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diff --git a/39720.txt b/39720.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..10d08b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/39720.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5912 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences, +by Hilary Abner Herbert + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences + Four Periods of American History + + +Author: Hilary Abner Herbert + + + +Release Date: May 17, 2012 [eBook #39720] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABOLITION CRUSADE AND ITS +CONSEQUENCES*** + + +E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Julia Neufeld, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://archive.org/details/abolitioncrusade00herbrich + + +Transcriber's note: + + Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). + + Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. + + + + + +THE ABOLITION CRUSADE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES + +Four Periods of American History + +by + +HILARY A. HERBERT, LL.D. + + + + + + + +New York +Charles Scribner's Sons +1912 + +Copyright, 1912, by +Charles Scribner's Sons + +Published April, 1912 + + + + + TO MY GRANDCHILDREN + + THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED + IN THE HOPE THAT ITS PERUSAL + WILL FOSTER IN THEM, AS CITIZENS OF THIS GREAT + REPUBLIC, A DUE REGARD FOR THE CONSTITUTION + OF THEIR COUNTRY + AS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE BY JAMES FORD RHODES + + +"Livy extolled Pompey in such a panegyric that Augustus called him +Pompeian, and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship." That we +find in Tacitus. We may therefore picture to ourselves Augustus reading +Livy's "History of the Civil Wars" (in which the historian's republican +sympathies were freely expressed), and learning therefrom that there +were two sides to the strife which rent Rome. As we are more than +forty-six years distant from our own Civil War, is it not incumbent on +Northerners to endeavor to see the Southern side? We may be certain that +the historian a hundred years hence, when he contemplates the lining-up +of five and one-half million people against twenty-two millions, their +equal in religion, morals, regard for law, and devotion to the common +Constitution, will, as matter of course, aver that the question over +which they fought for four years had two sides; that all the right was +not on one side and all the wrong on the other. The North should +welcome, therefore, accounts of the conflict written by candid Southern +men. + +Mr. Herbert, reared and educated in the South, believing in the moral +and economical right of slavery, served as a Confederate soldier during +the war, but after Appomattox, when thirty-one years old, he told his +father he had arrived at the conviction that slavery was wrong. Twelve +years later, when home-rule was completely restored to the South (1877), +he went into public life as a Member of Congress, sitting in the House +for sixteen years. At the end of his last term, in 1893, he was +appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Cleveland, whom he +faithfully served during his second administration. + +Such an experience is an excellent training for the treatment of any +aspect of the Civil War. Mr. Herbert's devotion to the Constitution, the +Union, and the flag now equals that of any soldier of the North who +fought against him. We should expect therefore that his work would be +pervaded by practical knowledge and candor. + +After a careful reading of the manuscript I have no hesitation in saying +that the expectation is realized. Naturally unable to agree entirely +with his presentation of the subject, I believe that his work exhibits a +side that entitles it to a large hearing. I hope that it will be placed +before the younger generation, who, unaffected by any memory of the heat +of the conflict, may truly say: + + Tros Tyriusve, mihi nullo discrimine agetur. + + JAMES FORD RHODES. + +BOSTON, _November_, 1911. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In 1890 Mr. L. E. Chittenden, who had been United States Treasurer under +President Lincoln, published an interesting account of $10,000,000 +United States bonds secretly sent to England, as he said, in 1862, and +he told all about what thereupon took place across the water. It was a +reminiscence. General Charles Francis Adams in his recent instructive +volume, "Studies Military and Diplomatic," takes up this narrative and, +in a chapter entitled "An Historical Residuum," conclusively shows from +contemporaneous evidence that the bonds were sent, not in 1862, but in +1863, but that, as for the rest of the story, the residuum of truth in +it was about like the speck of moisture that is left when a soap bubble +is pricked by a needle. + +General Adams did not mean that Mr. Chittenden knew he was drawing on +his imagination. He was only demonstrating that one who intends to +write history cannot rely on his memory. + +The author, in the following pages, is undertaking to write a connected +story of events that happened, most of them, in his lifetime, and as to +many of the most important of which he has vivid recollections; but, +save in one respect, he has not relied upon his own memory for any +important fact. The picture he has drawn of the relations between the +slave-holder and non-slave-holder in the South is, much of it, given as +he recollects it. His opportunities for observation were somewhat +extensive, and here he is willing to be considered in part as a witness. +Elsewhere he has relied almost entirely upon contemporaneous written +evidence, memory, however, often indicating to him sources of +information. + +Nowhere are there so many valuable lessons for the student of American +history as in the story of the great sectional movement of 1831, and of +its results, which have profoundly affected American conditions through +generation after generation. + +An effort is here made to tell that story succinctly, tracing it, step +after step, from cause to effect. The subject divides itself naturally +into four historic periods: + +1. The anti-slavery crusade, 1831 to 1860. + +2. Secession and four years of war, 1861 to 1865. + +3. Reconstruction under the Lincoln-Johnson plan, with the overthrow by +Congress of that plan and the rule of the negro and carpet-bagger, from +1865 to 1876. + +4. Restoration of self-government in the South, and the results that +have followed. + +The greater part of the book is devoted to the first period--1831 to +1860, the period of causation. The sequences running through the three +remaining periods are more briefly sketched. + +Italics, throughout the book, it may be mentioned here, are the +author's. + +Now that the country is happily reunited in a Union which all agree is +indissoluble, the South wants the true history of the times here treated +of spread before its children; so does the North. The mistakes that were +committed on both sides during that lamentable and prolonged sectional +quarrel (and they were many) should be known of all, in order that like +mistakes may not be committed in the future. The writer has, with +diffidence, attempted to lay the facts before his readers, and so to +condense the story that it may be within the reach of the ordinary +student. How far he has succeeded will be for his readers to say. The +verdict he ventures to hope for is that he has made an honest effort to +be fair. + +The author takes this occasion to thank that accomplished young teacher +of history, Mr. Paul Micou, for valuable suggestions, and his friend, +Mr. Thomas H. Clark, who with his varied attainments has aided him in +many ways. + + HILARY A. HERBERT. + +WASHINGTON, D. C., _March_, 1912. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + INTRODUCTION 3 + + I. SECESSION AND ITS DOCTRINE 15 + + II. EMANCIPATION PRIOR TO 1831 37 + + III. THE NEW ABOLITIONISTS 56 + + IV. FEELING IN THE SOUTH--1835 77 + + V. ANTI-ABOLITION AT THE NORTH 84 + + VI. A CRISIS AND A COMPROMISE 93 + + VII. EFFORTS FOR PEACE 128 + + VIII. INCOMPATIBILITY OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM 147 + + IX. FOUR YEARS OF WAR 180 + + X. RECONSTRUCTION, LINCOLN-JOHNSON PLAN AND CONGRESSIONAL 208 + + XI. THE SOUTH UNDER SELF-GOVERNMENT 229 + + INDEX 245 + + + + + +THE ABOLITION CRUSADE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +The Constitution of the United States attempts to define and limit the +power of our Federal Government. + +Lord Brougham somewhere said that such an instrument was not worth the +parchment it was written on; people would pay no regard to self-imposed +limitations on their own will. + +When our fathers by that written Constitution established a government +that was partly national and partly federal, and that had no precedent, +they knew it was an experiment. To-day that government has been in +existence one hundred and twenty-three years, and we proudly claim that +the experiment of 1789 has been the success of the ages. + +Happy should we be if we could boast that, during all this period, the +Constitution had never been violated in any respect! + +The first palpable infringement of its provisions occurred in the +enactment of the alien and sedition laws of 1798. The people at the +polls indignantly condemned these enactments, and for years thereafter +the government proceeded peacefully; the people were prosperous, and the +Union and the Constitution grew in favor. + +Later, there grew up a rancorous sectional controversy about slavery +that lasted many years; that quarrel was followed by a bloody sectional +war; after that war came the reconstruction of the Southern States. +During each of these three trying eras it did sometimes seem as if that +old piece of "parchment," derided by Lord Brougham, had been utterly +forgotten. Nevertheless, and despite all these trying experiences, we +have in the meantime advanced to the very front rank of nations, and our +people have long since turned, not only to the Union, but, we are happy +to think, to the Constitution as well, with more devotion than ever. + +It may be further said that, notwithstanding all the bitter animosities +that for long divided our country into two hostile sections, that +wonderful old Constitution, handed down to us by our fathers, was +always, and in all seasons, in the hearts of our people, and that never +for a moment was it out of mind. Even in our sectional war Confederates +and Federals were both fighting for it--one side to maintain it over +themselves as an independent nation; the other to maintain it over the +whole of the old Union. In the very madness of reconstruction the +fundamental idea of the Constitution, the equality of the States, +ultimately prevailed--this idea it was that imperatively demanded the +final restoration of the seceded States, with the right of +self-government unimpaired. + +The future is now bright before us. The complex civilization of the +present is, we do not forget, continually presenting new and complex +problems of government, and we are mindful, too, that, for the people +who must deal with these problems, a higher culture is required, but to +all this our national and State governments seem to be fully alive. We +are everywhere erecting memorials to our patriotic dead, we have our +"flag day" and many ceremonies to stimulate patriotism, and, throughout +our whole country, young Americans are being taught more and more of +American history and American traditions. + +The essence of these teachings presumably is that time has hallowed our +Constitution, and that experience has fully shown the wisdom of its +provisions. In this land of ours, where there are so much property and +so many voters who want it, and where the honor and emoluments of high +place are so tempting to the demagogue, there can be no such security +for either life, liberty, or property as those safeguards which our +fathers devised in the Constitution of the United States. + +Our teachers of history must therefore expose fearlessly every violation +in the past of our Constitution, and point out the penalties that +followed; and, above all, they cannot afford to condone, or to pass by +in silence, the conduct of those who have heretofore advocated, or acted +on, any law which to them was _higher than the American Constitution_. + +One of the most serious troubles in the past, many think our greatest, +was our terrible war among ourselves. Perhaps, after the lapse of nearly +fifty years, we can all now agree that if our people and our States had +always, between 1830 and 1860, faithfully observed the Federal +Constitution we should have not had that war. However that may be, the +crusade of the Abolitionists, which began in 1831, was the beginning of +an agitation in the North against the existence of slavery in the South, +which continued, in one form or another, until the outbreak of that war. + +The negro is now located, geographically, much as he was then. If +another attempt shall be made to project his personal status into +national politics, the voters of the country ought to know and consider +the mistakes that occurred, North and South, during the unhappy era of +that sectional warfare. This little book is a study of that period of +our history. It concludes with a glance at the war between the North and +South, and the reconstruction that followed. + +The story of Cromwell and the Great Revolution it was impossible for any +Englishman to tell correctly for nearly or quite two centuries. The +changes that had been wrought were too profound, too far-reaching; and +English writers were too human. The changes--economic, political, and +social--wrought in our country by the great controversy over slavery and +State-rights, and by the war that ended it, have been quite as profound, +and the revolution in men's ideas and ways of looking at their past +history has been quite as complete as those which followed the downfall +of the government founded by Cromwell. But we are now in the twentieth +century; history is becoming a science, and we ought to succeed better +in writing our past than the Englishmen did. + +The culture of this day is very exacting in its demands, and if one is +writing about our own past the need of fairness is all the more +imperative. And why not? The masses of the people, who clashed on the +battlefields of a war in which one side fought for the supremacy of the +Union and the other for the sovereignty of the States, had honest +convictions; they differed in their convictions; they had made honest +mistakes about each other; now they would like their histories to tell +just where those mistakes were; they do not wish these mistakes to be +repeated hereafter. Nor is there any reason why the whole history of +that great controversy should not now be written with absolute fairness; +the two sections of our country have come together in a most wonderful +way. There has been reunion after reunion of the blue and the gray. The +survivors of a New Jersey regiment, forty-four years after the bloody +battle of Salem Church, put up on its site a monument to their dead, on +one side of which was a tablet to the memory of the "brave Alabama +boys," who were their opponents in that fight. One of those "Alabama +boys" wrote the story of that battle for the archives of his own State, +and the State of New Jersey has published it in her archives, as a fair +account of the battle. + +The author has attempted to approach his subject in a spirit like this, +and while he hopes to be absolutely fair, he is perfectly aware that he +sees things from a Southern view-point. For this, however, no apology is +needed. Truth is many-sided and must be seen from every direction. + +Nearly all the school-books dealing with the period here treated of, and +now considered as authority, have been written from a Northern +stand-point; and many of the extended histories that are most widely +read seem to the writer to be more or less partisan, although the +authors were apparently quite unconscious of it. Attempts made here to +point out some of the errors in these books are, as is conceived, in the +interests of history. + +Of course it is important that readers should know the stand-point of an +author who writes at this day of events as recent as those here treated +of. Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, professor of history in Harvard +University, in the preface to his "Slavery and Abolition" (Harper +Brothers, 1906), says of himself: "It is hard for a son and grandson of +abolitionists to approach so explosive a question with impartiality." +Following this example, the writer must tell that he was born in the +South, of slave-holding parents, three years after the Abolition crusade +began in 1831. Growing up in the South under the stress of that crusade, +he maintained all through the war, in which he was a loyal Confederate +soldier, the belief in which he had been educated--that slavery was +right, morally and economically. + +One day, not long after Appomattox, he told his father he had reached +the conclusion that slavery was wrong. The reply was, to the writer's +surprise, that his mother in early life had been an avowed +emancipationist; that she (who had lived until the writer was sixteen +years old) had never felt at liberty to discuss slavery after the rise +of the new abolitionists and the Nat Turner insurrection; and then +followed the further information that when, in 1846, the family removed +from South Carolina to Alabama, Greenville, Ala., was chosen for a home +because it was thought that the danger from slave insurrections would be +less there than in one of the richer "black counties." + +What a creature of circumstances man is! The writer's belief about a +great moral question, his home, his school-mates, and the companions of +his youth, were all determined by a movement begun in Boston, +Massachusetts, before he was born in the far South! + +With a vivid personal recollection of the closing years of the great +anti-slavery crusade always in his mind, the writer has studied closely +many of the histories dealing with that movement, and he has found quite +a consensus of opinion among Northern writers--a view that has even been +sometimes accepted in the South--that it was not so much the fear of +insurrections, created by Abolition agitation, that shut off discussion +in the South about the rightfulness of slavery as it was the invention +of the cotton-gin, that made cotton growing and slavery profitable. The +cotton-gin was invented in 1792, and was in common use years before the +writer's mother was born. A native of, she grew to maturity entirely in, +the South, and in 1830 was an avowed emancipationist. The subject was +then being freely discussed. + +The author has ventured to relate in the pages that follow this +introduction two or three incidents that were more or less personal, in +the hope that their significance may be his sufficient excuse. + +And now, having spoken of himself as a Southerner, the author thinks it +but fair, when invoking for the following pages fair consideration, to +add that, since 1865, he has never ceased to rejoice that slavery is no +more, and that secession is now only an academic question; and, further, +that he has, since Appomattox, served the government of the United +States for twenty years as loyally as he ever served the Confederacy. He +therefore respectfully submits that his experiences ought to render him +quite as well qualified for an impartial consideration of the +anti-slavery crusade and its consequences as are those who have never, +either themselves or through the eyes of their ancestors, seen more than +one side of those questions. Certain he is, in his own mind, that this +Union has now no better friend than is he who submits this little study, +conscious of its many shortcomings, claiming for it nothing except that +it is the result of an honest effort to be fair in every statement of +facts and in the conclusions reached. + +Not much effort has been made in the direction of original research. +Facts deemed sufficient to illustrate salient points, which alone can be +treated of in a short story, have been found in published documents, +and other facts have been purposely taken, most of them, from Northern +writers; and the authorities have been duly cited. These facts have been +compressed into a small compass, so that the book may be available to +such students as have not time for a more extended examination. + +Of the results of the crusade of the Abolitionists, and the consequent +sectional war, George Ticknor Curtis, one of New England's distinguished +biographers, says in his "Life of Buchanan," vol. II, p. 283: + +"It is cause for exultation that slavery no longer exists in the broad +domain of this republic--that our theory of government and practice are +now in complete accord. But it is no cause for national pride that we +did not accomplish this result without the cost of a million of precious +lives and untold millions of money." + + + + +CHAPTER I + +SECESSION AND ITS DOCTRINE + + +John Fiske has said in his school history: "Under the government of +England before the Revolution the thirteen commonwealths were +independent of one another, and were held together juxtaposed, rather +than united, only through their allegiance to the British Crown. Had +that allegiance been maintained there is no telling how long they might +have gone on thus disunited." + +They won their independence under a very imperfect union, a government +improvised for the occasion. The "Articles of Confederation," the first +formal constitution of the United States of America, were not ratified +by Maryland, the last to ratify, until in 1781, shortly before Yorktown. +In 1787 the thirteen States, each claiming to be still sovereign, came +together in convention at Philadelphia and formed the present +Constitution, looking to "a more perfect union." The Constitution that +created this new government has been rightly said to be "the most +wonderful work ever struck off, at a given time, by the brain and +purpose of man."[1] And so it was, but it left unsettled the great +question whether a State, if it believed that its rights were denied to +it by the general government, could peaceably withdraw from the Union. + + [1] Gladstone, "Kin Beyond the Sea." + +The Federal Government was given by the Constitution only limited +powers, powers that it could not transcend. Nowhere on the face of that +Constitution was any right expressly conferred on the general government +to decide exclusively and finally upon the extent of the powers granted +to it. If any such right had been clearly given, it is certain that many +of the States would not have entered into the Union. As it was, the +Constitution was only adopted by eleven of the States after months of +discussion. Then the new government was inaugurated, with two of the +States, Rhode Island and North Carolina, still out of the Union. They +remained outside, one of them for eighteen months and the other for a +year. + +The States were reluctant to adopt the Constitution, because they were +jealous of, and did not mean to give up, the right of self-government. + +The framers of the Constitution knew that the question of the right of a +State to secede was thus left unsettled. They knew, too, that this might +give trouble in the future. Their hope was that, as the advantages of +the Union became, in process of time, more and more apparent, the Union +would grow in favor and come to be regarded in the minds and hearts of +the people as indissoluble. + +From the beginning of the government there were many, including +statesmen of great influence, who continued to be jealous of the right +of self-government, and insisted that no powers should be exercised by +the Federal Government except such as were very clearly granted in the +Constitution. These soon became a party and called themselves +Republicans. Some thirty years later they called themselves Democrats. +Those, on the other hand, who believed in construing the grants of +power in the Constitution liberally or broadly, called themselves +Federalists. + +Washington was a Federalist, but such was his influence that the dispute +between the Republicans and the Federalists about the meaning of the +Constitution did not, during his administration, assume a serious +aspect; but when a new president, John Adams, also a Federalist, came in +with a congress in harmony with him, the Republicans made bitter war +upon them. France, then at war with England, was even waging what has +been denominated a "quasi war" upon us, to compel the United States, +under the old treaty of the Revolution, to take her part against +England; and England was also threatening us. Plots to force the +government into the war as an ally of France were in the air. + +Adams and his followers believed in a strong and spirited government. To +strike a fatal blow at the plotters against the public peace, and to +crush the Republicans at the same time, Congress now passed the famous +alien and sedition laws. + +One of the alien laws, June 25, 1798, gave the President, for two years +from its passage, power to order out of the country, _at his own will, +and without "trial by jury" or other "process of law," any alien he +deemed dangerous_ to the peace and safety of the United States. + +The sedition law, July 14, 1798, made criminal any unlawful conspiracy +to oppose any measure of the government of the United States "which was +directed by proper authority," as well as also any "false and scandalous +accusations against the Government, the President, or the Congress." + +The opportunity of the Republicans had come. They determined to call +upon the country to condemn the alien and sedition laws, and at the +presidential election in 1800 the Federalists received their death-blow. +The party as an organization survived that election only a few years, +and in localities the very name, Federalist, later became a reproach. + +The Republicans began their campaign against the alien and sedition laws +by a series of resolutions, which, drawn by Jefferson, were passed by +the Kentucky legislature in November, 1798. Other quite similar +resolutions, drawn by Madison, passed the Virginia assembly the next +year; and these together became the celebrated Kentucky and Virginia +resolutions of 1798-9.