Within the memory of men still in the vigor of life, American Slavery
was considered by a vast majority of the North, and by a large minority
of the South, as an evil which should, at best, be tolerated, and not
a good which deserved to be extended and protected. A kind of
lazy acquiescence in it as a local matter, to be managed by local
legislation, was the feeling of the Free States. In both the Slave and
the Free States, the discussion of the essential principles on which
Slavery rests was confined to a few disappointed Nullifiers and a few
uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun
and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and
North in one category of pestilent "abstractionists." Negro Slavery
was considered simply as a fact; and general irritation among most
politicians of all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore
the principles on which the fact reposed. That these principles had the
mischievous vitality which events have proved them to possess, few of
our wisest statesmen then dreamed, and we have drifted by degrees into
the present war without any clear perception of its animating causes.
The future historian will trace the steps by which the subject of
Slavery was forced on the reluctant attention of the citizens of the
Free States, so that at last the most cautious conservative could not
ignore its intrusive presence, could not banish its reality from his
eyes, or its image from his mind. He will show why Slavery, disdaining
its old argument from expediency, challenged discussion on its
principles. He will explain the process by which it became discontented
with toleration within its old limits, and demanded the championship
or connivance of the National Government in a plan for its limitless
extension. He will indicate the means by which it corrupted the Southern
heart and Southern brain, so that at last the elemental principles of
morals and religion were boldly denied, and the people came to "believe
a lie." He will, not unnaturally, indulge in a little sarcasm, when
he comes to consider the occupation of Southern professors of ethics,
compelled by their position to scoff at the "rights" of man, and
Southern professors of theology, compelled by their position to teach
that Christ came into the world, not so much to save sinners, as to
enslave negroes. He will be forced to class these among the meanest
and most abject slaves that the planters owned. In treating of the
subserviency of the North, he will be constrained to write many a page
which will flush the cheeks of our descendants with indignation and
shame. He will show the method by which Slavery, after vitiating the
conscience and intelligence of the South, contrived to vitiate in part,
and for a time, the conscience and intelligence of the North. It will
be his ungrateful task to point to many instances of compliance and
concession on the part of able Northern statesmen which will deeply
affect their fame with posterity, though he will doubtless refuse to
adopt to the full the contemporary clamor against their motives. He will
understand, better than we, the amount of patriotism which entered
into their "concessions," and the amount of fraternal good-will which
prompted their fatal "compromises." But he will also declare that the
object of the Slave Power was not attained. Vacillating statesmen and
corrupt politicians it might address, the first through their fears,
the second through their interests; but the intrepid and incorruptible
"people" were but superficially affected. A few elections were gained,
but the victories were barren of results. From political defeat the free
people of the North came forth more earnest and more united than ever.
The insolent pretensions of the Slavocracy were repudiated; its
political and ethical maxims were disowned; and after having stirred the
noblest impulses of the human heart by the spectacle of its tyranny, its
attempt to extend that tyranny only roused an insurrection of the human
understanding against the impudence of its logic. The historian can then
only say, that the Slave Power "seceded," being determined to form a
part of no government which it could not control. The present war is to
decide whether its real force corresponds to the political force it has
exerted heretofore in our affairs.
That this war has been forced upon the Free States by the "aggressions"
of the Slave Power is so plain that no argument is necessary to sustain
the proposition. It is not so universally understood that the Slave
Power is aggressive by the necessities of the wretched system of labor
on which its existence is based. By a short exposition of the principles
of Slavery, and the expedients it has practised during the last twenty
or thirty years, we think that this proposition can be established.
And first it must be always borne in mind, that Slavery, as a system,
is based on the most audacious, inhuman, and self-evident of lies,--the
assertion, namely, that property can be held in men. Property applies to
things. There is a meta-physical impossibility implied in the attempt to
extend its application to persons. It is possible, we admit, to ordain
by local law that four and four make ten, but such an exercise of
legislative wisdom could not overcome certain arithmetical prejudices
innate in our minds, or dethrone the stubborn eight from its accustomed
position in our thoughts. But you might as well ordain that four and
four make ten as ordain that a man has no right to himself, but can
properly be held as the chattel of another. Yet this arrogant falsehood
of property in men has been organized into a colossal institution. The
South calls it a "peculiar" institution; and herein perhaps consists
its peculiarity, that it is an absurdity which has lied itself into a
substantial form, and now argues its right to exist from the fact of its
existence. Doubtless, the fact that a thing exists proves that it has
its roots in human nature; but before we accept this as decisive of
its right to exist, it may be well to explore those qualities in human
nature, "peculiar" and perverse as itself, from which it derives
its poisonous vitality and strength. It is plain, we think, that an
institution embodying an essential falsity, which equally affronts the
common sense and the moral sense of mankind, and which, as respects
chronology, was as repugnant to the instincts of Homer as it is to the
instincts of Whittier, must have sprung from the unblessed union of
wilfulness and avarice, of avarice which knows no conscience, and of
wilfulness that tramples on reason; and the marks of this parentage,
the signs of these its boasted roots in human nature, are, we are
constrained to concede, visible in every stage of its growth, in every
argument for its existence, in every motive for its extension.
