It threatens his whole doctrine of compact, and its darling derivatives, nullification and secession, with instant confutation.
Because, if he admits our instrument of government to be a _const.i.tution_, then, for that very reason, it is not a compact between sovereigns; a const.i.tution of government and a compact between sovereign powers being things essentially unlike in their very natures, and incapable of ever being the same.
We know no more of a const.i.tutional compact between sovereign powers than we know of a _const.i.tutional_ indenture of copartnership, a _const.i.tutional_ bill of exchange. But we know what the _const.i.tution_ is; we know what the bond of our union and the security of our liberties is; and we mean to maintain and to defend it, in its plain sense and unsophisticated meaning."
This is enough of the exorcism of that malignant spirit, const.i.tutional compact. Now as to the other malignant spirit. Webster says:
"The first resolution declares that the people of the several States "_acceded_" to the const.i.tution, or to the const.i.tutional compact, as it is called. This word "accede," not found either in the const.i.tution itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of the States, has been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without a well-considered purpose.
The natural converse of _accession_ is _secession_; and, therefore, when it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the union, it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. _If in adopting the const.i.tution, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, nothing would seem necessary to break it up, but to secede from the same compact._ But the term is wholly out of place.... The people of the United States have used no such form of expression in establishing the present government. They do not say that they _accede_ to a league, but they declare that they _ordain and establish_ a const.i.tution. Such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in all the States, without exception, the language used by their conventions was, that they "_ratified_ the const.i.tution;" some of them employing the additional words "a.s.sented to" and "adopted," but all of them "ratifying.""
Note that I have italicized in the quotation certain admissions of Webster, which, in case his premises should be disproved, concede the cause to his adversary. And we will now tell you how Calhoun did disprove those premises.
He showed that Webster himself had in a senate speech called the const.i.tution a _const.i.tutional compact_; and that President Washington, in his official announcement to congress, described North Carolina as _acceding_ to the union by the ratification she had at last made of the const.i.tution.
As to these two points Calhoun further sustained himself with unquestionable authority and also argument inconfutable by one who, like Webster, did not find the true _ratio decidendi_, that is, the effect of evolution to bring forth the nation.
The rest of Calhoun"s answer will be considered a little later. But what of it has already been given covers the essentials of the controversy. In supporting his proposition that the States were sovereign when they made the const.i.tution, and kept their entire sovereignty intact afterwards, he was too strong for his antagonist. And yet had his knowledge of the facts been fuller, how much better he could have done. He could have quoted from all the great men who made the const.i.tution and secured its ratification language, in which _accede_ is used again and again in the same sense as it is in his resolutions.
Likewise, he could have quoted language in which they designated the const.i.tution as a compact or something synonymous. Madison--to mention only one of many instances--advocating ratification in the Virginia convention, called the const.i.tution "a government of _a federal nature_, consisting of _many coequal sovereignties_." What an effective _argumentum ad hominem_ could Calhoun have found in the provision of the const.i.tution of the State of Webster, to wit: that Ma.s.sachusetts is free, sovereign, and independent, retaining every power which she has not expressly delegated to the United States.[30]
Webster also made blunders in construing the context of the const.i.tution, as well as the clauses specially involved, in contrasting the const.i.tution with the articles of confederation, and in his reading of our const.i.tutional history. These blunders were exhaustively, ably, relentlessly exposed.
We who are trained either in forensic or parliamentary debate well know the conquering and demolishing reply. Although, as we have just shown, Calhoun"s reply could have been far more effective than it really was, still its success and triumph were so evident that when he closed, John Randolph, who had heard it, wanted a hat obstructing his sight removed, so that, as he said, he might see "Webster die, muscle by muscle."
Master the question at issue, and read the two speeches as impartially as you strive to read the discussion of aeschines and Demosthenes, and if you are qualified to judge of debate between intellectual giants you must admit that Webster was driven from every inch of ground chosen by him as his very strongest, and which he confidently believed that he could hold against the world.
