THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.
I have seen various essays purporting to describe the causes of this
civil war between the North and South; but they have generally been
written with the view of vindicating either one side or the other,
and have spoken rather of causes which should, according to the ideas
of their writers, have produced peace, than of those which did, in
the course of events, actually produce war. This has been essentially
the case with Mr. Everett, who in his lecture at New York, on the 4th
of July, 1860, recapitulated all the good things which the North has
done for the South, and who proved--if he has proved anything--that
the South should have cherished the North instead of hating it. And
this was very much the case also with Mr. Motley in his letter to
the "London Times." That letter is good in its way, as is everything
that comes from Mr. Motley, but it does not tell us why the war has
existed. Why is it that eight millions of people have desired to
separate themselves from a rich and mighty empire,--from an empire
which was apparently on its road to unprecedented success, and which
had already achieved wealth, consideration, power, and internal
well-being?
One would be led to imagine from the essays of Mr. Everett and of Mr.
Motley, that slavery has had little or nothing to do with it. I must
acknowledge it to be my opinion that slavery in its various bearings
has been the single and necessary cause of the war;--that slavery
being there in the South, this war was only to be avoided by a
voluntary division,--secession voluntary both on the part of North
and South;--that in the event of such voluntary secession being not
asked for, or if asked for not conceded, revolution and civil war
became necessary,--were not to be avoided by any wisdom or care on
the part of the North.
The arguments used by both the gentlemen I have named prove very
clearly that South Carolina and her sister States had no right to
secede under the constitution; that is to say, that it was not open
to them peaceably to take their departure, and to refuse further
allegiance to the President and Congress without a breach of the
laws by which they were bound. For a certain term of years, namely,
from 1781 to 1787, the different States endeavoured to make their
way in the world, simply leagued together by certain articles
of confederation. It was declared that each State retained its
sovereignty, freedom, and independence; and that the said States then
entered severally into a firm league of friendship with each other
for their common defence. There was no President, no Congress taking
the place of our Parliament, but simply a congress of delegates
or ambassadors, two or three from each State, who were to act in
accordance with the policy of their own individual States. It is
well that this should be thoroughly understood, not as bearing
on the question of the present war, but as showing that a loose
confederation, not subversive of the separate independence of the
States, and capable of being partially dissolved at the will of each
separate State, was tried, and was found to fail. South Carolina took
upon herself to act as she might have acted had that confederation
remained in force; but that confederation was an acknowledged
failure. National greatness could not be achieved under it, and
individual enterprise could not succeed under it. Then in lieu of
that, by the united consent of the thirteen States the present
constitution was drawn up and sanctioned, and to that every State
bound itself in allegiance. In that constitution no power of
secession is either named or presumed to exist. The individual
sovereignty of the States had, in the first instance, been thought
desirable. The young republicans hankered after the separate power
and separate name which each might then have achieved; but that dream
had been found vain,--and therefore the States, at the cost of some
fond wishes, agreed to seek together for national power, rather than
run the risks entailed upon separate existence. I append to this
volume the articles of confederation and the constitution of the
United States, as they who desire to look into this matter may be
anxious to examine them without reference to other volumes. The
latter alone is clear enough on the subject, but is strengthened by
the former in proving that under the latter no State could possess
the legal power of seceding.
But they who created the constitution, who framed the clauses, and
gave to this terribly important work what wisdom they possessed, did
not presume to think that it could be final. The mode of altering the
constitution is arranged in the constitution. Such alterations must
be proposed either by two-thirds of both the houses of the general
Congress, or by the legislatures of two-thirds of the States;
and must, when so proposed, be ratified by the legislatures of
three-fourths of the States.--(Article V.) There can, I think, be no
doubt that any alteration so carried would be valid; even though that
alteration should go to the extent of excluding one or any number
of States from the Union. Any division so made would be made in
accordance with the constitution.
South Carolina and the southern States no doubt felt that they would
not succeed in obtaining secession in this way, and therefore they
sought to obtain the separation which they wanted by revolution,--by
revolution and rebellion, as Naples has lately succeeded in her
attempt to change her political status; as Hungary is looking to do;
as Poland has been seeking to do any time since her subjection; as
the revolted colonies of Great Britain succeeded in doing in 1776,
whereby they created this great nation which is now undergoing all
the sorrows of a civil war. The name of secession claimed by the
South for this movement is a misnomer. If any part of a nationality
or empire ever rebelled against the government established on behalf
of the whole, South Carolina so rebelled when, on the 20th November,
1860, she put forth her ordinance of so-called secession; and the
other southern States joined in that rebellion when they followed
her lead. As to that fact, there cannot, I think, much longer be any
doubt in any mind. I insist on this especially, repeating perhaps
unnecessarily, opinions expressed in my first volume, because I still
see it stated by English writers that the secession ordinance of
South Carolina should have been accepted as a political act by the
government of the United States. It seems to me that no government
can in this way accept an act of rebellion without declaring its own
functions to be beyond its own power.