It is not, perhaps, surprising that some of the advocates of Slavery do
not relish the analysis which reveals the origin of their institution
in those dispositions which connect man with the tiger and the wolf.
Accordingly they discourage, with true democratic humility, all
genealogical inquiries into the ancestry of their system, substitute
generalization for analysis, and, twisting the maxims of religion into
a philosophy of servitude, bear down all arguments with the sounding
proposition, that Slavery is included in the plan of God's providence,
and therefore cannot be wrong. Certain thinkers of our day have asserted
the universality of the religious element in human nature: and it must
be admitted that men become very pious when their minds are illuminated
by the discernment of a Providential sanction for their darling sins,
and by the discovery that God is on the side of their interests and
passions. Napoleon's religious perceptions were somewhat obtuse, as
tried by the standards of the Church, yet nothing could exceed the depth
of his belief that God "was with the heaviest column"; and the most
obdurate jobber in human flesh may well glow with apostolic fervor, as,
from the height of philosophic contemplation to which this principle
lifts him, he discerns the sublime import of his Providential mission.
It is true, he is now willing to concede, that a man's right to himself,
being given by God, can only by God be taken away. "But," he exultingly
exclaims, "it _has_ been taken away by God. The negro, having always
been a slave, must have been so by divine appointment; and I, the mark
of obloquy to a few fanatical enthusiasts, am really an humble agent in
carrying out the designs of a higher law even than that of the State, of
a higher will even than my own." This mode of baptizing man's sin and
calling it God's providence has not altogether lacked the aid of certain
Southern clergymen, who ostentatiously profess to preach Christ and Him
crucified, and by such arguments, we may fear, crucified _by them_.
Here is Slavery's abhorred riot of vices and crimes, from whose
soul-sickening details the human imagination shrinks aghast,--and over
all, to complete the picture, these theologians bring in the seraphic
countenance of the Saviour of mankind, smiling celestial approval of the
multitudinous miseries and infamies it serenely beholds!
It may be presumptuous to proffer counsel to such authorized expositors
of religion, but one can hardly help insinuating the humble suggestion,
that it would be as well, if they must give up the principles of
liberty, not to throw Christianity in. We may be permitted to doubt the
theory of Providence which teaches that a man never so much serves God
as when he serves the Devil. Doubtless, Slavery, though opposed to God's
laws, is included in the plan of God's providence, but, in the long run,
the providence most terribly confirms the laws. The stream of events,
having its fountains in iniquity, has its end in retribution. It is
because God's laws are immutable that God's providence can be _foreseen_
as well as seen. The mere fact that a thing exists, and persists in
existing, is of little importance in determining its right to exist,
or its eventual destiny. These must be found in an inspection of the
principles by which it exists; and from the nature of its principles,
we can predict its future history. The confidence of bad men and the
despair of good men proceed equally from a too fixed attention to the
facts and events before their eyes, to the exclusion of the principles
which underlie and animate them; for no insight of principles, and of
the moral laws which govern human events, could ever cause tyrants to
exult or philanthropists to despond.
If we go farther into this question, we shall commonly find that the
facts and events to which we give the name of Providence are the acts
of human wills divinely overruled. There is iniquity and wrong in these
facts and events, because they are the work of free human wills. But
when these free human wills organize falsehood, institute injustice, and
establish oppression, they have passed into that mental state where
will has been perverted into wilfulness, and self-direction has been
exaggerated into self-worship. It is the essence of wilfulness that it
exalts the impulses of its pride above the intuitions of conscience
and intelligence, and puts force in the place of reason and right. The
person has thus emancipated himself from all restraints of a law higher
than his personality, and acts _from_ self, _for_ self, and in sole
obedience _to_ self. But this is personality in its Satanic form; yet it
is just here that some of our theologians have discovered in a person's
actions the purposes of Providence, and discerned the Divine intention
in the fact of guilt instead of in the certainty of retribution.
The tyrant element in man is found in this Satanic form of his
individuality. His will, self-released from restraint, preys upon and
crushes other wills. He asserts himself by enslaving others, and mimics
Divinity on the stilts of diabolism. Like the barbarian who thought
himself enriched by the powers and gifts of the enemy he slew, he
aggrandizes his own personality, and heightens his own sense of freedom,
through the subjection of feebler natures. Ruthless, rapacious, greedy
of power, greedy of gain, it is in Slavery that he wantons in all
the luxury of injustice, for it is here that he tastes the exquisite
pleasure of depriving others of that which he most values in himself.
Thus, whether we examine this system in the light of conscience and
intelligence, or in the light of history and experience, we come to but
one result,--that it has its source and sustenance in Satanic energy, in
Satanic pride, and in Satanic greed. This is Slavery in itself, detached
from the ameliorations it may receive from individual slaveholders.
