Congress during the Winter of 1860-61.--Leave-taking of Senators
and Representatives.--South Carolina the First to secede.--Her
Delegation in the House publish a Card withdrawing.--Other States
follow.--Mr. Lamar of Mississippi.--Speeches of Seceding Senators.
--Mr. Yulee and Mr. Mallory of Florida.--Mr. Clay and Mr. Fitzpatrick
of Alabama.--Jefferson Davis.--His Distinction between Secession
and Nullification.--Important Speech by Mr. Toombs.--He defines
Conditions on which the Union might be allowed to survive.--Mr.
Iverson's Speech.--Georgia Senators withdraw.--Insolent Speech of
Mr. Slidell of Louisiana.--Mr. Judah P. Benjamin's Special Plea
for his State.--His Doctrine of "A Sovereignty held in Trust."--
Same Argument of Mr. Yulee for his State.--Principle of State
Sovereignty.--Disproved by the Treaty of 1783.--Notable Omission
by Secession Senators.--Grievances not stated.--Secession Conventions
in States.--Failure to state Justifying Grounds of Action.--
Confederate Government fail likewise to do it.--Contrast with the
Course of the Colonies.--Congress had given no Cause.--Had not
disturbed Slavery by Adverse Legislation.--List of Measures Favorable
to Slavery.--Policy of Federal Government steadily in that Direction.
--Mr. Davis quoted Menaces, not Acts.--Governing Class in the South.
--Division of Society there.--Republic ruled by an Oligarchy.--
Overthrown by Election of Lincoln.--South refuses to acquiesce.
No feature of the extraordinary winter of 1860-61 is more singular
in retrospect than the formal leave-taking of the Southern senators
and representatives in their respective Houses. Members of the
House from the seceding States, with few exceptions, refrained from
individual addresses, either of farewell or defiance, but adopted
a less demonstrative and more becoming mode. The South-Carolina
representatives withdrew on the 24th of December (1860), in a brief
card laid before the House by Speaker Pennington. They announced
that, as the people of their State had "in their sovereign capacity
resumed the powers delegated by them to the Federal Government of
the United States," their "connection with the House of Representatives
was thereby dissolved." They "desired to take leave of those with
whom they had been associated in a common agency, with mutual regard
and respect for the rights of each other." They "cherished the
hope" that in future relations they might "better enjoy the peace
and harmony essential to the happiness of a free and enlightened
people."
SOUTHERN REPRESENTATIVES WITHDRAW.
Other delegations retired from the House in the order in which
their States seceded. The leave-taking, in the main, was not
undignified. There was no defiance, no indulgence of bravado.
The members from Mississippi "regretted the necessity" which impelled
their State to the course adopted, but declared that it met "their
unqualified approval." The card was no doubt written by Mr. L. Q.
C. Lamar, and accurately described his emotions. He stood firmly
by his State in accordance with the political creed in which he
had been reared, but looked back with tender regret to the Union
whose destiny he had wished to share and under the protection of
whose broader nationality he had hoped to live and die. A few
Southern representatives marked their retirement by speeches bitterly
reproaching the Federal Government, and bitterly accusing the
Republican party; but the large majority confined themselves to
the simpler form of the card.
Whether the ease and confidence as to the future which these Southern
representatives manifested was really felt or only assumed, can
never be known. They were all men of intelligence, some of them
conspicuously able; and it seems incredible that they could have
persuaded themselves that a great government could be dissolved
without shock and without resistance. They took leave with no more
formality than that with which a private gentleman, aggrieved by
discourteous treatment, withdraws from a company in which he feels
that he can no longer find enjoyment. Their confidence was based
on the declarations and admissions of Mr. Buchanan's message; but
they had, in effect, constructed that document themselves, and the
slightest reflection should have warned them that, with the change
of administration to occur in a few weeks, there would be a different
understanding of Executive duty, and a different appeal to the
reason of the South.