But what if such rebellion be justifiable, or even reasonable? what
if the rebels have cause for their rebellion? For no one will now
deny that rebellion may be both reasonable and justifiable; or that
every subject in the land may be bound in duty to rebel. In such case
the government will be held to have brought about its own punishment
by its own fault. But as government is a wide affair, spreading
itself gradually, and growing in virtue or in vice from small
beginnings,--from seeds slow to produce their fruits,--it is
much easier to discern the incidence of the punishment than the
perpetration of the fault. Government goes astray by degrees, or sins
by the absence of that wisdom which should teach rulers how to make
progress, as progress is made by those whom they rule. The fault may
be absolutely negative and have spread itself over centuries; may
be, and generally has been, attributable to dull good men;--but not
the less does the punishment come at a blow. The rebellion exists
and cannot be put down,--will put down all that opposes it; but the
government is not the less bound to make its fight. That is the
punishment that comes on governing men or on a governing people, that
govern not well or not wisely.
As Mr. Motley says in the paper to which I have alluded, "No man, on
either side of the Atlantic, with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins,
will dispute the right of a people, or of any portion of a people,
to rise against oppression, to demand redress of grievances, and in
case of denial of justice to take up arms to vindicate the sacred
principle of liberty. Few Englishmen or Americans will deny that the
source of government is the consent of the governed, or that every
nation has the right to govern itself according to its will. When
the silent consent is changed to fierce remonstrance, revolution is
impending. The right of revolution is indisputable. It is written on
the whole record of our race. British and American history is made
up of rebellion and revolution. Hampden, Pym, and Oliver Cromwell;
Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, all were rebels." Then comes the
question whether South Carolina and the Gulf States had so suffered
as to make rebellion on their behalf justifiable or reasonable; or if
not, what cause had been strong enough to produce in them so strong
a desire for secession,--a desire which has existed for fully half
the term through which the United States has existed as a nation,
and so firm a resolve to rush into rebellion with the object of
accomplishing that which they deemed not to be accomplished on other
terms.
It must, I think, be conceded that the Gulf States have not suffered
at all by their connection with the northern States; that in lieu
of any such suffering, they owe all their national greatness to the
northern States; that they have been lifted up by the commercial
energy of the Atlantic States and by the agricultural prosperity of
the western States, to a degree of national consideration and respect
through the world at large, which never could have belonged to them
standing alone. I will not trouble my readers with statistics which
few would care to follow, but let any man of ordinary every-day
knowledge turn over in his own mind his present existing ideas of
the wealth and commerce of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Pittsburg, and Cincinnati, and compare them with his ideas as to New
Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Richmond, and Memphis. I do
not name such towns as Baltimore and St. Louis, which stand in slave
States, but which have raised themselves to prosperity by northern
habits. If this be not sufficient, let him refer to population tables
and tables of shipping and tonnage. And of those southern towns
which I have named the commercial wealth is of northern creation.
The success of New Orleans as a city can be no more attributed to
Louisianians than can that of the Havana to the men of Cuba, or of
Calcutta to the natives of India. It has been a repetition of the old
story, told over and over again through every century since commerce
has flourished in the world; the tropics can produce,--but the men
from the North shall sow and reap, and garner and enjoy. As the
Creator's work has progressed, this privilege has extended itself to
regions further removed and still further from southern influences.
If we look to Europe, we see that this has been so in Greece, Italy,
Spain, France, and the Netherlands; in England and Scotland; in
Prussia and in Russia; and the Western world shows us the same story.
Where is now the glory of the Antilles? where the riches of Mexico,
and the power of Peru? They still produce sugar, guano, gold, cotton,
coffee, almost whatever we may ask them,--and will continue to do so
while held to labour under sufficient restraint; but where are their
men, where are their books, where are their learning, their art,
their enterprise? I say it with sad regret at the decadence of so
vast a population; but I do say that the southern States of America
have not been able to keep pace with their northern brethren;--that
they have fallen behind in the race, and feeling that the struggle is
too much for them, have therefore resolved to part.
The reasons put forward by the South for secession have been trifling
almost beyond conception. Northern tariffs have been the first,
and perhaps foremost. Then there has been a plea that the national
exchequer has paid certain bounties to New England fishermen,
of which the South has paid its share,--getting no part of such
bounty in return. There is also a complaint as to the navigation
laws,--meaning, I believe, that the laws of the States increase
the cost of coast traffic by forbidding foreign vessels to engage in
the trade, thereby increasing also the price of goods and confining
the benefit to the North, which carries on the coasting trade of
the country, and doing only injury to the South, which has none
of it. Then last, but not least, comes that grievance as to the
Fugitive Slave Law. The law of the land as a whole,--the law of the
nation,--requires the rendition from free States of all fugitive
slaves. But the free States will not obey this law. They even pass
State laws in opposition to it. "Catch your own slaves," they say,
"and we will not hinder you; at any rate we will not hinder you
officially. Of non-official hindrance you must take your chance. But
we absolutely decline to employ our officers to catch your slaves."