Now a bad system is not continued or extended by the virtues of any
individuals who are but partially corrupted by it, but by those who
work in the spirit and with the implements of its originators. Every
amelioration is a confession of the essential injustice of the thing
ameliorated, and a step towards its abolition; and the humane and
Christian slaveholders owe their safety, and the security of what they
are pleased to call their property, to the vices of the hard and stern
spirits whom they profess to abhor. If they invest in stock of the
Devil's corporation, they ought not to be severe on those who look out
that they punctually receive their dividends. The true slaveholder feels
that he is encamped among his slaves, that he holds them by the right of
conquest, that the relation is one of war, and that there is no crime he
may not be compelled to commit in self-defence. Disdaining all cant,
he clearly perceives that the system, in its practical working, must
conform to the principles on which it is based. He accordingly believes
in the lash and the fear of the lash. If he is cruel and brutal, it may
as often be from policy as from disposition, for brutality and cruelty
are the means by which weaker races are best kept "subordinated" to
stronger races; and the influence of his brutality and cruelty is felt
as restraint and terror on the plantation of his less resolute neighbor.
And when we speak of brutality and cruelty, we do not limit the
application of the words to those who scourge, but extend it to some of
those who preach,--who hold up heaven as the reward of those slaves who
are sufficiently abject on earth, and threaten damnation in the next
world to all who dare to assert their manhood in this.
If, however, any one still doubts that this system develops itself
logically and naturally, and tramples down the resistance offered by the
better sentiments of human nature, let him look at the legislation which
defines and protects it,--a legislation which, as expressing the average
sense and purpose of the community, is to be quoted as conclusive
against the testimony of any of its individual members. This legislation
evinces the dominion of a malignant principle. You can hear the crack
of the whip and the clank of the chain in all its enactments. Yet these
laws, which cannot be read in any civilized country without mingled
horror and derision, indicate a mastery of the whole theory and practice
of oppression, are admirably adapted to the end they have in view, and
bear the unmistakable marks of being the work of practical men,--of men
who know their sin, and "knowing, dare maintain." They do not, it
is true, enrich the science of jurisprudence with any large or wise
additions, but we do not look for such luxuries as justice, reason, and
beneficence in ordinances devised to prop up iniquity, falsehood, and
tyranny. Ghastly caricatures of justice as these offshoots of Slavery
are, they are still dictated by the nature and necessities of the
system. They have the flavor of the rank soil whence they spring.
If we desire any stronger evidence that slaveholders constitute a
general Slave Power, that this Slave Power acts as a unit, the unity of
a great interest impelled by powerful passions, and that the virtues of
individual slaveholders have little effect in checking the vices of the
system, we can find that evidence in the zeal and audacity with which
this power engaged in extending its dominion. Seemingly aggressive in
this, it was really acting on the defensive,--on the defensive, however,
not against the assaults of men, but against the immutable decrees of
God. The world is so constituted, that wrong and oppression are not, in
a large view, politic. They heavily mortgage the future, when they
glut the avarice of the present. The avenging Providence, which the
slaveholder cannot find in the New Testament, or in the teachings of
conscience, he is at last compelled to find in political economy; and
however indifferent to the Gospel according to Saint John, he must give
heed to the gospel according to Adam Smith and Malthus. He discovers, no
doubt to his surprise, and somewhat to his indignation, that there is an
intimate relation between industrial success and justice; and however
much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract principles which
declare Slavery a nonsensical enormity, he cannot fail to read its
nature, when it slowly, but legibly, writes itself out in curses on the
land. He finds how true is the old proverb, that, "if God moves with
leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." The law of Slavery is, that,
to be lucrative, it must have a scanty population diffused over large
areas. To limit it is therefore to doom it to come to an end by the laws
of population. To limit it is to force the planters, in the end, to free
their slaves, from an inability to support them, and to force the slaves
into more energy and intelligence in labor, in order that they may
subsist as freemen. People prattle about the necessity of compulsory
labor; but the true compulsory labor, the labor which has produced the
miracles of modern industry, is the labor to which a man is compelled by
the necessity of saving himself, and those who are dearer to him than
self, from ignominy and want. It was by this policy of territorial
limitation, that Henry Clay, before the annexation of Texas, declared
that Slavery must eventually expire. The way was gradual, it was
prudent, it was safe, it was distant, it was sure, it was according to
the nature of things. It would have been accepted, had there been any
general truth in the assertion that the slaveholders were honestly
desirous of reconverting, at any time, and on any practicable plan,
their chattels into men. But true to the malignant principles of their
system, they accepted the law of its existence, but determined to evade
the law of its extinction. As Slavery required large areas and scanty
population, large areas and scanty population it should at all times
have. New markets should be opened for the surplus slave-population;
to open new markets was to acquire new territory; and to acquire new
territory was to gain additional political strength. The expansive
tendencies of freedom would thus be checked by the tendencies no less
expansive of bondage. To acquire Texas was not merely to acquire an
additional Slave State, but it was to keep up a demand for slaves which
would prevent Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Kentucky from
becoming Free States. As soon as old soils were worn out, new soils were
to be ready to receive the curse; and where slave-labor ceased to be
profitable, slave-breeding was to take its place.
This purpose was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it
was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the
declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient
heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless
to seek for the causes of actions in extraneous sources, when they
are plainly but steps in the development of principles already known.
Slave-breeding and Slavery-extension are necessities of the system. Like
Romulus and Remus, "they are both suckled from one wolf."