[2] The alien and sedition laws were denounced in +these resolutions for the exercise of powers not delegated to the +general government. Adverting to the sedition law, it was declared that +no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of +the press had been given. On the contrary, it had been expressly +provided by the Constitution that "Congress shall make no law respecting +an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, +_or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press_." + + [2] Warfield, in his "Kentucky Resolutions of 1798," relates that John + Breckenridge introduced the Kentucky and John Taylor, of Caroline, moved + the Virginia resolutions. In 1814 Taylor made it known that Madison was + the author of the Virginia resolves, but not till 1821 did Jefferson + admit his authorship of the Kentucky resolutions. Jefferson was + Vice-President when they were drawn, and it would have been thought + unseemly for him to appear openly in a canvass against the President, + but by correspondence with his friends he "gradually drew out a program + of action" (Warfield, p. 17). The Kentucky Resolutions were sent by the + Governor to the Legislatures of the other States, ten of which, being + controlled by the Federalists, are known to have declared against them + (Warfield, p. 115). But of course the resolutions were canvassed by the + public before the presidential election of 1800. + +The first of the Kentucky resolutions was as follows: + + "_Resolved_, That the several States composing the United States of + America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to + their general government, _but that by compact_, under the style + and title of a constitution for the United States, and of + amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for + specific purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite + powers, _reserving, each State to itself_, the residuary mass of + right to their own self-government; and _that whensoever the + general government assumes undelegated powers its acts are + unauthoritative, void, and of no effect_: That to this _compact + each State acceded as a State_, and is an integral party, its + co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: That the + government created by _this compact, was not made the exclusive or + final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself_, since + that would have made its direction, and not the Constitution, the + measure of its powers; but that, _as in all other cases of compact + among parties having no common judge, each party has a right to + judge for itself as well of infractions as of the mode and measure + of redress._" + +Undoubtedly it is from the famous resolutions of 1798-9 that the +secessionists of a later date drew their arguments. The authors of these +celebrated resolutions were, both of them, devoted friends of the Union +they had helped to construct. Why should they announce a theory of the +Constitution that was so full of dangerous possibilities? + +The answer is, they were announcing the theory upon which the States, or +at least many of the States, had ten years before ratified the +Constitution. A crisis in the life of the new government had now come. +Congress had usurped powers not given; it had exercised powers that had +been prohibited, and the government was enforcing the obnoxious statutes +with a high hand. Dissatisfaction was intense. + +Jefferson and Madison were undoubtedly Republican partisans, Jefferson +especially; but it is equally certain that they were both friends of the +Union, and as such they concluded, with the lights before them, that the +wise course would be to submit to the people, in ample time for full +consideration, before the then coming presidential election, a full, +clear, and comprehensive exposition of the Constitution precisely as +they, and as the people, then understood it. This they did in the +resolutions of 1798 and 1799, and the very same voters who had created +the Constitution of 1789, now, with their sons to aid them, endorsed +these resolutions in the election of 1800, which had been laid before +them by the legislatures of two Republican States as a correct +construction of that instrument. + +The Republicans under Jefferson came into power with an immense +majority. The people were satisfied with the Constitution as it had been +construed in the election of 1800, and the country under control of the +Republicans was happy and prosperous for three decades. Then the party +in power began to split into National Republicans and Democratic +Republicans. The National Republicans favored a liberal construction of +the Constitution and became Whigs; the Democratic Republicans dropped +the name Republican and became Democrats. + +The foregoing sketch has been given with no intent to write a political +history, but only to show with what emphasis the American people +condemned all violations of the Constitution up to the time when, in +1831, our story of the Abolitionists is to begin. The sketch has also +served to explain the theory of State-rights, as it was held in early +days, and later, by the Southern people. + +Whether the union of the States under the Constitution as expounded by +the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions would survive every trial that was +to come, remained to be seen. The question was destined to perplex Mr. +Jefferson himself, more than once. + +Indeed, even while Washington was President there had been disunion +sentiment in Congress. In 1794 the celebrated Virginian, John Taylor, of +Caroline, shortly after he had expressed an intention of publicly +resigning from the United States Senate, was approached in the privacy +of a committee room by Rufus King, senator from New York, and Oliver +Ellsworth, a senator from Massachusetts, both Federalists, with a +proposition for a dissolution of the Union by mutual consent, the line +of division to be somewhere from the Potomac to the Hudson. This was on +the ground "that it was utterly impossible for the Union to continue. +That the Southern and the Eastern people thought quite differently," +etc. Taylor contended for the Union, and nothing came of the +conference, the story of which remained a secret for over a hundred +years.[3] + + [3] Taylor was so deeply impressed by the conference, which was + protracted, that two days later, May 11, 1794, he made an extended note + of it which he sent to Mr. Madison. At the foot of his note Taylor says, + among other things: "He (T.) is thoroughly convinced that the design to + break up the Union is contemplated. The assurance, the manner, the + earnestness, and the countenances with which the idea was uttered, all + disclosed the most serious intention. It is also probable that K. (King) + and E. (Ellsworth) having heard that T. (Taylor) was against the + (adoption of) the Constitution have hence imbibed a mistaken opinion + that he was secretly an enemy of the Union, and conceived that he was a + fit instrument (as he was about retiring) to infuse notions into the + anti-federal temper of Virginia, consonant to their views."--"Disunion + Sentiment in the Congress in 1794" (with fac-simile of Taylor + memorandum), by Gaillard Hunt, Editor of Writings of James Madison. + Lowdermilk Co., Washington, D. C., 1905. + +"In the winter of 1803-4, immediately after, and as a consequence of, +the acquisition of Louisiana, certain leaders of the Federal party +conceived the project of the dissolution of the Union and the +establishment of a Northern Confederacy, the justifying causes to those +who entertained it, that the acquisition of Louisiana to the Union +transcended the constitutional powers of the government of the United +States; that it created, in fact, a new confederacy to which the States, +united by the former compact, were not bound to adhere; that it was +oppressive of the interests and destructive of the influence of the +northern section of the Confederacy, whose right and duty it was +therefore to secede from the new body politic, and to constitute one of +their own."[4] + + [4] C. F. Robertson, "The Louisiana Purchase," etc. "Papers of the + American Association," vol. I, pp. 262, 263. + +This project did not assume serious proportions. + +John Fiske in his school history says: "John Quincy Adams, a supporter +of the embargo act of 1807, privately informed President Jefferson (in +February, 1809) that further attempts to enforce it in the New England +States would be likely to drive them to secession. Accordingly, the +embargo was repealed, and the non-intercourse act substituted for it." + +The spirit of nationality was yet in its infancy, threats of secession +were common, and they came then mostly from New England. These threats +were in no wise connected with slavery; agitators had not then made +slavery a national issue; the idea of separation was prompted by the +fear that power in the councils of the Union would pass into the hands +of other sections. + +Massachusetts was heard from again in 1811, when the State of Louisiana, +the first to be carved from the Louisiana purchase, asked to come into +the Union. In discussing the bill for her admission, Josiah Quincy said: +"Why, sir, I have already heard of six States, and some say there will +be at no great distance of time more. I have also heard that the mouth +of the Ohio will be far to the east of the contemplated empire.... It +is impossible that such a power could be granted. It was not for these +men that our fathers fought. It was not for them this Constitution +was adopted. You have no authority to throw the rights and liberties +and property of this people into hotchpot with the wild men on +the Missouri, or with the mixed, though more respectable, race of +Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask in the sands in the mouth of the +Mississippi.... _I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion +that, if this bill passes, the bonds of the Union are virtually +dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral +obligations; and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be +the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation--amicably, if +they can; violently, if they must._" + +June 15, 1813, the Massachusetts legislature endorsed the position taken +in this speech.[5] + + [5] "American State Documents and Federal Relations," p. 21. + +Later, in 1814, a convention of representative New England statesmen met +at Hartford, to consider of secession unless the non-intercourse act, +which also bore hard on New England, should be repealed; but the war +then pending was soon to close, and the danger from that quarter was +over. + +But secession was not exclusively a New England doctrine. "When the +Constitution was adopted by the votes of States in popular conventions, +it is safe to say there was not a man in the country, from Washington +and Hamilton, on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason, on +the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment, +entered into by the States, and from which each and every State had the +right to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised."[6] + + [6] Henry Cabot Lodge's "Webster," p. 176. + +As late as 1844 the threat of secession was to come again from +Massachusetts. The great State of Texas was applying for admission to +the Union. But Texas was a slave State; Abolitionists had now for +thirteen years been arousing in the old Bay State a spirit of hostility +against the existence of slavery in her sister States of the South, and +in 1844 the Massachusetts legislature resolved that "the Commonwealth of +Massachusetts, faithful to the _compact_ between the people of the +United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was +understood by them, is sincerely anxious for its preservation; but that +it is determined, as it _doubts not other States are, to submit to +undelegated powers in no body of men on earth_," and that "the project +of the annexation of Texas, unless arrested at the threshold, may tend +to drive _these States into a dissolution of the Union_." + +This was _just seventeen years before the Commonwealth of Massachusetts +began to arm her sons to put down secession in the South_! + +The Southern reader must not, however, conclude from this startling +about-face on the question of secession, that the people of +Massachusetts, and of the North, did not, _in 1861_, honestly believe +that under the Constitution the Union was indissoluble, or that the +North went to war simply for the purpose of perpetuating its power over +the South. Such a conclusion would be grossly unjust. The spirit of +nationality, veneration of the Union, was a growth, and, after it had +fairly begun, a rapid growth. It grew, as our country grew in prestige +and power. The splendid triumphs of our ships at sea, in the War of +1812, and our victory at New Orleans over British regulars, added to it; +the masterful decisions of our great Chief Justice John Marshall, +pointing out how beneficently our Federal Constitution was adapted to +the preservation not only of local self-government but of the liberties +of the citizen as well; peace with, and the respect of, foreign nations; +free trade between the people of all sections, and abounding +prosperity--all these things created a deep impression, and Americans +began to hark back to the words of Washington in his farewell address: +"The unity of our government, which now constitutes you one people, is +also dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the +edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at +home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that +very liberty which you so highly prize." + +But far and away above every other single element contributing to the +development of Union sentiment was the wonderful speech of Daniel +Webster, January 26, 1830, in his debate in the United States Senate +with Hayne, of South Carolina. Hayne was eloquently defending States' +rights, and his argument was unanswerable if his premise was admitted, +that, as had been theretofore conceded, the Constitution was _a compact +between the States_. Webster saw this and he took new ground; the +Constitution was, he contended, not a compact, but the formation of a +government. His arguments were like fruitful seed sown upon a soil +prepared for their reception. No speech delivered in this country ever +created so profound an impression. It was the foundation of a new school +of political thought. It concluded with this eloquent peroration: "When +my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, +may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a +once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a +land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! +Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gracious +ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, +still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their +original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star +obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What +is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly, +'Liberty first and Union afterwards,' but everywhere, spread all over +with living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over +the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, +that other sentiment, dear to every American heart--'Liberty _and_ +Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.'" + +For many years every school-house in the land resounded with these +words. By 1861 they had been imprinted on the minds and had sunk into +the hearts of a whole generation. Their effect was incalculable. + +It is perfectly true that the secession resolution of the Massachusetts +legislature of 1844 was passed fourteen years after Webster's speech, +but the Garrisonians had then been agitating the slavery question within +her borders for fourteen years, and the old State was now beside herself +with excitement. + +There was another great factor in the rapid manufacture of Union +sentiment at the North that had practically no existence at the South. +It was immigration. + +The new-comers from over the sea knew nothing, and cared less, about the +history of the Constitution or the dialectics of secession. They had +sought a land of liberty that to them was one nation, with one flag +flying over it, and in their eyes secession was rebellion. Immigrants to +America, practically all settling in Northern States, were during the +thirty years, 1831-1860, 4,910,590; and these must, with their natural +increase, have numbered at least six millions in 1860. In other words, +far more than one-fourth of the people of the North in 1860 were not, +themselves or their fathers, in the country in the early days when the +doctrine of States' rights had been in the ascendant; and, as a rule, to +these new people that old doctrine was folly. + +In the South the situation was reversed. Slavery had kept immigrants +away. The whites were nearly all of the old revolutionary stock, and had +inherited the old ideas. Still, love of and pride in the Union had grown +in them too. Nor were the Southerners all followers of Jefferson. From +the earliest days much of the wealth and intelligence of the country, +North and South, had opposed the Democracy, first as Federalists and +later as Whigs. In the South the Whigs have been described as "a fine +upstanding old party, a party of blue broadcloth, silver buttons, and a +coach and four." It was not until anti-slavery sentiment had begun to +array the North, as a section, against the South, that Southern Whigs +began to look for protection to the doctrine of States' rights. + +Woodrow Wilson says, in "Division and Reunion," p. 47, of Daniel +Webster's great speech in 1830: "The North was now beginning to insist +upon a national government; the South was continuing to insist upon the +original understanding of the Constitution; that was all." + +And in those attitudes the two sections stood in 1860-61, one upon the +modern theory of an indestructible Union; the other upon the old idea +that States had the right to secede from the Union. + +In 1848 there occurred in Ireland the "Rebellion of the Young Irishmen." +Among the leaders of that rebellion were Thomas F. Meagher and John +Mitchel. Both were banished to Great Britain's penal colony. Both made +their way, a few years later, to America. Both were devotees of liberty, +both men of brilliant intellect and high culture. Meagher settled in the +North, Mitchel in the South. This was about 1855. Each from his new +stand-point studied the history and the Constitution of his adopted +country. Meagher, when the war between the North and South came on, +became a general in the Union army. Mitchel entered the civil service of +the Confederacy and his son died a Confederate soldier. + +The Union or Confederate partisan who has been taught that his side was +"eternally right, and the other side eternally wrong," should consider +the story of these two "Young Irishmen." + +How fortunate it is that the ugly question of secession has been +settled, and will never again divide Americans, or those who come to +America! + + + + +CHAPTER II + +EMANCIPATION PRIOR TO 1831 + + +In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dutch, French, Portuguese, +Spanish, English, and American vessels brought many thousands of negroes +from Africa, and sold them as slaves in the British West Indies and in +the British-American colonies. William Goodell, a distinguished +Abolitionist writer, tells us[7] that "in the importation of slaves for +the Southern colonies the merchants of New England competed with those +of New York and the South" (which never had much shipping). "They appear +indeed to have outstripped them, and to have _almost monopolized_ at one +time the profits of this detestable trade. Boston, Salem, and +Newburyport in Massachusetts, and Newport and Bristol in Rhode Island, +amassed, in the persons of a few of their citizens, vast sums of this +rapidly acquired and ill-gotten wealth."[7] + + [7] "Slavery and Anti-Slavery," 3d ed., 1885. + +The slaves coming to America went chiefly to the Southern colonies, +because there only was slave labor profitable. The laws and conditions +under which these negroes were sold in the American colonies were +precisely the same as in the West Indies, except that the whites in the +islands, so far as is known, never objected, whereas the records show +that earnest protests came from Virginia[8] and also from Georgia[9] and +North Carolina.[10] The King of England was interested in the profits of +the iniquitous trade and all protests were in vain. + + [8] _Am. Archives_, 4th series, vol. I, p. 696. + + [9] _Ib._, p. 1136. + + [10] _Ib._, p. 735. + +Of the rightfulness, however, of slavery itself there was but little +question in the minds of Christian peoples until the closing years of +the eighteenth century. Then the cruelties practised by ship-masters in +the Middle Passage attracted attention, and then came gradually a +revolution in public opinion. This revolution, in which the churches +took a prominent part, originated in England, but it soon swept over +America also, both North and South. + +England abolished the slave trade in 1807. The United States followed +in 1808; the Netherlands in 1814; France in 1818; Spain in 1820; +Portugal in 1830. The great Wilberforce, Buxton, and others, who had +brought about the abolition of the slave trade in England, continued +their exertions in favor of the slave until finally, in 1833, Parliament +abolished slavery in the British West Indies, appropriating twenty +millions sterling ($100,000,000) as compensation to owners--this because +investments in slave property had been made under the sanction of +existing law. + +"Great Britain, loaded with an unprecedented debt and with a grinding +taxation, contracted a new debt of a hundred millions of dollars to give +freedom, not to Englishmen, but to the degraded African. This was not an +act of policy, but the work of statesmen. Parliament but registered the +edict of the people. The English nation, with one heart and one voice, +under a strong Christian impulse and without distinction of rank, sex, +party, or religious names, decreed freedom to the slave. I know not that +history records a national act so disinterested, so sublime." + +So wrote Dr. Channing, the great New England pulpit orator, in his +celebrated letter on Texas annexation, to Henry Clay, in 1837. + +While the rightfulness of slavery was being discussed in England, the +American conscience had also been aroused, and emancipation was making +progress on this side of the water. + +Emancipation was an easy task in the Northern States, where slaves were +few, their labor never having been profitable, and by 1804 the last of +these States had provided for the ultimate abolition of slavery within +its borders. But the problem was more difficult in the Southern States, +where the climate was adapted to slave labor. There slaves were +numerous, and slavery was interwoven, economically and socially, with +the very fabric of existence. Naturally, it occurred to thoughtful men +that there ought to be some such solution as that which was subsequently +adopted in England, and which, as we have seen, was so highly extolled +by Dr. Channing--emancipation of the slaves with compensation to the +owners by the general government. The difficulty in our country was +that the Federal Constitution conferred upon the Federal Government no +power over slavery in the States--no power to emancipate slaves or +compensate owners; and that for the individual States where the negroes +were numerous the problem seemed too big. Free negroes and whites in +great numbers, it was thought, could not live together. To get rid of +the negroes, if they should be freed, was for the States a very serious, +if not an unsurmountable task. + +On the seventeenth of January, 1824, the following resolutions, proposed +as a solution of the problem, were passed by the legislature of +Ohio:[11] + + [11] "State Documents on Federal Relations," Ames, pp. 203-4. + + _Resolved_, That the consideration of a system providing for the + gradual emancipation of the people of color, held in servitude in + the United States, be recommended to the legislatures of the + several States of the American Union, and to the Congress of the + United States. + + _Resolved_, That, in the opinion of the general assembly, a system + of foreign colonization, with correspondent measures, might be + adopted that would in due time effect the entire emancipation of + the slaves of our country without any violation of the national + compact, or infringement of the rights of individuals; by the + passage of a law by the general government (with the consent of the + slave-holding States) which would provide that all children of + persons now held in slavery, born after the passage of the law, + should be free at the age of twenty-one years (being supported + during their minority by the persons claiming the service of their + parents), provided they then consent to be transported to the + intended place of colonization. Also: + + _Resolved_, That it is expedient that such a system should be + predicated upon the principle that the evil of slavery is a + national one, and that the people and the States of the Union ought + mutually to participate in the duties and burthens of removing it. + + _Resolved_, That His Excellency the Governor be requested to + forward a copy of the foregoing resolutions to His Excellency the + Governor of each of the United States, requesting him to lay the + same before the legislature thereof; and that His Excellency will + also forward a like copy to each of our senators and + representatives in Congress, requesting their co-operation in all + national measures having a tendency to effect the grave object + embraced therein. + +By June of 1825 eight other Northern States had endorsed the +proposition, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, +Massachusetts. Six of the slave-holding States emphatically disapproved +of the suggestion, _viz._, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri, +Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.[12] + + [12] Ames, p. 203. + +Reasons which in great part influenced all the Southern States thus +rejecting the proposition may be gathered from the following words of +Governor Wilson, of South Carolina, in submitting the resolutions: "A +firm determination to resist, at the threshold, every _invasion of our +domestic tranquillity_, and to _preserve our sovereignty and +independence as a State_, is earnestly recommended."[13] + + [13] _Ib._, p. 206. + +The resolutions required of the Southern States a complete surrender in +this regard of their reserved rights; they feared what Governor Wilson +called "the overwhelming powers of the general government," and were +unwilling to make the admission required, that the slavery in the South +was a question for the nation. + +Another reason was that, although there was a quite common desire in the +Southern States to get rid of slavery, the majority sentiment doubtless +was not yet ready for the step. + +Basing this plan on the "consent of the slave-holding States," as the +Ohio legislature did, was an acknowledgment that the North had no power +over the matter; while the proposition to share in the expense of +transporting the negroes, after they were manumitted, seems to be a +recognition of the joint responsibility of both sections for the +existence of slavery in the South. However that may be, the generous +concurrence of nine of the thirteen Northern States indicates how kindly +the temper of the North toward the South was before the rise of the "New +Abolitionism" in 1831. Had emancipation been, under the Federal +Constitution, a national and not a local question, it is possible that +slavery might have been abolished in America, as it was in the mother +country, peacefully and with compensation to owners. + +The Ohio idea of freeing and at the same time colonizing the slaves, was +no doubt suggested by the scheme of the African Colonization Society. +This Colonization Society grew out of a resolution passed by the General +Assembly of Virginia, December 23, 1816. Its purpose was to rid the +country of such free negroes and subsequently manumitted slaves as +should be willing to go to Liberia, where a home was secured for them, +and a government set up that was to be eventually controlled by the +negro from America. The plan was endorsed by Georgia in 1817, Maryland +in 1818, Tennessee in 1818, and Vermont in 1819.[14] + + [14] Ames, 195. + +The Colonization Society was composed of Southern and Northern +philanthropists and statesmen of the most exalted character. Among its +presidents were, at times, President Monroe and ex-President Madison. +Chief Justice Marshall was one of its presidents. Colonization, while +relieving America, was also to give the negro an opportunity for +self-government and self-development in his native country, aided at the +outset by experienced white men, and Abraham Lincoln, when he was +eulogizing the dead Henry Clay, one of the eloquent advocates of the +scheme, seemed to be in love with the idea of restoring the poor African +to that land from which he had been rudely snatched by the rapacious +white man. The society, with much aid from philanthropists and some from +the Federal Government, was making progress when, from 1831 to 1835, +the Abolitionists halted it.