That list comprises, as I take it, the amount of southern official
grievances. Southern people will tell you privately of others. They
will say that they cannot sleep happy in their beds, fearing lest
insurrection should be roused among their slaves. They will tell you
of domestic comfort invaded by northern falsehood. They will explain
to you how false has been Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Ladies will fill your
ears and your hearts too with tales of the daily efforts they make
for the comfort of their "people," and of the ruin to those efforts
which arises from the malice of the abolitionists. To all this you
make some answer with your tongue that is hardly true,--for in such
a matter courtesy forbids the plain truth. But your heart within
answers truly, "Madam,--dear madam, your sorrow is great; but that
sorrow is the necessary result of your position."
As to those official reasons, in what fewest words I can use I will
endeavour to show that they come to nothing. The tariff--and a
monstrous tariff it then was--was the ground put forward by South
Carolina for secession, when General Jackson was President, and Mr.
Calhoun was the hero of the South. Calhoun bound himself and his
State to take certain steps towards secession at a certain day if
that tariff were not abolished. The tariff was so absurd that Jackson
and his Government were forced to abandon it,--would have abandoned
it without any threat from Calhoun; but under that threat it was
necessary that Calhoun should be defied. General Jackson proposed
a compromise tariff, which was odious to Calhoun,--not on its own
behalf, for it yielded nearly all that was asked, but as being
subversive of his desire for secession. The President, however,
not only insisted on his compromise, but declared his purpose of
preventing its passage into law unless Calhoun himself, as senator,
would vote for it. And he also declared his purpose, not, we may
presume, officially, of hanging Calhoun if he took that step towards
secession which he had bound himself to take in the event of the
tariff not being repealed. As a result of all this Calhoun voted for
the compromise, and secession for the time was beaten down. That was
in 1832, and may be regarded as the commencement of the secession
movement. The tariff was then a convenient reason, a ground to be
assigned with a colour of justice, because it was a tariff admitted
to be bad. But the tariff has been modified again and again since
that; and the tariff existing when South Carolina seceded in 1860 had
been carried by votes from South Carolina. The absurd Morrill tariff
could not have caused secession, for it was passed without a struggle
in the collapse of Congress occasioned by secession.
The bounty to fishermen was given to create sailors, so that a
marine might be provided for the nation. I need hardly show that
the national benefit would accrue to the whole nation for whose
protection such sailors were needed. Such a system of bounties may
be bad, but if so it was bad for the whole nation. It did not affect
South Carolina otherwise than it affected Illinois, Pennsylvania, or
even New York.
The navigation laws may also have been bad. According to my thinking
such protective laws are bad; but they created no special hardship
on the South. By any such a theory of complaint all sections of all
nations have ground of complaint against any other section which
receives special protection under any law. The drinkers of beer in
England should secede because they pay a tax, whereas the consumers
of paper pay none. The navigation laws of the States are no doubt
injurious to the mercantile interests of the States. I at least have
no doubt on the subject. But no one will think that secession is
justified by the existence of a law of questionable expediency. Bad
laws will go by the board if properly handled by those whom they
pinch, as the navigation laws went by the board with us in England.
As to that Fugitive Slave Law, it should be explained that the
grievance has not arisen from the loss of slaves. I have heard it
stated that South Carolina, up to the time of the secession, had
never lost a slave in this way--that is, by northern opposition to
the Fugitive Slave Law; and that the total number of slaves escaping
successfully into the northern States, and there remaining through
the non-operation of this law, did not amount to five in the year.
It has not been a question of property but of feeling. It has been a
political point, and the South has conceived--and probably conceived
truly--that this resolution on the part of northern States to defy
the law with reference to slaves, even though in itself it might
not be immediately injurious to southern property, was an insertion
of the narrow end of the wedge. It was an action taken against
slavery,--an action taken by men of the North against their
fellow-countrymen in the South. Under such circumstances the sooner
such countrymen should cease to be their fellows the better it would
be for them. That, I take it, was the argument of the South; or at
any rate that was its feeling.
I have said that the reasons given for secession have been trifling,
and among them have so estimated this matter of the Fugitive Slave
Law. I mean to assert that the ground actually put forward is
trifling;--the loss, namely, of slaves to which the South has been
subjected. But the true reason pointed at in this--the conviction,
namely, that the North would not leave slavery alone, and would
not allow it to remain as a settled institution--was by no means
trifling. It has been this conviction on the part of the South, that
the North would not live in amity with slavery, would continue to
fight it under this banner or under that, would still condemn it as
disgraceful to man and rebuke it as impious before God, which has
produced rebellion and civil war--and will ultimately produce that
division for which the South is fighting, and against which the
North is fighting; and which, when accomplished, will give the North
new wings, and will leave the South without political greatness or
commercial success.
Under such circumstances I cannot think that rebellion on the part
of the South was justified by wrongs endured or made reasonable
by the prospect of wrongs to be inflicted. It is disagreeable, that
having to live with a wife who is always rebuking one for some
special fault; but the outside world will not grant a divorce on that
account, especially if the outside world is well aware that the fault
so rebuked is of daily occurrence. "If you do not choose to be called
a drunkard by your wife," the outside world will say, "it will be
well that you should cease to drink." Ah! but that habit of drinking
when once acquired cannot easily be laid aside. The brain will not
work, the organs of the body will not perform their functions, the
blood will not run. The drunkard must drink till he dies. All that
may be a good ground for divorce, the outside world will say; but
the plea should be put in by the sober wife, not by the intemperate
husband. But what if the husband takes himself off without any
divorce and takes with him also his wife's property, her earnings,
that on which he has lived and his children? It may be a good bargain
still for her, the outside world will say; but she, if she be a woman
of spirit, will not willingly put up with such wrongs. The South
has been the husband drunk with slavery, and the North has been the
ill-used wife.
