which this war might have, viewed from the beginning; of the several
modes, in other words, in which it might terminate. The most distant
extremes of possible eventuality were the entire conquest of the North
by the South, and the entire conquest of the Southern rebellion by the
North, so as to secure the continuance of the old Union upon the old
basis; or with such modifications as the changed condition of things at
the South might require. The supposition of the conquest of the Northern
States by the Southern Vandals has been already glanced at and
sufficiently considered for so remote and improbable a contingency. The
counter supposition of the entire success of the United States
Government in the reassertion of its own authority over the whole of its
original domain, divided, at the commencement of the war, into two
branches.
It was the general theory at the North, at that time, that the _animus_
of rebellion was confined at the South to comparatively few minds, and
that the war was to be a war, not against the South as a people, but
against a tyrannical and usurping faction at the South, and for the
defence of the people at large residing in that region. There was a
modicum of truth in this theory, but events have shown, and any one who
knew the South well might safely have predicted, that the whole people
there would soon be subdued to the authority of those few. Such was the
terror throughout the confederacy, and still is, where the facts have
not been already changed by the war, at the mere imputation of sympathy
with anti-slavery sentiment in any form, that a part, hardly one tenth
even of the whole, in numerical strength, could successfully put the
remaining nine tenths into Coventry, and bully them out of all
expression of adverse opinion, by simply threatening to accuse them of
abolition tendencies. No people on earth were ever so completely _cowed_
by the nightmare of unpopular opinion as the people of the South. Hence
whatever was violently advocated under pretence of excessive devotion
to, or ultra championship of the cause of slavery, was sure in the end
to succeed. By this process, the Union party at the South has been
gradually overawed and diminished for years past, and finally driven,
since the outbreak of the rebellion, into a complete surrender to, and a
full coöperation with the rebel chiefs. Whatever may seem to be the
reaction in behalf of Union sentiment, as the triumphant armies of the
North march to the Gulf, it will be long before the real opinion of the
masses will declare itself in full as it exists. The fear of the renewal
of the old terrorism, so soon as our armies shall be withdrawn, will
effectually prevent the free expression of the favorable sentiment which
has heretofore existed, and still exists, as a substratum of Southern
opinion in favor of the Union, unless the Northern conquest is made
unquestionably final.
In the event that the theory just stated should have proved true, that,
aided by the presence of Northern troops, there should have been a loyal
sentiment sufficiently powerful and extended to reassert itself, in the
extreme South, and that, consequently, all the Southern States should
have been again represented in Congress at an early day, and should
again have taken their places as equal partners under the Constitution
of our common country, it seemed just possible that the results of the
war should be confined, in their immediate action, to what may be called
its educational effects upon the Southern mind and its economical
bearings upon the wealth and industry of the nation.
As the other branch of the alternative, the South might have to be
conquered by the force of our arms, and might remain unanimously, or in
vast preponderance, disloyal and rebellious in spirit. In that event, it
would be requisite, if those States were to be retained at all as part
of the Union, that they should be reconsigned to the Territorial
condition, or otherwise governed still by the central authority.
In the former of these two latter suppositions: that of the
reëstablishment of the old _status_, it was foreseen by some, as not
impossible, that the final result might prove disastrous to the freedom
of the North. With the advent of peace, the suspicions of the Northern
people with regard to the designs and real character of Southern men
would have been allayed. A certain appeal would even have been made, by
the suggestions of their own generosity, to the hearts of Northern men
to lay aside all hostile and adverse action as against the South, and to
welcome them with open arms to all the rights and privileges of the
common country. Meantime, a horde of unscrupulous machinators would have
been installed in the seats of power at Washington, and would have
recommenced operations, in the consciousness of the new strength
acquired in the field from which they had just retired, with all the
chicanery and craft with which heretofore they had blinded the North and
secretly controlled the destinies of our Government. Southern men and
Southern women would again have been feasted and feted at Northern
hotels and watering places, and again have given tone to Northern
opinion, while new and especial reasons would have seemed to exist for
opposing countervailing influences, as unnecessary agitation, and causes
of the retention of acrimonious feeling between the two sections, which
had now resolved to live in amity with each other. In a word, all the
sources of corruption of Northern sentiment, emanating from the South,
would have been renewed in their operation, with some circumstances
added, tending to give to them greater potency than ever before.
Undoubtedly, immense advantages were to be contemplated in the
restoration of the United States to their primitive boundaries and
united power. But it was not without deep apprehension of moral taint
and ulterior evil consequences, that a wise patriot could look even then
to any attempt of the old matrimonial partners to dwell again in a
common household, upon the old terms, and with no real settlement of the
dispute between them.