[15] They got the ears of the negro and +persuaded him not to go to Liberia. Its friends thought the enterprise +would stimulate emancipation by furnishing a home for such negroes as +their owners were willing to manumit; but the new friends of the negro +told him it was a trick of the slave-holder, and intended to perpetuate +slavery--it was banishment. And Dr. Hart now, in his "Abolition and +Slavery," calls it a move for the "expatriation of the negro." + + [15] See Garrison's "Garrison." + +All together only a few thousand negroes went to Liberia. The enterprise +lagged, and finally failed, partly because of opposition, but chiefly +because the negroes were slothful and incapable of self-government. The +word came back that they were not prospering. For a time, while white +men were helping them in their government, the outlook for Liberia had +more or less promise in it. When the whites, to give the negroes their +opportunity for self-development withdrew their case was hopeless.[16] + + [16] See article in _Independent_, 1906, Miss Mahony. + +In 1828, while emancipation was still being freely canvassed North and +South, Benjamin Lundy, an Abolition editor in charge of _The Genius of +Emancipation_, then being published at Baltimore, in a slave State, went +to Boston to "stir up" the Northern people "to the work of abolishing +slavery in the South." Dr. Channing, who has been previously quoted, +wrote a letter to Daniel Webster on the 28th of May, 1828, in which, +after reciting the purpose of Lundy, and saying that he was "aware how +cautiously exertions are to be made for it in this part of the country," +it being a local question, he said: "It seems to me that, before moving +in this matter, we ought to say to them (our Southern brethren) +distinctly, 'We consider slavery _as your calamity, not your crime_, and +_we will share with you the burden_ of putting an end to it. We will +consent that the public lands shall be appropriated to this object; or +that the general government shall be _clothed with the power to apply a +portion of revenue to it_.' + +"I throw out these suggestions merely to illustrate my views. We must +first let the Southern States see that we are their _friends_ in this +affair; that we sympathize with them and, from principles _of patriotism +and philanthropy, are willing to share the toil and expense_ of +abolishing slavery, or, I fear, our interference will avail +nothing."[17] Mr. Webster never gave out this letter until February 15, +1851.[18] + + [17] "Webster's Works," vol. V, pp. 366-67, 1851. + + [18] _Ib._, ed. 1851, vol. V, pp. 266-67. + +In less than three years after that letter was written, Lundy's friend, +William Lloyd Garrison, started in Boston a crusade against slavery in +the South, on the ground that instead of being the "_calamity_," as Dr. +Channing deemed it to be, it was the "_crime_" of the South. Had no such +exasperating sectional cry as this ever been raised, the story told in +this little book would have been very different from that which is to +follow. Even Spain, the laggard of nations, since that day has abolished +slavery in her colonies. Brazil long ago fell into line, and it is +impossible for one not blinded by the sectional strife of the past, now +to conceive that the Southern States of this Union, whose people in 1830 +were among the foremost of the world in all the elements of Christian +civilization, would not long, long ago, if left to themselves, have +found some means by which to rid themselves of an institution condemned +by the public sentiment of the world and even then deplored by the +Southerners themselves. + +The crime, if crime it was, of slavery in the South in 1830 was one for +which the two sections of the Union were equally to blame. Abraham +Lincoln said in his debate with Douglas at Peoria, Illinois, October 15, +1858: "When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for +slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the +institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in +any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I +surely do not blame them for not doing what I would not know how to do +myself."[19] + + [19] "The Negro Problem," Pickett, 1809. + +Prior to the rise of the Abolitionists in 1831, emancipationists in the +South had been free to grapple with conditions as they found them. What +they and what the people of the North had accomplished we may gather +from the United States census reports. The tables following are taken +from "Larned's History of Ready Reference," vol. V. The classifications +are his. We have numbered three of his tables, for the sake of +reference, and have added columns 4 and 5, calculated from Larned's +figures, to show "excess of free blacks" and "increase of free blacks, +South." + +Let the reader assume as a fact, which will perhaps not be questioned, +that "free blacks" in the census means freedmen and their increase, and +these tables tell their own story, a story to which must be added the +statement that slaves in the South had been freed only by voluntary +sacrifices of owners. + +It will be noted that in 1790 the total "blacks" in the North was +67,479, and, although emancipation in these States had begun some years +before, the excess of "free blacks" in the South was over 5,000. Also +that at every succeeding census, down to and including that of 1830, the +"excess of free blacks" increased with considerable regularity until +1830, when that excess is 44,547. + + +----------------------+----------+-------+---------+-------+-------+--------+ + | | | | | | | | + | | | | | TOTAL |EXCESS |INCREASE| + | | WHITES | FREE | SLAVES |BLACKS,|OF FREE|IN FREE | + | | | BLACKS| | NORTH |BLACKS,|BLACKS, | + | | | | | | SOUTH | SOUTH | + | | | | | | | | + +----------------------+----------+-------+---------+-------+-------+--------+ + | | | | | | | | + |1790: North, 9 States | 1,900,976| 27,109| 40,370| 67,479| .... | .... | + | South, 8 States | 1,271,488| 32,357| 657,527| .... | 5,248 | .... | + | | | | | | | | + |1800: North, 11 States| 2,601,521| 47,154| 35,946| 83,100| .... | 20,045 | + | South, 9 States| 1,702,980| 61,241| 857,095| .... |14,087 | 28,884 | + | and D.C. | | | | | | | + | | | | | | | | + |1810: North, 13 States| 3,653,219| 78,181| 27,510|105,691| .... | 31,027 | + | South, 11 States| 2,208,785|108,265|1,163,854| .... |30,084 | 47,024 | + | and D. C. | | | | | | | + |1820: North, 13 States| 5,030,371| 99,281| 19,108|118,359| .... | 21,100 | + | South, 13 States| 2,831,560|134,223|1,519,017| .... |34,942 | 25,958 | + | and D. C. | | | | | | | + |1830: North, 13 States| 6,871,302|137,529| 3,568|141,097| .... | 38,248 | + | South, 13 States| 3,660,758|182,070|2,005,475| .... |44,541 | 47,747 | + | D. C. and Ter.| | | | | | | + |1840: North, etc. | 9,577,065|170,728| 1,728|171,857| .... | 33,199 | + | South, etc. | 4,632,530|215,575|2,486,326| .... |44,547 | 33,505 | + | | | | | | | | + |1850: North, etc. |13,269,149|196,262| 262|196,524| .... | 25,534 | + | South, etc. | 6,283,965|238,187|3,204,051| .... | 1,925 | 22,612 | + | | | | | | | | + |1860: North, etc. |18,791,159|225,967| 64|226,031| .... | 29,705 | + | South, etc. | 8,162,684|262,003|3,953,696| .... |36,036 | 23,816 | + | | | | | | | | + +----------------------+----------+-------+---------+-------+-------+--------+ + +There was always in the South, prior to 1831, an active and freely +expressed emancipation sentiment. But there was not enough of it to +influence legislation. In all but three or four of these States, +emancipation was made difficult by laws which, among other conditions, +required that slaves after being freed should leave the State. + +Emancipation in the North had not been completed in 1830. Professor +Ingram, president of the Royal Irish Academy, says in his "History of +Slavery," London, 1895, p. 184: "The Northern States--beginning with +Vermont in 1777 and ending with New Jersey in 1804--either abolished +slavery or adopted measures to effect its gradual abolition within their +boundaries. But the principal operation of (at least) the latter change +was to transfer Northern slaves to Southern markets." + +There had been in 1820 an angry discussion in Congress about the +admission of Missouri--with or without slavery--which was finally +settled by the Missouri Compromise. This dispute over the admission of +Missouri is often said to have been the beginning of the sectional +quarrel that finally ended in secession; but the controversy over +Missouri and that begun by the "New Abolitionists" in 1831 were +entirely distinct. They were conducted on different plans. + +In the Missouri controversy the only questions were as to the expediency +and constitutionality of denying to a new State the right to enter the +Union, with or without slavery, as she might choose. The entire dispute +was settled to the satisfaction of both sections by an agreement that +States thereafter, south of 36 deg. 30', might enter the Union with or +without slavery; _and nobody denied, during all that discussion about +Missouri, or at any time previous to_ 1831, _that every citizen was +bound to maintain the Constitution and all laws passed in pursuance of +it, including the fugitive slave law_. + +"The North submitted at that time (1828) to the obligations imposed upon +it by the fugitive slave-catching clause of the Constitution and the +fugitive slave law of 1793."[20] So say the biographers of William Lloyd +Garrison for the purpose of establishing, as they afterwards do, their +claim that Garrison conducted a successful revolt against that provision +of the Constitution. What strengthens the statement that the North in +1828 submitted without protest to the "fugitive slave-catching clause of +the Constitution," is that the Compromise Act of 1820 contained a +provision extending the fugitive slave law over the territory made free +by the act, while it should continue to be territory, and until there +should be formed from it States, to which the existing law would +automatically apply. Every subsequent _nullification of the fugitive +slave laws_ of the United States, whether by governors or state +legislatures, was therefore a palpable _violation of a provision that +was of the essence of the Missouri Compromise_. + + [20] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. I, p. 113. + +The South was content with the Missouri Compromise, and from that date, +1820, until the rise of the "New Abolitionists," slavery was in all that +region an open question. Judge Temple says in his "Covenanter, Cavalier, +and Puritan," p. 208: "In 1826, of the 143 emancipation societies in the +United States, 103 were in the South." + +The questions for Southern emancipationists were: How could the slaves +be freed, and in what time? How about compensation to owners? Where +could the freed slaves be sent, and how? And, if deportation should +prove impossible, what system could be devised whereby the two races +could dwell together peacefully? These were indeed serious problems, and +required time and grave consideration. + +"Who can doubt," says Mr. Curtis, to quote once more his "Life of +Buchanan," "that all such questions could have been satisfactorily +answered, if the Christianity of the South had been left to its own time +and mode of answering them, and without any external force but the force +of kindly, respectful consideration and forebearing Christian +fellowship?"[21] + + [21] George Ticknor Curtis's "Life of Buchanan," vol. II, p. 283. + +But this was not to be. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE NEW ABOLITIONISTS + + +On the first day of January, 1831, there came out in Boston a new paper, +_The Liberator_, William Lloyd Garrison, editor. That was the beginning, +historians now generally agree, of "New Abolitionism." The editor of the +new paper was the founder of the new sect. + +Benjamin Lundy was a predecessor of Garrison, on much the same lines as +those pursued by the latter. Lundy had previously formed many Abolition +societies. _The Philanthropist_ of March, 1828, estimated the number of +anti-slavery societies as "upwards of 130, and most of them in the slave +States, and of Lundy's formation, among the Quakers."[22] But Garrison +became the leader and Lundy the disciple. + + [22] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. I. + +Garrison was a man of pleasing personal appearance, abstemious in +habits, and of remarkable energy and will power. He was a vigorous and +forceful writer. Denunciation was his chief weapon, and he had "a genius +for infuriating his antagonists." The following is a fair specimen of +his style. Speaking of himself and his fellow-workers as the "soldiers +of God," he said: "Their feet are shod with the preparation of the +_gospel of peace_.... Hence, when smitten on one cheek they turn the +other also, being defamed they entreat, being reviled they bless," etc. +And on that same page,[23] and in the same prospectus, showing how he +"blesses" those who, as he understands, are outside of the "Kingdom of +God," he says: "All without are dogs and sorcerers, and ... and +murderers, and idolaters, and whatsoever loveth a lie." + + [23] _Ib._, Vol. II, p. 202. + +Mr. Garrison had no perspective, no sense of relation or proportion. In +his eye the most humane slave-holder was a wicked monster. He had a +genius for organization, and a year after the first issue of _The +Liberator_ he and his little body of brother fanatics had grown into the +New England Anti-Slavery Society. + +The new sect called themselves for a time the "New Abolitionists," +because their doctrines were new. The principles upon which this +organization was to be based were not all formulated at once. The +key-note was sounded in Garrison's "Address to the Public" in the first +number of _The Liberator_: + + I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of + our slave population. I shall be as harsh as truth and as + uncompromising as justice on this subject. _I do not wish to think + or speak or write with moderation._ + +In an earlier issue, after denouncing slavery as a "damning crime," the +editor said: "Therefore my efforts shall be directed to _the exposure of +those who practise it_." + +The substance of Garrison's teachings was that slavery, anywhere in the +United States, was the concern of all, and that it was to be put down by +making not only slavery but also the slave-holder odious. And, further, +it was the slave, not the slave-owner, who was entitled to compensation. + +Thus the distinctive features of the new crusade were to be warfare upon +the personal character of every slave-holder and the confiscation of +his property. It was, too, the beginning of that sectional war by people +of the North against the existence of slavery in the South, which, as we +have seen, was deprecated by Dr. Channing in his letter three years +before to Mr. Webster. + +The new sect began by assailing slavery in States other than their own, +and very soon they were openly denouncing the Constitution of their +country because under it slavery in those sections was none of their +business; and of course they repudiated the Missouri Compromise +absolutely, the essence of that compromise being that slavery was the +business of the States in which it existed. + +It was a part of their scheme to send circulars depicting the evils of +slavery broadcast through the South; and they were sent especially to +the free negroes of that section. + +"In 1820," says Dr. Hart in his "Slavery and Abolition," "at Charleston +(South Carolina), Denmark Vesey, a free negro, made an elaborate plot to +rise, massacre the white population, seize the shipping in the harbor, +and, if hard pressed, to sail away to the West Indies. One of the +negroes gave evidence, Vesey was seized, duly tried, and with +thirty-four others was hanged."[24] + + [24] Hart's "Slavery and Abolition," p. 163. + +This plot, so nearly successful, was fresh in the minds of Southerners +when the Abolitionists began their programme, and naturally, the South +at once took the alarm--an alarm that was increased by the massacre, in +the Nat Turner insurrection, of sixty-one men, women, and children, +which took place in Virginia seven months after the first issue of _The +Liberator_. One of Turner's lieutenants is stated to have been a free +negro. This insurrection the South attributed to _The Liberator_. +Professor Hart says a free negro named Walker had previously sent out to +the South, from Boston, a pamphlet, "the tone of which was +unmistakable," and that "this pamphlet is known to have reached +Virginia, and may possibly have influenced the Nat Turner +insurrection."[25] + + [25] _Ib._, pp. 217-20. + +If this surmise be correct, knowledge that Walker, a free negro, had +been responsible for the Turner insurrection, would have lessened +neither the guilt of the Abolitionists nor the fears of the Southerners. + +But in 1832 Abolition agitation and the fears of insurrection had not +as yet entirely stifled the discussion of slavery in the South. A debate +on slavery took place that year in the Virginia Assembly, the immediate +cause of which was no doubt the Turner insurrection. The members of that +body had not been elected on any issue of that character. The discussion +thus precipitated shows, therefore, the state of public opinion in +Virginia on slavery. Of this debate a distinguished Northern writer +says:[26] + + [26] "Life of James Buchanan," George Ticknor Curtis, vol. II, pp. + 277-78. + +"In the year 1832 there was, nowhere in the world, a more enlightened +sense of the wrong and evil of slavery than there was among the public +men and people of Virginia." + +In the Assembly of that year Mr. Randolph brought forward a bill _to +accomplish gradual emancipation_. Mr. Curtis continues: + +"No member of the House defended slavery.... There could be nothing said +anywhere, there had been nothing said out of Virginia, stronger and +truer in deprecating the evils of slavery, than was said in that +discussion, by Virginia gentlemen, debating in their own legislature, a +matter that concerned themselves and their people." + +The bill was not pressed to a vote, but the House, by a vote of 65 to +38, declared "that they were profoundly sensible of the great evils +arising from the condition of the colored population of the Commonwealth +and were induced by policy, as well as humanity, to attempt the +immediate removal of the free negroes; but that further action for the +_removal of the slaves should await a more definite development of +public opinion_." + +Mr. Randolph, who was from the large slave-holding county of Albemarle, +was re-elected to the next assembly. + +But when the early summer of 1835 had come the fear of insurrection had +created such wide-spread terror throughout the whole South that every +emancipation society in that region had long since closed its doors; and +now the Abolitionists were sending South their circulars in numbers. +Many were sent to Charleston, South Carolina,[27] where fifteen years +before[28] the free negro, Denmark Vesey, had laid the plot to massacre +the whites, that had been discovered just in time to prevent its +consummation. + + [27] Referred to in "Life of Andrew Jackson," W. G. Sumner, p. 350. + + [28] Hart, _supra._ + +The President, Andrew Jackson, in his next message to Congress, +December, 1835, called their "attention to the painful excitement +produced in the South by attempts to circulate through the mails +_inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints +and in various sorts of publications calculated to stimulate them to +insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war_." + +The good people of Boston were now thoroughly aroused. They had from the +first frowned on the Abolition movement. Garrison was complaining that +in all the city his society could not "hire a hall or a meeting-house." +The Abolition idea had been for a time thought chimerical and therefore +negligible. Later, civic, business, social, and religious organizations +had all of them in their several spheres been earnest and active in +their opposition; now it seemed to be time for concerted action. + +In Garrison's "Garrison" (vol. I, p. 495), we read that "the _social_, +_political_, _religious and intellectual elite_ of Boston filled +Faneuil Hall on the afternoon of Friday, August 3, 1835, to frame an +indictment against their fellow-citizens." + +This "indictment" the _Boston Transcript_ reported as follows: + + _Resolved_, That the people of the United States by the + Constitution under which, by the Divine blessing, they hold their + most valuable political privileges, have solemnly agreed with each + other to leave to their respective States the jurisdiction + pertaining to the relation of master and slave within their + boundaries, and that no man or body of men, except the people of + the governments of those States, can of right do any act to + dissolve or impair the obligations of that contract. + + _Resolved_, That we hold in reprobation all attempts, in whatever + guise they may appear, to coerce any of the United States to + abolish slavery by _appeals to the terror of the master or the + passions of the slave_. + + _Resolved_, That we disapprove of all associations instituted in + the non-slave-holding States with the intent to act, within the + slave-holding States, on the subject of slavery in those States + without their consent. For the purpose of securing freedom of + individual thought they are needless--and they afford to those + persons in the Southern States, whose object is to effect a + dissolution of the Union (if any such there may be now or + hereafter), a pretext for the furtherance of their schemes. + + _Resolved_, That all measures adopted, _the natural and direct + tendency of which is to excite the slaves of the South to revolt, + or of spreading among them a spirit of insubordination_, are + repugnant to the duties of the man and the citizen, and that where + such measures become manifest by overt acts, which are recognizable + by constitutional laws, we will aid by all means in our power in + the support of those laws. + + _Resolved_, That while we recommend to others the duty of + sacrificing their opinions, passions and sympathies upon the altar + of the laws, we are bound to show that a regard to the supremacy of + those laws is the rule of our conduct--and consequently to + deprecate all tumultuous assemblies, all riotous or violent + proceedings, all outrages on person and property, and all illegal + notions of the right or duty of executing summary and vindictive + justice in any mode unsanctioned by law. + +The allusion in the last resolution is to a then recent lynching of +negroes in Mississippi charged with insurrection. + +In speaking to these resolutions, Harrison Gray Otis, a great +conservative leader, denounced the Abolition agitators, accusing them of +"wishing to 'scatter among our Southern brethren _firebrands_, _arrows_, +and _death_,' and of attempting to force Abolition by appeals to the +terror of the masters and the passions of the slaves," and decrying +their "measures, the natural and direct tendency of which is to excite +the slaves of the South to revolt," etc. + +Another of the speakers, ex-Senator Peleg Sprague, said (p. 496, +Garrison's "Garrison") that "if their sentiments prevailed it would be +all over with the Union, which would give place to two hostile +confederacies, with forts and standing armies." + +These resolutions and speeches, viewed in the light of what followed, +read now like prophecy. + +It is a familiar rule of law that a contemporaneous exposition of a +statute is to be given extraordinary weight by the courts, the reason +being that the judge then sitting knows the surrounding circumstances. +That Boston meeting pronounced the deliberate judgment of the most +intelligent men of Boston on the situation, as they knew it to be that +day; it was in their midst that _The Liberator_ was being published; +there the new sect had its head-quarters, and there it was doing its +work. + +Quite as strong as the evidence furnished by that great Faneuil Hall +meeting is the testimony of the churches. + +The churches and religious bodies in America had heartily favored the +general anti-slavery movement that was sweeping over all America between +1770 and 1831, while it was proceeding in an orderly manner and with due +regard to law. + +In 1812 the Methodist General Conference voted that no slave-holder +could continue as a local elder. The Presbyterian General Assembly in +1818 unanimously resolved that "slavery was a gross violation of the +most precious and moral rights of human nature," etc. + +These bodies represented both the North and the South, and this +paragraph shows what was, and continued to be, the general attitude of +American churches until after the Abolitionists had begun their assault +on both slavery in the South and the Constitution of the United States, +which protected it. Then, in view of the awful social and political +cataclysm that seemed to be threatened, there occurred a stupendous +change. We learn from Hart that Garrison "soon found that neither +minister _nor church anywhere in the lower South continued_ (as before) +to protest against slavery; _that the cloth in the North was arrayed +against him_; and that many Northern divines vigorously opposed him." +Also that Moses Stuart, professor of Hebrew in Andover Theological +Seminary; President Lord, of Dartmouth College, and Hopkins, the +Episcopal bishop of Vermont, now became defenders of slavery. "The +positive opposition of churches soon followed." + +And then we have cited, condemnations of Abolitionism by the Methodist +Conference of 1836, by the New York Methodist Conference of 1838, by the +American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, by the American +Home Missionary Society, the American Bible Society, the Protestant +Episcopal Church, and the Baptists. See for these statements, Hart, pp. +211-12. + +The import of all this is unmistakable; and this "about-face" of +religious organizations on the question of the morality of slavery has +no parallel in all the history of Christian churches. Its significance +cannot be overstated. It took place North and South. It meant opposition +to a movement that was outside the church _and with which religion could +have no concern, except in so far as it was a vital assault upon the +State, and the peace of the State_. To make their opposition effective +the Christians of that day did this remarkable thing. _They reversed +their religious views on slavery, which the Abolitionists were now +assailing, and which they themselves had previously opposed._ They +re-examined their Bibles and found arguments that favored slavery. These +arguments they used in an attempt to stem an agitation that, as they saw +it, was arraying section against section and threatening the perpetuity +of the Union. + +United testimony from all these Christian bodies is more conclusive +contemporaneous evidence against the agitators and their methods than +even the proceedings of all conservative Boston at Faneuil Hall in +August, 1835. + +This new attitude of the church toward slavery meant perhaps also +something further--it meant that slavery, as it actually existed, was +not then as horrible to Northerners, who could go across the line and +see it, which many of them did, as it is now to those whose ideas of it +come chiefly from "Uncle Tom's Cabin." + +In view of this phenomenal movement of Northern Christians it is not +strange that Southern churches adhered, throughout the deadly struggle +that was now on, to the position into which they had been driven--that +slavery was sanctioned by the Bible--nor is it matter of wonder that, as +Professor Hart makes prominent on p. 137, "not a single Southern man of +large reputation and influence failed to stand by slavery." + +Historians of to-day usually narrate without comment that nearly all the +American churches and divines at first opposed the Abolitionists. It +illustrates the courage with which the Abolitionists stood, as Dr. Hart +delights to point out, "for a despised cause." They assuredly did stand +by their guns. + +Later, another change came about in the attitude of the churches. In +1844 the Abolitionists were to achieve their first victory in the great +religious world. The Methodist Church was then disrupted, "squarely on +the question whether a bishop could own slaves, and all the Southern +members withdrew and organized the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." +Professor Hart, p. 214, says of this: "Clearly, the impassioned +agitation of the Abolitionists had made it impossible for a great number +of Northern anti-slavery men _to remain on terms of friendship with +their Southern brethren_." + +That great Faneuil Hall meeting of August 31, 1835, was followed some +weeks later by a lamentable anti-Garrison mob, which did not stand +alone. In the years 1835, 1836, and 1837 a great wave of anti-Abolition +excitement swept over the North. In New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, +Alton (Illinois), and many other places, there were anti-Abolition +riots, sometimes resulting in arson and bloodshed. + +The heart of the great, peace-loving, patriotic, and theretofore happy +and contented North, was at that time stirred with the profoundest +indignation against the Abolitionists. Northern opinion then was that +the Abolitionists, by their unpatriotic course and their nefarious +methods, were driving the South to desperation and endangering the +Union. If the North at that time saw the situation as it really was, the +historian of the present day should say so. If, on the other hand, the +people of both the North and South were then laboring under delusions, +as to the facts that were occurring among them, those of this +generation, who are wiser than their ancestors, should give us the +sources of their information. To know the lessons of history we must +have the facts.