8. No white person unless married to a negro, or a resident federal official, to be allowed citizenship in the negro State or Territory, but all citizens of the United States to be protected therein as in the other States.[194]
9. Only those of reputable character and some degree of education, and perhaps those possessed of a year"s support, to become citizens. Criminals and undesirable persons to be kept out.
It was gratification extreme to me to find a prominent negro so much in accord with my long-cherished project. I hope there is a determination of the ma.s.s of southern negroes thitherward, as seems to be indicated by the activity both of Bishop Holsey and also by that of Bishop Turner. With nearly all of the negro writers and speakers now in the public eye upper-cla.s.s sympathies are dominant. But Holsey, demanding a State in the union, and Turner, putting his whole soul into immigration to Liberia, are actuated by lower-cla.s.s sympathies. The others just mentioned really advocate a.s.similation,--and at bottom, only the a.s.similation of the upper cla.s.s,--but these two are of far different and higher ambition. They are patriotic, and as true to their race as that famous heathen who rejected christianity when told that it consigned his forefathers to perdition. He declared he would go to h.e.l.l with his people and not to heaven without them. The others are representative of only some five per cent, these two represent the ninety-five per cent--the real negroes. I never took to Bishop Turner"s proposal, for all of the ability with which he advocates it, because I want the negroes where our nation can foster and protect their State, it matters not what may be the resulting pains and expense. I highly approve the earnestness of Bishop Holsey in objecting to expatriation by the Afro-Americans.
Let our negroes have their own State. That will be the fit culmination which was foreshadowed in their deserting the galleries a.s.signed them in our churches and flocking to their own churches, immediately upon emanc.i.p.ation, and their effecting soon afterwards the removal of their cabins from the old site. Their ma.s.ses have ever since been inclining towards a community of their own by an internal impulsion in harmony with the external white expulsion. The impulsion and the expulsion are each, as it seems to me, manifestations of the same all-powerful cosmic force.
Further, I would say a negro State makes a precedent for the world federation. Each race that ought not to intermarry with others can flourish under its separate autonomy. Then loving brotherhood between white, yellow, red, and black people will bless all the earth. Whether the p.r.o.neness of opposites to fancy each other, progressively going from the smaller to the greater differences, will ultimately compound a universal color, no man can now tell.
Of course some reader has exclaimed, "Your proposal is absurdly chimerical." Is it indeed chimerical to demand of the great republic that it do its very highest duty? Suppose an ignorant, neglected child taken home by a rich man, taught to work, the world of industry, with all of its prizes, kept in his sight, until he begins to cherish the hope that some day he can have a happy fireside of his own; suppose further that just as he reaches the age of discretion the adopting father sets him where he may see the fair world plainer and long for it more than ever, but so completely strips him of all means and opportunity that there is nothing for the outcast but ign.o.ble life and uncared-for death. How you would pity the outcast! how you would curse the false father! I cannot believe that the nation will prove such an unnatural parent to these its helpless and lovable children. It may be that some thousands of them, nay, some millions, may be left to perish in their dire constraint. But when the people fully understand, their consciences will awaken, and they will give the American negro a bright house-warming.
Suppose we do not give him his State, or suppose it will be long years before we give it to him, what do you say we are to do for him?
We must help Booker Washington and his co-laborers to the utmost. Grant that they can s.n.a.t.c.h only a few brands from the burning. Is it not most praiseworthy to save even one? Further, I can never abandon the hope that the nation will yet allot the negroes their State, even if to do it land must be condemned on a large scale. When that fair day does dawn on America, out of the scholars of these worthy teachers will come many a good shepherd for the blacks in their new land. This may now be but a glimmering of hope. All the good must join in effort to enlarge and brighten it.
We should not begrudge the higher education to the few in the upper cla.s.s who can get it. The negroes need teachers, preachers, writers, and others of the learned occupations.
We should impartially equalize the negro population to the white in common school privileges. Both ought to have rational industrial training. The right primary education is just beginning to show itself. It will more and more recognize what a prominent factor the hand has been in evolution.