Rebellion, as I have said, is often justifiable, but it is, I think,
never justifiable on the part of a paid servant of that Government
against which it is raised. We must at any rate feel that this is
true of men in high places,--as regards those men to whom by reason
of their offices it should specially belong to put down rebellion.
Had Washington been the Governor of Virginia, had Cromwell been a
minister of Charles, had Garibaldi held a marshal's baton under the
Emperor of Austria or the King of Naples, those men would have been
traitors as well as rebels. Treason and rebellion may be made one
under the law, but the mind will always draw the distinction. I,
if I rebel against the Crown, am not on that account necessarily a
traitor. A betrayal of trust is, I take it, necessary to treason.
I am not aware that Jefferson Davis is a traitor; but that Buchanan
was a traitor admits, I think, of no doubt. Under him and with his
connivance, the rebellion was allowed to make its way. Under him and
by his officers arms and ships, and men and money, were sent away
from those points at which it was known that they would be needed
if it were intended to put down the coming rebellion, and to those
points at which it was known that they would be needed if it were
intended to foster the coming rebellion. But Mr. Buchanan had no
eager feeling in favour of secession. He was not of that stuff of
which are made Davis and Toombs and Slidell. But treason was easier
to him than loyalty. Remonstrance was made to him, pointing out the
misfortunes which his action, or want of action, would bring upon the
country. "Not in my time," he answered. "It will not be in my time."
So that he might escape unscathed out of the fire, this chief ruler
of a nation of thirty millions of men was content to allow treason
and rebellion to work their way! I venture to say so much here as
showing how impossible it was that Mr. Lincoln's government, on its
coming into office, should have given to the South,--not what the
South had asked, for the South had not asked,--but what the South had
taken; what the South had tried to filch. Had the South waited for
secession till Mr. Lincoln had been in his chair, I could understand
that England should sympathize with her. For myself I cannot agree to
that scuttling of the ship by the captain on the day which was to see
the transfer of his command to another officer.
The southern States were driven into rebellion by no wrongs inflicted
on them; but their desire for secession is not on that account matter
for astonishment. It would have been surprising had they not desired
secession. Secession of one kind, a very practical secession, had
already been forced upon them by circumstances. They had become
a separate people, dissevered from the North by habits, morals,
institutions, pursuits, and every conceivable difference in their
modes of thought and action. They still spoke the same language, as
do Austria and Prussia; but beyond that tie of language they had
no bond but that of a meagre political union in their Congress at
Washington. Slavery, as it had been expelled from the North, and as
it had come to be welcomed in the South, had raised such a wall of
difference, that true political union was out of the question. It
would be juster, perhaps, to say that those physical characteristics
of the South which had induced this welcoming of slavery, and those
other characteristics of the North which had induced its expulsion,
were the true causes of the difference. For years and years this
has been felt by both, and the fight has been going on. It has been
continued for thirty years, and almost always to the detriment of
the South. In 1845 Florida and Texas were admitted into the Union as
slave States. I think that no State had then been admitted, as a free
State, since Michigan, in 1836. In 1846 Iowa was admitted as a free
State, and from that day to this Wisconsin, California, Minnesota,
Oregon, and Kansas have been brought into the Union; all as free
States. The annexation of another slave State to the existing Union
had become, I imagine, impossible--unless such object were gained by
the admission of Texas. We all remember that fight about Kansas, and
what sort of a fight it was! Kansas lies alongside of Missouri, a
slave State, and is contiguous to no other State. If the free-soil
party could, in the days of Pierce and Buchanan, carry the day in
Kansas, it is not likely that they would be beaten on any new ground
under such a President as Lincoln. We have all heard in Europe how
southern men have ruled in the White House, nearly from the days of
Washington downwards; or if not southern men, northern men, such as
Pierce and Buchanan, with southern politics; and therefore we have
been taught to think that the South has been politically the winning
party. They have, in truth, been the losing party as regards national
power. But what they have so lost they have hitherto recovered by
political address and individual statecraft. The leading men of the
South have seen their position, and have gone to their work with the
exercise of all their energies. They organized the Democrat party so
as to include the leaders among the northern politicians. They never
begrudged to these assistants a full share of the good things of
official life. They have been aided by the fanatical abolitionism of
the North by which the Republican party has been divided into two
sections. It has been fashionable to be a Democrat, that is, to hold
southern politics, and unfashionable to be a Republican, or to hold
anti-southern politics. In that way the South has lived and struggled
on against the growing will of the population; but at last that will
became too strong, and when Mr. Lincoln was elected, the South knew
that its day was over.