[29] + + [29] The late Professor William Graham Sumner, of Yale, in his "Life of + Andrew Jackson," 1888, treats of the excitement at Charleston, South + Carolina, in 1835, during Jackson's administration, over Abolition + circulars, etc. Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at + Harvard, in his "Abolition and Slavery," 1906, treats of the same + subject. The following extracts from these books will show how these + authors picture that exciting period, and our italics will emphasize the + _sang-froid_ with which they touch off what so profoundly affected + public sentiment, both North and South, _when the events were + occurring_. Professor Sumner has this to say: + + "The Abolition Society adopted the policy of sending documents, papers, + and pictures against slavery to the Southern States. + + "_If the intention was_, as charged, to excite the slaves to revolt, + _the device, as it seems to us now_, must have fallen short of its + object, for the chance that anything could get into the hands of the + black man must _have been poor indeed_. + + "These publications, however, caused _a panic_ and _a wild indignation_ + in the South."--Sumner's "Jackson," p. 350. + + Why should the Southerners of that day go _wild_ over conduct for which + the professor of this era has no word of condemnation? + + Dr. Hart follows Professor Sumner's treatment. These are his words: + + "The free negroes of the South, the Abolitionists could not reach except + by _mailing publications to them_, a process which _fearfully + exasperated_ the South _without reaching the persons + addressed_."--Hart's "Abolition and Slavery," p. 216. + + Why should Southerners be "fearful" when they were intercepting all the + dangerous circulars, etc., they could find? And why should they be + exasperated at all? + + Dr. Hart's chair at Harvard is within gunshot of Faneuil Hall, yet the + great meeting there of August 31, 1835, is not mentioned in either his + or Professor Sumner's book, nor is there to be found in either of them + _any explanation of the reasons underlying the general and emphatic + condemnation throughout the North at that period of the Abolitionists + and their methods_. + +In 1854, at Framingham, Massachusetts, the Abolitionists celebrated the +Fourth of July thus: Their leader, William Lloyd Garrison, held up and +burned to ashes, before the applauding multitude, one after another, +copies of + +1st. The fugitive slave law. + +2d. The decision of Commissioner Loring in the case of Burns, a fugitive +slave. + +3d. The charge to the Grand Jury of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis in +reference to the effort of a mob to secure a fugitive slave. + +4th. "Then, holding up the United States Constitution, he branded it as +the source and parent of all other atrocities, 'a covenant with death +and an agreement with hell,' and consumed it to ashes on the spot, +exclaiming, 'So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the +people say, Amen!' A tremendous shout of 'Amen!' went up to heaven in +ratification of the deed, mingled with a few hisses and wrathful +exclamations from some, who evidently were in a _rowdyish_ state of +mind, but who were at once cowed by the popular feeling."[30] + + [30] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. III, p. 412. + +The Abolitionist movement was radical; it was revolutionary. When an +accredited teacher of history, in one of the greatest of our +universities, writes a volume on "Abolition and Slavery," why should he +restrict himself in comment, as Dr. Hart thus does in his preface? The +book is "intended to show that there was more than one side to the +controversy, and that both the milder form of opposition called +anti-slavery and _the extreme form called Abolition_, were _confronted +by practical difficulties_ which to many public men seemed +insurmountable." + +Why should not the historian, in addition to pointing out the +"difficulties" encountered by these extremists, _show how and why the +people of that day condemned their conduct_? + +Condonation of the Abolitionists, and a proper regard for the +Constitution of the United States, cannot be taught to the youth of +America at one and the same time. + +The writer has been unable to find any of the incendiary pamphlets that +had proved so inflammatory. He has, however, before him a little +anonymous publication entitled "Slavery Illustrated in its Effects upon +Woman," Isaac Knapp, Boston, 1837. It was for circulation in the North, +being "Affectionately Inscribed to all the Members of Female +Anti-Slavery Societies," and it is only cited here as an illustration of +the almost inconceivable venom with which the crusade was carried on to +_embitter the North against the South_. It is a vicious attack upon the +morality of Southern men and women, and upon Southern churches. None of +its charges does it claim to authenticate, and it gives no names or +dates. One incident, related as typical, is of two white women, all the +time in full communion with their church, under pretence of a +boarding-house, keeping a brothel, negro women being the inmates. + +In the chapter entitled "Impurity of the Christian Churches" is this +sentence: "At present the Southern Churches are only one vast +consociation of hypocrites and sinners." + +The booklet was published anonymously, but at that time any prurient +story about slavery in the South would circulate, no matter whether +vouched for or not. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +FEELING IN THE SOUTH--1835 + + +Not stronger than the proceedings of a great non-partisan public +meeting, or than the action of religious bodies, but going more into +detail as to public opinion in the South and the effect upon it of +Abolition agitation, is the evidence of a quiet observer, Professor E. +A. Andrews, who, in July, 1835, had been sent out as the agent of "The +Boston Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race." His +reports from both Northern and Southern States, consisting of letters +from various points, constitute a book, "Slavery and the Domestic Slave +Trade," Boston, 1836. + +July 17, 1835, from Baltimore, Professor Andrews reports that a resident +clergyman, who appears to have his entire confidence, says, among other +things, "that a disposition to emancipate their slaves is very prevalent +among the slave-holders of this State, could they see any way to do so +consistently with the true interest of the slave, but that it is their +universal belief that no means of doing this is now presented except +that of colonizing them in Africa." + +From the same city, July 17, 1835, he writes, p. 53: "In this city there +appears to be no strong attachment to slavery and no wish to perpetuate +it." + +Again, on p. 95: "There is but one sentiment amongst those with whom I +have conversed in this city, respecting the possibility of the white and +colored races living peaceably together in freedom, nor during my +residence at the South and my subsequent intercourse with the Southern +people, _did I ever meet with one who believed it possible for the two +races to continue together after emancipation_.... When the slaves of +the South are liberated they form an integral part of the population of +the country, and must influence its destiny for ages--perhaps forever." + +From Fredericksburg, Virginia, Professor Andrews writes: + + Since I entered the slave-holding country I have seen but one man + who did not deprecate wholly and absolutely the direct interference + of Northern Abolitionists with the institutions of the South. "I + was an Abolitionist," has been the language of numbers of those + with whom I have conversed; "I was an Abolitionist, _and was + laboring earnestly to bring about a prospective system of + emancipation. I even saw, as I believed, the certain and complete + success of the friends of the colored race at no distant period, + when these Northern Abolitionists interfered, and by their + extravagant and impracticable schemes frustrated all our hopes.... + Our people have become exasperated, the friends of the slaves + alarmed_, etc....[31] Equally united are they in the opinion that + the servitude of the slaves is far more rigorous now than it would + have been had there been no interference with them. _In proportion + to the danger of revolt and insurrection, have been_ the severity + of the enactments for controlling them and the diligence with which + the laws have been executed." + + [31] "Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade," Andrews, pp. 156-57. + +From a private letter, written at Greenville, Alabama, August 30, 1835, +by a distinguished lawyer, John W. Womack, to his brother, we quote: + + The anti-slavery societies in the Northern and Middle States are + doing all they can to destroy our domestic harmony by sending among + us pamphlets, tracts, and newspapers--for the purpose of exciting + dissatisfaction and insurrection among our slaves.... Meetings have + been held in Mobile, in Montgomery, in Greensboro, and in + Tuscaloosa, and in different parts of all the Southern States. At + these meetings resolutions have been adopted, disclaiming (_sic_) + and denying the right of the Northern people to interfere in any + manner in our internal domestic concerns.... It is my solemn + opinion that this question (to wit, slavery) will ultimately bring + about a dissolution of the Union of the States. + +It should be remembered that in 1832 the massacre in Santo Domingo of +all the whites by the blacks was fresh in mind. It had occurred in +1814--after manumission--and had produced, especially in the minds of +statesmen and of all observers of the many signs of antagonism between +the two races, a profound and lasting impression. + +The fear that the races, both free, could not live together was in the +mind of Thomas Jefferson, of Henry Clay, and of every other Southern +emancipationist. And deportation, its expense, and the want of a home to +which to send the negro--here was a stumbling-block in the way of +Southern emancipation. + +Indeed, the incompatibility of the races was an appalling thought in the +minds of Southerners for the whole thirty years of anti-slavery +agitation. It was even with Abraham Lincoln, and weighed upon his mind +when, at last, in 1862, military necessity placed upon his shoulders the +responsibility of emancipating the Southern slaves. Serious as was the +responsibility, the question was not new to him. When Mr. Lincoln said, +in his celebrated Springfield speech in 1858, "I believe this government +cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," and added that he +did not expect the government to fail, he certainly expected that +emancipation in the South was coming; and, of course, he thought over +what the consequences might be. + +In that same debate with Douglas, in his speech at Charleston, Illinois, +Mr. Lincoln said: "There is a physical difference between the white and +black races, which, I believe, will forever forbid the two races living +together on terms of social and political equality." + +In his memorial address on Henry Clay, in 1852, he had said: "If, as the +friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our +countrymen shall by some means succeed in freeing our land from the +dangerous presence of slavery, and at the same time in restoring a +captive people to their long lost father-land, ... it will, indeed, be a +glorious consummation. And if to such a contribution the efforts of Mr. +Clay shall have contributed ... none of his labors will have been more +valuable to his country and his kind." + +In his famous emancipation proclamation he promised "that the effort to +colonize persons of African descent upon this continent or elsewhere, +with the consent of the government existing there, will be continued." + +It must have been with a heavy heart that the great President announced +the failure of all his efforts to find a home outside of America for the +freedmen, _when he informed Congress in his December message, 1862, that +all in vain he had asked permission to send the negroes, when freed, to +the British, the Danish, and the French West Indies; and that the +Spanish-American countries in Central America had also refused his +request_. He could find no places except Hayti and Liberia. He even made +the futile experiment of sending a ship-load to a little island off +Hayti.[32] Hume, in "The Abolitionists," tells us that Mr. Lincoln for a +time _considered setting Texas apart as a home for the negroes_--so much +was he disturbed by this trouble. + + + [32] Within perhaps a year Mr. Lincoln was compelled to bring these + negroes home; they were starving. + +CHAPTER V + +ANTI-ABOLITION AT THE NORTH + + +Southerners, save perhaps a few who were wise enough to foresee what the +consequences might be, were deeply gratified when they read (1835-1838) +of the violent opposition in the North to the desperate schemes of the +Abolitionists. Surely these mobs fairly represented public opinion, and +that public opinion certainly was a strong guaranty to the South of +future peace and security. + +But the Abolitionists themselves were not dismayed. They may have +misread, indeed it is certain they did misunderstand, the signs of the +times. Garrison in his _Liberator_ took the ground--as do his children +in their life of him, written fifty years later--that the great Faneuil +Hall meeting of August 31, 1835, which they themselves declare +represented "the intelligence, the wealth, the culture, and the religion +of Boston," was but an indication of the "pro-slavery" sentiment then +existing. In reality it was just what it purported to be--an +authoritative condemnation, not of the anti-slavery opinions, but of the +avowed purposes and methods of the new sect. The mobbing of Garrison and +the sacking of his printing office in Boston on September 26th, however, +and the lawless violence to Abolitionists that followed the +denunciations of that despised sect by speakers, and by the public +press, in New York, in Philadelphia, in Cincinnati, and elsewhere in the +North, proved disastrous in the extreme. + +While that great wave of anti-Abolition feeling was sweeping over that +whole region from East to West, there were many good people who deluded +themselves with the idea that this new sect with its visionary and +impracticable ideas was being consigned to oblivion, but in what +followed we have a lesson that unfortunately some of our people have not +yet fully learned. Mob law in any portion of our free country, where +there is law with officers to enforce it, is a mistake, a mistake that +is likely to be followed sooner or later by most disastrous results. The +mobs that marked the beginning of our Revolution in 1774 were +legitimate; they meant revolt, revolt against constituted authorities. +But where a mob does not mean the overthrow of government, where it only +means to substitute its own blind will for the arm of the law, not good +but evil--it may be long deferred, but evil eventually--is sure to +follow. When mobs assailed Abolitionists because they threatened the +peace and tranquillity of the country, evil followed swiftly. + +Violent and harsh treatment of these mischievous agitators almost +everywhere in the North, and the heroism with which they endured +ignominy and insult, brought about a revulsion of public sentiment. To +understand the philosophy of this, read two extracts from the writings +of that great, and universally admired, pulpit orator, Dr. William E. +Channing of Boston, the first written sometime prior to that August +meeting: + + The adoption of the common system of agitation by the Abolitionists + has not been justified by success. From the beginning it has + created alarm in the considerate, and strengthened the sympathies + of the Free States with the slave-holder. It has made converts of + a few individuals, but alienated multitudes. _Its influence at the + South has been almost wholly evil. It has stirred up bitter + passions, and a fierce fanaticism, which have shut every ear and + every heart against its arguments and persuasions._ These efforts + are more to be deplored, because the hope of freedom to the slave + lies chiefly in the dispositions of his master. The Abolitionist + proposed indeed to convert the slave-holder; and for this end he + _approached them with vituperation, and exhausted upon them the + vocabulary of reproach_. And he has reaped as he sowed.... Perhaps + (though I am anxious to repel the thought) something has been lost + to the cause of freedom and humanity.[33] + + [33] "Channing's Works," vol. II, ed. 1837, pp. 131-32. + +These were Dr. Channing's opinions of the Abolitionists prior to August, +1835, and he seems to have kept silent for a time after the mobbing that +followed that great Faneuil Hall meeting; but a year later, when many +other things had happened along the same line, he spoke out in an open +letter to James G. Birney, an Abolitionist editor who had been driven +from Cincinnati, and whose press, on which _The Philanthropist_ was +printed, had been broken up. In that letter, p. 157, _supra_, speaking +of course not for himself alone, Dr. Channing says: + + I think it best ... to extend my remarks to the spirit of violence + and persecution which has broken out against the Abolitionists + throughout the whole country. Of their merits and demerits as + Abolitionists I have formerly spoken.... I have expressed my + fervent attachment to the great end to which they are pledged and + at the same time _my disapprobation, to a certain extent, of their + spirit and measures_.... Deliberate, systematic efforts have been + made, _not here and there, but far and wide_, to wrest from its + adherents that _liberty of speech and the press_, which our fathers + asserted in blood, and which our National and State Governments are + pledged to protect as our most sacred right. Its most conspicuous + advocates have been hunted and stoned, its meetings scattered, its + presses broken up, and nothing but the patience, constancy and + intrepidity of its members has saved it from extinction.... They + are _sufferers for the liberty of thought, speech and press; and in + maintaining this liberty, amidst insult and violence, they deserve + a place among its honorable defenders_. + +Still admitting that "their writings have been blemished by a spirit of +intolerance, sweeping censure, and rash, injurious judgment," this great +man now threw all the weight of his influence on the side of the +Abolitionists, because they were _the champions of free speech_. Their +moral worth and steady adherence to their ideas of non-resistance he +pointed to admiringly, and it must always be remembered to their credit +that the private lives of Garrison and his leading co-workers were +irreproachable. Indeed, the unselfish devotion of these agitators and +their high moral character were in themselves a serious misfortune. They +soon attracted a lot of zealots, male and female, who became as reckless +as they were. And these out-and-out fanatics were not themselves +office-seekers. What they feared, they said, was that a "lot of soulless +scamps would jump on to their shoulders to ride into office";[34] and +there really was the great danger, as appeared later. + + [34] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. III, p. 214. + +In the results that followed the mobbing of Abolitionists in the North, +from 1834 to 1836, is to be found another lesson for those voters of +this day who can profit by the teachings of history. The violent +assaults on the Abolitionists by the friends of the Constitution and the +Union constituted an epoch in the lives of these people. It gave them a +footing and a hearing and many converts. + +We have already noted some wonderful and instructive changes in the tide +of events set in motion by the radical teachings of the New +Abolitionists. The churches, as has been shown, to save the country, +North and South, changed their attitude on slavery itself. Dr. Channing, +who had opposed the methods of the Abolitionists, became, as many others +did with him, when mobs had assailed these people, their defender and +eulogist, because they were martyrs for the sake of free speech; and now +we are to see in John Quincy Adams another change, equally notable, a +change that was to make Mr. Adams thenceforward the most momentous +figure, at least during its earlier stages, in the tragic drama that is +the subject of our story. + +Elected to the House of Representatives after the expiration of his term +as President, Mr. Adams was not in sympathy with the methods of the +Abolitionists. Indeed, prior to December 31, 1831, he had shown as +little interest in slavery as he did when on that day in presenting to +the House fifteen petitions against slavery he "deprecated a discussion +which would lead to ill-will, to heart-burning, to mutual hatred ... +without accomplishing anything else."[35] + + [35] Hart's "Slavery and Abolition," p. 256. + +The petitions presented by Mr. Adams were referred to a committee. + +The Southerners had not then become so exasperated as to insist on +Congress refusing to receive Abolition petitions. But multiplying these +petitions was a ready means of provoking the slave-holders, and soon +petitions poured in from many quarters, couched, most of them, in +language, not disrespectful to Congress but provoking to slave-holders. + +Unfortunately, the lower house of Congress on May 26, 1836, which was +while mobs in the North were still trying to put down the Abolitionists, +passed a resolution that all such petitions, etc., should thereafter be +laid upon the table, _without further action_. Adams voted against it as +"a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States." The +Constitution forbids any law "abridging the freedom of speech ... or the +right ... to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The +resolution to lay all anti-slavery petitions on the table without +further action was passed, "with the hope that it might put a stop to +the agitation that seemed to endanger the existence of the Union." But +it had the opposite effect. It soon became known as the "gag +resolution," and was, for years, the centre of the most aggravating +discussions that had, up to that time, ever occurred in Congress. Mr. +Adams in these debates became, without, it seems, ever having been in +full sympathy with the agitators, thenceforward their champion in +Congress, and so continued until the day of his death in 1848. + +The Abolitionists were happy. They were succeeding in their +programme--making the Southern slave-holder odious by exasperating him +into offending Northern sentiment. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A CRISIS AND A COMPROMISE + + +In 1840 there were 200 Abolition societies, with a membership of over +200,000. Agitation had created all over the North a spirit of hostility +to slavery as it existed in the South, and especially to the admission +of new slave States into the Union. In 1840 the struggle over the +application of Texas for admission into the Union had already, for three +years, been mooted. Objections to the admission of the new State were +many, such as: American adventurers had wrongfully wrested control of +the new State from Mexico; boundary lines were unsettled; war with +Mexico would follow, etc.; but chiefly, Texas was a slave State, which +was, in the South, a strong reason for annexation. There were, however, +many sound and unanswerable arguments for the admission of the new +State, just such as had influenced Jefferson in purchasing the +Louisiana territory: Texas was contiguous, her territory and resources +immense. + +On the issue thus joined the first great gun had been fired by Dr. +Channing, who, though still more moderate than some, might now be +classed as an Abolitionist. August 1, 1837, he wrote a long open letter +to Henry Clay against annexation, and in that letter he said: + + To me it seems not only the right but the duty of the Free States, + in case of the annexation of Texas, to say to the slave-holding + States, "We regard this act as the dissolution of the Union; the + essential conditions of the National Compact are violated."[36] + + [36] "Channing's Works," vol. II, ed. 1847, p. 237. + +This was very like the pronunciamento already made by Garrison--"no +union with slavery." + +The underlying reasons that controlled Southern statesmen in this +contest over Texas, and the motives that animated them in the fierce +battles they fought later for new slave States, are thus stated by Mr. +George Ticknor Curtis, of New England.