But it was just here that the question became to the Free States a
practical question. There could be no "fanaticism" in meeting it at this
stage. What usually goes under the name of fanaticism is the habit of
uncompromising assault on a thing because its principles are absurd
or wicked; what usually goes under the name of common sense is the
disposition to assail it at that point where, in the development of its
principles, it has become immediately and pressingly dangerous. Now by
no sophistry could we of the Free States evade the responsibility of
being the extenders of Slavery, if we allowed Slavery to be extended. If
we did not oppose it from a sense of right, we were bound to oppose it
from a sense of decency. It may be said that we had nothing to do with
Slavery at the South; but we had something to do with rescuing the
national character from infamy, and unhappily we could not have anything
to do with rescuing the national character from infamy without having
something to do with Slavery at the South. The question with us was,
whether we would allow the whole force of the National Government to be
employed in upholding, extending, and perpetuating this detestable and
nonsensical enormity?--especially, whether we would be guilty of that
last and foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate planting of
slave institutions on virgin soil? If this question had been put to
any despot of Europe,--we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,--his
answer would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. Yet the South
confidently expected so to wheedle or bully us into dragging our common
sense through the mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we should
connive at the commission of this execrable crime!
There can be no doubt, that, if the question had been fairly put to the
inhabitants of the Free States, their answer would have been at once
decisive for freedom. Even the strongest conservatives would have been
"Free-Soilers,"--not only those who are conservatives in virtue of
their prudence, moderation, sagacity, and temper, but prejudiced
conservatives, conservatives who are tolerant of all iniquity which is
decorous, inert, long-established, and disposed to die when its time
comes, conservatives as thorough in their hatred of change as Lamennais
himself. "What a noise," says Paul Louis Courier, "Lamennais would have
made on the day of creation, could he have witnessed it. His first cry
to the Divinity would have been to respect that ancient chaos." But even
to conservatives of this class, the attempt to extend Slavery, though
really in the order of its natural development, must still have appeared
a monstrous innovation, and they were bound to oppose the Marats and
Robespierres of despotism who were busy in the bad work. Indeed, in our
country, conservatism, through the presence of Slavery, has inverted
its usual order. In other countries, the radical of one century is the
conservative of the next; in ours, the conservative of one generation
is the radical of the next. The American conservative of 1790 is the
so-called fanatic of 1820; the conservative of 1820 is the fanatic
of 1856. The American conservative, indeed, descended the stairs of
compromise until his descent into utter abnegation of all that civilized
humanity holds dear was arrested by the Rebellion. And the reason of
this strange inversion of conservative principles was, that the movement
of Slavery is towards barbarism, while the movement of all countries
in which labor is not positively chattellized is towards freedom and
civilization. True conservatism, it must never be forgotten, is the
refusal to give up a positive, though imperfect good, for a possible,
but uncertain improvement: in the United States it has been misused to
denote the cowardly surrender of a positive good from a fear to resist
the innovations of an advancing evil and wrong.
There was, therefore, little danger that Slavery would be extended
through the conscious thought and will of the people, but there
was danger that its extension might, somehow or other, _occur_.
Misconception of the question, devotion to party or the memory of
party, prejudice against the men who more immediately represented the
Anti-Slavery principle, might make the people unconsciously slide into
this crime. And it must be said that for the divisions in the Free
States as to the mode in which the free sentiment of the people should
operate the strictly Anti-Slavery men were to some extent responsible.
It is difficult to convince an ardent reformer that the principle
for which he contends, being impersonal, should be purified from the
passions and whims of his own personality. The more fervid he is, the
more he is identified in the public mind with his cause; and, in a large
view, he is bound not merely to defend his cause, but to see that the
cause, through him, does not become offensive. Men are ever ready to
dodge disagreeable duties by converting questions of principles into
criticisms on the men who represent principles; and the men who
represent principles should therefore look to it that they make no
needless enemies and give no needless shock to public opinion for
the purpose of pushing pet opinions, wreaking personal grudges, or
gratifying individual antipathies. The artillery of the North has
heretofore played altogether too much on Northerners.
But to return. The South expected to fool the North into a compliance
with its designs, by availing itself of the divisions among its
professed opponents, and by dazzling away the attention of the people
from the real nature of the wickedness to be perpetrated. Slavery was to
be extended, and the North was to be an accomplice in the business; but
the Slave Power did not expect that we should be active and enthusiastic
in this work of self-degradation. It did not ask us to extend Slavery,
but simply to allow its extension to occur; and in this appeal to our
moral timidity and moral laziness, it contemptuously tossed us a few
fig-leaves of fallacy and false statement to save appearances.
We were informed, for instance, that by the equality of men is meant the
equality of those whom Providence has made equal. But this is exactly
the sense in which no sane man ever understood the doctrine of equality;
for Providence has palpably made men unequal, white men as well as
black.