It is not surprising that the South should have desired secession. It
is not surprising that it should have prepared for it. Since the days
of Mr. Calhoun its leaders have always understood its position with
a fair amount of political accuracy. Its only chance of political
life lay in prolonged ascendancy at Washington. The swelling
crowds of Germans, by whom the western States were being filled,
enlisted themselves to a man in the ranks of abolition. What was
the acquisition of Texas against such hosts as these? An evil day
was coming on the southern politicians, and it behoved them to be
prepared. As a separate nation,--a nation trusting to cotton, having
in their hands, as they imagined, a monopoly of the staple of English
manufacture, with a tariff of their own, and those rabid curses on
the source of all their wealth no longer ringing in their ears, what
might they not do as a separate nation? But as a part of the Union,
they were too weak to hold their own if once their political finesse
should fail them. That day came upon them, not unexpected, in 1860,
and therefore they cut the cable.
And all this has come from slavery. It is hard enough, for how could
the South have escaped slavery? How, at least, could the South have
escaped slavery any time during these last thirty years? And is it,
moreover, so certain that slavery is an unmitigated evil, opposed
to God's will, and producing all the sorrows which have ever been
produced by tyranny and wrong? It is here, after all, that one comes
to the difficult question. Here is the knot which the fingers of men
cannot open, and which admits of no sudden cutting with the knife. I
have likened the slave-holding States to the drunken husband, and in
so doing have pronounced judgment against them. As regards the state
of the drunken man, his unfitness for partnership with any decent,
diligent, well-to-do wife, his ruined condition, and shattered
prospects, the simile, I think, holds good. But I refrain from
saying, that as the fault was originally with the drunkard in that he
became such, so also has the fault been with the slave States. At any
rate I refrain from so saying here, on this page. That the position
of a slave-owner is terribly prejudicial, not to the slave of whom I
do not here speak, but to the owner;--of so much at any rate I feel
assured. That the position is therefore criminal and damnable, I am
not now disposed to take upon myself to assert.
The question of slavery in America cannot be handled fully and fairly
by any one who is afraid to go back upon the subject, and take its
whole history since one man first claimed and exercised the right of
forcing labour from another man. I certainly am afraid of any such
task; but I believe that there has been no period yet, since the
world's work began, when such a practice has not prevailed in a large
portion, probably in the largest portion, of the world's work-fields.
As civilization has made its progress, it has been the duty and
delight, as it has also been the interest of the men at the top of
affairs, not to lighten the work of the men below, but so to teach
them that they should recognize the necessity of working without
coercion. Emancipation of serfs and thralls, of bondsmen and slaves,
has always meant this,--that men having been so taught, should then
work without coercion. As men become educated and aware of the nature
of the tenure on which they hold their life, they learn the fact that
work is a necessity for them, and that it is better to work without
coercion than with it. When men have learned this they are fit for
emancipation, but they are hardly fit till they have learned so much.
In talking or writing of slaves, we always now think of the negro
slave. Of us Englishmen it must at any rate be acknowledged that we
have done what in us lay to induce him to recognize this necessity
for labour. At any rate we acted on the presumption that he would do
so, and gave him his liberty throughout all our lands at a cost which
has never yet been reckoned up in pounds, shillings, and pence. The
cost never can be reckoned up, nor can the gain which we achieved in
purging ourselves from the degradation and demoralization of such
employment. We come into court with clean hands, having done all that
lay with us to do to put down slavery both at home and abroad. But
when we enfranchised the negroes, we did so with the intention, at
least, that they should work as free men. Their share of the bargain
in that respect they have declined to keep, wherever starvation has
not been the result of such resolve on their part; and from the
date of our emancipation, seeing the position which the negroes now
hold with us, the southern States of America have learned to regard
slavery as a permanent institution, and have taught themselves to
regard it as a blessing, and not as a curse.
Negroes were first taken over to America because the white man
could not work under the tropical heats, and because the native
Indian would not work. The latter people has been, or soon will be,
exterminated,--polished off the face of creation, as the Americans
say,--which fate must, I should say, in the long run attend all
non-working people. As the soil of the world is required for
increasing population, the non-working people must go. And so the
Indians have gone. The negroes under compulsion did work, and work
well; and under their hands vast regions of the western tropics
became fertile gardens. The fact that they were carried up into
northern regions which from their nature did not require such aid,
that slavery prevailed in New York and Massachusetts, does not
militate against my argument. The exact limits of any great movement
will not be bounded by its purpose. The heated wax which you drop
on your letter spreads itself beyond the necessities of your seal.
That these negroes would not have come to the western world without
compulsion, or having come, would not have worked without compulsion,
is, I imagine, acknowledged by all. That they have multiplied in the
western world and have there become a race happier, at any rate in
all the circumstances of their life, than their still untamed kinsmen
in Africa, must also be acknowledged. Who, then, can dare to wish
that all that has been done by the negro immigration should have
remained undone?
The name of slave is odious to me. If I know myself I would not own
a negro though he could sweat gold on my behoof. I glory in that
bold leap in the dark which England took with regard to her own West
Indian slaves. But I do not see the less clearly the difficulty of
that position in which the southern States have been placed; and I
will not call them wicked, impious, and abominable, because they now
hold by slavery, as other nations have held by it at some period of
their career. It is their misfortune that they must do so now,--now,
when so large a portion of the world has thrown off the system,
spurning as base and profitless all labour that is not free. It is
their misfortune, for henceforth they must stand alone, with small
rank among the nations, whereas their brethren of the North will
still "flame in the forehead of the morning sky."