The latter of these suppositions, the remanding of a hostile and
rebellious tier of States, who had long and proudly enjoyed the dignity
of State sovereignty, to a subordinate condition, had also its
proportion of difficulty and danger. To carry out a _programme_ of this
kind would demand a great increase of the army and navy, and would give
to the military spirit and power a preponderance in the councils of the
nation which has always been deemed dangerous to the liberties of the
country. A constant drain of expenditure of the resources of the nation;
a continuous unrest and anxiety of the whole people; a succession of
outbreaks and partial renewals of the civil war; the installation of a
necessary system of proconsular or viceroyal commissions; the
appointment of men who, whether as provost-marshals, dictators, or what
not, would be in the stated exercise of authority unmeasured by the
theories of republican policy--all these were serious and threatening
considerations, which must give the thoughtful mind some pause ere it
entered upon their adoption.
There were other remaining possible suppositions in respect to the
termination of the war, of a middling character, or those lying between
the two opposite extremes. In case, without any positive conquest or
submission on either side, the general tenor of success throughout the
war should be with the South, so that it finally behooved the North to
secure the most favorable terms, but to submit, nevertheless, to great
deductions from its confident expectations, a theory then not wholly
impossible, we had to contemplate, as one evil of the war, a final
disruption of the original territory of the United States into two
nationalities, coincident, as to boundary, with the Free and the Slave
States. Except in the way of absolute conquest, the South would be
little inclined to insist upon the addition to itself of any territory
absolutely free. We were not required, therefore, to make this
supposition any less favorable to the North than the division just
suggested; and unless, again, power had been acquired by the South to
impose terms on the North little short of those which a conqueror
imposes on a conquered people, the North, within its own limit of Free
States, would be left in a condition boldly to announce and actively to
defend its own legitimate policy in behalf of the extension of free
institutions and their development to the supreme degree of beneficent
truth.
But again, it might have been foreseen that in case the eagle of victory
should perch on the banners of the North; in case our arms should be
generally victorious after a few incipient disasters; in case our armies
should move in power southward, meeting, nevertheless, a steady and
resisting front on the part of the South, making the prospect of
ultimate conquest remote or hopeless; in case, in a single word, the
North should find herself in position to dictate terms short of absolute
submission and return to the common fold, but substantially in
accordance with her own wishes, the question of boundary and of the
future policy of the new North would have become one of immense
importance.
Had such considerations been forced on the attention of the country by
the course of the war, it may not be uninteresting to speculate upon
the nature of the possible boundary, which a drawn game in the
contest--a possibility at least, viewed from that early point of
observation--might have imposed upon the two future nationalities. We
are considering the case still in which the preponderance of advantage
should have remained with the North. It would have been, in that event,
of the first importance that we should retain within the limits of the
North all that portion of the South--by no means inconsiderable in
extent--which has never been thoroughly debauched by Southern
slaveholding opinion and theories of government; where the true American
feeling is still extant; and where a good degree of loyalty to the
Government of the United States has been hitherto exhibited. Such are
especially Delaware, Maryland, Western Virginia, Kentucky, Western North
Carolina, Eastern, and to some extent, Middle Tennessee, Northern
Georgia, Northern Alabama, and Missouri. An important object would have
been, had the power of the North proved inadequate to do more, to secure
this territory within the boundary of the new North, and upon such terms
as to give strength and new impetus to the freedom-loving sentiment
there extant. A second object would have been the retention of
Washington City, to be used, at least for the time being, as the capital
of the country; avoiding the disgrace of being driven from that centre
of national authority; and to secure it on terms in respect to
territorial arrangement which should prevent it from being continually
threatened from the South. To this end, it would have been necessary
that the boundary be carried far enough south to include a portion of
Northern and Northeastern Virginia, as thoroughly imbued at that day
with slaveholding faith and practice, and as little loyal, perhaps, as
any portion of the South--a region, however, which at this time has been
so completely devastated by the operations of the war, that it would be
readily liable to be resettled from the North, and made into an
efficient military border.
If, retaining Fortress Monroe, we should then have run with the James
River and the line of Richmond and Lynchburg, or if, ascending higher to
the Chesapeake Bay and the Rappahannock, we were to run with the line of
Fredericksburg, we should reach either the Blue Ridge or the Alleghany
Mountains, as in the case of power on our part, we might have chosen.
With these mountains, sweeping in a southwesterly direction into
Northern Georgia and Alabama, runs the line of division between the
'true-blue' Southern slaveholding opinion and policy, on the south and
east, and the semi-Free-State opinion and policy on the north and west.