Yet the union men, who were hosts in the north and numerous even in the south at that time, accepted Webster"s speech as the bible of their political faith, and as its reward enn.o.bled him with the pre-eminent t.i.tle of Expounder of the Const.i.tution. They ignored, or they never learned of, the pulverizing refutation. But the State-rights men and the south generally understood. Webster also understood. He did not make any real rejoinder. And his subsequent utterances are in harmony with the State-rights doctrine to which Calhoun seems to have converted him.[31] I fancy that with that rare humor which was one of his shining gifts, he dubbed himself in his secret meditations, "Expounder because not expounding." Later I shall tell you how Webster builded better than he knew, and that there was, after all, in the speech that which fully justifies the worship it received from the union men.
But there is something else pertinent to be learned here. That the north generally found out only what Webster said in the debate for his side, and never even heard of what was said on the other, and that the south became at once familiar with both speeches, proves that each section had already formed its own belonging and independent public, and that the southern public kept attentive watch upon all affairs of fact or opinion interesting the other, while the northern public knew hardly anything at all of the south. A large percentage of the southern leaders had studied in northern schools and colleges. In this and many other ways they had been instructed as to the north. Such instruction contributed very greatly to southern supremacy in the federal government until the election of Lincoln. We can now see that the powers in charge, as a part of their work, made the great northern public, which, as Lincoln observed, was to be the savior of the union, stop its ears to all anti-union sentiments or arguments. How else can you understand it that the ante-bellum notices of Webster, the memoir by Everett, the different utterances of Choate, and many, many other sketches, are so utterly dumb as to Calhoun"s great reply? And is not the same dumbness of Curtis, Von Holst, and McMaster, writing after the war, due to the survival in the north of the old constraint? a constraint so powerful that, while Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in 1883, did concede just a little to Calhoun, he stopped far short of the full justice that I believe he would now render were he to traverse the ground again.
We must now go beyond what we have already hinted, and show you plainly how both the union men and the State-rights men a.s.sumed untenable premises, and how the south, maintaining a cause foredoomed, vanquished in the forum of discussion her adversary, maintaining the side which fate had decreed must win. In no other way can the reader be better made to understand the incalculable potency of the forces which preserved the American union after its orators and advocates had all been discomfited; and in no other way can he better learn what principles are to be invoked if he would grasp the real essence of the union.
We emphasize the material and cardinal mistake of the union men, thus phrased by Webster in the speech we have discussed: "Whether the const.i.tution be a compact between States in their sovereign capacities, is a question which must be mainly argued from what is contained in the instrument itself."
This was to abandon inexpugnable ground. That ground was the great body of pertinent facts, known to all, which begun the making of the union before the declaration of independence, and which, from that time on to the very hour that Webster was speaking, had been making the union stronger and more perfect. He ought to have contended that a nation grows; that it cannot be made, or be at all modified, even by a const.i.tution. Any const.i.tution is its creature, not its creator.
How weak he was when he invoked construction of the federal const.i.tution as the main umpire. That const.i.tution had been always construed against him. The three departments of the federal government had each uniformly treated it as a compact between sovereign States; and they kept this up until the brothers" war broke out. Mr. Stephens, in his great compilation,[32] demonstrates this unanswerably. But the State-rights men had a still greater strength than even this, if the question be conceded to be one of construction. As the author of the Republic of Republics shows by a mountain of proofs, the ill.u.s.trious draftsmen of the const.i.tution and their contemporaries who finally got the const.i.tution adopted--all the people, high and low, who favored the cause--declared at the time that the sovereignty of the States would remain unimpaired after adoption.[33]
To sum up, the generation that drafted and adopted the const.i.tution, and all the succeeding ones who had lived under it, agreed that the States were sovereign.
