=Injurious Effect of Misinformation=
In connection with this claim of the slave power were the most shocking
misrepresentations of the condition of the slaves themselves and of the
social relations of the Southern people, in order to array the prejudices
of the world against their cause. This course of misrepresentation had
long been pursued before the war, and was not confined to American
writers, but many works appeared from the British press containing libels
upon the society of the Southern states and false views of slavery as
established there. Such works in both countries were evidently written by
persons with prejudiced minds or who knew little practically of slavery as
it existed in the South. Such was the intolerance of the public sentiment
which had been fostered in both countries upon the subject, that no candid
and impartial account of the workings of domestic slavery as it existed
in the Southern states would be received with the slightest favor, whilst
the exaggerated accounts of cruelty practiced by the slave-owners, and
consequent sufferings of the slaves were eagerly accepted as the truth.
A very striking evidence of this prejudice was furnished by the reception
given to the works of two female writers not many years since. The one,
Miss Harriett Beecher, later Mrs. Stowe, wrote a work of fiction called
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," containing misrepresentations of slavery and slanders
upon Southern society. Drawing upon a fertile imagination and pandering
to the prejudices of the uninformed, she published the book, which had a
great run in Europe as well as America, and was translated into almost
all of the continental languages. The incidents contained in the book
were either erroneous in point of fact or greatly exaggerated, but the
book itself was still more untrue as a picture of Southern society and
slavery, and would have been a misrepresentation if every fact contained
in it had been true in isolated cases. But the book was received as a
true and faithful picture of society and slavery in the South, not merely
by the agitators of abolition, but by that very considerable class of
persons in the world who allow others to do their thinking, and when the
authoress visited Great Britain, she was treated with great attention and
extensively feted by the nobility, gentry and others. The view of Southern
slavery which she drew is perhaps accepted by nine-tenths of the otherwise
well informed persons in Europe.
In remarkable contrast to Miss Beecher's case, was that of Miss Murray, a
lady of talents and refinement, who held the position of maid of honor to
Queen Victoria. Miss Murray visited the United States as a tourist with
all of her predilections against slavery, but she happened to be one of
those persons who, not satisfied with hearsay report, took the necessary
trouble to inform herself intelligently upon the subject. In the course
of her travels, she went into the Southern states, where she remained for
some time as a guest on some of the plantations. She had the opportunity
of observing the workings of domestic slavery as it actually existed and
in all of its details, and she availed herself of that opportunity to make
her own reflections. In letters to friends at home she gave the result
of her actual observations and upon her return to England was induced to
publish her letters. These letters represented slavery in the Southern
states in a very different light from that in which it was accustomed to
be presented to the British public, and the consequence was that Miss
Murray was notified by the ministry that it was not desirable that she
should longer occupy the relation she held to the Queen, as the views she
expressed in regard to slavery were not consonant with the policy of the
British government; so she was retired.
This illustrates the difference in the reception of two works on the
subject of slavery given by the British public: one a work of fiction from
a prejudiced writer, the other a matter-of-fact account of an eye witness
of what she undertook to describe.
If British ministers could thus view the subject and be guilty of the
injustice they perpetrated in Miss Murray's case, what could be expected
of the great mass of British readers? It is hard to conceive how the
glory or prosperity of a nation could be advanced by giving currency to
fallacies, or suppressing the truth in regard to the actual condition of
African slavery in the Southern states.
It would seem that as Great Britain had had so much to do with fostering
the institution in those states, it would be rather gratifying, than
otherwise, to its ministers and its people, to know that the descendants
of those who had been ravished from their native country by the cupidity
of their predecessors, were in a contented and comfortable condition.
But such was not then "the policy of the government" and perhaps the
philanthropic disciple of Exeter Hall who callously passed by the misery,
want and immorality at her own door in the great city of London, while she
shed tears over the imaginary woes pictured by Miss Beecher, would have
been equally as indignant as the British ministers with Miss Murray for
attempting to disabuse her of the delusion which caused those tears to
flow.