One or other of these mountain ranges, with their unfrequent and
difficult passes, would have offered the best natural boundary between
the two future nations, whose divergent national tendencies would not
have ceased with the nominal termination of the war to be essentially
hostile.
Following this line till we reach the Tennessee river, thence along the
course of that stream, turning northwardly to the Ohio, or more
properly, perhaps, to the southern line of Kentucky, we exclude the most
pestilent portion of Tennessee, of which Memphis is the capital, and
retain the middle and eastern parts, along with Eastern Kentucky and
Western Virginia. Thence passing westward with the southern line of
Missouri to the Indian Territory, thence southward with the western line
of Arkansas to the Red river, thence westward along that river as the
boundary between the Indian Territory and Texas, to the one hundredth
degree of longitude west from Greenwich, and with that meridian south,
to the Rio Grande and the Gulf--dividing the western from the eastern
half of Texas--we circumscribe very fairly the exact region of country
in which the slaveholding epidemic is violent and intense, and throw
within the limits of the great Northern Republic all of the region in
which freedom is already established, and all that in which, as above
stated, there was still a surviving and half vital tendency in freedom's
behalf.
In addition to a boundary so favorable to ourselves, and forced by our
commanding position upon our unwilling adversary, we might have imposed
upon her such other terms in relation to her foreign policy,
custom-house regulations, and the like, as the extent of our power
should have authorized. We might even have consigned the Southern States
to a species of provisional and _quasi_ nationality, with the claim and
expectation of their ultimate return within the pale of the Union, when,
through the severe ordeal of military despotism or anarchy at home, or
from other causes, they should have purged themselves of that
institution, adverse to all our policy, which has been the sole cause of
all our woes.
Still more important it would have been, under the theory of this
essentially victorious position of the Northern people, that Northern
opinion and the purposes of Americanism on this continent--the assertion
and defence of freedom and of free institutions of all sorts--should
have been distinctly, peremptorily, and finally impressed upon the
character and future career of our own Northern nationality. While those
portions of slaveholding territory which would still have remained
within the Union, would have had, of course, to be treated with courtesy
and consideration, if the institution of slavery were to have been
permitted to survive, they should have been thoroughly made to know from
the first, that slavery among us was no longer to be regarded as a
perpetuity; that it was only tolerated provisionally; and that we, as a
people, had no intention of permitting its renewed influence in the
councils of the nation. Cut off as these States would then have been
from the possibilities of carrying on an inter-State slave trade with
the Southern confederacy, the institution of slavery would have lost
much of its value and potency; and allied, as those States would have
been, as a small minority, with a country whose territorial and
institutional preponderance would have been wholly in favor of freedom,
we might have anticipated that, if closely watched and incidentally
aided in its decline, the institution in these adhering slaveholding
States would have reached its term of existence at no very distant day;
at any rate, that it would, from the first, have been neutralized for
any serious bad effects which it might have otherwise impressed upon our
healthy national life. It was even worth reflection at that time
whether, if the whole adjustment of the future were placed at our own
disposition, there would not be less danger incurred, and more promise
of a prompt, healthy, and powerful development on this continent of
those grand purposes of national existence which the true American
people have always had in view and at heart, if this plan were to be
adopted, than if, on the contrary, the whole South were either
quiescently, by the subsidence of the rebellion, or forcibly, to be
reinstated within the limits of the Union, the institution of slavery
remaining intact.
Northeastern Virginia, Southern Maryland, and portions of Kentucky,
Middle Tennessee, and Middle Missouri would still have furnished
pestilent centres of intense slaveholding sentiment, and would have
required, perhaps, as much exercise of vigilance in preventing their
undue influence as our usually sleepy habits of inattention to such
causes would have authorized us to count upon.
With the gradual decline of this remnant of slavery in the Northern
Union, and with the thousand contingencies threatening its perpetuity in
the Southern States, after the sustaining influence of the North in its
behalf should have been finally withdrawn, the anticipation would not
have been without high grounds of probability, that the institution, as
a whole, would have hastened more or less rapidly to its final
dissolution; and that, one by one, the States of the South, ridding
themselves of the incubus of slavery and its comcomitants--oligarchic,
mobocratic, and military despotism--would have sought, for their own
protection and happiness, to reënter the original Union as Free States.
