DISUNION MOVEMENTS: SOUTHERN PRESS AT WASHINGTON: SOUTHERN
CONVENTION AT NASHVILLE: SOUTHERN CONGRESS CALLED FOR BY SOUTH
CAROLINA AND MISSISSIPPI.
"_When the future historian shall address himself to the task
of portraying the rise, progress, and decline of the American
Union, the year 1850 will arrest his attention, as denoting and
presenting the first marshalling and arraying of those hostile
forces and opposing elements which resulted in dissolution; and
the world will have another illustration of the great truth,
that forms and modes of government_, _however correct in
theory, are only valuable as they conduce to the great ends of
all government--the peace, quiet, and conscious security of the
governed._"
So wrote a leading South Carolina paper on the first day of January,
1850--and not without a knowledge of what it was saying. All that
was said was attempted, and the catastrophe alone was wanting to
complete the task assigned to the future historian.
The manifesto of the forty-two members from the slave States,
issued in 1849, was not a _brutum fulmen_, nor intended to be so.
It was intended for action, and was the commencement of action;
and regular steps for the separation of the slave from the free
States immediately began under it. An organ of disunion, entitled
"The Southern Press," was set up at Washington, established upon a
contribution of $30,000 from the signers to the Southern manifesto,
and their ardent adherents--its daily occupation to inculcate the
advantages of disunion, to promote it by inflaming the South against
the North, and to prepare it by organizing a Southern concert of
action. Southern cities were to recover their colonial superiority
in a state of sectional independence; the ships of all nations were
to crowd their ports to carry off their rich staples, and bring back
ample returns; Great Britain was to be the ally of the new "United
States South;" all the slave States were expected to join, but the
new confederacy to begin with the South Atlantic States, or even a
part of them; and military preparation was to be made to maintain by
force what a Southern convention should decree. That convention was
called--the same which had been designated in the first manifesto,
entitled THE CRISIS, published in the Charleston Mercury in 1835;
and the same which had been repulsed from Nashville in 1844. Fifteen
years of assiduous labor produced what could not be started in
1835, and what had been repulsed in 1844. A disunion convention met
at Nashville! met at the home of Jackson, but after the grave had
become his home.
This convention (assuming to represent seven States) took the
decisive step, so far as it depended upon itself, towards a
separation of the States. It invited the assembling of a "Southern
Congress." Two States alone responded to that appeal--South Carolina
and Mississippi; and the legislatures of these two passed solemn
acts to carry it into effect--South Carolina absolutely, by electing
her quota of representatives to the proposed congress; Mississippi
provisionally, by subjecting her law to the approval of the people.
Of course, each State gave a reason, or motive for its action. South
Carolina simply asserted the "aggressions" of the slaveholding
States to be the cause, without stating what these aggressions were;
and, in fact, there were none to be stated. For even the repeal
of the slave sojournment law in some of them, and the refusal to
permit the State prisons to be used for the detention of fugitives
from service, or State officers to assist in their arrest, though
acts of unfriendly import, and a breach of the comity due to sister
States, and inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, were
still acts which the States, as sovereign within their limits upon
the subjects to which they refer, had a right to pass. Besides,
Congress had readily passed the fugitive slave recovery bill, just
as these Southern members wished it; and left them without complaint
against the national legislature on that score. All other matters of
complaint which had successively appeared against the free States
were gone--Wilmot Proviso, and all. The act of Mississippi gave two
reasons for its action:
"_First_. That the legislation of Congress, at the last session,
was controlled by a dominant majority regardless of the
constitutional rights of the slaveholding States: and,
"_Secondly_. That the legislation of Congress, such as it was,
affords alarming evidence of a settled purpose on the part of
said majority to destroy the institution of slavery, not only
in the State of Mississippi, but in her sister States, and to
subvert the sovereign power of that and other slaveholding
States."