[37] + + [37] "Life of Buchanan," vol. II, p. 280. + + It should in justice be remembered that the effort _at that period + to enlarge the area of slavery was an effort on the part of the + South, dictated by a desire to remain in the Union, and not to + accept the issue of an inherent incompatibility of a political + union between slave-holding and non-slave-holding States_. + +In 1840 the first effort for the annexation of Texas, by treaty, was +defeated in the Senate. + +If the Southerners had been as ready to accept the doctrine of an +inherent incompatibility between slave and free States as were Dr. +Channing and those other Abolitionists who were now declaring for "no +union with slave-holders," they would at once have seceded and joined +Texas; but the South still loved the Union, and strove, down to 1860, +persistently, and often passionately, for power that would enable it to +remain safely in its folds. + +Texas was finally admitted in 1845, after annexation had been passed on +by the people in the presidential election of 1844. In that election +Clay was defeated by the Abolitionists. Because Clay was not +unreservedly against annexation the Abolitionists drew from the Whigs in +New York State enough votes, casting them for Birney, to defeat Clay and +elect Polk; and now Abolitionism was a factor in national politics. + +The two great national parties were the Democrats and the Whigs, the +voters somewhat equally divided between them. For years both parties had +regarded the Abolitionists precisely as did the non-partisan meeting at +Faneuil Hall, in August, 1835--as a band of agitators, organized for the +purpose of interfering with slavery where it was none of their business; +and both parties had meted out to this new and, as they deemed it, +pestilent sect, unstinted condemnation. But at last the voters of this +despised cult had turned a presidential election and were making inroads +in both parties. Half a dozen Northern States, in which in 1835 "no +protest had been made against the fugitive slave law of 1793," had +already passed "personal liberty laws" intended to obstruct and nullify +that law. And now it was "slave-catchers" and not Abolitionists who were +being mobbed in the North. + +Boston had reversed its attitude toward the Abolitionists. On May 31, +1849, the New England Anti-Slavery Society was holding its annual +convention in that very Faneuil Hall where, in 1835, Abolitionism had +been so roundly condemned; and now Wendell Phillips, pointing to one of +two fugitive slaves, who then sat triumphantly on the platform, said, +"amid great applause, ... 'We say that they may make their little laws +in Washington, but that _Faneuil Hall repeals them_, in the name of the +humanity of Massachusetts.'"[38] + + [38] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. III, p. 247. + +Poets headed by Whittier and Longfellow, authors like Emerson and +Lowell, and orators like Theodore Parker and Wendell Phillips, had +joined the agitators, and all united in assaulting the fugitive slave +law. The following, from James Russell Lowell's "Biglow Papers," No. 1, +June, 1840, is a specimen of the literature that was stirring up +hostility against slavery and the "slave-catcher" in the breasts of many +thousands, who were joining in an anti-slavery crusade while disdaining +companionship with the Abolitionists: + + "Ain't it cute to see a Yankee + Take such everlastin' pains + All to get the Devil's Thankee + Helpin' on 'em weld their chains?" + W'y it's jest es clear es figgers, + Clear es one and one makes two, + Chaps that makes black slaves of niggers + Want to make w'ite slaves o' you. + +In the meantime the people of the South, much excited, were resorting to +repression, passing laws to prevent slaves from being taught to read, +and laws, in some States, inhibiting assemblages of slaves above given +numbers, unless some white person were present--all as safeguards +against insurrection. Thus, in 1835, an indictment was found in +Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, against one Williams, who had never been in +Alabama, for circulating there an alleged incendiary document, and +Governor Gayle made requisition on Governor Marcy, of New York, for the +extradition of Williams. Governor Marcy denied the request. The case was +the same as that more recently decided by the Supreme Court of the +United States, when it held that editors of New York and Indiana papers +could not be brought to the District of Columbia for trial. + +The South, all the while clamoring to have the agitators put down, had +by still other means than these contributed to the ever-increasing +excitement in the North. Southerners had mobbed Abolitionists, and +whipped and driven out of the country persons found in possession of +_The Liberator_ or suspected of circulating other incendiary literature. +And violence in the South against the Abolitionists had precisely the +same effect on the Northern mind as the violence against them in the +North had from 1835 to 1838, but there was this difference: the refugee +from the distant South, whether he were an escaped slave or a fleeing +Abolitionist, could color and exaggerate the wrongs he had suffered and +so parade himself as a martyr. While this was true, it was also quite +often true that the outrage committed in the South against the suspect +was real enough--a mob had whipped and expelled him without any trial. +_And this is another of the lessons as to the evil effects of mob law +that crop out all through the history of the anti-slavery crusade. No +good can come from violating the law._ + +In 1848 another presidential election turned on the anti-slavery vote, +this time again in New York State. Anti-slavery Democrats bolted the +Democratic ticket, thus electing General Taylor, the Whig candidate. + +In the canvass preceding this election originated, we are told, the +catch-phrase applied to Cass, the Democratic candidate--"a Northern man +with Southern principles." The phrase soon became quite common, South +and North--"a Southern man with Northern principles," and _vice versa_. + +The invention and use of it in 1848 shows the progress that had been +made in arraying one section of the Union against the other. Later, a +telling piece of doggerel in Southern canvasses, and it must also have +been used North, was + + He wired in and wired out, + Leaving the people all in doubt, + Whether the snake that made the track + Was going North, or coming back. + +Over the admission of California in 1849 there was another battle. +California, 734 miles long, with about 50,000 people (less than the +usual number), and with a constitution improvised under military +government, applied for admission as a State. Southerners insisted on +extending the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific, thereby +making of the new territory two States. The South had been much +embittered by the opposition to the admission of Texas. Texas was, +nearly all of it, below the Missouri Compromise line, and the South +thought it was equitably entitled to come in under that agreement. Its +case, too, differed from that of Missouri, which already belonged to the +United States when it applied for admission as a State. Texas, with all +its vast wealth, was asking to come in without price. + +Another continuing and increasing cause of distraction had been the use +made by Abolitionists of the right of petition. As already shown, +petitions to Congress against slavery had been received without question +till 1836, when Northern conservatives and Southern members, hoping to +abate this source of agitation, had combined to pass a resolution to lay +them on the table, which meant that they were to be no further noticed. +The Abolitionists were so delighted over the indefensible position into +which they had driven the conservatives--the "gag law"--that they +continued, up to the crisis of 1850, with unflagging zeal to hurry in +monster petitions, one after another. The debates provoked by the +presentation of these petitions, and the more and more heated +discussions in Congress of _slavery in the States_, which was properly +_a local and not a national question_, now attracted still wider public +attention. The Abolitionists had almost succeeded in arraying the entire +sections against each other, in making of the South and North two +hostile nations. Professor John W. Burgess, dean of the Faculty of +Political Science in Columbia University, says: "It would not be +extravagant to say that the whole course of the internal history of the +United States from 1836 to 1861 was more largely determined by the +struggle in Congress, over the _Abolition petitions_ and the use of the +mails for the Abolition literature, than anything else."[39] + + [39] "The Middle Period," John W. Burgess, p. 274. + +The South had its full share in the hot debates that took place over +these matters in Congress. Its congressmen were quite as aggressive as +those from the North, and they were accused of being imperious in +manner, when demanding that a stop should be put to Abolition petitions, +and Abolition literature going South in the mails. + +There was another cause of complaint from the South, and this was grave. +By the "two underground railroads" that had been established, slaves, +estimated at 2,000 annually, abducted or voluntarily escaping, were +secretly escorted into or through the free States to Canada. To show how +all this was then regarded by those who sympathized with the +Abolitionists, and how it is still looked upon by some modern +historians, the following is given from Hart's "Abolition and Slavery": + +"The underground railroad was manned chiefly by orderly citizens, +members of churches, and philanthropical citizens. _To law-abiding folk_ +what could be more delightful than the sensation of aiding an oppressed +slave, _exasperating_ a cruel master, and at the same time incurring the +penalties of _defying an unrighteous law_?" + +Southerners at that time thought that conductors on that line were +practising, and readers of the above paragraph will probably think that +Dr. Hart in his attractive rhetoric is now extolling in his history, +"higher law doctrines." + +It is undoubtedly true that, in 1850, a large majority of the Northern +people strongly disapproved of the Abolitionists and their methods. +Modern historians carefully point out the difference between the great +body of Northern anti-slavery people and the Abolitionists. +Nevertheless, here were majorities in eleven Northern States voting for, +and sustaining, the legislators who passed and kept upon the statute +books laws which were intended to enable Southern slaves to escape from +their masters. The enactment and the support of these laws was an attack +upon the constitutional rights of slave-holders; and Southern people +looked upon all the voters who sustained these laws, and all the +anti-slavery lecturers, speakers, pulpit orators, and writers of the +North, as engaged with the Abolitionists in one common crusade against +slavery. From the Southern stand-point a difference between them could +only be made by a Hudibras: + + He was in logic a great critic + Profoundly skilled in analytic, + He could distinguish and divide + A hair 'twixt South and South West side. + +As to how much of the formidable anti-slavery sentiment of that day had +been created by the Abolitionists, we have this opinion of a +distinguished English traveller and observer. Mr. L. W. A. Johnston was +in Washington, in 1850, studying America. He says: + +"Extreme men like Garrison seldom have justice done to them. It is true +they may be impracticable, both as to their measures and their men, but +that unmixed evil is the result of their exertions, all history of +opinion in every country, I think, contradicts. Such ultra men are as +necessary as the more moderate and reasonable advocates of any growing +opinion; and, as _an impartial person_, who never happened to fall in +with one of the party in the course of my tour, I must express my belief +that the present wide diffusion of anti-slavery sentiment in the United +States is, in no small degree, owing to their exertions."[40] + + [40] "Notes on North America," London, 1851, vol. II, p. 486. + +And Professor Smith, of Williams College, speaking of the anti-slavery +feeling in the North in 1850, says: + +"This sentiment of the free States regarding slavery was to a large +degree the result of an agitation for its abolition which had been +active for a score of years (1831-1850) without any positive +results."[41] + + [41] "Parties and Slavery," Smith, pp. 3, 4. + +But no matter what had produced it, the anti-slavery sentiment that +pervaded the North in 1850 boded ill to slavery and to the Constitution, +and the South was bitterly complaining. Congress met in December, 1849, +and was to sit until October, 1850. Lovers of the Union, North and +South, watched its proceedings with the deepest anxiety. The South was +much excited. The continual torrent of abuse to which it was subjected, +the refusal to allow slavery in States to be created from territory in +the South-west that was below the parallel of the Missouri Compromise, +and the complete nullification of the fugitive slave law, seemed to many +to be no longer tolerable, and from sundry sources in that section came +threats of secession. + +In 1849-50 the South was demanding a division of California, an +efficient fugitive slave law, and that the territories of New Mexico and +Arizona should be organized with no restrictions as to slavery. Other +minor demands were unimportant. + +Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, Lewis Cass, and other +conservative leaders came forward and, after long and heated debates in +Congress, the Compromise of 1850 was agreed on. To satisfy the North, +California, as a whole, came in as a free State, and the slave trade was +abolished in the District of Columbia. To satisfy the South, a new and +stringent fugitive slave law was agreed on, and the territories of New +Mexico and Arizona were organized with no restrictions as to slavery. + +In bringing about this compromise, Daniel Webster was, next to Clay, the +most conspicuous figure. He was the favorite son of New England and the +greatest statesman in all the North. On the 7th of March, 1850, Mr. +Webster made one of the greatest speeches of his life on the Compromise +measures. Rising above the sectional prejudices of the hour, he spoke +for the Constitution and the Union. The manner in which he and his +reputation were treated by popular historians in the North, for half a +century afterward, on account of this speech, is the most pathetic and, +at the same time, the most instructive story in the whole history of the +anti-slavery crusade. + +Mr. Webster was under the ban of Northern public opinion for all this +half a century, not because of inconsistency between that speech and his +former avowals, an averment often made and never proven, but because he +was consistent. He stood squarely upon his record, and the venom of the +assaults that were afterward made upon him was just in proportion to the +love and veneration which had been his before he offended. His offence +was that he would not move with the anti-slavery movement.[42] He did +not stand with his section in a sectional dispute. + + [42] McMaster says: "The great statesman was behind the + times."--"Webster," p. 19. + +Henry Clay, old and feeble, had come back into the Senate to render his +last service to his country. He was the author of the Compromise. Daniel +Webster was everywhere known as the champion of the Union. Henry Clay +was known as the "Old Man Eloquent," and he now spoke with all his +old-time fire; but Webster's great speech probably had more influence on +the result. + +Before taking up Mr. Webster's speech his previous attitude toward +slavery must be noted. The purpose of the friends of the Union was, of +course, to effect a compromise that would, if possible, put an end to +sectional strife. Compromise means concession, and a compromise of +political differences, made by statesmen, may involve some concession of +view previously held by those who advocate as well as by those who +accept it. Webster thought his section of the Union should now make +concessions. + +Fanaticism, however, concedes nothing; it never compromises, although +statesmanship does. One of the most notable utterances of Edmund Burke +was: + +"_All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue +and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter._" + +Great statesmen, on great occasions, speak not only to their countrymen +and for the time being, but they speak to all mankind and for all time. +So spoke Burke in that famous sentence when advocating, in the British +Parliament in 1776, "conciliation with America"; and so did Daniel +Webster speak, in the Senate of the United States, on the 7th of March, +1850, for "the Constitution and the Union." If George III and Lord North +had heeded Burke, and if the British government and people, from that +day forth, had followed the wise counsels given in that speech by their +greatest statesman, all the English-speaking peoples of the world, now +numbering over 170,000,000, might have been to-day under one government, +that government commanding the peace of the world. And if all the people +of the United States in 1850 and from that time on, had heeded the words +of Daniel Webster, we should have been spared the bloodiest war in the +book of time; every State of the Union would have been left free to +solve its own domestic problems, and it is not too much to say that +these problems would have been solved in full accord with the advancing +civilization of the age. + +The sole charge of inconsistency against Webster that has in it a shadow +of truth relates to the proposition he made in his speech as to the +"Wilmot proviso." That celebrated proviso was named for David Wilmot, of +Pennsylvania, its author. It provided against slavery in all the +territory acquired from Mexico. The South had opposed the Wilmot proviso +because the territory in question, much of it, was south of the Missouri +Compromise line extended. Mr. Webster had often voted for the Wilmot +proviso, as all knew. In his speech for the Compromise, by which the +South was urged to and did give up its contentions as to the admission +of California, and its contentions as to the slave trade in the District +of Columbia, Webster argued that _the North might forego_ the proviso as +to New Mexico and Arizona for the reason that the proviso was, as to +these territories, _immaterial_. Those territories, he argued, would +never come in as slave States, because the God of nature had so +determined. Climate and soil would forbid. Time vindicated this +argument. In 1861 Charles Francis Adams said, in Congress, that New +Mexico, open to slave-holders and their slaves for more than ten years, +then had only twelve slaves domiciled on the surface of over 200,000 +square miles of her extent.[43] + + [43] "Vindication of Webster," William C. Wilkinson, p. 69. + +Daniel Webster's services to the cause of the Union, the preservation of +which had been the passion of his life, had been absolutely +unparalleled. It is perhaps true that without him Abraham Lincoln and +the armies of the Union in 1861-65 would have been impossible. The sole +and, as he then stated and as time proved, immaterial concession this +champion of the Union now (1850) made for the sake of preserving the +Union was his proposition as to New Mexico and Arizona. + +Henry Clay spoke before Webster. These words were the key-note of Clay's +great speech: "In my opinion the body politic cannot be preserved unless +this agitation, this distraction, this exasperation, which is going on +between the two sections of the country, shall cease." + +The country waited with anxiety to hear from Webster. Hundreds of +suggestions and appeals went to him. Both sides were hopeful.[44] +Anti-slavery people knew his aversion to slavery. He had never +countenanced anti-slavery agitation, but he had voted for the Wilmot +proviso. They knew, too, that he had long been ambitious to be +President, and, carried away by their enthusiasm, they hoped that +Webster would swim along with the tide that was sweeping over the +majority section of the Union. In view of Mr. Webster's past record, +however, it would be difficult to believe that Abolitionists were really +disappointed in him had we not many such proofs as the following stanza +from Whittier's ode, published after the speech: + + Oh! dumb be passing, stormy rage + When he who might + Have lighted up and led his age + Falls back in night! + + [44] McMaster's "Webster." + +The conservatives also were hopeful. They knew that, though Webster had +always been, as an individual, opposed to slavery, he had at all times +stood by the Constitution, as well as the Union. At no time had he ever +qualified or retracted these words in his speech at Niblo's Garden in +1839: "Slavery, as it exists in the States, is beyond the reach of +Congress. It is a concern of the States themselves. They have never +submitted it to Congress, and Congress has no rightful power over it. I +shall concur therefore in _no act_, _no measure_, _no menace_, no +indication of purpose which _shall interfere or threaten to interfere +with the exclusive authority_ of the several States over the subject of +slavery, as it exists within their respective limits. All this appears +to me to be matter of plain imperative duty." + +Nullifying the fugitive slave law was a plain "interference" with the +rights of the slave States. + +Mr. Webster's intent, when he spoke on the Compromise measures, is best +explained by his own words, on June 17, while these measures were still +pending: "Sir, my object is peace. My object is reconciliation. My +purpose is not to make up a case _for the North_ or a case _for the +South_. My object is not to continue useless and irritating +controversies. I am against agitators, North and South, and all narrow +local contests. I am an American, and I know no locality but America." + +In his speech made on the 7th of March he dwelt at length on existing +conditions, on the attitude of the North toward the fugitive slave law, +and argued fully the questions involved in the "personal liberty" laws +passed by Northern States. Referring to the complaints of the South +about these, he said: "In that respect _the South, in my judgment, is +right and the North is wrong_. Every member of every Northern +legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country, +to support the Constitution of the United States; and the article of the +Constitution which says to these States that they shall deliver up +fugitives from service _is as binding in honor and conscience as any +other article_. _No man fulfils his duty in any legislature who sets +himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes, from this constitutional +obligation._" + +And further on he said: "Then, sir, there are the Abolition societies, +of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard to which I have very +clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. _I think their +operations for the last twenty years have produced nothing good or +valuable.... I cannot but see what mischief their interference with the +South has produced._" + +In these statements is the substance of Webster's offending. + +Webster's speech was followed, on the 11th of March, by the speech of +Senator Seward, of New York, in the same debate. Quoting the fugitive +slave provision of the Federal Constitution, Mr. Seward said: "This is +from the Constitution of the United States in 1787, and the parties were +the Republican States of the Union. The law of nations _disavows such +compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of +freemen, repudiates them_."[45] The people of the North, instead of +following Webster, chose to follow Seward, the apostle of a _law higher +than the Constitution_; and when, ten years later, it appeared to them +that the whole North had given in its adhesion to the "higher law" +doctrine, the people of eleven Southern States seceded, and put over +themselves in very substance the Constitution that Seward had flouted +and Webster had pleaded for in vain. + + [45] _Congressional Globe_, 31st Congress, 1st session, Appendix, p. + 263. + +Anti-slavery enthusiasts in the North generally, and Abolitionists +especially, in their comments on Webster's speech scouted the idea that +the preservation of the Union depended upon the faithful execution of +the fugitive slave law or the cessation of anti-slavery agitation. +"What," said Theodore Parker, "cast off the North! They set up for +themselves! Tush! Tush! Fear boys with bugs!... I think Mr. Webster knew +there was no danger of a dissolution of the Union."[46] + + [46] "Vindication of Webster," William C. Wilkinson, p. 191. + +The immediate effect of the speech was wonderful; congratulations poured +in upon Mr. Webster from conservative classes in every quarter, and he +must have felt gratified to know that he had contributed greatly to the +enactment of measures that, for a time, had some effect in allaying +sectional strife. But the revilings of the Abolitionists prevailed, and +it turned out that Daniel Webster, great as he was, had undertaken a +task that was too much even for him. His enemies struck out boldly at +once: and years afterward, when the anti-slavery movement that Webster's +appeals could not arrest had culminated in secession, and when the +Union had been saved by arms, the triumphant hosts of the anti-slavery +crusade all but succeeded in writing Daniel Webster down permanently in +the history of his country as an apostate from principle for the sake of +an office he did not get. Here is their verdict, which Mr. Lodge, a +biographer of Webster, passes on into history: + +"The _popular verdict_ has been given against the 7th of March speech, +_and that verdict has passed into history_. Nothing can be said or done +which will alter the fact that the people of this country, _who +maintained and saved the Union, have passed judgment on Mr. Webster_, +and condemned what he said on the 7th of March as _wrong in principle +and mistaken in policy_." + +Here are specimens of the assaults that were made on Webster after his +speech. They are selected from among many given by one of his +biographers.[47] + + [47] McMaster's "Webster," p. 316 _et seq._ + +"'Webster,' said Horace Mann, 'is a fallen star! Lucifer descended from +Heaven.'... 'Webster,' said Sumner, 'has placed himself in the dark +list of apostates.' When Whittier named him Ichabod, and mourned for him +in verse as one dead, he did but express the feeling of half New +England: + + 'Let not the land once proud of him + Mourn for him now, + Nor brand with deeper shame his dim + Dishonored brow. + + * * * * * + + Then pay the reverence of old days + To his dead fame! + Walk backward with averted gaze + And hide his shame.'" + +After much more to the same effect, Professor McMaster proceeds: "The +attack by the press, the _expressions of horror_ that rose from New +England, Webster felt keenly, but the absolute isolation in which he was +left by his New England colleagues cut him to the quick."