How could even Webster talk these facts out of existence? At every stage of the intersectional debate the cause of the south supporting State sovereignty became stronger. And there were great hosts at the north who understood the record as the south did; and, while they hoped and prayed that separation would never come, they conscientiously conceded State sovereignty to the full. It seems to me to be the fact that, although the federal soldiers cherished deep love for the union, a very great majority of the more intelligent among them did not long keep at its height the emotion excited by the attack on Fort Sumter, and soon settled back into their former creed, holding, because of the reasons summarized above, the States to be sovereign; and while they thought it supreme folly in the south to set up the confederacy, they still believed that to do so was but the exercise of an indubitable right of the States creating it. From what I saw at the time, and the many proofs that appeared to acc.u.mulate upon me afterwards, this explains the unprecedented panic with which the federal army abandoned the field at the First Mana.s.sas. Consider just a moment. The federal army, giving the confederates a complete surprise, turns their position and drives them back in rout. The confederates make an unexpected stand, fight for some hours, and at last, a.s.suming the offensive, win the field. The troops on each side practically all raw volunteers, very much alike in race and character. But the federals had much more than two to one engaged, as is demonstrated by the fact that the confederates had only twenty-five regiments of infantry in action, and they took prisoners from fifty-five. The more one who, like me, observed much of the war, thinks it over, the more clearly he sees that the flight from Mana.s.sas is not to be explained because of the superior courage and stamina of the southern soldiers. I believe that the union men, observing how brave and death-defying their brothers on the other side were in facing disaster that seemed irretrievable and odds irresistible, at last became convinced that these brothers, defending home and firesides, were right, and that they themselves, invading an inviolably sovereign State, were heinously wrong; and thus awakened conscience made cowards of all these gallant men. And it is thoroughly established, I believe, that everywhere in the first engagements of the war, the southern volunteers, if they were commanded by a fighter, showed far more spirit and stomach than their adversaries. In the amicable meetings, often occurring upon the picket line, when we confederates would with good humor ask the union men how it was that we won so many fights, it was a stereotyped reply of the latter, "Why, you are fighting for your country and we only for $13 a month." It was but natural that, by reason of what has been told in the foregoing, the south unanimously, and a very large number at the north, should believe any State could under its reserved powers rightfully secede from the union whenever and for whatever cause it pleased.
We see now what the angry brothers did not see. The absolute sovereignty of the States, and the right of secession both _de facto_ and _de jure_ could have been conceded, and at the same time the war for the union justified. The unionists could well have said to the south:
"Your independence is too great a menace to our interests to be tolerated, and the high duty of self-defence commands that we resist to the death. The _status quo_ is better for us all. Now that you have set up for yourself, we must tell you, sadly but firmly, that if you do not come back voluntarily, we must resort to coercion,--not under the const.i.tution, for you have thrown that off, but under the law of nations to which you have just subjected yourself."
The man who of all southerners has given State sovereignty its most learned and able defence--Sage, the author of "The Republic of Republics"--says: "To coerce a state is unconst.i.tutional; but it is equally true that the precedent of coercing states is established, and that it is defensible under the law of nations."[34]
To have received the confederate commissioners as representing an independent nation, and made demand that the seceding States return to the union, would have been a far stronger theory than that on which the war was avowedly waged; for it would have taken from the south that superiority in the argument which had given her great prestige in Europe, and even in the north. And lastly, under the law of nations, the federal government, after coercing the seceding States back, would have had--even according to the theory of State rights as maintained in the south--perfectly legitimate power to abolish slavery. The statement that emanc.i.p.ation was "sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the const.i.tution, upon military necessity," protests so much that one sees that the highly conscientious man hesitated and doubted. And well may he have doubted; for what warrant can be found in the const.i.tution for destroying that property which it solemnly engaged to defend and protect as a condition precedent of its adoption?--that is, if the southern States were still in the union and under the const.i.tution, as was claimed by all who justified the proclamation? But if the southern States had gone out of the union, they had revoked their ratification and had thrown away all the protection of slavery given by the const.i.tution; and while the const.i.tution did not direct how the federal government should act in the matter, the law of nations gave full and ample directions. Its authority was not stinted nor hampered by any rights recognized in the const.i.tution as reserved to the States under it. The subsequent amendment, imposed as a condition of reconstruction, shows that the people of the north seriously questioned if slavery had been abolished by the proclamation and its enforcement by the union armies.
But this, strong as it was, would not have been the true theory. The true theory--the real fact--is that at the outbreak of the brothers" war, and long before, the States had become more closely connected than the Siamese Twins,--indissolubly united as integral parts of the same organism, like the different trunks of the Banyan tree; and while the southern nationalization was opposing the union forces with might and main, it was really but an excrescence, with roots far more shallow than those of the American union--a parasite like the mistletoe, growing upon the American body politic, fated to die of itself if not destroyed by its fell foe. For, as we have explained, the sole motor of this southern nationalization--slavery--could no more maintain itself permanently against free labor than the handloom could stand against the steam-loom, or the draft-horse can much longer compete with artificial traction power.