Then we were told that the white and black races could dwell together
only in the relation of masters and slaves,--and, in the same breath,
that in this relation the slaves were steadily advancing in civilization
and Christianity. But, if steadily advancing in civilization and
Christianity, the time must inevitably come when they would not submit
to be slaves; and then what becomes of the statement that the white
and black races cannot dwell together as freemen? Why boast of their
improvement, when you are improving them only that you may exterminate
them, or they _you?_
Then, with a composure of face which touches the exquisite in
effrontery, we were assured that this antithesis of master and slave, of
tyrant and abject natures, is really a perfect harmony. Slavery--so said
these logicians of liberticide--has solved the great social problem of
the working-classes, comfortably for capital, happily for labor; and has
effected this by an ingenious expedient which could have occurred only
to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the expedient, namely,
of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle
between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue
until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But
Slavery exhibits this struggle in its earliest and most savage stage,
a stage answering to the rude energies and still ruder conceptions of
barbarians. The issue of the struggle, it is plain, will not be that
capital will own labor, but that labor will own capital, and no _man_ be
owned.
Still we were vehemently told, that, though the slaves, for their own
good, were deprived of their rights as men, they were in a fine state
of physical comfort. This was not and could not be true; but even if it
were, it only represented the slaveholder as addressing his slave in
some such words of derisive scorn as Byron hurls at Duke Alphonso,--
"Thou! born to eat, and be despised, and die, Even as the brutes that
perish,"--
though we doubt if he could truly add,--
"save that thou Hast a more splendid trough and wider sty."
Then we were solemnly warned of our patriotic duty to "know no North and
no South." This was the very impudence of ingratitude; for we had long
known no North, and unhappily had known altogether too much South.
Then we were most plaintively adjured to to comply with the demands of
the Slave Power, in order to save the Union. But how save the Union?
Why, by violating the principles on which the Union was formed, and
scouting the objects it was intended to serve.
But lastly came the question, on which the South confidently relied as
a decisive argument, "What could we do with our slaves, provided we
emancipated them?" The peculiarity which distinguished this question
from all other interrogatories ever addressed to human beings was this,
that it was asked for the purpose of not being answered. The moment a
reply was begun, the ground was swiftly shifted, and we were overwhelmed
with a torrent of words about State Rights and the duty of minding our
own business.
But it is needless to continue the examination of these substitutes and
apologies for fact and reason, especially as their chief characteristic
consisted in their having nothing to do with the practical question
before the people. They were thrown out by the interested defenders of
Slavery, North and South, to divert attention from the main issue. In
the fine felicity of their in appropriateness to the actual condition of
the struggle between the Free and Slave States, they were almost a match
for that renowned sermon, preached by a metropolitan bishop before an
asylum for the blind, the halt, and the legless, on "The Moral Dangers
of Foreign Travel." But still they were infinitely mischievous,
considered as pretences under which Northern men could skulk from their
duties, and as sophistries to lull into a sleepy acquiescence the
consciences of those political adventurers who are always seeking
occasions for being tempted and reasons for being rogues. They were all
the more influential from the circumstance that their show of argument
was backed by the solid substance of patronage. These false facts and
bad reasons were the keys to many fat offices. The South had succeeded
in instituting a new political test, namely, that no man is qualified
serve the United States unless he is the champion or the sycophant of
the Slave Power. Proscription to the friends of American freedom, honors
and emoluments to the friends of American slavery,--adopt that creed,
or you did not belong to any "healthy" political organization! Now we
have heard of civil disabilities for opinion's sake before. In some
countries no Catholics are allowed to hold office, in others no
Protestants, in others no Jews. But it is not, we believe, in Protestant
countries that Protestants are proscribed; it is not in Catholic
countries that Catholics are incompetent to serve the State. It was left
for a free country to establish, practically, civil disabilities against
freemen,--for Republican America to proscribe Republicans! Think of
it,--that no American, whatever his worth, talents, or patriotism,--could
two years ago serve his country in any branch of its executive
administration, unless he was unfortunate enough to agree with the
slaveholders, or base enough to sham an agreement with them! The test,
at Washington, of political orthodoxy was modelled on the pattern of
the test of religious orthodoxy established by Napoleon's minister of
police. "You are not orthodox," he said to a priest "In what," inquired
the astonished ecclesiastic, "have I sinned against orthodoxy?"
"You have not pronounced the eulogium of the Emperor, or proved the
righteousness of the conscription."
Now we had been often warned of the danger of sectional parties, on
account of their tendency to break up the Government. The people gave
heed to this warning; for here was a sectional party in possession
of the Government. We had been often advised not to form political
combinations on one idea. The people gave heed to this advice; for here
was a triumphant political combination, formed not only on one idea, but
that the worst idea that ever animated any political combination. Here
was an association of three hundred and fifty thousand persons, spread
over some nine hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory, and
wielding its whole political power, engaged in the work of turning the
United States into a sort of slave plantation, of which they were to be
overseers. We opposed them by argument, passion, and numerical power;
and they read us long homilies on the beauty of law and order,--order
sustained by Border Ruffians, law which was but the legalizing of
criminal instincts,--law and order which, judged by the code established
for Kansas, seemed based on legislative ideas imported from the Fegee
Islands. We opposed them again, and they talked to us about the
necessity of preserving the Union;--as if, in the Free States, the love
of the Union had not been a principle and a passion, proof against many
losses, and insensible to many humiliations; as if, with our teachers,
disunion had not been for half a century a stereotyped menace to scare
us into compliance with their rascalities; as if it were not known that
only so long as they could wield the powers of the National Government
to accomplish their designs, were they loyal to the Union! We opposed
them again, and they clamored about their Constitutional rights and our
Constitutional obligations; but they adopted for themselves a theory of
the Constitution which made each State the judge of the Constitution in
the last resort, while they held us to that view of it which made the
Supreme Court the judge in the last resort. Written constitutions, by a
process of interpretation, are always made to follow the drift of great
forces; they are twisted and tortured into conformity with the views
of the power dominant in the State; and our Constitution, originally
a charter of freedom, was converted into an instrument which the
slaveholders seemed to possess by right of squatter sovereignty and
eminent domain.