Waiving the question whether these reasons, if true, would be
sufficient to justify this abrupt attempt to break up the Union,
an issue of fact can well be taken on their truth: and first, of
the dominant majority of the last session, ending September 1850:
that majority, in every instance, was helped out by votes from the
slave States, and generally by a majority of them. The admission of
California, which was the act of the session most complained of,
most resisted, and declared to be a "test" question, was supported
by a majority of the members from the slave States: so that reason
falls upon the trial of an issue of fact. The second set of reasons
have for their point, an assertion that the majority in Congress
have a settled purpose to destroy the institution of slavery in the
State of Mississippi, and in the other slave States, and to subvert
the sovereignty of all the slave States. It is the duty of history
to deal with this assertion, thus solemnly put in a legislative
act as a cause for the secession of a State from the Union--and to
say, that it was an assertion without evidence, and contrary to
the evidence, and contrary to the fact. There was no such settled
purpose in the majority of Congress, nor in a minority of Congress,
nor in any half-dozen members of Congress--if in any one at all.
It was a most deplorable assertion of a most alarming design,
calculated to mislead and inflame the ignorant, and make them fly to
disunion as the refuge against such an appalling catastrophe. But it
was not a new declaration. It was part and parcel of the original
agitation of slavery commenced in 1835, and continued ever since.
To destroy slavery in the States has been the design attributed to
the Northern States from that day to this, and is necessary to be
kept up in order to keep alive the slavery agitation in the slave
States. It has received its constant and authoritative contradiction
in the conduct of those States at home, and in the acts of their
representatives in Congress, year in and year out; and continues
to receive that contradiction, continually; but without having the
least effect upon its repetition and incessant reiteration. In the
mean time there is a fact visible in all the slave States, which
shows that, notwithstanding these twenty years' repetition of the
same assertion, there is no danger to slavery in any slave State.
Property is timid! and slave property above all: and the market is
the test of safety and danger to all property. Nobody gives full
price for anything that is insecure, either in title or possession.
All property, in danger from either cause, sinks in price when
brought to that infallible test. Now, how is it with slave property,
tried by this unerring standard? Has it been sinking in price
since the year 1835? since the year of the first alarm manifesto
in South Carolina, and the first of Mr. Calhoun's twenty years'
alarm speeches in the Senate? On the contrary, the price has been
constantly rising the whole time--and is still rising, although it
has attained a height incredible to have been predicted twenty
years ago.
But, although the slavery alarm does not act on property, yet
it acts on the feelings and passions of the people, and excites
sectional animosity, hatred for the Union, and desire for
separation. The Nashville convention, and the call for the Southern
Congress, were natural occasions to call out these feelings;
and most copiously did they flow. Some specimens, taken from
the considered language of men in high authority, and speaking
advisedly, and for action, will show the temper of the whole--the
names withheld, because the design is to show a danger, and not to
expose individuals.
In the South Carolina Legislature, a speaker declared:
"We must secede from a Union perverted from its original
purpose, and which has now become an engine of oppression to the
South. He thought our proper course was for this legislature
to proceed directly to the election of delegates to a Southern
Congress. He thought we should not await the action of all the
Southern States; but it is prudent for us to await the action
of such States as Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida;
because these States have requested us to wait. If we can get
but one State to unite with us, then we must act. Once being
independent, we would have a strong ally in England. But we must
prepare for secession."
Another:
"The friends of the Southern movement in the other States look
to the action of South Carolina; and he would make the issue in
a reasonable time, and the only way to do so is by secession.
There would be no concert among the Southern States until a blow
is struck. And if we are sincere in our determination to resist,
we must give the South some guarantee that we are in earnest.
He could not concur with the gentleman from Greenville in his
expressions of attachment to the Union. He hated and detested
the Union, and was in favor of cutting the connection. He avowed
himself a disunionist--a disunionist _per se_. If he had the
power, he would crush this Union to-morrow."
Another:
"Denied the right or the power of the general government to
coerce the State in case of secession. This State is sovereign
and independent, so soon as she sees proper to assert that
sovereignty. And when can we be stronger than we are now? If
we intend to wait until we become superior to the federal
government in numerical strength, we will wait for ever. In the
event of an attempt to coerce her, sacrifices might be made,
but we are willing and ready to make those sacrifices. But he
did not believe one gun would be fired in this contest. South
Carolina would achieve a bloodless victory. But, should there be
a war, all the nations of Europe would be desirous of preserving
their commercial intercourse with the Southern States, and would
make the effort to do so. He thought there never would be a
union of the South until this State strikes the blow, and makes
the issue."