Now let us rapidly set in array the stronger supports of this true theory.
We should start with the impulse to combine which adjacency always gives to communities of the same origin; and external compression and joint interest to those of diverse origin, as we see in the case of the Swiss.
How clearly does our great American sociologist trace the effect of this impulse in ancient society. First a body of consanguinei grows into a gens; after a while, neighboring gentes of the same stock-language form a tribe; then neighboring tribes, as some of the Iroquois and Aztecs, form a confederacy. At this point the development of the American Indians was arrested by the coming of the whites. "A coalescence of tribes into a nation had not occurred in any case in any part of America," says the great authority.[35] But we can easily understand what would have occurred had the Indians been left to themselves. They would have pa.s.sed out of the nomadic state into settlements of fixed abodes, local and geographical political divisions evolving from the old gentes and tribes, the contiguous ones often uniting. History furnishes many examples of neighboring communities coalescing into nations. One of the most remarkable of all is the environment which has constrained peoples of four different languages to coalesce into the little Swiss nation. Turning away from prehistoric times and also ancient history, let the student re-enforce the case of the Swiss, just alluded to, with the modern nation-making in Italy and Germany. These few of the many instances which can be given show how and what sorts of adjacent communities are p.r.o.ne to co-operate or combine for a common purpose, and how such combination develops at last an irresistible p.r.o.neness to national union. Drops of liquid in proximity to one another on a plane may long maintain each their independent forms; but bring them into actual contact, and presto! all the globules have coalesced into a single ma.s.s. After the belonging part of the evolutionary science of sociology has been fully developed--which time does not seem very far off--the subject will receive adequate ill.u.s.tration. Then all of us will understand that, many years before Alamance and Lexington, the colonies, in their defence of themselves against the Indians and the French, in their intercommunication over innumerable matters of joint interest, in the beneficent example of the Iroquois confederacy and the advice of our fathers by the Iroquois, as early as 1755, to form one of the colonies similar to their own,[36] and in many other things that can be suggested, were steadily becoming one people, and more and more predisposed to political union. We shall also see, much more clearly than we do yet, that the Revolutionary war, by keeping them some years under a general government, imparted new and powerful impetus to the nationalizing forces, which were working none the less surely because un.o.bserved. Our lesson will be completely learned when we recognize that about the time the war with the mother country commenced the globules, that is, the separate colonies, had become actually a quasi-political whole,--a stage of evolution so near to that of full nationality that it is hard to distinguish the two. It seems to me that the nation had come at least into rudimentary existence when the declaration of independence was made. Surely from that time on something wondrously like a _de facto_ national union of the old colonies grew rapidly, and became stronger and stronger; and this to me is the sufficient and only explanation of the seismic popular upheaval that displaced the weaker government under the articles of confederation with one endowed by the federal const.i.tution with ample powers to administer the affairs of the nation now beginning to stir with consciousness. And yet so blind was everybody that in 1787 the delegates and their const.i.tuents all believed the convention to be the organ of the States, when in truth it was the organ of the new American nation. Prompted by a self-preserving instinct, this nationality deftly kept itself hid. Had it been disclosed, the federal const.i.tution could not have been adopted; and had a suspicion of it come a few years later, there would have been successful secession. And so each State dreamed on its sweet dream of dominion until the call to the stars and stripes rang through the north.
Then its people began darkly and dimly to discern the nationalization which had united the States and become a hoop of adamant to hold the union forever stanch. Of course to the south nothing appeared but the State sovereignty of the fathers. Her illuded sight was far clearer and more confident than the true vision of the north, and she magnified State sovereignty which she thought she saw, and d.a.m.ned the American nationality preached by the north as anti-State-rights, when at that very time a nationality of her own had really put all the southern States at its feet. It mattered not for the thick perception of the north and the optical illusion of the south, the American nation was now full grown; and by the result of the brothers" war it made good its claim to sovereignty.