The senators from the seceding States were more outspoken than the
representatives. They took the opportunity of their retirement to
say many things which, even for their own personal fame, should
have been left unsaid. A clear analysis of these harangues is
impossible. They lacked the unity and directness of the simple
notifications with which the seceding representatives had withdrawn
from the House. The valedictories in the Senate were a singular
compound of defiance and pity, of justification and recrimination.
Some of the speeches have an insincere and mock-heroic tone to the
reader twenty years after the event. They appear to be the
expressions of men who talked for effect, and who professed themselves
ready for a shock of arms which they believed would never come.
But the majority of the utterances were by men who meant all they
said; who, if they did not anticipate a bloody conflict, were yet
prepared for it, and who were too deeply stirred by resentment and
passion to give due heed to consequences.
On the 21st of January the senators from Florida, Alabama, and
Mississippi formally withdrew from the Senate. Their speeches
showed little variety of thought, consisting chiefly of indictments
against the free States for placing the government under the control
of an anti-slavery administration. Mr. Yulee was the first to
speak. He solemnly announced to the Senate that "the State of
Florida, though a convention of her people, had decided to recall
the powers which she had delegated to the Federal Government, and
to assume the full exercise of all her sovereign rights as an
independent and separate community." At what particular period in
the history of the American continent Florida had enjoyed "sovereign
rights," by what process she had ever "delegated powers to the
Federal Government," or at what time she had ever been "an independent
and separate community," Mr. Yulee evidently preferred not to inform
the Senate. His colleague, Mr. Mallory, implored the people of
the North not to repeat the fatal folly of the Bourbons by imagining
that "the South would submit to the degradation of a constrained
existence under a violated Constitution." Mr. Mallory regarded
the subjugation of the South by war as impossible. He warned the
North that they were dealing with "a nation, and not with a
faction."
Mr. Clement C. Clay, Jr., of Alabama, boasted that in the convention
which adopted the Ordinance of Secession in his State there was
not one friend of the Union; and he resented with indignation what
he termed the offensive calumny of the Republicans in denouncing
slavery and polygamy as twin relics of barbarism. The action of
Alabama, he said, was not from "sudden, spasmodic, and violent
passion." It was the conclusion her people had reached "after
years of enmity, injustice, and injury at the hands of their Northern
brethren." Instead of causing surprise, "it is rather matter of
reproach that they have endured so much and so long, and have
deferred this act of self-defense until to-day." Mr. Clay's speech
was insulting and exasperating to the last degree. His colleague,
Mr. Fitzpatrick, a man of better tempter, showed reserve and an
indisposition to discuss the situation. He contented himself with
the expression of a general concurrence in the views of Mr. Clay,
adding no word of bitterness himself. He said that he "acknowledged
loyalty to no other power than to the sovereign State of Alabama."
But for the pressure brought upon him, Mr. Fitzpatrick would have
been glad to retain his seat in the Senate and wait the course of
events. He was not in his heart a Disunionist, as his colleague
was. He would have accepted the nomination for the Vice-Presidency
on the ticket with Douglas the preceding year, if the whole political
power of the Cotton States had not opposed his wishes and forced
him into the support of Breckinridge.
VALEDICTORY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS.
Jefferson Davis expressed his concurrence in the action of the
people of Mississippi. He believed that action was necessary and
proper, but would "have felt himself equally bound if his belief
had been otherwise." He presented an analysis of the difference
between the remedies of nullification and secession. Nullification
was a remedy inside of the Union; secession a remedy outside. He
expressed himself as against the theory of nullification, and
explained that, so far from being identified with secession, the
two are antagonistic principles. Mr. Calhoun's mistake, according
to Mr. Davis, was in trying to "nullify" the laws of the Union
while continuing a member of it. He intimated that President
Jackson would never have attempted to "execute the laws" in South
Carolina as he did against the nullifiers in 1832, if the State
had seceded, and that therefore his great example could not be
quoted in favor of "coercion." It is not believed that Mr. Davis
had the slightest authority for this aspersion upon the memory of
Jackson. It seems rather to have been a disingenuous and unwarranted
statement of the kind so plentifully used at the time for the
purpose of "firing the Southern heart."