When the present constitution of the United States was written,--the
merit of which must probably be given mainly to Madison and Hamilton,
Madison finding the French democratic element, and Hamilton the
English conservative element,--this question of slavery was
doubtless a great trouble. The word itself is not mentioned in
the constitution. It speaks not of a slave, but of a "person held
to service or labour." It neither sanctions nor forbids slavery.
It assumes no power in the matter of slavery; and under it, at
the present moment, all Congress voting together, with the full
consent of the legislatures of thirty-three States, could not
constitutionally put down slavery in the remaining thirty-fourth
State. In fact the constitution ignored the subject.
But nevertheless Washington, and Jefferson from whom Madison received
his inspiration, were opposed to slavery. I do not know that
Washington ever took much action in the matter, but his expressed
opinion is on record. But Jefferson did so throughout his life.
Before the declaration of independence he endeavoured to make slavery
illegal in Virginia. In this he failed, but long afterwards, when
the United States was a nation, he succeeded in carrying a law by
which the further importation of slaves into any of the States was
prohibited after a certain year--1820. When this law was passed, the
framers of it considered that the gradual abolition of slavery would
be secured. Up to that period the negro population in the States had
not been self-maintained. As now in Cuba, the numbers had been kept
up by new importations, and it was calculated that the race, when
not recruited from Africa, would die out. That this calculation was
wrong we now know, and the breeding-grounds of Virginia have been the
result.
At that time there were no cotton-fields. Alabama and Mississippi
were outlying territories. Louisiana had been recently purchased, but
was not yet incorporated as a State. Florida still belonged to Spain,
and was all but unpopulated. Of Texas no man had yet heard. Of the
slave States, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia were alone
wedded to slavery. Then the matter might have been managed. But under
the constitution as it had been framed, and with the existing powers
of the separate States, there was not even then open any way by which
slavery could be abolished other than by the separate action of the
States; nor has there been any such way opened since. With slavery
these southern States have grown and become fertile. The planters
have thriven, and the cotton-fields have spread themselves. And then
came emancipation in the British islands. Under such circumstances
and with such a lesson, could it be expected that the southern States
should learn to love abolition?
It is vain to say that slavery has not caused secession, and that
slavery has not caused the war. That, and that only, has been the
real cause of this conflict, though other small collateral issues may
now be put forward to bear the blame. Those other issues have arisen
from this question of slavery, and are incidental to it and a part of
it. Massachusetts, as we all know, is democratic in its tendencies,
but South Carolina is essentially aristocratic. This difference
has come of slavery. A slave country, which has progressed far in
slavery, must be aristocratic in its nature,--aristocratic and
patriarchal. A large slave-owner from Georgia may call himself a
democrat,--may think that he reveres republican institutions, and
may talk with American horror of the thrones of Europe; but he must
in his heart be an aristocrat. We, in England, are apt to speak of
republican institutions, and of universal suffrage which is perhaps
the chief of them, as belonging equally to all the States. In South
Carolina there is not and has not been any such thing. The electors
for the President there are chosen not by the people, but by the
legislature; and the votes for the legislature are limited by a high
property qualification. A high property qualification is required for
a member of the House of Representatives in South Carolina;--four
hundred freehold acres of land and ten negroes is one qualification.
Five hundred pounds clear of debt is another qualification;--for,
where a sum of money is thus named, it is given in English money.
Russia and England are not more unlike in their political and social
feelings than are the real slave States and the real free-soil
States. The gentlemen from one and from the other side of the line
have met together on neutral ground, and have discussed political
matters without flying frequently at each other's throats, while the
great question on which they differed was allowed to slumber. But the
awakening has been coming by degrees, and now the South had felt that
it was come. Old John Brown, who did his best to create a servile
insurrection at Harper's Ferry, has been canonized through the North
and West, to the amazement and horror of the South. The decision in
the "Dred Scott" case, given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States, has been received with shouts of
execration through the North and West. The southern gentry have been
Uncle-Tommed into madness. It is no light thing to be told daily
by your fellow-citizens, by your fellow-representatives, by your
fellow-senators, that you are guilty of the one damning sin that
cannot be forgiven. All this they could partly moderate, partly
rebuke, and partly bear as long as political power remained in their
hands; but they have gradually felt that that was going, and were
prepared to cut the rope and run as soon as it was gone.
Such, according to my ideas, have been the causes of the war. But I
cannot defend the South. As long as they could be successful in their
schemes for holding the political power of the nation, they were
prepared to hold by the nation. Immediately those schemes failed,
they were prepared to throw the nation overboard. In this there
has undoubtedly been treachery as well as rebellion. Had these
politicians been honest,--though the political growth of Washington
has hardly admitted of political honesty,--but had these politicians
been even ordinarily respectable in their dishonesty, they would
have claimed secession openly before Congress, while yet their own
President was at the White House. Congress would not have acceded.
