A fact which stands broadly out on the page of our current history is
the intense and peculiar hatred wherewith the people of the North are
generally regarded by those engaged in the Southern rebellion. That _it
is_ a fact, is established by the concurrent testimony of the whole
insurgent press and of our soldiers returned from Southern captivity,
and nearly all those, whether in civil or military life, who have
visited the States deeply infected with the virus of Secession. Probably
never before were prisoners of war in a civilized country subjected to
so much obloquy and vituperation from women and children as our captured
volunteers in the South during the past year. Hate of the abhorred
'Yankees,' scorn and the loathing of 'Lincoln's hirelings,' detestation
of the mean, sordid, groveling, mercenary spirit of the Northern masses,
have been the burden of Southern oratory and journalism for the last
eighteen months. No devilish hate expressed in Milton's magnificent epic
surpasses in intensity, however it may in dignity and genuine force,
that which is breathed through every oracle of Southern popular
sentiment. And this is insisted on by Southern letter-writers and
journalists as demonstrating the impossibility of 'reconstruction.' 'How
can those who hate each other so implacably ever again be one people?
What use in seeking to restore a Union which hereafter can, at best, be
but the result of overwhelming force on the one side, and utter
subjugation on the other?'
But the assumption of _mutual_ hate between the Northern and the
Southern masses is utterly groundless. Nothing in the attitude, the
bearing, the utterances, of the loyal millions affords it any
justification or countenance. So far are they from cherishing any such
aversion to the Southern people, that they can with difficulty, and but
inadequately, comprehend the malignity wherewith they are regarded by
the revolters, without feeling the smallest desire to reciprocate it.
That the Rebellion itself should be regarded with general reprobation
throughout the Free States was inevitable, for, in the first place, it
involves a most flagitious breach of faith. Republican liberty rests on
an implied but essential compact that the result of a fair election
shall be conclusive. If those who lose an election are thereupon to rush
to arms for a reversal of the decision of the ballot-box, then elections
are a stupid sham, whereon no earnest person will waste his breath or
his suffrage. Why should any one devote his time and effort to secure a
political result which those overborne by it will set at defiance the
next hour? It is not merely Jefferson or Adams, Jackson or Lincoln, who
is defied by a revolt like that now raging in this country; it is the
principle of Popular Elections--it is the right of a constitutional
majority to govern. Concede that the Southern States were justifiable in
seceding from the Union because Lincoln (with their connivance) was
chosen President, and it were absurd ever to hold another Presidential
Election, or ask any man to vote hereafter. The North certainly feels
that the principle of government by constitutions and majorities is
assailed by this rebellion, and that to concede its rightfulness is to
displace the very corner-stone of republican liberty.
The North feels also that commercial dishonesty was potent among the
influences which fomented this rebellion. Bankruptcy almost
universal--planters immersed in debt for lands, for negroes, for food,
for fabrics--merchants overhead in debt to the importers and jobbers of
the Northern sea-ports--every one owing more or less, and few able or
willing to pay: such was the general pecuniary condition of the South at
the outset of this subversion. It is no libel on the South to say that
relief from the pressure of over-due obligations was primarily sought by
an immense number, in plunging into the abyss of revolution. And a great
proportion of the Southern merchants, with full intent to defraud their
creditors, by lighting the flames of civil war, in 1860 swelled their
indebtedness to their Northern friends to the utmost. This was low
knavery seeking protection behind the black mantle of treason. If the
facts could be fully laid bare, it would be found that disinclination to
pay their honest debts has transformed vast numbers from Unionists into
traitors. The North can never respect those who seek to slay their
creditors, that they may evade their moral as well as legal obligation
to pay them.
Nor can the loyal millions respect those who, in setting forth the
grounds of their rebellion, and essaying to justify themselves in the
eyes of the civilized world, do not hesitate to deny the most palpable
truths. The rebel who rests on the inherent or reserved right of each
State to secede from the Union at her sovereign pleasure, is a bad
logician, and unsound in his constitutional theories; but he is not
necessarily a knave. But the rebel apologist who says to Europe, 'This
revolt was not impelled by Slavery, but by hostility to the policy of
Protection, Internal Improvements, etc., which the North had power in
the Union to fasten upon us in defiance of our utmost opposition,' he
shows himself a dissembler and a liar. There was no tariff when the
Cotton States seceded--there had been none for many years--which those
States had not heartily aided to enact. For not more than ten years of
the eighty-odd of our existence as a nation, has there been a tariff in
operation that South-Carolina did not help enact and sustain. The
tariffs which are now trumped up as an excuse for Secession, not only
had no existence when that Secession was inaugurated, but could have had
none had the Cotton States remained faithful to their constitutional
obligations. When, therefore, such men as Lieutenant Maury assure Europe
that Slavery did not incite the Southern Rebellion--that it had but a
remote and subordinate relation to that outbreak--they betray their own
recklessness of truth, and their knowledge that their case is one which
can not abide the scrutiny and the dispassionate judgment of
Christendom.