The historian must accurately gauge the effect wrought by the wonderfully successful career of the United States under the federal const.i.tution in its first years. War with France imminent, Pinckney"s winged word, "Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute," the sword buckled on again by the father of his country--and peace; the extension of our domain from the Mississippi to the Pacific by the Louisiana purchase; the victories won against the men who used to say scornfully that our fathers could not stand the bayonet, and the still more surprising victories won with an improvised navy against the mistress of the seas, in the war of 1812; the brilliant operations of Decatur against Algiers; the military power of the Indians decisively and permanently outcla.s.sed, until soon our women and children on the border were practically secure against the tomahawk and scalping knife; and perhaps above all the world-wide s.p.a.ciousness, as it were, and the inexpressibly greater dignity and splendor of the public arena, as compared with that of any single colony or State, which was opened at once to every ambitious spirit--these are some, only, of the feats and achievements which gave the United States unquestioned authority at home and incomparable prestige around the world.
And on and on the American nation rushed, from one stage of growth into and through another, until the result was that for some years before secession State sovereignty, for all of the high airs it gave itself and the imposing show of respect it extorted, had become merely a survival.
Thus did the American nation form, from a number of different neighboring, cognate, and very closely-akin communities, under that complex of the forces of growth and those of combination which imperceptibly and resistlessly steers the social organism along the entire track of its evolution. The nationalizing leaven was hidden by the powers in charge of our national destiny in the colonial meal, and it had in time so completely leavened the whole lump that Rhode Island, and North Carolina, trying hard to stay out, and Texas desporting joyfully and proudly under the lone star in her golden independence, could not break the invisible leading strings, which pulled all three into the United States. Note how Oregon and California, though largely settled from the south yet being without slavery, in their extreme remoteness from the brothers" war adhered to the union cause. And had the southern confederacy triumphed in the war, the States in it would have staid out of the federal union only the few years necessary for slavery to run its course. When there was no more virgin soil for cotton, the southern nation, which was merely a growth upon the American nation, would have collapsed of itself, as did the State of Frankland; and that continental brotherhood which brought in Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Texas, would have commandingly rea.s.serted itself. The more you contemplate the facts, the more it is seen that this continental brotherhood was and is the most vigorous tap-root and stock of nationality in all history. The providence which at first gradually and surely mixed the colonies into one people, then into a feeble and infirm political whole, rapidly hardening in consistency, and lastly into an indissoluble union, and which was from the beginning more and more developing us into a nation--this overruling evolution, and not const.i.tution or lawmaking organs, has been, is, and always will be the ultimate and supreme authority, the opposeless lawgiver, the resistlessly self-executing higher law in America, creating, altering, modifying or abolishing man-made const.i.tutions, laws, ordinances, and statutes, as suits its own true democratic purpose, often inscrutable to contemporaries.
The foregoing is the substance of the argument that must now take the place of that made by Webster and the unionists after him, which was convincingly confuted by the south. It proves the complete and immaculate justice of the war for the union.
This view differs from the other, which we admitted above to be very strong, mainly in refusing to concede that a State is sovereign and can legitimately secede at will. But under it, it ought to be conceded that the States in the southern confederacy were for the time actually out of the American union by revolution. It is not possible to say they were in rebellion; that is an offence of individuals standing by an authority hastily improvised and manifestly sham. It was not by the action of individuals, but it was by the action of States, veritable political ent.i.ties and quasi sovereigns, that the confederacy was organized. When these States were coerced back, they could not invoke the protection to their slaves given in a const.i.tution which they had solemnly repudiated.
The United States could therefore deal with them as it had with the Territories from which it excluded slavery. While of course adequate protection of the freedmen against their former masters ought to have been provided, it should at the same time have been made clear to the world that slavery was abolished solely because events had demonstrated it to be the only root and cause of dismemberment of the union. Such a familiar example as the often-exercised power of a munic.i.p.ality to blow up a house, without compensation therefor, to stop the progress of conflagration, and many other seemingly arbitrary acts done by society in its self-preservation, would have occurred to conscientious people contemplating. And it would have been a long flight in morals above the proclamation, merely to have justified emanc.i.p.ation on the ground that the existence of slavery was a serious menace to the life of the nation.