Think of the superiority of animals with, to those without, hands. What a high brain the elephant has made for himself by exercising his single hand; the polar bear kills the seal by throwing a block of ice; the "c.o.o.n goes through his master"s pockets for sweetmeats; the greater intelligence of the house-cat as compared with the average dog is due to long use of the forepaws as rudimentary hands. Think of how we note humanity dawning in the monkey ever busy with his hands. Think of the importance of his hands to beginning man. With them he could gather fruits, rub fire-sticks together, make war-clubs, spears, fish-hooks, bow and arrows, bar up his cave door against beasts of prey, elevate his roosting place in a tree too high for night prowlers, and do all other vital things up the whole ascent to civilization. The steady enlargement of man"s brain has been mainly because of his progressive use of his hands; for whenever a new thing was to be done his brain had first to acquire faculty of telling hands how to do it. To train the hands is the true way to develop brain power. The negroes in American slavery had risen far above the level of West African hand ability, and at emanc.i.p.ation they were prepared to go higher by leaps and bounds. Had they from that time steadily on been drafted off into their State, gradually, as Bishop Holsey suggests, and a t.i.the of the millions which have since been lavished in giving them premature literacy and smattering of learning been applied in teaching their children handicraft faculty and the best methods of labor, the promise for them now would be satisfactory to their dearest friends. Somebody wisely advises, Never do the second thing first. Those who took charge of the negro when he was freed tried to make him do the hundredth or thousandth thing first.
Instead of patiently schooling him in handicraft and self-support until he was really ready to take part in his own self-government, they made the ignorant and inexperienced slave of yesterday a complete citizen, and plunged him up to his neck into politics and letters. What a baleful _hysteron proteron_ was this. The looming greatness of Booker Washington is that he teaches by his actions that the seeming advance was in fact prodigious retrogression, and he strives with all his might to draw the negro backwards to his right beginning. Let us further his good work by incorporating the utmost practicable of his industrial training in our common school system for both whites and blacks. America has learned important military lessons from the redskin; and, as I am almost sure, she acted on his suggestion when she confederated the separate colonies. Let her now show similar good sense in permitting a negro to teach her the true system of education for the new times.[195]
Now as to lynching. It is entirely wrong to conceive of a popular outbreak against one who has outraged a sacred woman as lawless. It is the furthest possible from that, being prompted by the most righteous indignation. The wretch has outlawed himself. Society can no more tolerate such an insult to its peace than it can permit a tiger to go at large. It is under no obligation to him whatever. It is the people dealing with him that should concern us. We ought to keep them from brutalizing themselves and their children. We must put down lynching with gentle firmness. The first thing to do is to shorten the "law"s delay" as much as possible. After the State has made the enabling const.i.tutional amendment, if such be necessary, let an act provide that whenever an alleged crime likely to excite popular violence has been committed the governor select a judge to try and finally dispose of the case, three days only, say, being allowed for motion for new trial or taking direct bill of exceptions; both the supreme court and the court below to proceed as fast as may be through all stages until acquittal or execution. Let the governor earnestly ask for some such measure, and let him also, after he gets it, impressively appeal to the people to a.s.sist in enforcing the law. With this preparation, more than ninety per cent of the whites will approve the most decided action of the military protecting prisoners, if that be necessary. Just at this time (September 27, 1904) there is a very decided manifestation of anti-lynching public opinion in the south. We should strike while the iron is hot, and bring it about that the law itself make quick riddance of the ravisher. It should be a spur to us that the party opposed in politics to the great majority of southerners finds much support and help from every lynching in this section. Why should we play into its hands?
The last thing that I have to say is that the south ought to invite immigrants only of white blood. We want no settlers from whose intermarriage mongrels would spring. All Europeans should receive welcome--the Germans perhaps the warmest. But in my judgment those that will most advantage us are the truckmen, growers of the smaller and larger fruits, gra.s.s, grain, and stock farmers, manufacturers, miners, builders, contractors, business men, and skilled laborers, of the north. It looks now as if the cotton mills of England as well as of the north would be profited by coming to us; and it also seems probable that there will be for many years so great a demand for our cotton that the worn-out soil of the older parts of the lower south must be restored to more than virgin richness by the method which Dr. Moore has patented and made a gift of to the nation, or some other intensive culture; and that there must be consequently great multiplication of southern mill-operatives and agricultural workers in the near future. Recall what we have said in the last chapter as to the future promise of the section. Every day the south by disclosing some new opportunity cogently makes new invitation to immigrants. It is the interest as well as the duty of the nation to remove the great clog upon development of the south. That clog is the presence of some millions of una.s.similable negroes in the section. It is also the best interest and the highest duty of the nation to segregate these negroes into a territory of their own. As Bishop Holsey says, and what I believe with my whole soul, "The union of the States will never be fully and perfectly recemented with tenacious integrity until black Ham and white j.a.pheth dwell together in separate tents."[196]
I must add an epilogue to these chapters on the race question as I did to that on Toombs.