[48] + + [48] Professor McMaster in the chapter preceding that containing these + extracts, has collected much evidence to show that Webster aspired to be + President, and the biographer entitles the chapter, "Longing for the + Presidency," apparently the author's clod on the grave of a buried + reputation. + +On Mr. Webster's speech, its purpose and effect, we have this opinion +from Mr. Lodge: + +"The speech, if exactly defined, is in reality a powerful effort, not +for a compromise, or for the fugitive slave law, or for any other one +thing, _but to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement_, and in that way +_put an end to the danger which threatened the Union and restore harmony +to the jarring sections_." + +And then he adds: + +"_It was a mad project. Mr. Webster might as well have attempted to stay +the incoming tide at Marshfield with a rampart of sand, as to check the +anti-slavery movement with a speech._" + +To undertake at this time to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement by +holding up the Constitution was indeed useless. + +Seward, who had spoken for the "higher law," was riding on the tide of +anti-slavery sentiment that was submerging "the Sage of Marshfield," who +had stood for the Constitution. Seward's reputation, in the years +following, went steadily up, while Webster's was going down. Webster +died, in dejection, in 1852. + +Seward, at Rochester, in 1854, later on in the same crusade, made +another famous declaration--there was an "irrepressible conflict between +slavery and freedom." The conflict was "irrepressible," as Seward well +knew; and this was simply and solely because the anti-slavery crusade +could not be suppressed. Clay and Webster, now both dead and gone, had +tried it in vain. Every one knew that if, in 1850, or at any other time, +the anti-slavery hosts had halted, and asked for, or consented to, +peace, they could have had it at once. + +Mr. Lodge, in the following paragraph, seems to have almost made up his +mind to defend Webster. He says: "What most shocked the North were his +utterances in regard to the fugitive slave law. There can be no doubt +that, _under the Constitution_, the South had a _perfect right_ to claim +the extradition of fugitive slaves. The legal _argument to support that +right was excellent_." This would seem to justify the speech in that +regard. "But," Mr. Lodge adds, "the Northern people could not feel that +it was _necessary_ for _Daniel Webster_ to make it." They wanted him to +be sectional or to hold his tongue. Then Mr. Lodge goes on to say: "The +fugitive slave law was in _absolute conflict with the awakened +conscience and moral sentiment of the North_." + +The conscience of _the North_ at that time, Mr. Lodge means, was a +_higher law_ than the _Constitution_; and Webster's "excellent +argument," therefore, fell on deaf ears. + +No American historian stands higher as an authority than Mr. Rhodes. He +says on page 161, vol. I, of his "History of the United States," +published in 1892: "_Until the closing years of our century a +dispassionate judgment could not be made of Webster_; but we see now +that in the war of secession his principles were mightier than those of +Garrison. It was not 'No Union with slave-holders,' but _Liberty and +Union_ that won." + +This tribute to services Webster had rendered to the Union in his great +speech in 1850, in which he advocated "Liberty and Union, now and +forever," exactly as he was advocating it in 1830, is just. How pathetic +that the historian was impelled also to record the fact, in the same +sentence, that for nearly half a century partisan prejudice had rendered +it impossible to form a dispassionate judgment of him who had pleaded in +vain for the Union without war! + +After an able analysis of his "7th of March speech," and a discussion of +his record, in which he paralleled Webster and Edmund Burke, Mr. Rhodes +declares: "His dislike of slavery was strong, but his love of the Union +was stronger, and the more powerful motive outweighed the other, for he +believed that _the crusade against slavery had arrived at a point where +its further prosecution was hurtful to the Union_. As has been said of +Burke, 'He changed his front but he never changed his ground.'"[49] + + [49] _Ib._, p. 160. + +Daniel Webster's name and its place in history may be likened to a giant +oak, a monarch of the forest, that, while towering high above all +others, was stripped of its branches; for a time it stood, a rugged +trunk, robbed of its glory by a cyclone; but its roots were deep down in +the rich earth; the storm is passing away; the tree has put out buds +again; now its branches are stretching out once more into the clear +reaches of the upper air. + +Mr. Rhodes seems to be the first historian of note to do justice to +Daniel Webster and the great speech which, McMaster takes pains to +inform us, historians have written down as his "7th of March speech," in +spite of the fact that Mr. Webster himself entitled it "The +Constitution and the Union." + +Other historians besides Mr. Rhodes have come to the rescue of Webster's +speech for "the Constitution and the Union." Mr. John Fiske says of it +in a volume (posthumous) published in 1907: "So far as Mr. Webster's +moral attitude was concerned, although he was not prepared for the +bitter hostility that his speech provoked in many quarters, he must +nevertheless have known it was quite as likely to injure him at the +North as to gain support for him in the South, and his resolute adoption +of a policy that he regarded as national rather than sectional was +really an instance of high moral courage."[50] + + [50] "Daniel Webster and the Sentiment of Union," John Fiske, "Essays + Historical and Literary," pp. 408-9. + +Mr. William C. Wilkinson has recently written an able "Vindication of +Daniel Webster," and, after a conclusive argument on that branch of his +subject, he says: "Webster's consistency stands like a rock on the shore +after the fretful waves are tired with beating upon it in vain."[51] + + [51] "Daniel Webster: A Vindication," p. 47. + +Mr. E. P. Wheeler, concluding a masterly sketch of Daniel Webster, +setting forth his services as statesman and expounder of the +Constitution, and not deigning to notice the partisan charges against +him, concludes with these words: + +"Great men elevate and ennoble their countrymen. In the glory of Webster +we find the glory of our whole country." + +The story of Daniel Webster and his great speech in 1850 has been told +at some length because it is instructive. The historians who had set +themselves to the task of upholding the idea that it was the +aggressiveness of the South, during the controversy over slavery, and +not that of the North, that brought on secession and war, could not make +good their contention while Daniel Webster and his speech for "the +Constitution and the Union" stood in their way. They, therefore, wrote +the great statesman "down and out," as they conceived. But Webster and +that speech still stand as beacon lights in the history of that crusade. +The attack came from the North. The South, standing for its +constitutional rights in the Union, was the conservative party. +Southern leaders, it is true, were, during the controversy over +slavery, often aggressive, but they were on the defensive-aggressive, +just as Lee was when he made his campaign into Pennsylvania for the +purpose of stopping the invasion of his own land; and the South lost in +her political campaign just for the same reason that Lee lost in his +Gettysburg campaign: numbers and resources were against her. "The stars +in their courses fought against Sisera." + +Mr. Webster in his great speech for "the Constitution and the Union," as +became a great statesman pleading for conciliation, measured the terms +in which he condemned "personal liberty" laws and Abolitionism. But +afterward, irritated by the attacks made upon him, he naturally spoke +out more emphatically. McMaster quotes several expressions from his +speeches and letters replying to these assaults, and says: "His hatred +of Abolitionists and Free-soilers grew stronger and stronger. To him +these men were a 'band of sectionalists, narrow of mind, wanting in +patriotism, without a spark of national feeling, and quite ready to see +the Union go to pieces if their own selfish ends were gained.'" Such, +if this is a fair summing up of his views, was Webster's final opinion +of those who were carrying on the great anti-slavery crusade.[52] + + [52] McMaster's "Webster," p. 340. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +EFFORTS FOR PEACE + + +The desire for peace in 1850 was wide-spread. Union loving people, North +and South, hoped that the Compromise would result in a cessation of the +strife that had so long divided the section; and the election of +Franklin Pierce, in 1852, as President, on a platform strongly approving +that Compromise, was promising. But anti-slavery leaders, instead of +being convinced by such arguments as those of Webster, were deeply +offended by the contention that legislators, in passing personal liberty +laws, had violated their oaths to support the Constitution. They were +angered also by the presumptuous attempt to "arrest the whole +anti-slavery movement." + +The new fugitive slave law was stringent; it did not give jury trial; it +required bystanders to assist the officers in "slave-catching," etc. For +these and other reasons the law was assailed as unconstitutional. All +these contentions were overruled by the Supreme Court when a case +eventually came before it. The court decided that the act was, in all +its provisions, fully authorized by the Constitution.[53] But in their +present mood, no law that was efficient would have been satisfactory to +the multitudes of people, by no means all "Abolitionists," who had +already made up their minds against the "wicked" provision of the +Constitution that required the delivery of fugitive slaves. This +deep-seated feeling of opposition to the return to their masters of +escaping slaves was soon to be wrought up to a high pitch by a novel +that went into nearly every household throughout the North--"Uncle Tom's +Cabin." On its appearance the poet Whittier, who had so ferociously +attacked Webster in the verses quoted in the last chapter, "offered up +thanks for the fugitive slave law, for it gave us 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'" + + [53] Ableman _v._ Boothe, 21 How., 506. + +Rufus Choate, a celebrated lawyer and Whig leader, is reported to have +said of "Uncle Tom's Cabin": "That book will make two millions of +Abolitionists." Drawing, as it did, a very dark picture of slavery, it +aroused sympathy for the escaping slave and pictured in glowing colors +the dear, sweet men and women who dared, for his sake, the perils of the +road in the darkness of night and all the dangers of the law. Mrs. Stowe +was _making heroes of law-breakers, preaching the higher law_. + +Mrs. Stowe declared she had not written the book for political effect; +she certainly did not anticipate the marvellous results that followed +it. That book made vast multitudes of its readers ready for the new +sectional and anti-slavery party that was to be organized two years +after its appearance. It was the most famous and successful novel ever +written. It was translated into every language that has a literature, +and has been more read by American people than any other book except the +Bible. As a picture of what was conceivable under the laws relating to +slavery there was a basis for it. Though there were laws limiting the +master's power, cruelty was nevertheless possible. + +Here, then, Mrs. Stowe's imagination had full scope. Her book, however, +has in it none of the strident harshness, none of the purblind ferocity +of Garrison, in whose eyes every slave-holder was a fiend. "Uncle Tom's +Cabin" assailed a system; it did not assault personally, as the +arch-agitator did, every man and woman to whom slaves had come, whether +by choice or chance. Light and shadow and the play of human nature made +Mrs. Stowe's picture as attractive in many of its pages as it was +repulsive and unfair in others. Mrs. Shelby was a type of many a noble +mistress, a Christian woman, and when financial misfortunes compelled +the sale of the Shelby slaves and the separation of families, we have +not only what might have been, but what sometimes was, one of the evils +of slavery, which, by reason of the prevailing agitation, the humanity +of the age could not remedy. But Mrs. Stowe's slave-master, Legree, was +impossible. The theory was inconceivable that it was cheaper to work to +death in seven years a slave costing a thousand dollars, than to work +him for forty years. Millions of our people, however, have accepted +"Uncle Tom" as a fact, and have wept over him; they have accepted also +as a fact the monster Legree. + +"Uncle Tom's Cabin" lives to-day as a classic on book shelves and as a +popular play. The present generation get most of their opinions about +slavery as it was in the South from its pages, and not one in ten +thousand of those who read it ever thinks of the inconsistency between +the picture of slavery drawn there and that other picture, which all the +world now knows of--the Confederate soldier away in the army, his wife +and children at home faithfully protected by slaves--not a case of +violence, not even a single established case, during four years, +although there were four millions of negroes in the South, of that crime +against white women that, after the reconstruction had demoralized the +freedmen, became so common in that section. + +The unwavering fidelity during the four years of war of so many slaves +to the families of their absent masters, and the fact that those who, +during that war, left their homes to seek their freedom invariably went +without doing any vengeful act, is a phenomenon that speaks for itself. +It tells of kindly relations between master and slave. It is not to be +denied that where the law gave so much power to the master there were +individual instances of cruelty, nor is it supposable that there were +not many slaves who were revengeful; but at the same time there was, +quite naturally, among slaves who were all in like case, a more clannish +and all-pervading public opinion than could have been found elsewhere. +It was that all-pervading and rigid standard of kindly feeling among the +slaves to their masters that made the rule universal--fidelity toward +the master's family, at least to the extent of inflicting no injury. + +What a surprise to many this conduct of the slave was may be gathered +from a telling Republican speech made by Carl Schurz during the campaign +of 1860.[54] A devotee of liberty, recently a revolutionist in his +native land, and, like other foreigners, disregarding all constitutional +obstacles, Mr. Schurz had naturally espoused the cause of anti-slavery +in this country. He had absorbed the views of his political associates +and now contended that secession was an empty threat and that secession +was impossible. "The mere anticipation of a negro insurrection," he +said, "will paralyze the whole South." And, after ridiculing the alarm +created by the John Brown invasion, the orator said that in case of a +war between the South and the North, "they will not have men enough to +quiet their friends at home; what will they have to oppose to the enemy? +Every township will want its home regiment; every plantation its +garrison; and what will be left for its field army?" + + [54] Fite, "Presidential Campaign of 1860," p. 243. + +Slavery in the South eventually proved to be, instead of a weakness, an +element of strength to the Confederates, and Mr. Lincoln finally felt +himself compelled to issue his proclamation of emancipation as a +military necessity--the avowed purpose being to deprive the Confederates +of the slaves who were by their labor supporting their armies in the +field. + +The faithfulness during the war of the slave to his master has been a +lesson to the Northerner, and it has been a lesson, too, to the +Southerner. It argues that the danger of bloody insurrections was +perhaps not as great as had been apprehended where incendiary +publications were sent among them. That danger, however, did exist, and +if the fear of it was exaggerated, it was nevertheless real, and was +traceable to the Abolitionists. + +The rights of the South in the territories had now been discussed for +years and Stephen A. Douglas, a Democratic senator from Illinois, had +reached the conclusion that under the Constitution Southerner and +Northerner had exactly the same right to carry their property, whatever +it might be, into the territories, which had been purchased with the +common blood and treasure of both sections, a view afterward sustained +by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case. +Douglas, "entirely of his own motion,"[55] introduced, and Congress +passed, such a bill--the Kansas-Nebraska act. The new act replaced the +Missouri Compromise. This the Southerners considered had been a dead +letter for years. Every "personal liberty" law passed by a Northern +State was a violation of it. + + [55] "Parties and Slavery," Theodore Clarke Smith, professor of history + in Williams College, p. 96. + +Ambition was now playing its part in the sectional controversy. Douglas +was a Democrat looking to the presidency and had here made a bid for +Southern support. On the other hand was Seward, an "old line Whig," +aspiring to the same office. The South had been the dominant element in +national politics and the North was getting tired of it. Seward's idea +was to organize all the anti-slavery voters and to appeal at the same +time to the pride and jealousy of the North as a section. + +The immediate effect of the Kansas-Nebraska act was to aggravate +sectionalism. It opened up the territory of Kansas, allowing it to come +into the Union with or without slavery, as it might choose. Slave State +and free State adventurers rushed into the new territory and struggled, +and even fought, for supremacy. The Southerners lost. Their resources +could not match the means of organized anti-slavery societies, and the +result was an increase, North and South, of sectional animosity. + +The overwhelming defeat of the old Whig party in 1852 presaged its +dissolution. Until that election, both the Whig and Democratic parties +had been national, each endeavoring to hold and acquire strength, North +and South, and each combating, as best it could, the spirit of +sectionalism that had been steadily growing in the North, and South as +well, ever since the rise of Abolitionism. Both these old parties had +watched with anxiety the increase of anti-slavery sentiment in the +North. Both parties feared it. Alliance with the anti-slavery North +would deprive a party of support South and denationalize it. For years +prior to 1852 the drift of Northern voters who were opposed to slavery +had been as to the two national parties toward the Whigs, and the +tendency of conservative Northerners had been toward the Democratic +party. Thus the great body of the Whig voters in the North had become +imbued with anti-slavery sentiments, and now, with no hope of victory as +a national party and left in a hopeless minority, the majority of that +old party in that section were ready to join a sectional party when it +should be formed two years later. William H. Seward was still a Whig +when he made in the United States Senate his anti-slavery "higher law" +speech of 1850. + +The Kansas-Nebraska act was a political blunder. The South, on any +dispassionate consideration, could not have expected to make Kansas a +slave State. The act was a blunder, too, because it gave the opponents +of the Democratic party a plausible pretext for the contention, which +they put forth then and which has been persisted in till this day, that +the new Republican party, immediately thereafter organized, was called +into existence by, and only by, the Kansas-Nebraska act. + +As far back as 1850 it was clear that a new party, based on the +anti-slavery sentiment that had been created by twenty years of +agitation, was inevitable. Mr. Rhodes, speaking of conditions then, +says: "It was, moreover, obvious to an astute politician like Seward, +and probably to others, that a dissolution of parties was imminent; that +to oppose the extension of slavery, _the different anti-slavery elements +must be organized as a whole_; it might be called Whig or some other +name, but it would be based on the principle of the Wilmot +proviso"[56]--the meaning of which was, no more slave States. + + [56] "Rhodes," vol. I, p. 192. + +Between 1850 and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854, new +impulse had been given anti-slavery sentiment by fierce assaults on the +new fugitive slave law and, as has been seen, by "Uncle Tom's Cabin." +The Kansas-Nebraska act did serve as a cry for the rallying of all +anti-slavery voters. That was all. It was a drum-call, in answer to +which soldiers already enlisted fell into ranks, under a new banner. Any +other drum-call--the application of another slave State for admission +into the Union--would have served quite as well. Thus the Republican +party came into existence in 1854. Mr. Rhodes sums up the reason for the +existence of the new party and what it subsequently accomplished in the +following pregnant sentence, "The moral agitation had accomplished its +work, the cause (of anti-slavery) ... was to be consigned to a political +party that brought to a successful conclusion the movement begun by the +moral sentiment of the community,"[57]--which successful conclusion was, +of course, _the freeing of the slaves by a successful war_. + + [57] Vol. I, p. 66. + +For a time the new Republican party had a powerful competitor in another +new organization. This was the American or Know-Nothing party. This +other aspirant for power made an honest effort to revitalize the old +Whig party under a new name and, by gathering in all the conservatives +North and South, to put an end to sectionalism. Its signal failure +conveys an instructive lesson. After many and wide-spread rumors of its +coming, the birth of the American party was formally announced in 1854. +It had been organized in secret and was bound together with oaths and +passwords; its members delighted to mystify inquirers by refusing to +answer questions, and soon they got the name of "Know-Nothings." The +party had grown out of the "Order of the Star Spangled Banner," +organized in 1850 to oppose the spread of Catholicism and indiscriminate +immigration--the two dangers that were said to threaten American +institutions. + +The American party made its appeal: For the Union and against +sectionalism; for Protestantism, the faith of the Fathers, against +Catholicism that was being imported by foreigners; its shibboleth was +"America for the Americans." + +The Americans or Know-Nothings everywhere put out in 1854 full tickets +and showed at once surprising strength. In the fall elections of that +year they polled over one-fourth of all the votes in New York, +two-fifths in Pennsylvania, and over two-thirds in Massachusetts, where +they made a clean sweep of the State and Federal offices.[58] + + [58] Smith, "Parties and Slavery," pp. 118-20. + +They struck directly at sectionalism by exacting of their adherents the +following oath: + +"You do further swear that you will not vote for any one ... whom you +know or believe to be in favor of a dissolution of the Union ... or who +is endeavoring to produce that result." + +The effect of this oath at the South was almost magical. The Whig party +there was speedily absorbed by the Americans, and Southern Democrats by +thousands joined the new party that promised to save the Union.[59] But +the attitude of the Northern and Southern members of the American party +soon became fundamentally different. Southerners saw their Northern +allies in Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts passing "personal liberty" +laws.[60] + + [59] The writer's father, who had been a nullifier and a lifelong + follower of Calhoun, joined the Know-Nothings in the hope of saving the + Union, but withdrew when he found that in the North the party was not + true to its Union pledges. Here was a typical case of Southern + unwillingness to resort to secession. + + [60] _Ib._, pp. 138-9. + +The Know-Nothings were strong enough in the elections of 1855 to +directly check the progress of the new Republican party; but the +American party, though it succeeded in electing a Speaker of the +national House of Representatives in February, 1856, soon afterward went +down to defeat. Even though led by such patriots as John Bell, of +Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, it could not stand +against the storm of passion that had been aroused by the crusade +against slavery. + +There was a fierce and protracted struggle between the pro-slavery and +anti-slavery men in Kansas for possession of the territorial government. +Rival constitutions were submitted to Congress, and the debates over +these were extremely bitter. In their excitement the Democrats again +delighted their adversaries by committing what now seems to have been +another blunder. They advocated the admission of Kansas under the +"Lecompton Constitution." A review of the conflicting evidence appears +to show that the Southerners were fairly outnumbered in Kansas and that +the Lecompton Constitution did not express the will of the people.[61] + + [61] Theodore Clarke Smith, "Parties and Slavery." + +While "the war in Kansas" was going on, Charles Sumner, an Abolitionist +from Massachusetts, delivered in the Senate a speech of which he wrote +his friends beforehand: "I shall pronounce the most thorough Philippic +ever delivered in a legislative body." He was a classical scholar. _His +purpose was to stir up in the North a greater fury against the South +than Demosthenes had aroused in Athens against its enemies, the +Macedonians._ His speech occupied two days, May 28 and 29, 1855. At its +conclusion, Senator Cass, of Michigan, arose at once and pronounced it +"the most un-American and unpatriotic that ever grated on the ears of +this high body." The speech attacked, without any sufficient excuse, the +personal character of an absent senator, Butler of South Carolina, a +gentleman of high character and older than Sumner. Among other +unfounded charges, it accused him of falsehood. Preston Brooks, a +representative from South Carolina, attacked Sumner in the Senate +chamber during a recess of that body and beat him unmercifully with a +cane. The provocation was bitter, indeed, but Brooks's assault was +unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the exasperated South applauded it, while +the North glorified Sumner as a martyr for free speech. + + * * * * * + +In less than two years the new Republican party had absorbed all the +Abolition voters, and in the election of 1856 was in the field with its +candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency--Fremont and +Dayton--upon a platform declaring it the duty of Congress to abolish in +the territories "those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery." + +Excitement during that election was intense. Rufus Choate, the great +Massachusetts lawyer, theretofore a Whig, voiced the sentiment of +conservatives when he said it was the "duty of every one to prevent the +madness of the times from working its maddest act--the permanent +formation and the actual present triumph of a party which knows one-half +of America only to hate it," etc. + +Senator Toombs, of Georgia, said: "The object of Fremont's friends is +the conquest of the South. I am content that they shall own us when they +conquer us." + +The Democrats elected Buchanan; Democrats 174 electoral votes; +Republicans 74, all Northern; and the Know-Nothings, combined with a +remnant of Whigs, 8. + +The work of sectionalism was nearly completed. + +The extremes to which some of the Southern people now resorted show the +madness of the times. They encouraged filibustering expeditions to +capture Cuba and Nicaragua. These wild ventures were absolutely +indefensible. They had no official sanction and were only spontaneous +movements, but they met with favor from the Southern public, the +outgrowth of a feeling that, if these countries should be captured and +annexed as slave States, the South could the better, by their aid, +defend its rights in the Union. _The Wanderer_ and one or two other +vessels, contrary to the laws of the United States, imported slaves +from Africa, and when the participants were, some of them, indicted, +Southern juries absolutely refused to convict. + + "Judgment had fled to brutish beasts, + And men had lost their reason." + +When later the Southern States had seceded and formed a government of +their own their constitution absolutely prohibited the slave traffic. