however, with comparatively few but very
troublesome exceptions, gave earnest and enthusiastic support to the
National Government. Committees were formed everywhere to aid the armies
in the field, to provide for the wounded and the sick and to assist the
families of absent soldiers. In the darkest days of the struggle the
people never lost faith in the ultimate triumph of the Union. While
statesmen and editors professing to be superior to their fellows in
knowledge and foresight saw only the gloomy side and predicted the defeat
and downfall of the Republic, the popular heart was true and confident
and courageous. Upon the people's arms Lincoln could always lean in times
of severest trial and anxiety, assured of comfort, support and strength.
* * *
The unfriendliness of Great Britain and France was a most serious and
ever-present danger to the United States throughout the whole period of
the war, and was prolific of injury to American interests. From the
first Great Britain showed a conscious unfriendly purpose. That
government privately proposed to France, even before Queen Victoria's
proclamation recognizing the insurgents as belligerents, to open direct
negotiations with the South, and the British Legation at Washington was
used for secret communications with the Confederate President. When the
Confederate agents, James M. Mason and John Slidell and their secretaries,
were taken from the British mail-steamer Trent by Captain Wilkes, of the
American warship San Jacinto, the course of the British Cabinet indicated
an unfriendliness so extreme as to approach a desire for war. Peremptory
instructions were sent to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington,
to demand the release of the men arrested, and to leave Washington if the
demand was not complied with in seven days. Vessels of war were fitted
out by the British, and troops pressed forward to Canada. The official
statement of the American Minister at London that the act had not been
authorized by the American Government was kept from the British people,
and public opinion was encouraged to drift into a state of hostility
toward the United States. The surrender of Mason and Slidell removed all
excuse for war, much to the disgust, doubtless, of the ruling class in
Great Britain. Leading English statesmen made public speeches favoring
the Confederacy. Lord Russell, himself, the Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, stated in the House of Lords that the subjugation of the
South by the North "would prove a calamity to the United States and to
the world." The Alabama and other privateers went forth from British
ports to prey on American commerce, and the builder of the Alabama was
cheered in the House of Commons when he boasted of what he had done. Even
Mr. Gladstone--before Vicksburg and Gettysburg--declared that "the
restoration of the American Union by force is unattainable."
Napoleon the Third--that crow in the eagle's nest--was cordially with
Great Britain in all efforts to injure the American Union. He had long
cherished the design to establish a vassal empire in Mexico, and in our
Civil War he saw his opportunity. A Southern Confederacy would form a
grand barrier between a Franco-Mexican dominion and the United States,
and while the French emperor treated the government at Washington with
diplomatic courtesy, he never ceased to exert his influence in favor of
the South, so far as he could, without an actual rupture. Napoleon was
ready and anxious to recognize the Confederacy, and he only waited for
the South to win victories that would give him an excuse for action. "His
course toward us," says Bigelow, "from the beginning to the end of the
plot was deliberately and systematically treacherous, and his ministers
allowed themselves to be made his pliant instruments."[1] General Grant
declared at City Point, in 1864, that as soon as we had disposed of the
Confederates we must begin with the Imperialists, and after Appomattox he
expressed the opinion that the French intervention in Mexico was so
closely allied to the rebellion as to be a part of it.
[1] France and the Confederate Navy.
Neither England nor France interfered directly in behalf of the South.
Louis Napoleon waited for England to act, and the British Cabinet felt
that the British masses would not justify a war in defence of slavery.
The American Government, while it met with firm and dignified protest
Great Britain's disregard of international obligations, was careful to
abstain from giving any excuse for British hostility. "One war at a
time," said Abraham Lincoln, in deciding to surrender Mason and Slidell.
But Americans kept careful account of every item of outrage on the part
of England, and in due time the bill was presented--and paid. And in due
time also Napoleon was told to go out of Mexico--and he went.