Brothers and sisters of the north, you should learn why there is a solid south. There is but one cause. It is the menace to the whites from the political power given the negroes by the fifteenth amendment. There is nothing in your section--in its past or its present--from which I can ill.u.s.trate to you the gravity of this menace to us. In not one of your States are there ignorant negroes in so great a number that, by combining with the debased whites, they can make for it such a const.i.tution and laws and set up such authorities as they please. We, your brothers and sisters of the south, have lived under the rule of this foulest of coalitions. We know from actual experience how it plunders and preys upon honest workers, producers, and property owners; how it licenses and fosters crime. In my own State, from the first day that a governor, elected by fiat voters and ex-whites, as we called the latter, was inaugurated, until we virtually restored the supremacy of our race by carrying the three days" election in December, 1870, fifty dollars would get a pardon for the greatest offence, and robberies, burglaries, horse-stealing, and the like each went free for a much smaller sum. Is it forgotten that the negro speaker was voted one thousand dollars by a South Carolina legislature, ostensibly as extra compensation for unusual services, but really of purpose to reimburse him for a bet lost upon a horse race? Why, the foremost of our people in virtue, wisdom, and patriotism were agreed that these sordid tyrannies should be subverted at once and at any cost to ourselves. The emergency justified any practice, device, or stratagem at the polls by which we could defend our homes, families, and subsistence against a.s.sa.s.sins of the public peace, wholesale robbers of the people, and instigators and protectors of every crime. It justified the shotgun and six-shooter in politics just as legitimate war justifies the musket in the hands of the soldier. It called forth most righteously the Ku-Klux. That spontaneous resistance finds a close parallel in the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, fought before American independence was declared. But the Ku-Klux fought for something still dearer than the dear cause for which our forefathers bled in the two battles just mentioned. Had the latter failed in the war they had thus begun, their children and people would nevertheless have had such good government as England is now giving the defeated Boers; but had the southern whites failed in their defence, their land would have for long years been befouled like Hayti, and those who had not been slaughtered unspeakably degraded. I think that all our countrymen who so rightfully eulogize the heroes of Lexington and Bunker Hill should also learn to give the greater praise to the southern heroes whose indomitable spirit routed the madmen that, with all the power of the federal government in their hands, tried their best to give the section over to negro rulers. Brothers and sisters, "picture it, think of it,"
until you can fully understand that hour of our trial. All my northern acquaintances who have resided in the south for several years--they are many--come to look at the subject just as the natives do. A candid and honest settler from Vermont has told me how he was made to change his mind. Conversing with a southerner, he had reprehended the different ways in which the negro"s ballot had been rendered nugatory. The other replied, "Suppose that there was an incursion of Indians given suffrage into your State in such a ma.s.s as to make them seventy-five per cent of all the voters, wouldn"t you whites in some way manage either to outvote or outcount them!" The Vermonter answered in the affirmative. We had to deliver ourselves. We used the only means at our command.
It was not to be thought of that these negro governments be endured, even if tempered by the Ku-Klux, for government is in its nature lasting and permanent while the other was only temporary. They would have gradually gathered strength. Then there would have been rapid enrichment of a few exceptional negroes and rapid expulsion of the whites impoverished by emanc.i.p.ation, from all their little that was left. And then, the leading negroes desiring nothing else so much, there would have come many white men and women, each one willing to climb out of the depths of want by intermarriage with a prosperous negro. Who can predict what would have been the future of mongrelism thus beginning? We of the south are most conscientiously solid against what we know from actual trial to be the worst and most corrupting of all government; and we are still more solid against everything that tends to promote amalgamation. Can you blame us for standing in serried phalanx by white domination and against the misrule exampled in the early years of reconstruction, and for our own uncontaminated white blood and against fusion with the negro? We must be solid in the face of these dangers, and as long as they are threatened by the presence of millions of negroes in our midst. There is no other solidity in the south. In all matters of the locality republicans and democrats count alike. When one offers to vote in the primary, if his name is on the registry list, and he appears on inspection to be white, his vote is accepted; and he generally casts that vote, not for the interest of a political party, but for that of the public. The triumphant election in November, 1904, of independents or democrats, in four northern States which at the same time went for Mr. Roosevelt, indicates solidity for the true local welfare of the people as against the behests of party. So what the white primary has produced in the south, has commenced in the north.