There had been an impression in the country that Mr. Davis was
among the most reluctant of those who engaged in the secession
movement; but in his speech he declared that he had conferred with
the people of Mississippi before the step was taken, and counseled
them to the course which they had adopted. This declaration was
a great surprise to Northern Democrats, among whom Mr. Davis had
many friends. For several years he had been growing in favor with
a powerful element in the Democracy of the free States, and, but
for the exasperating quarrel of 1860, he might have been selected
as the Presidential candidate of his party. No man gave up more
than Mr. Davis in joining the revolt against the Union. In his
farewell words to the Senate, there was a tone of moderation and
dignity not unmixed with regretful and tender emotions. There was
also apparent a spirit of confidence and defiance. He evidently
had full faith that he was going forth to victory and to power.
Mr. Toombs of Georgia did not take formal leave, but on the 7th of
January delivered a speech which, though addressed to the Senate
of the United States, was apparently intended to influence public
sentiment in Georgia, where there was an uncomfortable halting in
the progress of secession. The speech had special interest, not
alone from Mr. Toombs's well-known ability, but because it was the
only presentation of the conditions on which the scheme of Disunion
might be arrested, and the Cotton States held fast in their loyalty
to the government,--conditions which, in the language of Mr. Toombs,
would "restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us." It
was not believed that Mr. Toombs had the faintest expectation that
his proposition would receive favorable consideration in the free
States. His point would be fully gained by showing that the free
States would not accept conditions which Georgia had the right to
exact as the basis of her remaining in the Union. Once firmly
persuaded that she was deprived of her constitutional rights,
Georgia could the more easily be led or forced into secession.
The first condition prescribed by Mr. Toombs was, that in all the
territory owned or to be acquired by the United States, slave
property should be securely protected until the period of the
formation of a State government, when the people could determine
the question for themselves. The second condition was, that property
in slaves should be entitled to the same protection from the
Government of the United States in all its departments everywhere,
which is extended to other property, provided that there should be
no interference with the liberty of a State to prohibit or establish
slavery within its limits. The third condition was, that persons
committing crimes against slave property in one State, and fleeing
to another, should be delivered up in the same manner as persons
committing crimes against other forms of property, and that the
laws of the State from which such persons flee should be the test
of the criminality of the act. The fourth condition was, that
fugitive slaves should be surrendered under the Act of 1850 without
being entitled to a writ of _habeas corpus_, or trial by jury, or
other obstructions in the States to which they might flee. The
fifth and last demand was, that Congress should pass efficient laws
for the punishment of all persons in any of the States who should
in any manner aid or abet invasion or insurrection in any other
State, or commit any other act against the law of nations tending
to disturb the tranquility of the people or government of any other
State. Without the concession of these points Mr. Toombs said the
Union could not be maintained. If some satisfactory arrangement
should not be made, he was for immediate action. "We are," he
said, "as ready to fight now as we ever shall be. I will have
equality or war." He denounced Mr. Lincoln as "an enemy to the
human race, deserving the execration of all mankind."
GEORGIA SENATORS WITHDRAW.
Three weeks later the Georgia senators withdrew. Georgia had on
the 19th of January, after much dragooning, passed the Ordinance
of Secession, and on the 28th, Mr. Alfred Iverson, the colleague
of Mr. Toombs, communicated the fact to the Senate in a highly
inflammatory speech. He proclaimed that Georgia was the sixth
State to secede, that a seventh was about to follow, and that "a
confederacy of their own would soon be established." Provision
would be made "for the admission of other States," and Mr. Iverson
assured the Senate that within a few months "all the slave-holding
States of the late confederacy of the United States will be united
together in a bond of union far more homogenous, and therefore more
stable, than the one now being dissolved." His boasting was
unrestrained, but his conception of the contest which he and his
associates were inviting was pitiably inadequate. "Your conquest,"
said he, addressing the Union senators, "will cost you a hundred
thousand lives and a hundred millions of dollars."