Such an issue of the conflict might at the commencement of the war have
been looked forward to as almost fortunate, and as perhaps that which
Providence had in store for us as a people. That larger measure of
success, the entire destruction of slavery throughout the land, now
rapidly coming to be a foregone conclusion in most minds, was then
hardly hoped for by the most sanguine, although, as will appear by what
follows, that alternative was then anticipated by the writer.
Finally, in case the war should have proved a drawn game between the two
sections, with no special advantage on either side, some middle ground
of adjustment between the two last suppositions might have been sought
out, and an irregular line, running anywhere between Mason and Dixon's
line and the Ohio, on the one hand, and the Blue Ridge and the Tennessee
river on the other, might have been forced upon us. In that event, a
long-continued border warfare would have been to be anticipated, with
innumerable complex difficulties from expenditure in the protection of
the irregular and imperfect boundary, the collection of the revenues,
and the like.
The reason why we have chosen, in these glances at the possible
outcomings of the conflict, to go back to the state of the case as it
was at the opening of the war, and to view the subject as it would
present itself to the mind of a thoughtful man then, is, that this very
paper was originally written at that day, and is now only recast to
adapt it to the altered events from the actual progress of the war. The
boundary line above sketched, as one which the nation might possibly
find itself compelled to accept, was sketched, as it stands above, at
that time, nearly two and a half years ago; and the reader will hardly
fail to be struck with the remarkable coincidence between it and the
present state of the military lines between the Northern and Southern
armies; except in the fact of our actual possession of the Mississippi
river to its mouth, cutting the Southern confederacy in twain. Had the
defences below New Orleans proved impregnable, and Vicksburg more than a
match for the strategy of General Grant, our present position would be
almost identical with that contemplated by the writer at that early
period of the war, as one of the alternative positions at which the
struggle might at least temporarily terminate; and our present military
line would be almost the same as that indicated as the halting point of
the war, then to be nominally but not really brought to an end. The
pages following, and until the reader is advised to the contrary, are
literally extracted from the original article, and should be read
therefore as relating to the past period in question. Quotation marks
are added to aid this understanding of the subject. They indicate, in
this exceptional way, not literally the words of another writer, but
those of the same writer, upon a different occasion.
'We have reserved to the last the consideration of that possible
outcoming of the war which is looked upon with most dread, both at the
South and the North; from which both sections almost equally shrink as
the possible issue; but which, nevertheless, may be forced on them by
the logic of events, and that, too, at an earlier day than has been
indicated by the expectations of either. While we write, the startling
announcement is made from St. Louis that Major-General Fremont has been
forced, by the threatening progress of the Southern armies, to declare
martial law for the whole State of Missouri, coupled with the offer of
freedom to the slaves. A military critic, writing from the Potomac and
the lower counties of Maryland, is urging the application of the same
policy to that region, as a means of defeating the contemplated passage
of the river by the forces of the South. Whether the rumor so announced
prove to be literally correct or not, it is hardly possible that the war
can continue long, and grow desperate and earnest on any territory where
slavery exists, without leading to this result. Tenderness and deference
are sentiments which must soon give place to the stern struggle for life
between hostile and desperate men. Already the South has not hesitated,
in some instances, to muster her slaves into armed regiments, and in all
cases to avail herself of their brawny arms as equally valuable
assistants in the work of fortification, camp service, and all the other
incidents of war. Still further, as a great body of laborers,
undisturbed by the war, quietly conducting the general industry at home,
and providing the means of sustaining immense armies in the field, the
slaves are, in effect, an important auxiliary of the enemy's power.
Already the Congress of the United States has passed a law for the
confiscation of all property so used, so stringent in its terms that,
without much strain of legal ingenuity, it might be made to cover the
whole case. The threatened continuance of disaster to Northern arms may
at any moment force upon our generals the military necessity of
declaring emancipation within a given district or State, and finally, it
may be incumbent on the Government to resort to the same policy in
reference to the whole South. The contest is one of life and death for
the greatest human interests ever brought face to face in hostile array.
But a single step is wanting, and we may at any moment be forced over
the boundary which hitherto has prevented it from being a conflict
avowedly for the utter extinction of the institution of slavery on the
North American continent, on the one hand, and for the triumphant
establishment of the policy and power of that institution over the whole
land on the other.
'In case such an event as that above alluded to should occur, a new
disappointment will probably, to some extent, break upon the Northern
mind. It will be found that the slaves of the South are not, as a body,
so desirous of freedom, not so consciously intent upon the attainment of
that boon, as ardent philanthropists at the North have supposed. The
great masses of that population are too far depressed in the scale of
humanity to avail themselves earnestly and at once, of even the most
favorable means which should be placed at their disposal to secure their
own emancipation from thraldom.