Another:
"Would not recapitulate the evils which had been perpetrated
upon the South. Great as they have been, they are comparatively
unimportant, when compared with the evils to which they would
inevitably lead. We must not consider what we have borne, but
what we must bear hereafter. There is no remedy for these evils
in the government; we have no alternative left us, then, but to
come out of the government."
Another:
"He was opposed to calling a convention, because he thought
it would impede the action of this State on the questions now
before the country. He thought it would impede our progress
towards disunion. All his objections to a convention of
the people applied only to the proposition to call it now.
He thought conventions dangerous things, except when the
necessities of the country absolutely demand them. He said that
he had adopted the course he had taken on these weighty matters
simply and entirely with the view of hastening the dissolution
of this Union."
Another:
"Would sustain the bill for electing delegates to a Southern
Congress, because he thought it would bring about a more speedy
dissolution of the Union."
In the Nashville convention a delegate said:
"I shall enumerate no more of the wrongs that we have suffered,
or the dangers with which we are threatened. If these, so
enormous and so atrocious, are not sufficient to arouse the
Southern mind, our case is desperate. But, supposing that we
shall be roused, and that we shall act like freemen, and,
knowing our rights and our wrongs, shall be prepared to sustain
the one and redress the other, what is the remedy? I answer
secession--united secession of the slaveholding States, or a
large number of them. Nothing else will be wise--nothing else
will be practicable. The Rubicon is passed. The Union is already
dissolved. Instead of wishing the perpetuity of any government
over such vast boundaries, the rational lover of liberty should
wish for its speedy dissolution, as dangerous to all just and
free rule. Is not all this exemplified in our own case? In nine
months, in one session of Congress, by a great _coup d'etat_,
our constitution has been completely and for ever subverted.
Instead of a well balanced government, all power is vested
in one section of the country, which is in bitter hostility
with the other. And this is the glorious Union which we are to
support, for whose eternal duration we are to pray, and before
which the once proud Southron is to bow down. He ought to perish
rather."
"They have not, however, been satisfied with taking all (the
territory). They have made that all a wicked instrument for
the abolition of the constitution, and of every safeguard of
our property and our lives. I have said they have made the
appropriation of this territory an instrument to abolish the
constitution. There is no doubt that they have abolished the
constitution. The carcass may remain, but the spirit has left
it. It is now a fetid mass, generating disease and death. It
stinks in our nostrils."
"A constitution means _ex vi termini_, a guarantee of the
rights, liberty, and security of a free people, and can never
survive in the shape of dead formalities. It is a thing of life,
and just and fair proportions; not the _caput mortuum_ which the
so-called Constitution of the United States has now become. Is
there a Southern man who bears a soul within his ribs, who will
consent to be governed by this vulgar tyranny," &c.
From public addresses:
"Under the operation of causes beyond the scan of man, we are
rapidly approaching a great and important crisis in our history.
The shadow of the sun has gone back upon the dial of American
liberty, and we are rapidly hastening towards the troubled sea
of revolution. A dissolution of the Union is our inevitable
destiny, and it is idle for man to raise his puny arm to stem
the tide of events," &c.
Another:
"We must form a separate government. The slaveholding States
must all yet see that their only salvation consists in uniting,
and that promptly too, in organizing a Southern confederacy.
Should we be wise enough thus to unite, all California, with her
exhaustless treasures, would be ours; all New Mexico also, and
the sun would never shine upon a country so rich, so great and
so powerful, as would be our Southern republic."
Another:
"By our physical power," said one of the foremost of those
leaders, in a late speech to his constituents, "we can protect
ourselves against foreign nations, whilst by our productions we
can command their peace or support. The keys of their wealth
and commerce are in our hands, which we will freely offer to
them by a system of free trade, making our prosperity their
interest--our security their care. The lingering or decaying
cities of the South, which before our Revolution carried on all
their foreign commerce, buoyant with prosperity and wealth, but
which now are only provincial towns, sluggish suburbs of Boston
and New York, will rise up to their natural destiny, and again
enfold in their embraces the richest commerce of the world.