The conclusion of Mr. Iverson's harangue disclosed his fear that
after all Georgia might prefer the old Union. "For myself," said
he, "unless my opinions greatly change, I shall never consent to
the reconstruction of the Federal Union. The Rubicon is passed,
and with my consent shall never be recrossed." But these bold
declarations were materially qualified by Mr. Iverson when he
reflected on the powerful minority of Union men in Georgia, and
the general feeling in that State against a conflict with the
National Government. "In this sentiment," said he, "I may be
overruled by the people of my State and of the other Southern
States." . . . "Nothing, however, will bring Georgia back except
a full and explicit recognition and guaranty of the safety and
protection of the institution of domestic slavery." This was the
final indication of the original weakness of the secession cause
in Georgia, and of the extraordinary means which were taken to
impress the people of that State with the belief that secession
would lead to reconstruction on a basis of more efficient protection
to the South and greater strength to the whole Union.
On the 4th of February Mr. Slidell and Mr. Benjamin delivered their
valedictories as senators from Louisiana. Mr. Slidell was aggressively
insolent. He informed the Senate that if any steps should be taken
to enforce the authority of the Union in the seceded States, they
would be resisted. "You may," he said, "under color of enforcing
your laws and collecting your revenue, blockade our ports. This
will be war, and we shall meet it with different but equally
efficient weapons. We will not permit the consumption or introduction
of any of your manufactures. Every sea will swarm with our
privateers, the volunteer militia of the ocean." He confidently
expected foreign aid. "How long," he asked, "will the great naval
powers of Europe permit you to impede their free intercourse with
their best customers, and to stop the supply of the great staple
which is the most important basis of their manufacturing industry?"
"You were," said he, adding taunt to argument, "with all the wealth
of this once great confederacy, but a fourth or fifth rate naval
power. What will you be when emasculated by the withdrawal of
fifteen States, and warred upon by them with active and inveterate
hostility?"
In a tone of patronizing liberality, Mr. Slidell gave assurance
that the new confederacy would recognize the rights of the inhabitants
of the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries to free
navigation, and would guarantee to them "a free interchange of
agricultural production without impost, and the free transit from
foreign countries of every species of merchandise, subjected only
to such regulations as may be necessary for a protection of the
revenue system which we may establish." Had Mr. Slidell been less
inspired by insolence, and more largely endowed with wisdom, he
would have remembered that when the Union contained but six millions
of people, they were willing to fight any one of three great European
powers for freedom of access to the sea for the inhabitants of the
valley of the Mississippi, and that it was from the first a physical
impossibility to close it or in any way restrict it against the
rights of the North-West. The people of that section, even without
the prestige of the national flag, were immeasurably stronger than
the people of the South-West, and were, unaided, fully competent
to fight their way to the ocean over any obstacles which the powers
behind Mr. Slidell could interpose. In the mere matching of local
strength, it was sheer folly for the States of the lower Mississippi
to attempt to control the mouth of that river.
SPEECHES OF BENJAMIN AND SLIDELL.
Mr. Judah P. Benjamin spoke in a tone of moderation as contrasted
with the offensive dictation of Mr. Slidell. He devoted himself
mainly to answering an argument which came instinctively to every
man's mind, and which bore with particular severity upon the action
of Louisiana. Mr. Benjamin brought his eminent legal ability to
the discussion, but failed even to satisfy himself. The State of
Louisiana was formed from territory which had been bought and paid
for by the United States out of the common treasury of the whole
people. Whatever specious plea might be made for the independent
and separate sovereignty of the old thirteen States, the argument
could not apply to Louisiana. No one could maintain that Louisiana
had ever enjoyed a separate sovereignty of any kind, nominal or
real. She had been originally owned by France, had been sold to
Spain, had been sold back again to France, and had been bought by
the United States. These sales had been made without protest from
any one, and the title conferred at each transfer was undisputed,
the sovereignty of the purchasing power undeniable.