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +INCOMPATIBILITY OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM + + +That it was possible for slave States and free States to coexist under +our Federal Constitution was the belief of its framers and of most of +our people down to 1861. The first to announce the absolute +impossibility of such coexistence seems to have been William Lloyd +Garrison. In 1840, at Lynn, Massachusetts, the Essex County Anti-Slavery +Society adopted this resolution, offered by him: + +"That freedom and slavery are natural and irreconcilable enemies; that +it is morally impossible for them to endure together in the same nation, +and that the existence of the one can only be secured by the destruction +of the other."[62] + + [62] Garrison's "Garrison." + +Garrison's remedy was disunion. Near that time his paper's motto was "No +Union with Slave-Holders." + +The next to announce the idea of the incompatibility of slave States and +free States seems to have been one who did not dream of disunion. No +such thought was in the mind of Abraham Lincoln when, in a speech at +Springfield, Illinois, June 15, 1858, he said: + +"_A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government +cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the +Union to be divided. It will become one thing or the other._ Either the +opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it +where the public mind will rest in the belief that _it is in the course +of ultimate extinction_; or its advocates will push it forward until it +shall become alike lawful in all the States--old as well as new--North +as well as South." + +When the Southerners read that statement they concluded that, as Mr. +Lincoln knew very well that the South could not, if it would, force +slavery on the North, he was announcing the intention of his party to +place slavery "in course of ultimate extinction," constitution or no +constitution. + +Senator Seward, at Rochester, New York, some weeks later, reannounced +the doctrine, declaring that the contest was "an irrepressible conflict +between opposing and enduring forces; and it means that the United +States _must and will_, sooner or later, become either an entirely +slave-holding nation or entirely a free labor nation." + +The utterances of Lincoln and Seward were distinctly radical. The +question was, would this radical idea ultimately dominate the Republican +party? + +Less than eighteen months after the announcement in 1858 of the doctrine +of the "irrepressible conflict," John Brown raided Virginia to incite +insurrections. With a few followers and 1,300 stands of arms for the +slaves who were to join him, he captured the United States arsenal at +Harper's Ferry. Only a few slaves came to him and, after a brief +struggle, with some bloodshed, Brown was captured, tried by a jury, and +hanged. + +In the South the excitement was intense; the horror and indignation in +that section it is impossible to describe. Brown was already well known +to the public. He was not a lunatic. Not long before this, in Kansas, +"at the head of a small group of men, including two of his sons and a +son-in-law, he went at night down Pottowattamie Creek, stopping at three +houses. The men who lived in them were well known pro-slavery men; they +seem to have been rough characters; their most specific offence +(according to Sanborn, Brown's biographer and eulogist) was the driving +from his home, by violent threats, of an inoffensive old man. John Brown +and his party went down the creek, called at one after the other of +three houses, took five men away from their wives and children, and +deliberately shot one and hacked the others to death with swords."[63] + + [63] "The Negro and the Nation," George Spring Merriam, p. 120. + +Quite a number of people, some of them men of eminence in the North, +aided Brown in his enterprise. Among the men of repute were Gerrit +Smith, a former candidate for the presidency; and Theodore Parker, Dr. +Howe, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, of Boston, who were all members of +a "secret committee to collect money and arms for the expedition." With +them was F. S. Sanborn, who has since the war vauntingly revealed the +scheme in his "Life of John Brown."[64] + + [64] Sanborn's "Life of John Brown," p. 466. + +Sanborn intimates that Henry Wilson, subsequently vice-president, was +more or less privy to the design.[65] At various places in the North +church bells were tolled on the day of John Brown's execution; meetings +were held and orators extolled him as a martyr. Emerson, the greatest +thinker in all that region, declared that if John Brown was hanged he +would glorify the gallows as Jesus glorified the cross; and now many +Southern men who loved the Union reluctantly concluded that separation +was inevitable. John Bell, of Tennessee, Union candidate for President +in 1860, is said to have cried like a child when he heard of Brown's +raid. + + [65] _Ib._, p. 515. + +The great body of the Northern people condemned John Brown's expedition +without stint. Edward Everett, voicing the opinion of all who were +really conservative, said of Brown's raid, in a speech at Faneuil Hall, +that its design was to "let loose the hell hounds of a servile +insurrection, and to bring on a struggle which, for magnitude, +atrocity, and horror, would have stood alone in the history of the +world." + +But they who had been preaching the "irrepressible conflict," they whom +public opinion might hold responsible, did not feel precisely as Mr. +Everett did. They were concerned about political consequences, as +appears from a letter written somewhat later during the State canvass in +New York by Horace Greeley to Schuyler Colfax. Horace Greeley afterward +proved himself in many ways a broad-minded, magnanimous man, but now he +wrote: "Do not be downhearted about the old John Brown business. Its +present effect is bad and throws a heavy load on us in this State ... +_but the ultimate effect is to be good.... It will drive the slave power +to new outrages.... It presses on the irrepressible conflict_."[66] + + [66] "History of United States," Rhodes, vol. I. + +The fact that such a man as Horace Greeley was taking comfort because +that outrage would "drive the slave power to new outrages"[67] throws a +strong side-light on the tactics of the anti-slavery leaders. They were +following Garrison. Garrison, the father of the Abolitionists, had +begun his campaign against slave-holders by "exhausting upon them the +vocabulary of abuse," and he had shown "a genius for infuriating his +antagonists."[68] The new party--his successor and beneficiary, was now +felicitating itself that ultimate good would come, even from the John +Brown raid. It would further their policy of "_driving the slave power +to new outrages_." + + [67] Channing. + + [68] Hart. + +People at the North, conservatives and all, held their breath for a time +after Harper's Ferry. Then the crusade went on, in the press, on the +rostrum, and from the pulpit, with as much virulence as ever. No +assertion was too extravagant for belief, provided only its tendency was +to disparage the Southern white man or win sympathy for the negro. From +the noted "Brownlow and Pryne's Debate," Philadelphia (_Lippincott_), we +take the following as a specimen of the abuse a portion of the Northern +press was then heaping on the Southern people. Brownlow quotes from the +_New York Independent_ of November, 1856: + +"The mass of the population of the Atlantic Coast of the slave region +of the South are descended from the transported convicts and outcasts of +Great Britain.... Oh, glorious chivalry and hereditary aristocracy of +the South! Peerless first families of Virginia and Carolina!... Progeny +of the highwaymen, and horse-thieves and sheep-stealers, and +pick-pockets of Old England!" + +The South was not to be outdone, and here was a retort from _De Bow's +Review_, July, 1858: + +"The basis, framework, and controlling influence of Northern sentiment +is Puritanism--the old Roundhead, rebel refuse of England, which ... has +ever been an unruly sect of Pharisees ... the worst bigots on earth and +the meanest of tyrants when they have the power to exercise it."[69] + + [69] Theodore Clarke Smith, "Parties and Slavery," p. 303. + +And the non-slave-holder of the South did not escape from the pitiless +pelting of the storm. He was sustaining the slave-holder, and this was +not only an offence but a puzzle. + +It became quite common in the North for anti-slavery writers to classify +the non-slave-holding agricultural classes of the South as "poor +whites," thus distinguishing them from the slave-holders; and the idea +is current even now in that section that as a class the lordly +slave-holder despised his poor white fellow-citizen. The average +non-slave-holding Southern agriculturist, whether farming for himself or +for others, was a type of man that no one who knew him, least of all the +Southern slave-holder, his neighbor and political ally, could despise. +Educated and uneducated, these people were independent voters and honest +jurors, the very backbone of Southern State governments that always will +be notable in history for efficiency, purity, and economy. + +This class of voters, however, came in for much abuse in the literature +of the crusade. They were all lumped together as "poor whites," +sometimes as "poor white trash," and the belief was inculcated that +their imperious slave-holding neighbors applied that term to them. "Poor +white trash," on its face, is "nigger talk," caught up, doubtless, from +Southern negro barbers and bootblacks, and used by writers who, from +information thus derived, pictured Southern society. + +This is a sample of the numerous errors that crept into the literature +of one section of our Union about social conditions in the other during +that memorable sectional controversy. It is on a par with the idea that +prevailed, in some quarters in the South, that the Yankee cared for +nothing but money, and would not fight even for that. + +Southerners were practically all of the old British stock. Homogeneity, +common memories of the wars of the Revolution, of 1812, and with Mexico, +and Fourth of July celebrations, all tended to bind together strongly +the Southern slave-holder and non-slave-holder. + +There were, of course, many classes of non-slave-holders--the thrifty +farmer, the unthrifty, and the laborer who worked for hire, but more +frequently for "shares of the crop." Then there were others--the +inhabitants of the "sand-hills" and the mountain regions. These people +were, as a rule, very shiftless; too lazy to work, they were still too +proud to beg, as the very poor usually do in other countries. The +mountaineers were hardier than the sand-hillers, and it was from the +mountains of Tennessee, Alabama, etc., that the Union armies gathered +many recruits. This was not, as is often stated, because mountaineers +love liberty better than others, but because these mountaineers never +came into contact with either master or slave. The crusade against +slavery, therefore, did not threaten to affect their personal status. + +There were very few public schools in the South, but in the cities and +towns there were academies and high-schools, and the country was dotted +with "old field schools," most of them not good, but sufficient to train +those who became efficient leaders in social, religious, and political +circles. + +The wonderful progress made by the Southern white man during the last +thirty-five years is by no means all due to the abolition of slavery. +Labor, it is true, is held in higher esteem. This is a great gain, but +still more is due to improved transportation, to better prices for +timber and cotton, to commercial fertilizers, and an awakening interest +in education. The South is also developing its mineral resources and is +now rapidly forging to the front. The white man is making more cotton +than the negro. + +But the very strongest bond that bound together the Southern +slave-holder and non-slave-holder was the pride of caste. Every white +man was a freeman; he belonged to the superior, the dominant race. + +Edmund Burke, England's philosopher-statesman, in his speech on +"Conciliation with America" at the beginning of our Revolution, +complimented in high terms the spirit of liberty among the dissenting +protestants of New England. Then, alluding to the hopes indulged in by +some gentlemen, that the Southern colonies would be loyal to Great +Britain because the Church of England had there a large establishment, +he said: "It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance +attending these colonies which in my opinion fully counter-balances this +difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty +than in those to the Northward. It is, that in Virginia and Carolina +they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case, in any +part of the world, _those who are free are by far the most proud and +jealous of their freedom_. Freedom with them is not only an enjoyment, +but a kind of _rank and privilege_." + +The privilege of belonging to the superior race and of being free was a +bond that tied all Southern whites together, and it was infinitely +strengthened by a crusade that seemed, from a Southern stand-point, to +have for its purpose the levelling of all distinctions between the white +man and the slave hard by. + +Socially, there were classes in the South as there are everywhere. The +controlling class consisted of professional men, lawyers, physicians, +teachers, and high-class merchants (though the merchant prince was +unknown), and slave-holders. Slave-holders were, of course, divided into +classes, chiefly two: those who had acquired culture and breeding from +slave-holding ancestors, and those who had little culture or breeding, +principally the newly rich. It was the former class that gave tone to +Southern society. The performance of duty always ennobles, and this is +especially true of duty done by superiors to inferiors. The master and +mistress of a slave establishment were responsible for the moral and +material welfare of their dependents. When they appreciated and +fulfilled their responsibilities, as the best families usually did, +there was found what was called the Southern aristocracy. The habit of +command, assured position, and high ideals, coming down, as these often +did, with family traditions, gave these favored people ease and grace, +and they were social favorites, both in the North and Europe. At home +they dispensed a hospitality that made the South famous. They were +exemplars, giving tone to society, and it was notable that breeding and +culture, and not wealth, gave tone to Southern society. There was +perhaps in Virginia and South Carolina an aristocracy that was somewhat +more exclusive than elsewhere. + +Slavery was at its worst when masters were not equal to their +responsibilities, for want of either culture or Christian feeling, or +both, as also when, as was now and then the case, a brutal overseer was +in charge of a plantation far away from the eye of the owner. + +The influence of the slave-holder and his lavish hospitality did not +make for thrift among his less fortunate brethren; it made perhaps for +prodigality, but it also made for a high sense of honor among +slave-holders and non-slave-holders as well. Both slave-holders and +non-slave-holders were extremely punctilious. Money did not count where +honor was concerned, and Southerners do well to be proud of the record +in this respect that has been made by their statesmen. + +Among the more cultured classes in the period here treated of, the duel +prevailed, a practice now very properly condemned. But it made for a +high sense of honor. Demagogues were not common when a false statement +on "the stump" was apt to result in a mortal combat. + +Among the less cultured classes insult was answered with a blow of the +fist. Fisticuffs, too, were quite common to ascertain who was the "best +man" in a community or county. The rules were not according to the +Marquis of Queensbury, but they always secured "fair play."[70] + + [70] For the humorous side of life in the South in the old day, see + "Simon Suggs," J. J. Hooper; "Georgia Scenes," Judge Longstreet; and + "Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi," by Baldwin. + +This combative spirit of Southerners was undoubtedly a result of the +spirit of caste that came from slavery. Sometimes it was unduly +exhibited in Congress during the controversy over slavery and State's +rights, and excited Southerners occasionally subjected themselves to the +charge of arrogance. + +One of the great evils of slavery was that, as a rule, neither the +slave-holder nor the non-slave-holder properly appreciated the dignity +of labor. A witty student at a Southern university said that his chief +objection to college life was that he could not have a negro to learn +his lessons for him. The slave-holder quite generally disdained manual +labor, and the non-slave-holder was also inclined to deprecate the +necessity that compelled him to work. + +The sudden abolition of slavery was the ruin of thousands of innocent +families--a loss for which there was no recompense. But for the South at +large, and especially to this generation, it is a blessing that all +classes have come to see, that to labor and to be useful is not only a +duty, but a privilege. + +Political conditions, North and South, differed widely. The North was +the majority section. Its majority could protect its rights; recourse to +the limitations of the Federal Constitution was seldom necessary. The +South, a minority section, with a devotion that never failed, held high +the "Constitution of the fathers, the palladium" of its rights. To one +section the Constitution was the bond of a Federal Union that was the +security for interstate commerce and national prosperity; to the other +it was a guaranty of peace abroad and local self-government at home. In +the one section the brightest minds were for the most part engaged in +business or in literary pursuits; in the other, politics absorbed much +of its talent. In the North the staple of political discussion was +usually some business or moral question, while in the South the +political arena was a great school in which the masses were not only +educated in the history of the formation of the Constitution, but taught +an affectionate regard for that instrument as a revered "gift from the +fathers" and the only safeguard of American liberty. Joint political +discussions, which were common between the ablest men of opposing +parties, were always numerously attended, and the Federal Constitution +was an unfailing topic. The result was, an amount of political +information in the average Confederate soldier that the average Union +soldier in his business training had never acquired, and a devotion of +the Southerner to the Constitution of his country which even the ablest +historians of to-day have failed to comprehend. + +It is often stated, as if it were an important fact in the consideration +of the great anti-slavery crusade, that not many of the Abolitionists +were as radical as Garrison, and that of the anti-slavery voters very +few favored social equality between whites and blacks. Southerners did +not stop to make distinctions like these. They saw the Abolitionists +advocating mixed schools and favoring laws authorizing mixed marriages; +saw them practising social equality; saw the general trend in that +direction; and so from its very beginning the Republican party, which +had absorbed the Abolitionists, was dubbed, North and South, the "Black +Republican" party. + +The whites of the South believed that the triumph of the "Black +Republican" party, as they called it, would be ultimately the triumph of +its most radical elements. Judge Reagan, of Texas, United States +congressman in 1860-61, Confederate Postmaster-General, later United +States senator, and always until 1860 an avowed friend of the Union, in +his farewell speech to the Congress of the United States in January, +1861, gave expression to this idea when he said: + +"And now you tender to us the inhuman alternative of unconditional +submission to _Republican rule on abolition principles, and ultimately +to free negro equality, and a government of mongrels_, or a war of races +on the one hand, and on the other, secession and a bloody and desolating +civil war."[71] + + [71] "Memoirs of John H. Reagan," p. 261. + +Judge Reagan was expressing in Congress the opinion that animated the +Confederate soldier in the war that was to follow secession, an opinion +the ex-Confederate did not see much reason to change when the era of +Reconstruction had been reached, and the ballot had been given to every +negro, while the leading whites were disfranchised. + +In 1857 Hinton Rowan Helper, of North Carolina, wrote a notable book to +show that slavery was a curse to the South, and especially to the +non-slave-holders. It was an appeal to the latter to become +Abolitionists. His arguments availed nothing; back of his book was the +Republican party, now planting itself, as Garrison had planted himself, +on an extract from the first sentence of the Declaration of +Independence, "all men are created equal." The Republican contention +was, in platforms and speeches, that the Declaration of Independence +covered negroes as well as whites,[72] and Southern whites, nearly all +of Revolutionary stock, resented the idea. They rebelled at the +suggestion that the signers, every one of whom, save possibly those from +Massachusetts, represented slave-holding constituents, intended to say +that the negroes then in the colonies were the equals of the whites. If +so, why were these negroes kept in slavery, and why were they not +immediately given the right to vote, to sit on juries, to be educated, +and to intermarry with the whites? + + [72] Mr. Lincoln took that position in his great speech at Chicago, in + 1858, when beginning his campaign for the senatorship. + +All this, the Southerners said, as, indeed, did many Northerners also, +was to be the logical outcome of the Republican doctrine, that negroes +and whites were equals. It is passing strange that modern historians so +often have failed to note that this thought was in the minds of all the +opponents of the Republican party from the day of its birth--North and +South it was called the "Black Republican" party. Douglas, in his debate +with Lincoln, gave it that name and stood by it. In his speech at +Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858, he charges the Republicans with +advocating "negro citizenship and negro equality, putting the white man +and the negro on the same basis under the law."[73] + + [73] Lincoln, "Complete Works," vol. IV, p. 9. + +John C. Calhoun, in a memorial to the Southern people in 1849, signed by +many other congressmen, had said that Northern fanaticism would not stop +at emancipation. "Another step would be taken to raise them [the +negroes] to a political and social equality with their former owners, by +giving them the right of voting and holding public office under the +Federal Government.... But when raised to an equality they would become +the fast political associates of the North, acting and voting with them +on all questions, and by this perfect union between them holding the +South in complete subjection. _The blacks and the profligate whites that +might unite with them_ would become the principal recipients of Federal +patronage, and would, in consequence, be raised above the whites of the +South in the social and political scale. We would, in a word, change +conditions with them, _a degradation greater than has as yet fallen to +the lot of a free and enlightened people_."