Did any one suppose that we could retard the ever-onward movement of
their unscrupulous force and defiant wills by timely compromises and
concessions? Every compromise we made with them only stimulated their
rapacity, heightened their arrogance, increased their demands. Every
concession we made to their insolent threats was only a step downwards
to a deeper abasement; and we parted with our most cherished convictions
of duty to purchase, not their gratitude, but their contempt. Every
concession, too, weakened us and strengthened them for the inevitable
struggle, into which the Free States were eventually goaded, to preserve
what remained of their dignity, their honor, and their self-respect. In
1850 we conceded the application of the Wilmot Proviso; in 1856 we were
compelled to concede the principle of the Wilmot Proviso. In 1850 we had
no fears that slaves would enter New Mexico; in 1861 we were threatened
with a view of the flag of the rattlesnake floating over Faneuil Hall.
If any principle has been established by events, with the certainty of
mathematical demonstration, it is this, that concession to the Slave
Power is the suicide of Freedom. We are purchasing this fact at the
expense of arming five hundred thousand men and spending a thousand
millions of dollars. More than this, if any concessions were to be made,
they ought, on all principles of concession, to have been made to the
North. Concessions, historically, are not made by freedom to privilege,
but by privilege to freedom. Thus King John conceded Magna Charta; thus
King Charles conceded the Petition of Right; thus Protestant England
conceded Catholic Emancipation to Ireland; thus aristocratic England
conceded the Reform Bill to the English middle class. And had not we,
the misgoverned many, a right to demand from the slaveholders, the
governing few, some concessions to our sense of justice and our
prejudices for freedom? Concession indeed! If any class of men hold in
their grasp one of the dear-bought chartered "rights of man," it is
infamous to concede it.
"Make it the darling of your precious eye!
_To lose or give 't away_ were such perdition
As nothing else could match."
Considerations so obvious as these could not, by any ingenuity of
party-contrivance, be prevented from forcing themselves by degrees into
the minds of the great body of the voters of the Free States. The common
sense, the "large roundabout common sense" of the people, slowly, and
somewhat reluctantly, came up to the demands of the occasion. The
sophistries and fallacies of the Northern defenders of the pretensions
of the slave-holding sectional minority were gradually exposed, and were
repudiated in the lump. The conviction was implanted in the minds of the
people of the Free States, that the Slave Power, representing only a
thirtieth part of the population of the Slave States, and a ninth part
of the property of the country, was bent on governing the nation, and
on subordinating all principles and all interests to its own. Not being
ambitious of having the United States converted into a Western Congo,
with the traffic in "niggers" as its fundamental idea, the people
elected Abraham Lincoln, in a perfectly Constitutional way, President.
As the majority of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of
the Supreme Court was still left, by this election, on the side of the
"rights of the South," (humorously so styled,) and as the President
could do little to advance Republican principles with all the other
branches of the Government opposed to him, the people naturally imagined
that the slaveholders would acquiesce in their decision.
But such was not the result. The election was in November. The new
President could not assume office until March. The triumphs of the Slave
Power had been heretofore owing to its willingness and readiness to
peril everything on each question as it arose, and each event as it
occurred. South Carolina, perhaps the only one of the Slave States that
was thoroughly in earnest, at once "seceded." The "Gulf States" and
others followed its example, not so much from any fixed intention of
forming a Southern Confederacy as for the purpose of intimidating the
Free States into compliance with the extreme demands of the South. The
Border Slave States were avowedly neutral between the "belligerents,"
but indicated their purpose to stand by their "Southern brethren," in
case the Government of the United States attempted to carry out the
Constitution and the laws in the seceded States by the process of
"coercion."
The combination was perfect. The heart of the Rebellion was in South
Carolina, a State whose free population was about equal to that of the
city of Brooklyn, and whose annual productions were exceeded by those
of Essex County, in the State of Massachusetts. Around this centre was
congregated as base a set of politicians as ever disgraced human nature.
A conspiracy was formed to compel a first-class power, representing
thirty millions of people, to submit to the dictation of about three
hundred thousand of its citizens. The conspirators did not dream of
failure. They were sure, as they thought, of the Gulf States and of the
Border States, of the whole Slave Power, in fact. They also felt sure
of that large minority in the Free States which had formerly acted with
them, and obeyed their most humiliating behests. They therefore entered
the Congress of the nation with a confident front, knowing that
President Buchanan and the majority of his Cabinet were practically on
their side. Before Mr. Lincoln could be inaugurated they imagined they
could accomplish all their designs, and make the Government of the
United States a Pro-Slavery power in the eyes of all the nations of the
world. Mr. Calhoun's paradoxes had heretofore been indorsed only by
majorities in the national legislature and by the Supreme Court. What a
victory it would be, if, by threatening rebellion, they could induce
the people of the United States to incorporate those paradoxes into
the fundamental law of the nation, dominant over both Congress and the
Court! All their previous "compromises" had been merely legislative
compromises, which, as their cause advanced, they had themselves
annulled. They now seized the occasion, when the "people" had risen
against them, to compel the people to sanction their most extreme
demands. They determined to convert defeat, sustained at the polls, into
a victory which would have far transcended any victory they might have
gained by electing their candidate, Breckinridge, as President.