Wealth, honor, and power, and one of the most glorious destinies
which ever crowned a great and happy people, awaits the South,
if she but control her own fate; but, controlled by another
people, what pen shall paint the infamous and bloody catastrophe
which must mark her fall?"
From fourth of July toasts:
"The Union: A splendid failure of the first modern attempt,
by people of different institutions, to live under the same
government.
"The Union: For it we have endured much; for it we have
sacrificed much. Let us beware lest we endure too much; lest we
sacrifice too much.
"Disunion rather than degradation.
"South Carolina: She struck for the Union when it was a
blessing; when it becomes a curse, she will strike for herself.
"The Compromise: 'The best the South can get.' A cowardly banner
held out by the _spoilsman_ that would sell his country for a
mess of pottage.
"The American Eagle: In the event of a dissolution of the Union,
the South claims as her portion, the heart of the noble bird; to
the Yankees we leave the feathers and carcass.
"The South: Fortified by right, she considers neither threats
nor consequences.
"The Union: Once a holy alliance, now an accursed bond."
Among the multitude of publications most numerous in South Carolina
and Mississippi, but also appearing in other slave States, all
advocating disunion, there were some (like Mr. Calhoun's letter to
the Alabama member which feared the chance might be lost which the
Wilmot Proviso furnished) also that feared agitation would stop
in Congress, and deprive the Southern politicians of the means of
uniting the slave States in a separate confederacy. Of this class of
publications here is one from a leading paper:
"The object of South Carolina is undoubtedly to dissolve this
Union, and form a confederacy of slaveholding States. Should it
be impossible to form this confederacy, then her purpose is, we
believe conscientiously, to disconnect herself from the Union,
and set up for an independent Power. Will delay bring to our
assistance the slaveholding States? If the slavery agitation,
its tendencies and objects, were of recent origin, and not fully
disclosed to the people of the South, delay might unite us in
concerted action. We have no indication that Congress will soon
pass obnoxious measures, restricting or crippling directly the
institution of slavery. Every indication makes us fear that a
pause in fanaticism is about to follow, to allow the government
time to consolidate her late acquisitions and usurpations of
power. Then the storm will be again let loose to gather its
fury, and burst upon our heads. We have no hopes that the
agitation in Congress, this or next year, will bring about the
union of the South."
Enough to show the spirit that prevailed, and the extraordinary and
unjustifiable means used by the leaders to mislead and exasperate
the people. The great effort was to get a "Southern Congress"
to assemble, according to the call of the Nashville convention.
The assembling of that "Congress" was a turning point in the
progress of disunion. It failed. At the head of the States which
had the merit of stopping it, was Georgia--the greatest of the
South-eastern Atlantic States. At the head of the presses which did
most for the Union, was the National Intelligencer at Washington
City, long edited by Messrs. Gales & Seaton, and now as earnest
against Southern disunion in 1850 as they were against the Hartford
convention disunion of 1814. The Nashville convention, the Southern
Congress, and the Southern Press established at Washington, were the
sequence and interpretation (so far as its disunion-design needed
interpretation), of the Southern address drawn by Mr. Calhoun. His
last speech, so far as it might need interpretation, received it
soon after his death in a posthumous publication of his political
writings, abounding with passages to show that the Union was a
mistake--the Southern States ought not to have entered into it, and
should not now re-enter it, if out of it, and that its continuance
was impossible as things stood: Thus:
"All this has brought about a state of things hostile to the
continuance of this Union, and the duration of the government.
Alienation is succeeding to attachment, and hostile feelings to
alienation; and these, in turn, will be followed by revolution,
or a disruption of the Union, unless timely prevented. But this
cannot be done by restoring the government to its _federal_
character--however necessary that may be as a first step. What
has been done cannot be undone. The equilibrium between the
two sections has been permanently destroyed by the measures
above stated. The Northern section, in consequence, will ever
concentrate within itself the two majorities of which the
government is composed; and should the Southern be excluded
from all the territories, now acquired, _or to be hereafter
acquired_, it will soon have so decided a preponderance in
the government and the Union, as to be able to mould the
constitution to its pleasure. Against this the restoration
of the _federal_ character of the government can furnish no
remedy. So long as it continues there can be no safety for
the weaker section. It places in the hands of the stronger
and the _hostile_ section, the power to crush her and her
_institutions_; and leaves no alternative but to _resist_,
or sink down into a colonial condition. This must be the
consequence, if some effectual and appropriate remedy is not
applied.