One"s logic may be often wrong, and yet his proposition has been rightly given him by an instinct, as we so often see in the case of good women. O this subliminal self of ours, how it bends us. .h.i.ther and thither, as the solid hemisphere does the little human figure upon it, posing with a seeming will of his own! Hence, and not from our argument-making faculty, come not only our own most important principles of action, but also our very strongest persuasive influence. And it is the subconscious mental forces moving great ma.s.ses of men and women all the same way--that is, the national instincts--which are the all-conquering powers that the apostle of a good cause arouses and sets in array. And while it is true that the mere logic of Webster"s anti-nullification speech is puerile, the after world will more and more couple that speech with the reply to Hayne, and keep the two at the top--above every effort of all other orators. In the reply to Hayne, in 1830, he had magnified the union in a pa.s.sage which ever since has deservedly led all selections for American speech books.
And now, in 1833, when dismemberment actually makes menace of its ugly self, the great wizard of speech that takes consciences and hearts captive,[37] proclaimed to his countrymen that there could be no such thing as lawful secession or nullification. The earnestness and the emphasis with which he said this were supreme merits of the speech. And thenceforth it was enough to the hosts of the north to remember that the American, towering like a mountain above them all, had in his high place solemnly declared that secession is necessarily revolution. And, to one who is familiar with the hypnotizing effect of subconscious national suggestion it is not strange that they scouted Calhoun"s demolishing reply, and treasured Webster"s false logic as supreme and perfect exposition of the const.i.tution.
CHAPTER VI
ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS
For a long while opposition to slavery was moderate and not unreasoning.
The first actual quarrel over it between the sections was when Missouri applied for admission to the union in 1818. That was settled by the famous compromise of 1820. The most of the anti-slavery men of that day stood only against the extension of slavery. While many a one of them believed his conviction was dictated, independently and entirely, by his conscience, it was in fact given him because of his relation to the free-labor nationalization claiming the public lands for itself. That was also true of the great ma.s.s of northerners opposed to slavery down to the very beginning of the war. They wanted the Territories for themselves. The contest between the United States and England for Oregon is a parallel case. The American felt, if this territory falls to the United States, I and my children and children"s children can get cheap land somewhere in it; but if it falls to England, I and they are forever shut out. In the intersectional contest over the public lands northerners felt that they would be practically excluded from any part of them into which slavery was carried; for infinitely preferring, as they did, the free-labor system, to which they had been bred, to the slavery system, of which they had no experience, and against which they were prejudiced, they would never voluntarily settle where it obtained. This, the prevalent view, brought about the compromise of 1820, by which all the territory north of 36 30"
was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the north, not because its inhabitants were burning with zeal to repress the spread of what they thought to be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they purposed thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their own children.
So much for what we have called the first quarrel between the sections over slavery. Let us now glance at the stages following until the root-and-branch abolitionist shows himself.
For some twenty years after the Missouri compromise was made there was hardly any public agitation at all as to slavery. In 1840 an abolition ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much smaller than had been currently predicted. It is not until January, 1836, when, upon Calhoun"s motion in the senate of the United States to reject two pet.i.tions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, there ensued a prolonged and pa.s.sionate discussion, that we can say that the old free-soil practically begins to pa.s.s into an abolition movement.
Here moral attack upon slavery seriously begins. If we think but a moment we will understand it too well to explain it as an arousal of conscience, which ought to have been aroused many years before if slavery was indeed the terrible sin the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. The agitation of 1830, the year that Webster replied to Hayne, and that of 1833, when he and Calhoun crossed swords over nullification, mark a great advance of intersectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the Missouri compromise. We can see now as we look back what contemporaries could not see, that is, that the two were _avant couriers_ of the southern confederacy. But some of the contemporaries did discern the fact--not consciously, but instinctively. With these there was, in subliminal ratiocination, a process somewhat as follows: The southern confederacy, if it does come, will disrupt the union, which a.s.sures, while it lasts, immunity of our country from frequent wars upon its own soil, and from the heavy load of great armies kept up even in the intervals of peace. This disruption will establish in America all the evil conditions of Europe from which our fathers fled hither. Slavery is the _vis matrix_, the sole developing force, the life of this menaced confederacy. Let us abolish slavery, and preserve the union.
How accurately the common instincts--especially those protecting our private interests--discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes more of a marvel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally right, the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter threatens great injury, they excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. How else can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ and worshipping the same G.o.d, were at last divided, the northern churches impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. Dwell upon this fact until you interpret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the other the most conscientious and best of the south unanimous that it is morally right. Then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists, and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that of the other did the same things against it. When you do this, you must admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions.