Such is, and perhaps ever will be, the character of human philanthropy,
that it troubles itself more about the sufferings which exist a long way
off or only in imagination, than those which are before its eyes. One
weeps over the trials of the hero or heroine in a novel or a play, while
we pass the miserable child of want and sin in the street with perfect
indifference. If slavery did not have its evils and its wrongs, it would
not be a human institution, and as long as "man's inhumanity to man makes
countless thousands mourn," so long will evils and wrongs exist in every
relation of human society. These exist in the relation of governor and
governed, parent and child, husband and wife, master and servant, employer
and employed, neighbor and neighbor, and are not excluded even from the
church.
It is not pretended therefore that some masters did not abuse their
servants, but these were rare instances, more perhaps than in any other
relation of like, and if for no other reason, the great mass of masters
were induced to treat their slaves well, because it was their interest
to do so. Let any one compare the condition of the African in his native
land, with that of the slaves of the South before the violent abolition of
slavery, and then say whether that institution, which had produced such a
vast improvement in his condition was so great a wrong after all.[B]
[Footnote B: Note--Professor Draper, in his "History of the American
Civil War" thus represents the condition of the negro in his native
land. "The Negro in Africa."
"On the west coast of Africa, the true negro-land, the thermometer
not infrequently stands at 120° in the shade. For months together
it remains, night and day, above 80°. The year is divided into the
dry and the rainy season; the latter setting in with an incessant
drizzle, continues until May. It culminates in the most awful
thunderstorms and overwhelming rains. This is particularly the case
in the mountains. When the dry season has fairly begun a pestiferous
miasm is engendered from the vast quantities of vegetable matter
brought down into the low lands by torrents. From the fevers thus
arising the negroes themselves suffer severely.
"Moisture and heat, thus so fatal in their consequences to man,
give to that country its amazing vegetable luxuriance. For hundreds
of square miles there is an impenetrable jungle, infested with
intolerable swarms of musquitoes. The interior is magnificently
wooded. The mangrove thickets that line the river banks upon the
coast are here replaced by a dark evergreen verdure, interspersed
with palms and aloes. A rank herbage obstructs the course of the
streams. The crocodile, hippopotamus, pelican find here a suitable
abode. Monkeys swarm in the woods; in the more gloomy recesses live
the chimpanzee, gorilla and other anthropoid apes approaching man
most closely in stature and habits of life. In the open land--the
prairie of equatorial Africa--game is infrequent; there are a few
antelopes and horned cattle, but no horses. Man--or perhaps more
truly woman--is the only beast of burden.
"Plantains, sweet potatoes, cassava, pumpkins, ground-nuts, Indian
corn, the flesh of the deer, antelope, bear, snake, furnish to the
negro, his food. He lives in a hut constructed of bamboo or flakes
of bark, thatched with matting or palm leaves. His villages are
often palisaded. Too lazy, except when severely pressed, to attend
to the labors of the field, he compels his wives to plant the roots
or seeds, and gather the scanty harvest. In hunting and in war, his
main occupation, he relies upon cunning and will follow his prey with
surprising agility, crawling like a snake prone upon the ground. He
has little or no idea of property in land; slaves are his currency;
he makes his purchase and pays his debts with them. 'A slave is
a note of hand that may be discounted or pawned. He is a bill of
exchange that carries himself to his destination, and pays a debt
bodily. He is a tax that walks corporeally into the chieftain's
treasury.'
"Ferocious in his amours, the African negro has no sentiment of
love. The more wives he possesses the richer he is. If he inclines
to traffic, each additional father-in-law is an additional trading
connection; if devoted to war, an ally. His animal passions too often
disdain all such mercenary suggestions; he brings home new wives for
the sake of new gratifications. Fond of ornaments, his prosperity is
displayed in thick bracelets and anklets of iron or brass. An old
European hat or a tattered dress-coat, without any other article of
clothing is a sufficient badge of kingship. He inclines to nocturnal
habits. He will spend all the night lolling with his companions on
the ground at a blazing fire, though the thermometer may be at more
than 80°, occupying himself in smoking native tobacco, drinking
palm wine and telling stories about witches and spirits. He is an
inveterate gambler, a jester and a buffoon. He knows nothing of
hero-worship; his religion is a worship of fetiches.