And the result in Missouri, voting for Roosevelt, republican, and Folk, democrat, shows that what we may call federal independentism has commenced in the south. This will spread as the people learn it does not hurt them to split their tickets while voting upon national questions, if they but maintain their solidity while voting upon State or munic.i.p.al.
Now may I be allowed some decided words, most kindly and inoffensively spoken, as to appointing negroes to federal offices in the south. It is no sound argument for it that now and then some negro may have been appointed in a northern community which manifested no opposition. Consider the case of Mr. William H. Lewis, a negro lately made a.s.sistant district attorney in Boston by Mr. Roosevelt. He is a Harvard graduate, was captain of the Harvard eleven while in college, had represented Cambridge in the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature, and the community was not at all averse to his appointment.[197] Therefore when it was made there was no disregard of the wishes and feelings of Boston and the regions adjoining. But when a negro is given office in the south, it is felt by all the community to be an insult. Would President Roosevelt cram the appointment of a white down the throats of a northern community in which all the best citizens protested against it? Would he not confess to himself that the wishes and feelings of these good people ought to be respected, even if he considered them foolish and unreasonable? It seems to me that he would, and that he would find for the place somebody else in his party acceptable to the locality.
Why should he not do the like when his southern brothers and sisters who have such convincing reasons against the encouragement of negroes in their politics, protest unanimously against his filling an office in their midst with a negro? Will he snub them because a negro has more sacred right than a white? Is that what he means by keeping open the door of hope and opportunity? Or will he snub them because enough of punishment has not yet been given them, and because the south is still a province or dependency on which he is justified in quartering his partisans and pets without regard to the feelings and wishes of all the better inhabitants?
Brothers and sisters of the north, I cannot believe that any one of you who impartially considers the subject, would ever approve appointing even the most competent and deserving negro to a southern office in the teeth of universal objection by the whites of the community.
My last word is to implore every honest one in the country to lay aside all prejudice and master the southern situation before judging. Whoever does this, whoever will accurately place himself in the shoes of a good southern citizen, will, I most firmly believe, approve the att.i.tude of the south, with his whole heart and soul.
APPENDIX
THE OLD AND NEW SOUTH, a Centennial article for the International Review, afterwards corrected and published separately. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. 1876.
The approach of the Centennial Celebration is not hailed in the south with the demonstrative joy of the north. It would be out of taste to expect that the former should appear to triumph greatly over the life of the nation preserved at the cost of her recent overthrow. Her late antagonist can rejoice in a vast and happy population, great material prosperity, and the fresh fame of a world-renowned success. It is meet, while remembering she has so lately saved the union by her stupendous armipotence, that the north should exult as a people never did before. The south has been made to feel the pangs of a sudden impoverishment and the incalculable discomfort of complete economical unsettlement; and she has not learned the new lessons which she must learn to become self-sustaining and progressive. But her earnest spirits, doing painfully the slow task of repairing lost fortunes; seeking after the system proper to succeed planting; striving to make their homes pleasant again and to give their children a fair hope in the land,--these intent workers, who are most of them scarred confederate veterans, even if they will not say it loudly, have come around to hold in steadfast faith that it is far better the Blue Cross fell, and the American union stands forever unchallengeable hereafter. And they have brought with them the great ma.s.s of their people.
They cannot joy so happily as the north, but they have a warm welcome for the Great Commemoration. For they see that the evils which followed as the scourge of defeat are soon to pa.s.s away, while the fall of slavery and the failure of secession are to prove greater and greater blessings as years roll on.
And so the time has come for a southerner calmly to discuss the past, present, and future of the south. He has no use for the methods of popular and unscientific politics, wherein everything is blamed or applauded as being the result of party measures. The intentions and motives of the actors, on both sides of the late strife, will give but proximate explanations. How the two sections became, to use the fine phrase of Von Holst, economically contrasted; how the southern people and their representative politicians were bred, under their circ.u.mstances, into opposition to the union; and how the northern people and their representative politicians were bred, under widely different circ.u.mstances, into love of the union; how the long clashing in politics culminated in civil war; how the south was utterly crushed and her whole industrial system destroyed; how she slowly re-erects herself into a new condition better than the old,--the ultimate solution of these questions can only be found by discussing them in the light of those laws of development which give every community a policy suited to what it discerns to be its best interest. These laws are of far more importance than the politician, who is but their creature. Leaving to others to fight over the old struggles of the political arena and bandy hard words with one another, we will try to discuss our subject in the manner we have indicated to be appropriate.