Confronting these facts, and realizing the difficulty they presented,
Mr. Benjamin was reduced to desperate straits for argument. "Without
entering into the details of the negotiation," he said, "the archives
of our State Department show the fact to be that although the
domain, the public lands and other property of France in the ceded
province, were conveyed by absolute title to the United States,
the sovereignty was not conveyed _otherwise than in trust_." This
peculiar statement of a sovereignty that was "conveyed in trust"
Mr. Benjamin attempted to sustain by quoting the clause in the
treaty which gave the right of the people of Louisiana to be
incorporated into the Union "on terms of equality with the other
States." From this he argued that the sovereignty of the _Territory_
of Louisiana held in trust by the Federal Government, and conveyed
to the _State_ of Louisiana on her admission to the Union, was
necessarily greater than the National sovereignty. Indeed, Mr.
Benjamin recognized no "Nation" in the United States and no real
sovereignty in the General Government which was but the agent of
the sovereign States. It properly and logically followed, according
to Mr. Benjamin, that the "sovereignty held in trust," might, when
conferred, be immediately and rightfully employed to destroy the
life of the trustee. The United States might or might not admit
Louisiana to the Union, for the General Government was sole judge
as to time and expediency--but when once admitted, the power of
the State was greater than the power of the Government which
permitted the State to come into existence. Such were the
contradictions and absurdities which the creed of the Secessionists
inevitably involved, and in which so clever a man as Mr. Benjamin
was compelled to blunder and flounder.
Pursuing his argument, Mr. Benjamin wished to know whether those
who asserted that Louisiana had been bought by the United States
meant that the United States had the right based on that fact to
sell Louisiana? He denied in every form that there had ever been
such a purchase of Louisiana as carried with it the right of sale.
"I deny," said he, "the fact on which the argument is founded. I
deny that the Province of Louisiana or the people of Louisiana were
ever conveyed to the United States for a price as property that
could be bought or sold at will." However learned Mr. Benjamin
may have been in the law, he was evidently ill informed as to the
history of the transaction of which he spoke so confidently. He
should have known that the United States, sixteen years after it
bought Louisiana from France, actually sold or exchanged a large
part of that province to the King of Spain as part of the consideration
in the purchase of the Floridas. He should have known that at the
time the Government of the United States disposed of a part of
Louisiana, there was not an intelligent man in the world who did
not recognize its right and power to dispose of the whole. The
theory that the United States acquired a less degree of sovereignty
over Louisiana than was held by France when she transferred it, or
by Spain when she owned it, was never dreamed of when the negotiation
was made. It was an afterthought on the part of the hard-pressed
defenders of the right of secession. It was the ingenious but lame
device of an able lawyer who undertook to defend what was
indefensible.
Mr. Yulee of Florida had endeavored to make the same argument on
behalf of his State, feeling the embarrassment as did Mr. Benjamin,
and relying, as Mr. Benjamin did, upon the clause in the treaty
with Spain entitling Florida to admission to the Union. Mr. Benjamin
and Mr. Yulee should both have known that the guaranty which they
quoted was nothing more and nothing less than the ordinary condition
which every enlightened nation makes in parting with its subjects
or citizens, that they shall enter into the new relation without
discrimination against them and with no lower degree of civil rights
than had already been enjoyed by those who form the nation to which
they are about to be annexed. Louisiana, when she was transferred
to the United States, received no further guaranty than Napoleon
in effect gave to Spain at the treaty of San Ildefonso, or than
the Spanish Bourbons had given to the French Bourbons in the treaty
of 1763 at the close of the Seven Years' War. In each of the three
transfers of the sovereignty of Louisiana, the same condition was
perfectly understood as to the rights of the inhabitants. Mr.
Benjamin drew the conclusion which was not only diametrically wrong
in morals, but diametrically erroneous in logic. Instead of
inferring that a State, situated as Louisiana was, should necessarily
become greater than the power which purchased it, simply because
other States in the Union which she joined had assumed such power,
a discriminating mind of Mr. Benjamin's acuteness should have seen
that the very position proved the reverse of what he stated, and
demonstrated, in the absurdity of Louisiana's secession, the equal
absurdity of the secession of South Carolina and Georgia.