"The nature of the disease is such, that nothing can reach it,
short of some organic change--a change which will so modify
the constitution as to give to the weaker section, in some one
form or another, a _negative_ on the action of the government.
Nothing short of this can protect the weaker, and restore
harmony and tranquillity to the Union by arresting effectually
the tendency of the dominant section to oppress the weaker.
When the constitution was formed, the impression was strong
that the tendency to conflict would be between the larger and
smaller States; and effectual provisions were accordingly made
to guard against it. But experience has proved this to be a
mistake; and that instead of being as was then supposed, the
conflict is between the two great sections which are so strongly
distinguished by their institutions, geographical character,
productions and pursuits. Had this been then as clearly
perceived as it now is, the same jealousy which so vigilantly
watched and guarded against the danger of the larger States
oppressing the smaller, would have taken equal precaution to
guard against the same danger between the two sections. It is
for _us_, who see and feel it, to do, what the framers of the
constitution would have done, had they possessed the knowledge,
in this respect, which experience has given to us; that is, to
provide against the dangers which the system has practically
developed; and which, had they been foreseen at the time, and
left without guard, would undoubtedly have _prevented_ the
States forming the _Southern_ section of the confederacy, from
ever _agreeing_ to the constitution; and which, under like
circumstances, were they now out of, would for ever _prevent_
them _entering_ into the Union. How the constitution could
best be modified, so as to effect the object, can only be
authoritatively determined by the amending power. It may be
done in various ways. Among others, it might be effected
through a re-organization of the Executive Department; so
that its powers, instead of being vested, as they now are, in
a single officer, should be vested in two, to be so elected,
as that the two should be constituted the special organs and
representatives of the respective sections in the Executive
Department of the government; and requiring each to _approve_
of all the acts of Congress before they become laws. One might
be charged with the administration of matters connected with
the foreign relations of the country; and the other, of such as
were connected with its domestic institutions: the selection
to be decided by lot. Indeed it may be doubted, whether the
framers of the constitution did not commit a great _mistake_, in
constituting a single, instead of a plural executive. Nay, it
may even be doubted whether a single magistrate, invested with
all the powers properly appertaining to the Executive Department
of the government, as is the President, is compatible with the
_permanence_ of a popular government; especially in a wealthy
and populous community, with a large revenue, and a numerous
body of officers and employées. Certain it is, that there is
no instance of a popular government so constituted which has
long endured. Even ours, thus far, furnishes no evidence in
its favor, and not a little against it: for, to it the present
disturbed and dangerous state of things, which threaten the
country with _monarchy_ or _disunion_, may be justly attributed."
The observing reader, who may have looked over the two volumes of
this View, in noting the progress of the slavery agitation, and its
successive alleged causes for disunion, must have been struck with
the celerity with which these causes, each in its turn, as soon
as removed, has been succeeded by another, of a different kind;
until, at last, they terminate in a cause which ignores them all,
and find a new reason for disunion in the constitution itself! in
that constitution, the protection of which had been invoked as
sufficient, during the whole period of the alleged "aggressions and
encroachments." In 1835, when the first agitation manifesto and
call for a Southern convention, and invocation to unity and concert
of action, came forth in the Charleston Mercury, entitled "_The
Crisis_," the cause of disunion was then in the abolition societies
established in some of the free States, and which these States were
required to suppress. Then came the abolition petitions presented
in Congress; then the mail transmission of incendiary publications;
then the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; then
the abolition of the slave trade between the States; then the
exclusion of slavery from Oregon; then the Wilmot Proviso; then the
admission of California with a free constitution. Each of these,
in its day, was a cause of disunion, to be effected through the
instrumentality of a Southern convention, forming a sub-confederacy,
in flagrant violation of the constitution, and effecting the
disunion by establishing a commercial non-intercourse with the free
States. After twenty years' agitation upon these points, they are
all given up. The constitution, and the Union, were found to be
a "mistake" from the beginning--an error in their origin, and an
impossibility in their future existence, and to be amended into
another impossibility, or broken up at once.