To understand the present and future, we must first understand the past.
To understand the New south, we must first understand the Old south, the distinguishing feature of which was negro slavery. Mr. Stephens, then Vice-President of the southern confederacy, in an address to a large a.s.sembly in Savannah, in March, 1861, said of the new government: "Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery--subordination to the superior race--is his natural and normal condition." There is no doubt slavery was the corner-stone of southern society; and when it was removed, four years later, a thorough disintegration of the whole fabric was the logical result.
When our country was first settled, the southern regions were far more attractive in soil and climate; and their other natural resources--minerals, good harbors, navigable streams, water-power idling everywhere, to mention no more--were equal to those of the other section.
The subsequent advancement of the north has been so rapid as to excite the wonder of the world; while it is said by us of the south, jesting upon our worn-out and exhausted land, that we have done worse for the country than the Indians before us, who stayed here many centuries and yet left the soil as good as they found it.
The plantation system was the great barrier to southern progress. From its first historical appearance, among the Carthaginians, from whom the Romans seem to have derived it, this rude and wholesale method of farming has rested on slaveholding. Its workings have been similar everywhere. In Italy, under the Roman republic, absorbing the petty holdings, it drove out the small farmer; it destroyed the former respect for trades and handicrafts, and brought them into disfavor; it prevented the development of the industrial arts; it created a non-reciprocal commerce. Centuries later, it did the same things in our southern States.
A sketch of the leading features and results of the plantation system, as it existed in America, is our proper beginning.
The driver, as the negro foreman was called, was not very common in the south, and was generally under the superintendence of the overseer. Could the planters have made a good overseer of the driver, of course they would have consulted their interest, and reproduced the ancient slave-steward of Rome. Slaveholders keep their slaves under careful surveillance, but they do not usually overlook them in person. It is not often that a master engages in an employment which brings him into daily and intimate contact with the lowest orders, and which he instinctively feels to be degrading.
The planter could have neither his first choice, which would have been a slave overseer, nor his second choice, a superintendent from his own rank in society; and so, as the next best thing, he took as overseer a white hireling from the non-slaveholding cla.s.s. The tillage of the fields was thus intrusted to the overseers, who were, for the most part, men of little education and business skill, and who had no interest in their employment except to draw its wages. Thus the foremost, if not the only, southern industry was managed by incompetent and careless agents.
The Roman master, in the later days of the republic, having always vast markets open to him, shunned the expense of providing for women and children, and bought new slaves instead of breeding them; but the closing of the African slave-trade, and the softer hearts and manners of modern times, led our planters, at last, to rely on propagation as their only source of supply. The negroes were, therefore, well cared for, and, in a genial clime, increased rapidly. This increase, however, did not keep pace with the increasing demand for southern products, and so the market value of the slave rose rapidly. To the Roman slaveholder, land was almost everything, and his rustic slaves nothing; to the southerner, the slaves were almost everything, and the land nothing. There was no careful cultivation of the soil, no judicious rotation of crops, and no adequate system of fertilization. Southern husbandry was, for the most part, a reckless pillage of the bounty of nature. The planter became possessed with a roving spirit, and was continually seeking "fresh land," as virgin soil was termed. In the older sections, where there was most stability, the best farming consisted in judiciously eking out the natural fertility of the fields, and when that was exhausted, in leaving them to recuperate by years of rest. Thus a given working force required, year by year, a greater and greater allowance of land, and the plantations became steadily larger, the small farmer retiring, and the white population becoming continually less. Many of these older sections turned, from being agricultural communities, into nurseries, rearing slaves for the younger States where virgin soil was abundant. The fertile lands of the new settlements, by yielding bountiful crops, gave fresh impulse to the plantation system, and here the small holdings were absorbed more rapidly than they had been in the older States. The southern slaves, regarded as property, were the most desirable investment open to the generality of people that has ever been known. They were patient, tractable, and submissive, and never revolted in combined insurrections, as did the slaves of antiquity. Their labor was richly remunerative; their market value was constantly rising; they were everywhere more easily convertible into money than the best securities; and their natural increase was so rapid that a part of it could be squandered by a shiftless owner every year to make both ends meet, and he still be left enough of acc.u.mulation to enrich him steadily. And so the plantation, or rather the slave, system swallowed up everything else.