A portion of the Republicans, seeing clearly the force arrayed against
them, and disbelieving that the population of the Free States would be
willing, _en masse_, to sustain the cause of free labor by force of
arms, tried to avert the blow by proposing a new compromise. Mr.
Seward, the calmest, most moderate, and most obnoxious statesman of the
Republican party, offered to divide the existing territories of the
United States by the Missouri line, all south of which should be open
to slave labor. As he at the same time stated that by natural laws the
South could obtain no material advantage by his seeming concession, the
concession only made him enemies among the uncompromising champions of
the Wilmot Proviso. The conspirators demanded that the Missouri line
should be the boundary, not only between the territories which the
United States then possessed, but between the territories they might
hereafter _acquire_. As the country north of the Missouri line was held
by powerful European States which it would be madness to offend, and as
the country south of that line was held by feeble States which it would
be easy to conquer, no Northern or Western statesman could vote for such
a measure without proving himself a rogue or a simpleton. Hence all
measures of "compromise" necessarily failed during the last days of the
administration of James Buchanan.
It is plain, that, when Mr. Lincoln--after having escaped assassination
from the "Chivalry" of Maryland, and after having been subjected to a
virulence of invective such as no other President had incurred--arrived
at Washington, his mind was utterly unaffected by the illusions of
passion. His Inaugural Message was eminently moderate. The Slave
Power, having failed to delude or bully Congress, or to intimidate the
people,--having failed to murder the elected President on his way to
the capital,--was at wits' end. It thought it could still rely on its
Northern supporters, as James II. of England thought he could rely
on the Church of England. While the nation, therefore, was busy in
expedients to call back the seceded States to their allegiance, the
latter suddenly bombarded Fort Sumter, trampled on the American flag,
threatened to wave the rattlesnake rag over Faneuil Hall, and to make
the Yankees "smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel." All this
was done with the idea that the Northern "Democracy" would rally to the
support of their "Southern brethren." The result proved that the South
was, in the words of Mr. Davis's last and most melancholy Message, the
victim of "misplaced confidence" in its Northern "associates." The
moment a gun was fired, the honest Democratic voters of the North were
even more furious than the Republican voters; the leaders, including
those who had been the obedient servants of Slavery, were ravenous for
commands in the great army which was to "coerce" and "subjugate" the
South; and the whole organization of the "Democratic party" of the North
melted away at once in the fierce fires of a reawakened patriotism. The
slaveholders ventured everything on their last stake, and lost. A North,
for the first time, sprang into being; and it issued, like Minerva from
the brain of Jove, full-armed. The much-vaunted engineer, Beauregard,
was "hoist with his own petard."
Now that the slaveholders have been so foolish as to appeal to physical
force, abandoning their vantage-ground of political influence, they must
be not only politically overthrown, but physically humiliated. Their
arrogant sense of superiority must be beaten out of them by main force.
The feeling with which every Texan and Arkansas bully and assassin
regarded a Northern mechanic--a feeling akin to that with which the old
Norman robber looked on the sturdy Saxon laborer--must be changed, by
showing the bully that his bowie-knife is dangerous only to peaceful,
and is imbecile before armed citizens. The Southerner has appealed to
force, and force he should have, until, by the laws of force, he is not
only beaten, but compelled to admit the humiliating fact. That he is not
disposed "to die in the last ditch," that he has none of the practical
heroism of desperation, is proved by the actual results of battles.
When defeated, and his means of escape are such as only desperation can
surmount, he quickly surrenders, and is even disposed to take the oath
of allegiance. The martial virtues of the common European soldier he has
displayed in exceedingly scanty measure in the present conflict. He
has relied on engineers; and the moment his fortresses are turned or
stormed, he retreats or becomes a prisoner of war. Let Mr. Davis's
Message to the Confederate Congress, and his order suspending Pillow
and Floyd, testify to this unquestionable statement. Even if we grant
martial intrepidity to the members of the Slavocracy, the present war
proves that the system of Slavery is not one which develops martial
virtues among the "free whites" it has cajoled or forced into its
hateful service. Indeed, the armies of Jefferson Davis are weak on the
same principle on which the slave-system is weak. Everything depends on
the intelligence and courage of the commanders, and the moment these
fail the soldiers become a mere mob.