"They are such objects as the fingers and tails of monkeys, human
hair, skin, teeth, bones, old nails, copper chains, claws and skulls
of birds, seeds of plants. He believes that evil spirits walk at
the sunset hour by the edge of forests; he adores the devil, who
is thought to haunt burial-grounds and, in mortal terror of his
enmity, leaves food for him in the woods. He welcomes the new moon
by dancing in her shine. Whatever misfortune or sickness befalls
him, he imputes to sorcery and punishes the detected wizard or
witch with death. He determines guilt by the ordeal of fire: the
accused who can seize a red-hot copper ring without being burned is
innocent. His medicine-man--a wind raiser and rain-maker--pursues
his main business of exorcism in a head-dress of black feathers,
with a string of spirit-charms around his neck and a basket of
snake-bone incantations. The more advanced tribes have already risen
to idol worship; they adore grotesque figures of the human form, and
following the course through which intelligence in other races has
passed, they have wooden gods who can speak and nod and wink.
"In this deplorable, this benighted condition, the negro nevertheless
shows tokens of a capacity for better things. He is an eager trader,
and knows the value of his ebony, bar-wood, beeswax, palm oil,
ivory. He has learned how to cheat; nay, more, infrequently he can
out-cheat the white man. He can adulterate the caoutchouc and other
products he brings down to the coast and pass them off as pure. His
color secures him from the detection of a blush when he lies. Though
utterly ignorant of any conception of art, he is not unskillful in
the manufacture of cooking pots and tobacco pipes of clay; he has a
bellows-forge of his own invention; he can reduce iron from its ores
and manufacture it. He makes shields of elephants' hide, cross-bows,
and other weapons of war. But in the construction of musical
instruments his skill is chiefly displayed. From drums of goat-skins,
from harps and gourds, he extracts their melancholy sounds and
disturbs the nocturnal African forests with his plaintive melodies.
"It has been affirmed by those who have known them well, that
the equatorial negro tribes do not increase but tend to die out
spontaneously. This is attributed to infanticide and to the ravages
of miasmic fever, which in its most malignant form will often destroy
its victim in a single day. Even though quinine be taken as a
prophylactic no white man can enter their country with impunity. The
night dews are absolutely mortal."]
The most conclusive answer to all the slanders against Southern slave
owners is to be found in the rapid multiplication of the slaves by natural
increase, which could not have taken place if such barbarities had been
practiced or such immorality had existed, as has been represented. Our
detractors have convicted themselves of the slanders they have uttered
by taking the Southern slave from the Cotton fields to the ballot box
and vested him with all the privileges of an American citizen. If the
institution of slavery has so tutored the negro that immediately his bonds
are loosened, he is qualified for the privileges of the ballot box, what
a civilizing tendency that institution must have had. If on the contrary
that institution has kept him in utter ignorance of moral and Christian
duty and made him the cringing, degraded creature he has been represented,
what a monster must be he who proposes to vest in the untutored savage the
power of governing others while the white man is disfranchised. In his
native land he has never reached the dignity of a civilized being, and he
has never been civilized until transplanted into slavery. Even till this
day there are native Africans who continue in a state of barbarism despite
the civilizing influence of the British government and the efforts of
missionaries. In the western country away from the coast and civilization,
tribes of the "hinterland" practice cannibalistic rites, the victim being
preferably a blood relation of the sacrificer. The unfortunates are
kidnapped, then with ghoulish ceremony and weird incantations they are
frightfully mutilated; while life still remains a demoniacal feast is held
and human flesh consumed to offset the "Ju-Ju" or spell of evil omen. Then
the victim is put out of his misery and buried so that the white man shall
know nothing of the mysteries ages old, which the tribes of Africa revere;
many of the victims are young women and girls, captured by members of
secret societies and taken to some remote spot in the bush.