There were no distinct industrial cla.s.ses. There were negro blacksmiths, negro carpenters, negro shoemakers, etc., all over the land, but they were mere appendages to the plantations, and far inferior in capacity and skill to the artisan slaves of antiquity.
The commerce of the south was non-reciprocal. She traded raw produce for manufactures which she should have made herself, or which she should have got in exchange for manufactures of her own. The over-mastering energy of slave property, dissolving, as it were, all things into itself, kept her from that development of trades, manufactories, and industrial arts which is the solid and unprecedented progress, and far more durable wealth, of the north.
There were a few exceptions in the way of restorative agriculture, and of diversified investments of capital in railways, manufactories, inland navigation, and mercantile enterprises. All along the northern border there were efforts to let go slavery, and non-slave industry was slowly emerging in a few places; but these things were as dust in the balances.
The slave system was rooted in the best portions of the land, and nearly all of the productive wealth of the south was in, or dependent upon, planting. Implacable enemies of slavery were rapidly increasing in numbers and power, but she continued blindly sacrificing everything to rear negroes. When actual emanc.i.p.ation came--that nipping May frost--the south showed, on a gigantic scale, in her poverty and one solitary and portentously dried-up source of wealth, a parallel to Ireland, smitten with famine by the sudden failure of her only supply of food. When the charity of the world and the returning bounty of nature had again fed the Green Isle, everything fell back into the old track, and she could go on smoothly as before. But not so with the south: her wealth has fled; her occupation, the plantation system, is gone; and she must, for a generation, grope painfully in the dark, trying novel ways of subsisting, enduring want and many failures, before finding again the light of plenty and comfort.
The duties of the planter have changed. The management of a farm is not like that of a plantation, and one skilled in the management of slaves is not necessarily efficient in the directing of freedmen. Many other countries have been impoverished by wars; but is not this instantaneous and almost complete taking away of a great people"s mode of living unique in history? The most resolute secessionist would have lost heart and put up his sword, could he have seen, before the war commenced, how easily the solitary prop of southern wealth and comfort could be overturned, to be set up no more. But in none of the ablest of the anti-secession arguments of 1860 were the consequences of defeat predicted.
Some portions of our country have been built up into a high degree of prosperity by a steady influx of foreign settlers. How much has been added to the power and wealth of the northern States by the immigration from the old lands of those who, when first they come, can do no more than subsist themselves by their own industry, almost defies computation. How the force of the preponderant population of the north pressed upon the south during the war, and at last crushed her down! Slavery repelled the free immigrant from the south, and he went elsewhere with his power to enrich and defend.
The uniform and rapid advancement of civilization is mainly due to the struggle of the poor to better their condition. These efforts result in complex division of labor, acc.u.mulation of wealth, and better than these, in the production of a great population engaged in diversified industries.
In such a population, improving year by year in business habits, consists the strength of a nation. The slave had no hope of rising, and the system of which he was a part repelled free workingmen, and thus the south lost the benign emulation and energy of a lower cla.s.s. The ancient slaves were not alone rural laborers and domestic servants, as were those of the south. The former, being of kindred blood with their masters and near their level in natural capacity, were initiated in the various industries, some of which flourished greatly under their management. Though the slaves of old were very degraded, they were not as low and grovelling as those of our day. Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt was common; and, in a few generations afterwards, the descendants of the freedman were indistinguishable amid the body of free citizens. The ancient states were not, therefore, prevented by slavery from having advanced and diversified industries, nor were they denied the impulse of a possible rising from the lower to the higher cla.s.ses. But the American slave was of the remotest race, far below his master in development, and the horror of receiving him into the body of free citizens grew continually stronger. The law discouraged manumission, and frowned upon the increase of freedmen. Thus, the African slavery of the south was the most hopeless form of servitude the civilized world has ever seen; and, by preventing the formation of a great cla.s.s of freemen, engaged in respectable industry, it killed the very roots of social progress. These influences of slavery, so repugnant to American ideas, will be more vividly seen and understood in the answer to the question, What would have been the present condition of the south had it not been for slavery? Undoubtedly her land would have smiled with a fertility richer than the endowment of nature; her industrial arts would, ere this time, have branched out into multifarious activity; her own ships would have been carrying her produce and manufactures abroad; and, as the crown of all, she would have had a teeming population of workers, whose education in the methods of self-support would have been the a.s.surance of unlimited future advancement. In brief, in all the elements of the greatness of a community, the south might now have equalled, if not excelled, the north.