American Slavery, by the laws which control its existence, first rose
from a local power, dominant in certain States, to a national power,
assuming to dominate over the United States. At the first faint fact
which indicated the intention of the Free States to check its progress
and overturn its insolent dominion, it rebelled. The rebellion now
promises to be a failure; but it will cost the Free States the arming of
half a million of men and the spending of a thousand millions of dollars
to make it a failure. Can we afford to trifle with the cause which
produced it? We note that some of the representatives of the loyal Slave
States in Congress are furious to hang individual Rebels, but at the
same time are anxious to surround the system those Rebels represent
with new guaranties. When they speak of Jeff Davis and his crew, their
feeling is as fierce as that of Tilly and Pappenheim towards the
Protestants of Germany. They would burn, destroy, confiscate, and kill
without any mercy, and without any regard to the laws of civilized war;
but when they come to speak of Slavery, their whole tone is changed.
They wish us to do everything barbarous and inhuman, provided we do not
go to the last extent of barbarity and inhumanity, which, according to
their notions, is, to inaugurate a system of freedom, equality, and
justice. Provided the negro is held in bondage and denied the rights of
human nature, they are willing that any severity should be exercised
towards his rebellious master. Now we have no revengeful feeling towards
the master at all. We think that he is a victim as well as an oppressor.
We wish to emancipate the master as well as the slave, and we think that
thousands of masters are persons who merely submit to the conditions
of labor established in their respective localities. Our opposition is
directed, not against Jefferson Davis, but against the system whose
cumulative corruptions and enormities Jefferson Davis very fairly
represents. As an individual, Jefferson Davis is not worse than many
people whom a general amnesty would preserve in their persons and
property. To hang him, and at the same time guaranty Slavery, would be
like destroying a plant by a vain attempt to kill its most poisonous
blossom. Our opposition is not to the blossom, but to the root.
We admit that to strike at the root is a very difficult operation. In
the present condition of the country it may present obstacles which will
practically prove insuperable. But it is plain that we can strike lower
than the blossom; and it is also plain that we must, as practical
men, devise some method by which the existence of the Slavocracy as a
political power may be annihilated. The President of the United States
has lately recommended that Congress offer the cooperation and financial
aid of the whole nation in a peaceful effort to abolish Slavery,--with
a significant hint, that, unless the loyal Slave States accept the
proposition, the necessities of the war may dictate severer measures.
Emancipation is the policy of the Government, and will soon be the
determination of the people. Whether it shall be gradual or immediate
depends altogether on the slaveholders themselves. The prolongation of
the war for a year, and the operation of the internal tax bill, will
convert all the voters of the Free States, whether Republicans or
Democrats, into practical Emancipationists. The tax bill alone will
teach the people important lessons which no politicians can gainsay.
Every person who buys a piece of broadcloth or calico,--every person who
takes a cup of tea or coffee,--every person who lives from day to day
on the energy he thinks he derives from patent medicines, or beer, or
whiskey,--every person who signs a note, or draws a bill of exchange, or
sends a telegraphic despatch, or advertises in a newspaper, or makes a
will, or "raises" anything, or manufactures anything, will naturally
inquire why he or she is compelled to submit to an irritating as well as
an onerous tax. The only answer that can possibly be returned is this,--
that all these vexatious burdens are necessary because a comparatively
few persons out of an immense population have chosen to get up a civil
war in order to protect and foster their slave-property, and the
political power it confers. As this property is but a small fraction of
the whole property of the country, and as its owners are not a hundredth
part of the population of the country, does any sane man doubt that the
slave-property will be relentlessly confiscated in order that the Slave
Power may be forever crushed?
There are, we know, persons in the Free States who pretend to believe
that the war will leave Slavery where the war found it,--that our half
a million of soldiers have gone South on a sort of military picnic,
and will return in a cordial mood towards their Southern brethren in
arms,--and that there is no real depth and earnestness of purpose in the
Free States. Though one year has done the ordinary work of a century
in effecting or confirming changes in the ideas and sentiments of the
people, these persons still sagely rely on the party-phrases current
some eighteen months ago to reconstruct the Union on the old basis of
the domination of the Slave Power, through the combination of a divided
North with a united South. By the theory of these persons, there is
something peculiarly sacred in property in men, distinguishing it from
the more vulgar form of property in things; and though the cost of
putting down the Rebellion will nearly equal the value of the Southern
slaves, considered as chattels, they suppose that the owners of property
in things will cheerfully submit to be taxed for a thousand millions,--a
fourth of the almost fabulous debt of England,--without any irritation
against the chivalric owners of property in men, whose pride, caprice,
and insubordination have made the taxation necessary. Such may possibly
be the fact, but as sane men we cannot but disbelieve it. Our conviction
is, that, whether the war is ended in three months or in twelve months,
the Slave Power is sure to be undermined or overthrown.
The sooner the war is ended, the more favorable will be the terms
granted to the Slavocracy; but no terms will be granted which do not
look to its extinction. The slaveholders are impelled by their system to
complete victory or utter ruin. If they obey the laws of their system,
they have, from present appearances, nothing but defeat, beggary, and
despair to expect. If they violate the laws of their system, they must
take their place in some one of the numerous degrees, orders, and ranks
of the Abolitionists. It will be well for them, if the wilfulness
developed by their miserable system gives way to the plain reason and
logic of facts and events. It will be well for them, if they submit to a
necessity, not only inherent in the inevitable operation of divine laws,
but propelled by half a million of men in arms. Be it that God is on the
side of the heaviest column,--there can be no doubt that the heaviest
column is now the column of Freedom.
* * * * *