Whatever of eminence any individual of the race has attained, is due
directly or indirectly to the civilizing influence of the institution
of slavery. It was the master of slaves who accomplished the greatest
missionary success and the progress of his ward since is due to the
training and influence of the past.
Foreign people have said that if the Confederate Government had freed the
slaves, it might have been recognized by European nations. Such persons
should recall that when Don Quixote freed the galley slaves he had then to
defend himself against them--they would see the absurdity of such an idea.
What could the people of the South have done in the prosecution of the war
if 3,000,000 slaves had been turned loose among them and the whole labor
system of the country deranged?
Our victors say that having submitted "to the arbitrament of arms," and
having been overcome, the question of right has been decided against
us, and that we are a conquered people who must submit to the fate of
the conquered; but though the gordian knot was cut with the sword,
constitutional questions cannot be solved in the same way, such a
view would but prove the wrong of the whole doctrine of coercion. The
Constitution created by sovereign states, whatever the powers delegated,
could never have contemplated the possibility of one of those states
being reduced to the condition of a conquered province. That Constitution
was as binding in those states, which remained after the secession of
the Southern states as before, and it was as much an outrage to make war
upon those latter for the act of secession, as it would have been to have
destroyed their existence as states while they remained in the Union.
It is true that the South claimed to be a sovereign independent people
after their withdrawal, and were so by every principle of right and
justice, but that position did not authorize the making of war against
them. A counter-claim was that the seceding states had no right to
withdraw, and therefore those arrayed in opposition undertook to compel
them to submission to the rule and laws of the Union: upon that ground
alone could they justify the war. They were the aggressors and disregarded
the Constitution and the Union and they also were the ones who violated
the principle and precept of that Constitution, which they were sworn to
support and defend.
The doctrine has been broached that the highest law that can exist is
that established by force of arms. That the red-handed conquerors or the
armed robber on the highway should assert this, is not to be wondered at,
but when it comes from the men who have been compelled to yield to force
of arms while struggling for the right, the mantle of charity should be
allowed to fall over the weakness which cannot resist the temptations of
adversity.
In regard to this question of submitting our rights to "the arbitrament of
arms," much irrational language has been used and very erroneous opinions
have been expressed as to the result. There was never a greater mistake
of terms or perversion of language than that made in saying that the
Southern states submitted their right to be withdrawn from the Union to
the arbitrament of arms or having lost, that the question of right has
been decided against them. Those states proposed to withdraw peaceably,
tendered a peaceful solution of all of the questions which might arise out
of their former relations to the United States government. That government
declared a war of coercion, and the Southern states of necessity resorted
to arms to defend their rights and homes when most wrongfully and unjustly
invaded. In no sense can they be said to have submitted any of their
rights to the arbitrament of arms any more than the traveller on the
highway submits his money to the arbitrament of arms between himself and
the robber, and the result of the war decided no question of principle,
but simply furnished another instance of the fact that in this world, the
truth does not always prevail and that might is often more powerful than
right.
Not only has the question of right not been decided by the arbitrament of
arms, but the proposition that "The voice of the people is the voice of
God" is no better established now than on that memorable occasion when the
people cried "crucify him! crucify him!"
* * * * *
=ERRATA=
Page 51, line 17--
"obitu" should be "obitur."
Page 58, lines 15 and 19--
"Elden" should be "Eldon."
Page 77, line 11--
the letter "a" should be inserted before the word "felony."
Page 82, line 26--
"interferfence" should be "interference."
* * * * *
Transcriber Note
Minor typos were corrected. All corrections in the ERRATA have been
applied. Due to the length of Footnote B, the footnotes were indented.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Heritage of The South, by Jubal Anderson Early