But there are some other effects of slavery to be noted before the outline of the Old south can be clearly and fully drawn.
Among the planters, costly and liberal instruction was given to a few of those who were to adorn places of leisured ease, or to fill the necessary professions and public positions; but, in the midst of the spa.r.s.e and shifting rural population, there could not be that devotion to the education of all, which is one of the most conspicuous glories of the northern States.
In consequence of the spa.r.s.eness of the planters and their roving habits, there was not that subdivision of different portions of the counties into small self-governing wards, which Jefferson so fondly desired. He said of the New England townships, that they had "proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation." He also said that he considered the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on two hooks, to wit, "the public education, and the subdivision into wards." This government of every vicinage in its home affairs by itself, as originated in New England, and is now spread far and wide throughout the northern States, is the most beneficent achievement of American democracy. By this coercion of the citizen to partic.i.p.ate in the constant administration of public matters directly concerning his interests, self-government becomes, as it should be, the business of everybody, and everybody is compulsorily educated in the best of all learning for the race.
The finale of slavery remains to be told. As opposition to it increased from without, the south became more and more closely united. She honestly believed that wanton intermeddlers were attacking her dearest rights. The steady and continually strengthening warfare against slavery, and her continuous and earnest defence of it, began--it is impossible to determine precisely when--to knit her into a nationality of her own. He who understands what Mr. Bagehot calls "nation-making" will discover, in the past history of the south, if he looks attentively, many signs of this tendency, which steadily progressed unperceived on her part, and still more so on the part of the north, until the south began to coalesce into a nation as compact as her scattered and random elements would permit. The long advocacy and support of slavery in the political arena had fevered her whole people, and finally, under these promptings to a national life, politics absorbed nearly all of her intellectual powers.
There is a striking parallel between this sustained effort of the south and the struggle of Ireland, when the latter, for the fifty years ending with the advent of the present century, was arrayed against the British, in their encroachments upon her independent government. During this half-century, Ireland maintained that she was an independent integral part of the British Empire, just as Virginia contended that she was a sovereign in the federation of States. Ireland, like a southern State, challenged every seeming interference, by the general government, in her local affairs; and the claims put forth, in each instance, were inexorably contested by an adverse government, claiming supremacy and supported by superiority of power. Both were on the eve of revolutionary secession without knowing it. The results in Ireland and the south were similar: there was but one intellectual activity, namely, politics. The memory of all Irishmen of that time not forgotten--and many of their names are familiar words--is nothing but resistance to English aggression. Even Curran, Ireland"s great forensic advocate, made his world-wide fame in defending Irishmen against the prosecutions of the British ministry. It was much the same at the south in the period antecedent to the civil war.
She had neither literature nor science; but she had statesmen and advocates, who will be remembered as long as her soldiers and generals.
The national germ had long been growing below the surface, in darkness, and at last it burst into view, and shot up into a body of amazing proportions. There was not the birth of a new nation at Montgomery in 1861; only the majority of this vigorous young member of the family of nations was there proclaimed. But, for all of the eloquence of its orators and the virtue and bravery of its people, it was, as compared with its adversary, in raw and untutored nonage, and the great disaster that befell four years afterwards was then preordained. It was her unshunnable fate that she should be denationalized on the battle-field.
The late war was a conflict between implacable enemies. Each belligerent, standing up for national life, was resistlessly coerced to fight to the last. Neither can be blamed. The past may be taxed with lack of wisdom. It may be that as Scotland and, more lately, Ireland have been peacefully denationalized, a preventive, antic.i.p.ating the dreadful event of war, might years before have been devised by statesmanly forecast. The actual combatants--the southerner fighting for the confederacy, and the northern soldier bearing up the flag of the union--were equals in manhood and virtue. The survivors, federal and confederate, at last see this, and therefore they go in company to decorate alike the graves of the dead of both armies.