Congress itself could not have acceded under the constitution; but a
way would have been found, had the southern States been persistent in
their demand. A way, indeed, has been found; but it has lain through
fire and water, through blood and ruin, through treason and theft,
and the downfall of national greatness. Secession will, I think, be
accomplished, and the southern Confederation of States will stand
something higher in the world than Mexico and the republics of
Central America. Her cotton monopoly will have vanished, and her
wealth will have been wasted.
I think that history will agree with me in saying that the northern
States had no alternative but war. What concession could they make?
Could they promise to hold their peace about slavery? And had they
so promised, would the South have believed them? They might have
conceded secession; that is, they might have given all that would
have been demanded. But what individual chooses to yield to such
demands; and if not an individual,--then what people will do so?
But in truth they could not have yielded all that was demanded. Had
secession been granted to South Carolina and Georgia, Virginia would
have been coerced to join those States by the nature of her property,
and with Virginia Maryland would have gone, and Washington, the
capital. What may be the future line of division between the North
and the South I will not pretend to say; but that line will probably
be dictated by the North. It may still be hoped that Missouri,
Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland will go with the North, and be
rescued from slavery. But had secession been yielded, had the
prestige of success fallen to the lot of the South, those States must
have become southern.
While on this subject of slavery--for in discussing the cause of the
war, slavery is the subject that must be discussed--I cannot forbear
to say a few words about the negroes of the North American States.
The republican party of the North is divided into two sections, of
which one may be called abolitionist, and the other non-abolitionist.
Mr. Lincoln's government presumes itself to belong to the latter,
though its tendencies towards abolition are very strong. The
abolition party is growing in strength daily. It is but a short time
since Wendell Phillips could not lecture in Boston without a guard of
police. Now, at this moment of my writing, he is a popular hero. The
very men who, five years since, were accustomed to make speeches,
strong as words could frame them, against abolition, are now turning
round, and if not preaching abolition, are patting the backs of those
who do so. I heard one of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet declare old John
Brown to be a hero and a martyr. All the Protestant Germans are
abolitionists,--and they have become so strong a political element
in the country that many now declare that no future President can be
elected without their aid. The object is declared boldly. No long
political scheme is asked for, but instant abolition is wanted;
abolition to be declared while yet the war is raging. Let the slaves
of all rebels be declared free; and all slave-owners in the seceding
States are rebels!
One cannot but ask what abolition means, and to what it would lead.
Any ordinance of abolition now pronounced would not effect the
emancipation of the slaves, but might probably effect a servile
insurrection. I will not accuse those who are preaching this crusade
of any desire for so fearful a scourge on the land. They probably
calculate that an edict of abolition once given would be so much done
towards the ultimate winning of the battle. They are making their
hay while their sun shines. But if they could emancipate those four
million slaves, in what way would they then treat them? How would
they feed them? In what way would they treat the ruined owners of the
slaves, and the acres of land which would lie uncultivated? Of all
subjects with which a man can be called on to deal, it is the most
difficult. But a New England abolitionist talks of it as though no
more were required than an open path for his humanitarian energies.
"I could arrange it all to-morrow morning," a gentleman said to me,
who is well known for his zeal in this cause!
Arrange it all to-morrow morning,--abolition of slavery having
become a fact during the night! I should not envy that gentleman his
morning's work. It was bad enough with us, but what were our numbers
compared with those of the southern States? We paid a price for the
slaves, but no price is to be paid in this case. The value of the
property would probably be lowly estimated at £100 a piece for men,
women, and children, or four hundred million pounds for the whole
population. They form the wealth of the South; and if they were
bought, what should be done with them? They are like children. Every
slave-owner in the country,--every man who has had ought to do with
slaves,--will tell the same story. In Maryland and Delaware are men
who hate slavery, who would be only too happy to enfranchise their
slaves; but the negroes who have been slaves are not fit for freedom.
In many cases, practically, they cannot be enfranchised. Give them
their liberty, starting them well in the world at what expense you
please, and at the end of six months they will come back upon your
hands for the means of support. Everything must be done for them.
They expect food and clothes, and instruction as to every simple act
of life, as do children. The negro domestic servant is handy at his
own work; no servant more so; but he cannot go beyond that. He does
not comprehend the object and purport of continued industry. If he
have money he will play with it,--will amuse himself with it. If
he have none, he will amuse himself without it. His work is like a
schoolboy's task; he knows it must be done, but never comprehends
that the doing of it is the very end and essence of his life. He is a
child in all things, and the extent of prudential wisdom to which he
ever attains is to disdain emancipation, and cling to the security
of his bondage. It is true enough that slavery has been a curse.
Whatever may have been its effect on the negroes, it has been a
deadly curse upon the white masters.
The preaching of abolition during the war is to me either the
deadliest of sins or the vainest of follies. Its only immediate
result possible would be servile insurrection. That is so manifestly
atrocious,--a wish for it would be so hellish, that I do not presume
the preachers of abolition to entertain it. But if that be not meant,
it must be intended that an act of emancipation should be carried
throughout the slave States,--either in their separation from the
North, or after their subjection and consequent reunion with the
North. As regards the States while in secession, the North cannot
operate upon their slaves any more than England can operate on
the slaves of Cuba. But if a reunion is to be a precursor of
emancipation, surely that reunion should be first effected. A
decision in the northern and western mind on such a subject cannot
assist in obtaining that reunion,--but must militate against the
practicability of such an object. This is so well understood, that
Mr. Lincoln and his Government do not dare to call themselves
abolitionists.*
*President Lincoln has proposed a plan for the emancipation of
slaves in the border States, and for compensation to the owners.