THE ARGUMENT OF MR. BENJAMIN.
It seemed impossible for Mr. Benjamin or for any other leader of
Southern opinion to argue the question of State rights fairly or
dispassionately. They had been so persistently trained in the
heresy that they could give no weight to the conclusive reasoning
of the other side. The original thirteen, they averred, were "free,
sovereign, and independent States," acknowledged to be such by the
King of Great Britain in the Treaty of peace in 1783. The new
States, so the argument ran, were all admitted to the Union of
terms of equality with the old. Hence all were alike endowed with
sovereignty. Even the historical part of this argument was strained
and fallacious. Much was made in the South of Mr. Toombs's
declaration that "the original thirteen" were as "independent of
each other as Australia and Jamaica." So indeed they were as long
as they remained British Colonies. Their only connection in that
condition was in their common dependence on the Crown. But the
first step towards independence of the Crown was to unite. From
that day onward they were never separate. Nor did the King of
Great Britain acknowledge the "independence and sovereignty" of
the thirteen individual and separate States. The Treaty of peace
declares that "His Majesty acknowledges the said United States
[naming them] to be free, sovereign, and independent States."--not
separately and individually, but the "said _United_ States." The
King then agrees that "the following are and shall be the boundaries
of the said United States,"--proceeding to give, not the boundaries
of each State, but the boundaries of the whole as one unit, one
sovereignty, one nationality. Last of all, the commissioners who
signed the treaty with the King's commissioner were not acting for
the individual States, but for the _United_ States. Three of them,
John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, were from the North,
and Henry Laurens from the South. The separate sovereignties whose
existence was so persistently alleged by Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Toombs
were not represented when independence was conceded. Mr. Benjamin's
conclusion, therefore, was not only illogical, but was completely
disproved by plain historical facts.
It seems never to have occurred to Mr. Benjamin, or to Mr. Yulee,
or to the Texas senators, or to the Arkansas senators, that the
money paid from a common treasury of the nation gave any claim to
National sovereignty. Their philosophy seems to have been that
the General Government had been paid in full by the privilege of
nurturing new States, of improving their rivers and harbors, of
building their fortifications, of protecting them in peace, of
defending them in war. The privilege of leading the new communities
through the condition of Territorial existence up to the full
majesty of States, was, according to secession argument, sufficient
compensation, and removed all shadow of the title or the sovereignty
of the National Government, the moment the inhabitants thus benefitted
announced their desire to form new connections. Louisiana had cost
fifteen millions of dollars at a time when that was a vast sum of
money. It had cost five millions of money and the surrender of a
province, to purchase Florida, and nearly a hundred millions more
to extinguish the Indian title, and make the State habitable for
white men. Texas cost the National Treasury ninety millions of
dollars in the war which was precipitated by her annexation, and
ten millions more paid to her in 1850, in adjustment of her boundary
trouble. All these States apparently regarded the tie that bound
them to the National Government as in no degree mutual, as imposing
no duty upon them. By some mysterious process still unexplained,
the more they gained from connection with the National authority,
the less was their obligation thereto, the more perfect their right
to disregard and destroy the beneficent government which had created
them and fostered them.
SOUTHERN GRIEVANCES NOT STATED.
In all the speeches delivered by the senators from the seceding
States, there was no presentation of the grievances which, in their
own minds, justified secession. This fact elicited less notice at
the time than it calls forth in retrospect. Those senators held
in their hands in the beginning, the fate of the secession movement.
If they had advised the Southern States that it was wiser and better
to abide in the Union, and at least to wait for some overt act of
wrong against the slave States, the whole movement would have
collapsed. But they evidently felt that this would be a shrinking
and cowardly policy after the numerous manifestoes they had issued.
South Carolina had taken the fatal step, and to fail in sustaining
her would be to co-operate in crushing her. While these motives
and aims are intelligible, it seems utterly incredible that not
one of the senators gave a specification of the wrongs which led
the South to her rash step. Mr. Toombs recounted the concessions
on which the South would agree to remain; but these were new
provisions and new conditions, never intended by the framers of
the Federal Constitution; and they were abhorrent to the civilization
of the nineteenth century.