The economic interest of the north was against slavery. It was her interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free workers. It was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army.
On the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to preserve slavery, if that should be necessary. Each side feels deeply and more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of production and subsistence--the property to which of all it believes its t.i.tle most indefeasible. It required some years to bring affairs to this point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to masquerade as characters widely different from the true. When these servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not that of their masters, how the directors must smile. They have guaranteed animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a supreme momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically recognizes in his _dux vitae dia voluptas_. The pa.s.sion of anger is the converse of that of love. When consent cannot settle some great controversy that must be settled, the pa.s.sion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. In the ripeness of time the Ransy Sniffleses[38] come forth. They say and do everything possible to bring on the impending mortal combat. They never grasp the essence of the contention, for it is their mission to arouse feeling, pa.s.sion, anger. They are resistlessly--most conscientiously and honestly--impelled to make the other side appear detestable and insultingly offensive in heinous wrong-doing. The most zealous and the most influential of the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they vaulted into the arena. Garrison was twenty-six when he started the "Liberator" in 1831, Wendell Phillips was some six years younger than Garrison, and he was about twenty-six when he made his debut with a powerful impromptu in Boston, in 1837. Whittier was two years younger than Garrison, and he was early a co-worker in the "Liberator." It is demonstrated by everything they said that they were entirely ignorant of the south and its people, of the average condition of the slave in the south, and especially of the negro"s grade of humanity. They never studied and investigated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to ascertain the truth. They a.s.sumed the facts to be as it suited their purposes, given them by the directors, of exciting hatred of their opponents,--and it added greatly to their efficiency that they fully believed their a.s.sumptions. Knowing really nothing of the negro except that he was a man, it was natural for them to believe, as they did, that the typical, average negro slave of the south was in all the essentials of good citizenship just such a human being as the typical, average white. If they did not go quite so far, they surely claimed for him something so near to it that it is practically the same. We shall, as suggested above, treat this pernicious error more fully in later chapters.
The root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever since the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation became effective that the overthrow of slavery was brought about by them; and thousands upon thousands believing it sing them hosannas. But it is an undeniable fact that the superior power of free labor in its irreconcilable conflict with slavery was bound to do in America what it had done everywhere else. And without the abolitionist at all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were few even if there had been no secession, and very few if secession had triumphed. For free labor--its fell and implacable foe--was on the outside steadily and surely encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the extension that was a condition of its life; and within its ring fence necessarily it was rapidly exhausting all of its resources. It was the mighty counteraction of free labor that crushed slavery. The root-and-branch abolitionist thrown up by this movement which had set forward irresistibly, long before he was ever heard of, and who believed that he started it and was guiding it, strikingly examples the proverb
"Er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben."
I believe that future history will give him credit only for having a little hastened forward the inevitable.
Another abolition misstatement ought to be corrected. Sumner fulminated against what he called the oligarchs of slavery. And it was common at the north to speak of southern aristocracy and southern aristocratic inst.i.tutions. Of course the slaves had no political privileges, no more than they had in Athens, which has always been deemed the most genuine republic ever known. There was in the old south no oligarch, or anything like him, unless you choose to call such a man as Calhoun an oligarch, whose influence over his State was entirely from the good opinion and unexampled confidence of the free citizens of all cla.s.ses, which he had won. There was no aristocracy, except such a natural one as can be found in every one of our States, as is ill.u.s.trated by the Adamses in Ma.s.sachusetts, the Lees in Virginia, and the Cobbs in Georgia. In those days property was much more equally distributed than now; and it was easy for the energetic and saving poor young man, of the humblest origin, to make his way up. In all my day there was universal suffrage, and it was political death to propose any modification. I explained nearly thirty years ago how southern conditions prevented the development of anything like the beneficent New England town-meeting system.[39] But for all of that the entire spirit of southern society was democratic in the extreme, far more so than it is now with the nominating machinery everywhere in the south except South Carolina, controlled by corporation oligarchs. When the root-and-branch abolitionist inveighed against oligarchy and aristocracy, and aristocratic inst.i.tutions in the south, he was just as mistaken as he was in denouncing what he a.s.serted to be the guilt in morals of slaveholding.