His doing so proves that he regards present emancipation in the
Gulf States as quite out of the question. It also proves that he
looks forward to the recovery of the border States for the North,
but that he does not look forward to the recovery of the Gulf
States.
Abolition, in truth, is a political cry. It is the banner of defiance
opposed to secession. As the differences between the North and
South have grown with years, and have swelled to the proportions of
national antipathy, southern nullification has amplified itself into
secession, and northern free-soil principles have burst into this
growth of abolition. Men have not calculated the results. Charming
pictures are drawn for you of the negro in a state of Utopian bliss,
owning his own hoe and eating his own hog; in a paradise, where
everything is bought and sold, except his wife, his little ones, and
himself. But the enfranchised negro has always thrown away his hoe,
has eaten any man's hog but his own,--and has too often sold his
daughter for a dollar when any such market has been open to him.
I confess that this cry of abolition has been made peculiarly
displeasing to me by the fact that the northern abolitionist is by
no means willing to give even to the negro who is already free that
position in the world which alone might tend to raise him in the
scale of human beings,--if anything can so raise him and make him fit
for freedom. The abolitionists hold that the negro is the white man's
equal. I do not. I see, or think that I see, that the negro is the
white man's inferior through laws of nature. That he is not mentally
fit to cope with white men,--I speak of the full-blooded negro,--and
that he must fill a position simply servile. But the abolitionist
declares him to be the white man's equal. But yet, when he has him at
his elbow, he treats him with a scorn which even the negro can hardly
endure. I will give him political equality, but not social equality,
says the abolitionist. But even in this he is untrue. A black man may
vote in New York, but he cannot vote under the same circumstances as
a white man. He is subjected to qualifications which in truth debar
him from the poll. A white man votes by manhood suffrage, providing
he has been for one year an inhabitant of his State; but a man of
colour must have been for three years a citizen of the State, and
must own a property qualification of £50 free of debt. But political
equality is not what such men want, nor indeed is it social equality.
It is social tolerance and social sympathy; and these are denied to
the negro. An American abolitionist would not sit at table with a
negro. He might do so in England at the house of an English duchess;
but in his own country the proposal of such a companion would be
an insult to him. He will not sit with him in a public carriage if
he can avoid it. In New York I have seen special street-cars for
coloured people. The abolitionist is struck with horror when he
thinks that a man and a brother should be a slave; but when the man
and the brother has been made free, he is regarded with loathing and
contempt. All this I cannot see with equanimity. There is falsehood
in it from the beginning to the end. The slave as a rule is well
treated,--gets all he wants and almost all he desires. The free negro
as a rule is ill treated, and does not get that consideration which
alone might put him in the worldly position for which his advocate
declares him to be fit. It is false throughout,--this preaching. The
negro is not the white man's equal by nature. But to the free negro
in the northern States this inequality is increased by the white
man's hardness to him.
In a former book which I wrote some few years since, I expressed an
opinion as to the probable destiny of this race in the West Indies.
I will not now go over that question again. I then divided the
inhabitants of those islands into three classes,--the white, the
black, and the coloured, taking a nomenclature which I found there
prevailing. By coloured men I alluded to mulattoes, and all those of
mixed European and African blood. The word "coloured," in the States,
seems to apply to the whole negro race, whether full-blooded or
half-blooded. I allude to this now because I wish to explain that, in
speaking of what I conceive to be the intellectual inferiority of the
negro race, I allude to those of pure negro descent,--or of descent
so nearly pure as to make the negro element manifestly predominant.
In the West Indies, where I had more opportunity of studying the
subject, I always believed myself able to tell a negro from a
coloured man. Indeed the classes are to a great degree distinct
there, the greater portion of the retail trade of the country being
in the hands of the coloured people. But in the States I have been
able to make no such distinction. One sees generally neither the rich
yellow of the West Indian mulatto, nor the deep oily black of the
West Indian negro. The prevailing hue is a dry, dingy brown,--almost
dusty in its dryness. I have observed but little difference made
between the negro and the half-caste,--and no difference in the
actual treatment. I have never met in American society any man or
woman in whose veins there can have been presumed to be any taint of
African blood. In Jamaica they are daily to be found in society.
Every Englishman probably looks forward to the accomplishment of
abolition of slavery at some future day. I feel as sure of it as I do
of the final judgment. When or how it shall come I will not attempt
to foretell. The mode which seems to promise the surest success
and the least present or future inconvenience, would be an edict
enfranchising all female children born after a certain date, and all
their children. Under such an arrangement the negro population would
probably die out slowly,--very slowly. What might then be the fate of
the cotton-fields of the Gulf States, who shall dare to say? It may
be that coolies from India and from China will then have taken the
place of the negro there, as they probably will have done also in
Guiana and the West Indies.