Mr. Toombs, Mr. Jefferson Davis, and Mr. Benjamin were the three
ablest senators who spoke in favor of secession. Not one of them
deemed it necessary to justify his conduct by a recital of the
grounds on which so momentous a step could bear the test of historic
examination. They dealt wholly in generalities as to the past,
and apparently based their action on something that was to happen
in the future. Mr. John Slidell sought to give a strong reason
for the movement, in the statement that, if Lincoln should be
inaugurated with Southern assent, the 4th of March would witness,
in various quarters, outbreaks among the slaves which, although
they would be promptly suppressed, would carry ruin and devastation
to many a Southern home. It was from Mr. Slidell that Mr. Buchanan
received the information which induced him to dwell at length in
his annual message on this painful feature of the situation. But
it was probably an invention of Mr. Slidell's fertile brain--imposed
upon the President and intended to influence public sentiment in
the North. It was in flat contradiction of the general faith in
the personal fealty of their slaves, so constantly boasted by the
Southern men,--a faith abundantly justified by the subsequent fact
that four years of war passed without a single attempt to servile
insurrection. At the time of the John Brown disturbance the South
resented the imputation of fear, made upon it by the North. If
now the danger was especially imminent, Southern leaders were solely
to blame. They would not accept the honorable assurance of the
Republican party and of the President-elect that no interference
with slavery in the States was designed. They insisted in all
their public addresses that Mr. Lincoln was determined to uproot
slavery everywhere, and they might well fear that these repeated
declarations had been heard and might be accepted by their slaves.
The omission by individual senators to present the grievances which
justified secession is perhaps less notable then the same omission
by the conventions which ordained secession in the several States.
South Carolina presented, as a special outrage, the enactment of
personal-liberty bills in the free States, and yet, from the
foundation of the Federal Government, she had probably never lost
a slave in consequence of these enactments. In Georgia the attempt
at justification reached the ludicrous when solemn charge was made
that a bounty had been paid from the Federal Treasury to New-England
fishermen. The tariff was complained of, the navigation laws were
sneered at. But these were all public policies which had been in
operation with Southern consent and largely with Southern support,
throughout the existence of the Republic. When South Carolina
attempted, somewhat after the illustrious model of the Declaration
of Independence, to present justifying reasons for her course, the
very authors of the document must have seen that it amounted only
to a parody.
Finding no satisfactory exhibit of grievances, either in the speeches
of senators or in the declarations of conventions, one naturally
infers that the Confederate Government, when formally organized at
Montgomery in February, must have given a full and lucid statement
to the world of the reasons for this extraordinary movement. When
our fathers were impelled to break their loyalty to the English
king, and to establish an independent government, they declared in
the very fore-front of the document which contained their reasons,
that "when it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bonds which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station
to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that _they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation_." They
followed this assertion with an exhibit of causes which, in the
judgment of the world, has been and ever will be, a complete
justification of their revolutionary movement.
THOMAS JEFFERSON AND JEFFERSON DAVIS.
The Confederate Government saw fit to do nothing of the kind.
Their Congress put forth no declaration or manifesto, and Jefferson
Davis in his Inaugural as President utterly failed--did not even
attempt--to enumerate the grounds of complaint upon which the
destruction of the American Union was based. He said that "the
declared compact of the Union from which we have withdrawn was to
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. And when, in the judgment
of the sovereign States now composing this confederacy, it has been
perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and ceases
to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal
to the ballot-box declared, that, so far as they were concerned,
the government created by that compact should cease to exist. In
this they merely assert the right which the Declaration of Independence
of 1776 defined to be inalienable." But in what manner, at what
time, by what measure, "justice, domestic tranquillity, common
defense, the general welfare," had been destroyed by the government
of the Union, Mr. Jefferson Davis did not deign to inform the world
to whose opinion he appealed.