But the Southern Whites hate us vehemently. That is unfortunately true
of what would seem to be a large majority of them. Misled by artful
demagogues--excited by charges of Northern rapacity, perfidy, outrage,
and venom, to which no contradiction in their hearing is permitted--the
Poor Whites of the South really believe that the North is waging against
them an unprovoked and fiendish, war of subjugation and rapine. Of
course, they abhor us, and invoke all manner of curses on our heads. But
their hatred rests upon and is impelled by egregious falsehoods, and
will vanish when those falsehoods shall have been exposed and their
influence dissipated. The Whisky Rebels of Western Pennsylvania
intensely hated the rule of George Washington; but their rebellion being
crushed, all trace of the bitterness it engendered soon faded away.
As to the aristocracy of the South, it understands the case far better,
though individuals among its members are misled. The majority are
fighting for the extension and perpetuation of that Heaven-defying
system which is at once the idol and the bane of the South--for that
'peculiar institution' which makes one half the community helpless
victims to the pride, indolence, avarice, and lust of the other half.
The aristocracy are fighting for Slavery--neither less nor more--and
they fight bravely, desperately. Their existence as a privileged order
has been recklessly staked on the issue of the contest, and they mean to
triumph at any cost. To suppose that they can be vanquished yet leave
their bloody idol intact--that they can be compelled to reënter 'the
Union as it was,' and send their Slidells, Hammonds, Howell Cobbs, and
Masons, back to a Union Congress--is one of the wildest dreams that ever
flitted through a sane mind. Reunion or Disunion is possible; a
restoration of 'the Union as it was,' is as impracticable as a return of
the Eleventh Century or a replacement of the New World in the condition
wherein Columbus found it.
The Southern aristocracy must triumph or cease as an aristocracy to
exist. A flogged slaveholder is an anomaly that can not endure; he can
not rule his chattels if they know that he has succumbed to a force that
he would gladly have defied but could no longer resist. 'Poor White
trash' may endure and repay the contempt of their servile neighbors, but
a man-owning aristocracy that has fought and been vanquished, can no
longer command the respect or the obedience of its chattels.
The issue of our present struggle must be Disunion or Emancipation. And,
assuming it to be Emancipation, the hate wherewith the North is regarded
at the South would soon die out. New social and industrial relations and
interests, new activities, new ambitions, would speedily efface all
painful recollections of our desperate struggle. The late slaveholders,
having ceased to be such, would no longer be controlled by the impulses
nor plastic to the influences which impelled them to rush upon the thick
bosses of the Union. They would find in the rapid peopling of their
section by immigration from the North and from Europe, and the
consequent increase in current value of the lands, timber, mines,
water-power, etc., of their Section, new avenues to wealth, new
incitements to activity and energy. Shays' rebellion engulfed the
greater part of Western Massachusetts; but ten years passed, and it had
sunk into a mere tradition. La Vendée was more unanimous and more
intense in its hostility to the French Republic than any Southern State
now is to a restoration of the Union; yet La Vendée soon after responded
meekly to the conscriptions of Napoleon. War alienates and inflames; but
Peace speedily re-links the golden chain of mutual interests, and all is
kindly again.
Let Slavery disappear, and all incitement to alienation or bitterness
between the North and the South will have vanished. God has made them
for parts of the same country; their diverse topographies, climates,
productions, render them the natural complement of each other. The
Cotton, Sugar, Tobacco, etc., of the South will be freely exchanged, as
of yore, for the Manufactures, Machinery, and Implements of the North:
the former gradually learning to supply her own essential wants to an
extent hitherto unknown; but the rapid increase of her population,
industry, and wealth, will render her a wider and steadier market for
the products of the latter and of Europe than she has ever yet been. The
South will soon realize that the death of Slavery has awakened her to a
new and nobler life--that what she at first regarded as a great calamity
and a downfall, was in truth her beneficent renovation and her chief
blessing. So shall North and South, at length comprehending and
appreciating each other, walk hand in hand along their common pathway to
an exalted and benignant destiny, admonished to mutual forbearance and
deference by mournful yet proud recollections of their great struggle,
and realizing in their newly established and truly fraternal concord the
opening of a long, bright vista of reciprocal kindness and inviolable
peace.