The regular inauguration of this slavery agitation dates from
the year 1835; but it had commenced two years before, and in
this way: nullification and disunion had commenced in 1830 upon
complaint against protective tariff. That being put down in 1833
under President Jackson's proclamation and energetic measures, was
immediately substituted by the slavery agitation. Mr. Calhoun, when
he went home from Congress in the spring of that year, told his
friends, _That the South could never be united against the North on
the tariff question--that the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep
her out--and that the basis of Southern union must be shifted to the
slave question._ Then all the papers in his interest, and especially
the one at Washington, published by Mr. Duff Green, dropped tariff
agitation, and commenced upon slavery; and, in two years, had the
agitation ripe for inauguration on the slavery question. And, in
tracing this agitation to its present stage, and to comprehend its
rationale, it is not to be forgotten that it is a mere continuation
of old tariff disunion; and preferred because more available.
In June, 1833, at the first transfer of Southern agitation from
tariff to slavery, Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Clay:
"_It is painful to see the unceasing efforts to alarm the
South, by imputations against the North of unconstitutional
designs on the subject of slavery. You are right, I have no
doubt, in believing that no such intermeddling disposition
exists in the body of our Northern brethren. Their good faith
is sufficiently guaranteed by the interest they have as
merchants, as ship-owners, and as manufacturers in preserving
a union with the slaveholding States. On the other hand, what
madness in the South to look for greater safety in disunion.
It would be worse than jumping into the fire for fear of the
frying-pan. The danger from the alarms is, that pride and
resentment excited by them may be an overmatch for the dictates
of prudence; and favor the project of a Southern convention,
insidiously revived, as promising by its counsels the best
security against grievances of every kind from the North._"
Nullification, secession, and disunion were considered by Mr.
Madison as Synonymous terms, dangerous to the Union as fire to
powder, and the danger increasing in all the Southern States, even
Virginia. "_Look at Virginia herself, and read in the Gazettes,
and in the proceedings of popular meetings, the figure which the
anarchical principle now makes, in contrast with the scouting
reception given to it but a short time ago._" Mr. Madison solaced
himself with the belief that this heresy would not reach a majority
of the States; but he had his misgivings, and wrote them down in
the same paper, entitled, "Memorandum on nullification," written in
his last days and published after his death. "_But a susceptibility
of the contagion in the Southern States is visible, and the danger
not to be concealed, that the sympathy arising from known causes,
and the inculcated impression of a permanent incompatibility of
interests between the North and the South, may put it in the power
of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest stations, to unite
the South on some critical occasion, in a course that will end in
creating a theatre of great though inferior extent. In pursuing this
course, the first and most obvious step is nullification--the next,
secession--and the last, a farewell separation. How near has this
course been lately exemplified! and the danger of its recurrence,
in the same or some other quarter, may be increased by an increase
of restless aspirants, and by the increasing impracticability of
retaining in the Union a large and cemented section against its
will._"--So wrote Mr. Madison in the year 1836, in the 86th year
of his age, and the last of his life. He wrote with the pen of
inspiration, and the heart of a patriot, and with a soul which
filled the Union, and could not be imprisoned in one half of it.
He was a Southern man! but his Southern home could not blind his
mental vision to the origin, design, and consequences of the slavery
agitation. He gives to that agitation, a Southern origin--to that
design, a disunion end--to that end, disastrous consequences both to
the South and the North.
Mr. Calhoun is dead. Peace to his manes. But he has left his
disciples who do not admit of peace! who "_rush in_" where their
master "_feared to tread_." He recoiled from the disturbance of the
Missouri compromise: they expunge it. He shuddered at the thought of
bloodshed in civil strife: they demand three millions of dollars to
prepare arms for civil war.