Mr. Jefferson, in draughting the Declaration of Independence which
Davis quotes as his model, said "the history of the present King
of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,
all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny
over these States." What would have been thought of Mr. Jefferson
if he had stopped there and adduced no instance and given no proof
of his serious indictment against George III.? But Mr. Jefferson
and his fellow-patriots in that great Act proceeded to submit their
proof to the judgment of a candid world. They recited twenty-eight
distinct charges of oppression and tyranny, depriving them of rights
to which they were entitled as subjects of the Crown under the
British Constitution. From that hour to this, there has been no
disproval of the truth of these charges or of the righteousness of
the resistance to which our forefathers resorted. It would have
been well for the dignity of the Southern Confederacy in history
if one of its many able men had placed on record, in an authentic
form, the grounds upon which, and the grievances for which,
destruction of the Union could be justified.
In his message to the Confederate Congress, Mr. Davis apparently
attempted to cure the defects of his Inaugural address, and to give
a list of measures which he declared to have been hostile to Southern
interests. But it is to be observed that not one of these measures
had been completed. They were merely menaced or foreshadowed. As
matter of fact, emphasized by Mr. Buchanan in his message, and
known to no one better than to Mr. Davis, not a single measure
adverse to the interests of slavery had been passed by the Congress
of the United States from the foundation of the government. If
the Missouri Compromise of 1820 be alleged as an exception to this
sweeping assertion, it must be remembered that that compromise was
a Southern and not a Northern measure, and was a triumph of the
pro-slavery members of Congress over the anti-slavery members; and
that its constitutionality was upheld by the unanimous voice of
the Cabinet in which Mr. Crawford of Georgia and Mr. Calhoun of
South Carolina were leading members.
On the other hand, the policy of the government had been steadily
in favor of slavery; and the measures of Congress which would
strengthen it were not only numerous, but momentous in character.
They are familiar to every one who knows the simplest elements of
our national history. The acquisition of Louisiana, the purchase
of Florida, the Mexican war, were all great national movements
which resulted in strengthening the slave power. Every demand
which the South made for protection had been conceded. More
stringent provisions for the return of fugitive slaves were asked,
and a law was enacted trampling under foot the very spirit of
liberty, and putting in peril the freedom of men who were citizens
of Northern States. The Missouri Compromise, passed with the
consent and support of the South, was repealed by Southern dictation
the moment its operation was found to be hostile to the spread of
slavery. The rights of slavery in the Territories required judicial
confirmation, and the Supreme Court complied by rendering the famous
decision in the case of Dred Scott. Against all these guaranties
and concessions for the support of slavery, Mr. Davis could quote,
not anti-slavery aggressions which had been made, but only those
which might be made in the future.
SOUTHERN RESISTANCE TO LAW.
This position disclosed the real though not the avowed cause of
the secession movement. Its authors were not afraid of an immediate
invasion of the rights of the slave-holder in the States, but they
were conscious that the growth of the country, the progress of
civilization, and the expansion of our population, were all hostile
to their continued supremacy as the governing element in the
Republic. The South was the only section in which there was
distinctively a governing class. The slave-holders ruled their
States more positively than ever the aristocratic classes ruled
England. Besides the distinction of free and slave, or black and
white, there was another line of demarcation between white men that
was as absolute as the division between patrician and plebeian.
The nobles of Poland who dictated the policy of the kingdom were
as numerous in proportion to the whole population as the rich class
of slave-holders whose decrees governed the policy of their States.
It was, in short, an oligarchy which by its combined power ruled
the Republic. No President of any party had ever been elected who
was opposed to its supremacy. The political revolution of 1860
had given to the Republic an anti-slavery President, and the Southern
men refused to accept the result. They had been too long accustomed
to power to surrender it to an adverse majority, however lawful or
constitutional that majority might be. They had been trained to
lead and not to follow. They were not disciplined to submission.
They had been so long in command that they had become incapable of
obedience. Unwillingness to submit to Constitutional authority
was the controlling consideration which drove the Southern States
to the desperate design of a revolution, peaceful they hoped it
would be, but to a revolution even if it should be one of blood.