[74] + + [74] "Calhoun's Works," vol. VI, p. 311. + +In the light of Reconstruction, this was prophecy. + +These words, once heard by a Southern white man, of course sank into his +heart. They could never have been forgotten. The argument of Helper fell +on deaf ears. If Helper had come with the promise (and an assurance of +its fulfilment) that the negroes, when emancipated, would be sent to +Liberia, or elsewhere _out of the country_, the South would have become +Republicanized at once. Even if the slave-holder had been unwilling, the +Southern non-slave-holder, with his three, and often five, to one +majority, would have seen to it. + +And it is not too much to say that if the negro had been, as the +Abolitionists and ultimately many Republicans contended he was, the +equal of the white man, Liberia would have been a success. What a +glorious consummation of the dreams of statesmen and philanthropists +that would have been! Abolitionists, unable to frustrate their scheme, +and the American negro, profiting by the civilization here received from +contact with the white man, building by his own energy happy homes for +himself and his kinsmen, and enjoying the blessings of a great +government of his own, in his own great continent! + +Africa with its vast resources is a prize that all Europe is now +contending for. It is believed to be adapted even to white men. Most +assuredly, for the negro Liberia offered far better opportunities than +did the rocky coast of New England to the white men who settled it. +Liberia had been carefully selected as a desirable part of Africa. It +was an unequalled group of statesmen and philanthropists that had +planted the colony; they provided for it and set it on its feet. But it +failed; failed just for the same reason that prevented the aboriginal +African from catching on to the civilization that began to develop +thousands of years ago, close by his side on the borders of the +Mediterranean; failed for the same reason that Hayti, now free for a +century, has failed. The failure of the plan of the American +Colonization Society to repatriate the American negro in Africa was due +_primarily to the incapacity of the negro_. + +A very complete and convincing story will be found in an article +entitled "Liberia, an Example of Negro Self-Government,"[75] by Miss +Agnes P. Mahony, for five years a missionary in that country. The author +of the article was a sympathizing friend. She says: "In 1847 the colony +was considered healthy enough to stand alone.... So our flag was lowered +on the African continent, and the protectors of the colony retired, +leaving the people to govern the country in their own way." Then she +recites that in order to test their capacity for self-government their +constitution (1847) provided that no white man should hold property in +the country; and to this Miss Mahony traces the failure that followed. +When she wrote, the Liberian negroes, for fifty-nine years under the +protectorship of the United States, had been troubled by no foreign +enemy; yet their failure was complete--not a foot of railroad, no cable +communication with foreign countries, no telegraphic communication with +the interior, etc. Still the devoted missionary thinks that Liberia +might prosper, if it could but have "_the encouraging example of and +contact with the right kind of white men_." + + [75] _Independent_, 1906. + + * * * * * + +The presidential campaign of 1860 was very exciting. There were four +tickets in the field, Douglas and Johnson, Democrats; Breckenridge and +Lane, Democrats; Lincoln and Hamlin, Republicans, and Bell and Everett +representing the "Constitutional Union" party. As the election +approached it became apparent that the Republicans were leading, and +far-seeing men, like Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, became much alarmed +for fear that the election of Lincoln would bring about secession in the +South. Mr. Tilden, in view of the danger that to him was apparent, +wrote, shortly before the election, to William Kent, of New York City, +an open letter in which he earnestly urged a combination in New York +State of the supporters of other candidates, in order to defeat Abraham +Lincoln. The letter was so alarming that some of Tilden's friends +thought he had lost his balance; but now that letter is regarded as a +remarkable proof of his sagacity. In the first volume of Mr. Tilden's +"Life and Letters," by Bigelow, appears an "Appreciation" by James C. +Carter and an analysis of this letter. Of this the following is a brief +abstract: Mr. Tilden first argued that two strictly sectional parties, +arrayed upon the question of destroying an institution which one of +them, not unnaturally, regarded as essential to self-existence, would +bring war. + +Then Mr. Tilden further said that if the Republican party should be +successful in establishing its dominion over the South, the national +government in the Southern States would cease to be self-government and +become a government of one people over a distinct people, a thing +impossible with our race, except as a consequence of a successful war, +and even then incompatible with our democratic institutions. He also +said: "I assert that a controversy between powerful communities, +organized into governments, of a nature like that which now divides the +North and South, can be settled only by convention or by war." + +And again: "A condition of parties in which the Federative Government +shall be carried on by a party, having no affiliations in the Southern +States, is impossible to continue. Such a government would be out of all +relations to those States. It would have neither the nerves of +sensation, which convey intelligence to the intellect of the body +politic, nor the ligaments and muscles, which hold its parts together +and move them in harmony. It would be in substance the government of one +people by another people. That system will not do for our race." + +Mr. Tilden, when he spoke of "two sectional parties arrayed upon the +question of destroying an institution," _viz._, slavery, saw the +situation exactly as the South did. To prove that the Republican party +was looking to the ultimate destruction of the institution, Mr. Tilden +cited the leadership of Chase and his speeches in which he was +propounding the higher law theory; asserting that the conflict was +"irrepressible"; suggesting the power of the North to amend the +Constitution, etc. + +The South noted this, and it regarded, not the platform, but the record +of the Republican party and of the statesmen the party was following. + +Long before 1860, that great American scholar, George Ticknor, saw the +dilemma in which the North was involving itself by its concern over +slavery in the South, and he thus stated it, in a letter to his friend, +William Ellery Channing, April 30, 1842:[76] + + [76] Life and Letters and Journals of George Ticknor. + +"On the subject of our relations with the South and its slavery, we +must--as I have always thought--do one of two things; either keep +honestly the bargain of the Constitution as it shall be interpreted by +the authorities--of which the Supreme Court of the United States is the +chief and safest--or declare honestly that we can no longer in our +conscience consent to keep it, and break it." + +The North had failed to "keep honestly the bargain of the Constitution" +by faithfully delivering fugitive slaves and leaving the question of +slavery to be dealt with by the States in which it existed, and was now, +in 1860, upon the other horn of the dilemma--repudiating and denouncing +a decision of the Supreme Court, which, as Mr. Ticknor had said, was the +"chief and safest authority." But during that campaign of 1860 very +many, perhaps a majority of the Republican voters, failed to realize +what their party was standing for. Indeed, down to this day the members +of that organization, taught as they have been, indignantly deny that a +vote for Lincoln and Hamlin in 1860 looked to an interference with +slavery in the States. + +But now Professor Emerson David Fite, of Yale University, sees in 1911 +what was the underlying hope, and consequently the ultimate aim, of the +Republican party in 1860, exactly as the South saw it then. In a +powerful summing up of more evidence than there is room to recite here, +he says: "The testimony of the Democracy and of the leaders of the +Republican party accords well with the evidence of daily events in +_revealing Republican aggression_. _The party hoped to destroy slavery, +and this was something new in a large political organization._"[77] + + [77] "The Presidential Campaign of 1860," p. 195, Fite, 1911. + +That this party, when it should ultimately come into full power, would, +to carry out the purpose which Professor Fite now sees, ignore the +Federal Constitution was, in 1860, evident to Southerners from the +following facts: + +In 1841 the governor of Virginia demanded of the governor of New York +the extradition of two men indicted in Virginia for enticing away slaves +from their masters. Governor Seward, of New York, refused the demand, on +the ground that no such offence existed in New York. This case did not +go to the courts, but in 1860 the governor of Kentucky made a similar +demand in a like case on the governor of Ohio, who placed his refusal on +the same grounds as had Governor Seward in the former case. The Supreme +Court of the United States in this case decided that the governor of +Ohio, in refusing to deliver up the fugitive, was violating the +Constitution. The court further said: + +"If the governor of Ohio refuses to _discharge this duty there is no +power delegated to the general government_, either through the judicial +department or any other department, to use any coercive means to compel +him."[78] + + [78] "Virginia's Attitude on Slavery and Secession," Mumford, pp. + 211-12. + +If these two governors had defied the Federal Constitution, so had +eleven State legislatures. From 1854 to 1860, inclusive, Vermont, Rhode +Island, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, +Ohio, and Pennsylvania, had all passed new "personal liberty laws" to +abrogate the new fugitive slave law of 1850. + +Of these laws Professor Alexander Johnston said: + +"There is absolutely no excuse for the personal liberty laws. If the +rendition of fugitive slaves was a federal obligation, the personal +liberty laws were flat disobedience to the law; if the obligation was +upon the States, they were a gross breach of good faith, for they were +intended and operated to prevent rendition; and, in either case, they +were in violation of the Constitution."[79] + + [79] Alexander Johnston, "Lalor's Encyclopaedia," vol. III, p. 163. + +And now came the State of Wisconsin. Its Supreme Court intervened and +took from the hands of the federal authorities an alleged fugitive +slave. The Supreme Court of the United States reversed the case and +ordered the slave back into the custody of the United States +marshal;[80] and thereupon the General Assembly of Wisconsin expressly +repudiated the authority of the United States Supreme Court. The +Wisconsin assembly asserted its right to nullify the Federal law, basing +its action on the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798--a recrudescence of a +doctrine long since abandoned even in the South. + + [80] Ableman _v._ Booth, 21 How. + +In reality all this defiance of the Constitution of the United States by +State executives, State legislatures, and a State court, was on the +ground that whatever was dictated by conscience to these officials was a +"higher law than the Constitution of the United States"; and modern +historians recognize, as Tilden did, the leadership of the statesman who +in 1850 announced that startling doctrine. It is Alexander Johnston who +says, "Seward's speeches in the Senate made him the leader of the +Republican party from its first organization."[81] + + [81] Alexander Johnston, "Lalor's Encyclopaedia," vol. III, p. 707. + +To the minds of Southerners it seemed clear that _if the Southern States +desired to preserve for themselves the Constitution of the fathers, they +must secede and set it up over a government of their own_. This eleven +of these States did. Many of them were reluctant to take the step; all +their people had loved the old Union, but they passed their ordinances +of secession, united as the Confederate States of America, and their +officials took an oath to maintain inviolate the old Constitution, +which, with unimportant changes in it, they had adopted. + +The new government sent delegates to ask that the separation should be +peaceful. The application was denied and the war followed. Attempts to +secede were made in Kentucky and Missouri. In neither of these States +did the seceders get full control. They were represented, however, in +the Confederate Congress by senators and representatives elected by the +troops from those States that were serving in the Confederate army. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +FOUR YEARS OF WAR + + +The bitter fruits of anti-slavery agitation were secession and four +years of bloody war. The Federal Government waged war to coerce the +seceding States to remain in the Union. With the North it was a war for +the Union; the South was fighting for independence--denominated by +Northern writers as "the Civil War." It was in reality a war between the +eleven States which had seceded, as autonomous States, and were fighting +for independence, as the Confederate States of America, against the +other twenty-two States, which, as the United States of America, fought +against secession and for the Union of all the States. It is true the +States remaining in the Union had with them the army and the navy and +the old government, but that government could not, and did not, exercise +its functions within the borders of the seceded States until by force of +arms in the war that was now waged it had conquered a control. It was a +war between the States for such control; for independence on the one +hand, and for the Union on the other. It was not, save in exceptional +cases, a war between neighbor and neighbor; it was a war between States +as entities, and therefore not properly a civil war. The result of the +war did not change the principles upon which it was fought, though it +did decide finally the issues that were involved, the right of secession +primarily, and slavery incidentally. + +Jefferson Davis, afterward the much-loved President of the Confederacy, +in his farewell speech in the United States Senate, March 21, 1861, thus +stated the case of the South: "Then, senators, we recur to the compact +which binds us together. We recur to the principles upon which this +government was founded, and _when you deny them_, and when you deny to +us the right to withdraw from a Union which thus perverted _threatens to +be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers +when we proclaim our independence and take the hazard_. This is done not +in hostility to others, not to injure any section of our country, _not +even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive +of defending and protecting the rights we inherited and which it is our +duty to transmit unshorn to our children_." + +Southerners were, as Mr. Davis understood it, treading in the path of +their fathers when they proclaimed their independence and fought for the +right of self-government. + +Professor Fite, of Yale, justifies secession on the following ground: + +"In the last analysis the one complete justification of secession was +the necessity of saving the vast property of slavery from destruction; +secession was a commercial necessity designed to make those billions +secure from outside interference. Viewed in this light, secession was +right, for any people, prompted by the commonest motives of self-defence +and with no moral scruples against slavery, would have followed the same +course. The present generation of Northerners, born and reared after the +war, must shake off their inherited political passions and prejudices +and pronounce the verdict of justification for the South. Believing +slavery to be right, it was the duty of the South to defend it. It is +time that the words 'traitors,' 'conspirators,' 'rebels,' and +'rebellion' be discarded."[82] + + [82] "The Presidential Campaign of 1860," Emerson David Fite, 1911, + introductory chapter. + +These words of Professor Fite will waken a responsive echo in the hearts +of Southerners, but Southerners place, and their fathers planted, +themselves on higher ground than commercial considerations. The +Confederates were defending their inherited right of local +self-government and the Federal Constitution that secured it. It was for +these rights that, as Mr. Davis had said, they were willing to _follow +the path their fathers trod_. + +The preservation of the Union the North was fighting for, was a noble +motive; it looked to the future greatness and glory of the republic; but +devotion to the Union had been a growth, the product largely of a single +generation; the devotion of the South to the right of local +self-government was an older and deeper conviction; it had been bred in +the bone for three generations; it dated from Bunker Hill and Valley +Forge and Yorktown. Close as the non-slave-holders of the South were to +the slave-holders, of the same British stock, and with the same +traditions, blood kinsmen as they were, they might not have been willing +to dare all and do all for the protection of property in which they were +not interested; but they were ready to, and they did, wage a death +struggle to maintain against a hostile sectional majority, their +inherited right to govern themselves in their own way. Added to this was +the ever-present conviction of Southerners all, that they were battling +not only for the supremacy of their race but for the preservation of +their homes. There was a little ditty quite prevalent in the Army of +Northern Virginia, of which nothing is now remembered except the +refrain, but that of itself speaks volumes. It ran: + + "Do you belong to the rebel band + Fighting for your home?" + +Northerners had, most of them, convinced themselves that the South would +never dare to secede. The danger of servile insurrections, if nothing +else, would prevent it.[83] Many Southerners, on the other hand, could +not see how, under the Constitution, the North could venture on coercion. + + [83] See Fite, "Campaign of 1860," passim, and especially speech of + Schurz, p. 244 _et seq._ + +But to the South the greatest surprise furnished by the events of that +era has been Abraham Lincoln--as he appears now in the light of history. +What, in the minds of Southerners, fixed his status personally, during +the canvass of 1860, was the statement he had made in his speech at +Chicago, preliminary to his great debate with Douglas in 1858, that the +Union could not "continue to exist half slave and half free." And he was +now the candidate of the "Black Republican" party, a party that was +denouncing a decision of the Supreme Court; that, in nearly every State +in the North, had nullified the fugitive slave law, and that stood for +"negro equality," as the South termed it. + +There were other statements by Mr. Lincoln in that debate with Douglas +that the South has had especial reason to take note of since the period +of Reconstruction. At Springfield, Illinois, September 18, 1858, he +said: "There is a physical difference between the white and black races +which, I believe, will forever forbid the two races living together on +terms of social and political equality, and, _inasmuch as they can not +so live, while they do live together there must be the position of +superior and inferior; and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of +having that position assigned to the white man_." + +The new Confederacy took the Constitution of the United States, so +modified as to make it read plainly as Jefferson had expounded it in the +Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. Other changes were slight. The +presidential term was extended to six years and the President was not to +be re-eligible. The slave trade was prohibited and Congress was +authorized to forbid the introduction of slaves from the old Union. + +Abraham Lincoln became President, with a fixed resolve to preserve the +Union but with no intent to abolish slavery. Had the war for the Union +been as successful as he hoped it would be, slavery would not have been +abolished by any act of his. It is clear that, when inaugurated, he had +not changed his opinions expressed at Springfield, nor those others, +which, at Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, he had stated thus: +"When our Southern brethren tell us they are no more responsible for +slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said the +institution exists and it is very difficult to get rid of it in any +satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I will +surely not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do +myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do +as to the institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves +and send them to Liberia, their native land." + +This, he said, it was impracticable to do, at least suddenly, and then +proceeded: "To free them all and keep them among us as underlings--is it +quite certain that this would better their condition?... What next? Free +them and make them politically and socially our equals?" This question +he answered in the negative, and continued: "It does seem to me that +systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their +tardiness I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South." + +In these extracts from his speeches we find a central thread that runs +through the history of his whole administration. We see it again when, +pressed by extremists, Mr. Lincoln said in an open letter to Horace +Greeley, August 22, 1862: "My paramount object in this struggle is to +save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I +could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I +could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could +save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." + +Indeed, Congress had, in 1861, by joint resolution declared that the +sole purpose of the war was the preservation of the Union. In no other +way, and for no other purpose, could the North at that time have been +induced to wage war against the South. + +Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, and Jefferson +Davis, the President of the Confederate States, were both Kentuckians by +birth, both Americans. In the purity of their lives, public and private, +in patriotic devotion to the preservation of American institutions as +understood by each of them, they were alike; but they represented +different phases of American thought, and each was the creature more or +less of his environment. Both were men of commanding ability, but the +destiny of each was shaped by agencies that now seem to have been +directed by the hand of Fate. Mr. Lincoln, by nature a political genius, +was carried to Illinois when a child, reared in the North-west among +those to whom, with the Mississippi River as their only outlet to the +markets of the world, disunion, with its loss of their highway to the +sea, was unthinkable. Lincoln became a Whig, with the Union of the +States the passion of his life, and finally, by forces he had not +himself put in motion, he was placed at the head of the Federal +Government at a time when sectionalism had decided that the question of +the permanence of the Union was to be tried out, once and forever. + +Mr. Davis went from Kentucky further South. He was a Democrat, and +environment also moulded his opinions. During the long sectional +controversy between the North and the South, "State-rights" became the +passion of his life, and when the clash between the sections came, he +found himself, without his seeking, at the head of the Confederacy. He +had been prominent among the Southerners at Washington, who had hoped +that the South, by threats of secession, might obtain its rights in the +Union, as had been done in Jefferson's days by New England. In the +movement (1860-61) that resulted in secession, the people at home had +been ahead of their congressmen. William L. Yancey, then in Alabama, not +Jefferson Davis at Washington, was the actual leader of the +secessionists. Mr. Davis feared a long and bloody war and, unlike +Yancey, he had doubts as to its result.[84] + + [84] Mrs. Chestnut, wife of the Confederate general, James Chestnut, + writes in her "Diary from Dixie," under date of 1861, at Montgomery, + Alabama, then the Confederate capital: "In Mrs. Davis's drawing-room + last night, the President took a seat by me on the sofa where I sat. He + talked for nearly an hour. He laughed at our faith in our own powers. We + are like the British. We think every Southerner equal to three Yankees + at least. We will have to be equivalent to a dozen now. After his + experience of the fighting qualities of Southerners in Mexico, he + believes that we will do all that can be done by pluck and muscle, + endurance and dogged courage, dash, and red-hot patriotism. And yet his + tone was not sanguine. _There was a sad refrain running through it all._ + For one thing, either way, he thinks it will be a long war. That floored + me at once. It has been too long for me already. Then he said, before + the end came we would have many bitter experiences. He said only fools + doubted the courage of the Yankees, or their willingness to fight when + they saw fit. And now that we have stung their pride, we have roused + them till they will fight like devils." + +Mr. Lincoln, standing for the Union, succeeded in the war, but just as +he was on the threshold of his great work of Reconstruction he fell, +the victim of a crazy assassin. Martyrdom to his cause has naturally +added some cubits to the just measure of his wonderful reputation. + +Jefferson Davis and his cause failed; and the triumphant forces that +swept the Confederacy out of existence have long (and quite naturally) +sought to bury the cause of the South and its chosen leader in ignominy. +But the days of hate and passion are past; reason is reasserting her +sway; and history will do justice to both the Confederacy and its great +leader, whose ability, patriotism, and courage were conspicuous to the +end. + +Mr. Davis was also a martyr--his long imprisonment, the manacles he +wore, the sentinel gazing on him in the bright light that day and night +disturbed his rest; the heroism with which he endured all this, and the +quiet dignity of his after life--these have doubly endeared his memory +to those for whose cause he suffered. + +Mr. Lincoln had remarkable political tact--he seemed to know how long to +wait and when to act, and, if we may credit Mr. Welles,[85] his +inflexibly honest Secretary of the Navy, he was, with the members of his +cabinet, wonderfully patient and even long-suffering. And although he +was the subject of much abuse, especially at the hands of Southerners +who then totally misunderstood him, he was animated always by the +philosophy of his own famous words, "With malice towards none, with +charity for all." Never for one moment did he forget, amidst even the +bitterest of his trials, that the Confederates, then in arms against +him, were, as he regarded them, his misguided fellow-citizens; and the +supreme purpose of his life was to bring them back into the Union, not +as conquered foes, but as happy and contented citizens of the great +republic. + + [85] "Diary of Gideon Welles," 3 vols., passim. + +The resources of the Confederacy and the United States were very +unequal. The Confederacy had no army, no navy, no factories, save here +and there a flour mill or cotton factory, and practically no machine +shops that could furnish engines for its railroads. It had one cannon +foundry. The Tredegar Iron Works, at Richmond, Virginia, was a fully +equipped cannon foundry. The Confederacy's arms and munitions of war +were not sufficient to supply the troops that volunteered during the +first six months of military operations. Its further supplies, except +such as the Tredegar works furnished, depended on importations through +the blockade soon to be established and such as might be captured. + +The North had the army and navy, factories of every description, food in +abundance, and free access to the ports of the world. + +The population of the North was 22,339,978. + +The population of the South was 9,103,332, of which 3,653,870 were +colored. The total white male population of the Confederacy, of all +ages, was 2,799,818. + +The reports of the Adjutant-General of the United States, November 9, +1880, show 2,859,132 men mustered into the service of the United States +in 1861-65. General Marcus J. Wright, of the United States War Records +Office, in his latest estimate of Confederate enlistments, places the +outside number at 700,000. The estimate of Colonel Henderson, of the +staff of the British army, in his "Life of Stonewall Jackson," is +900,000. Colonel Thomas J. Livermore, of Boston, estimates the +number of Confederates at about 1,000,000, and insists that in the +Adjutant-General's reports of the Union enlistments there are errors +that would bring down the number of Union soldiers to about 2,000,000. +Colonel Livermore's estimates are earnestly combated by Confederate +writers. + +General Charles Francis Adams has, in a recently published volume,[86] +cited figures given mostly by different Confederate authorities, which +aggregate 1,052,000 Confederate enlistments. What authority these +Confederate writers have relied on is not clear. The enlistments were +for the most part directly in the Confederate army and not through State +officials. The captured Confederate records should furnish the highest +evidence. But it is earnestly insisted that these records are +incomplete, and there is no purpose here to discuss a disputed point. + + [86] "Studies, Military and Diplomatic," p. 282 _et seq._ These studies + make a volume of rare historic value. + +The call to arms was answered enthusiastically in both sections, but +the South was more united in its convictions, and practically all her +young manhood fell into line, the rich and the poor, the cultured and +uncultured serving in the ranks side by side. + +The devotion of the noble women of the North, and of its humanitarian +associations, to the welfare of the Federal soldiers was remarkable, but +there was nothing in the situation in that section that could evoke such +a wonderful exhibition of heroism and self-sacrifice as was exhibited by +the devoted women of the South, who made willingly every possible +sacrifice to the cause of the Confederacy. + +Both sides fought bravely. Excluding from the Union armies negroes, +foreigners, and the descendants of recent immigrants, the Confederates +and the Union soldiers were mainly of British stock. The Confederates +had some notable advantages. Excepting a few Union regiments from the +West, the Southerners were better shots and better horsemen, especially +in the beginning of the war, than the Northerners; and the Southerners +were fighting not only for the Constitution of their fathers and the +defence of their homes, but for the supremacy of their race. They had +also another military advantage, that would probably have been decisive +but for the United States navy: they had interior lines of communication +which would have enabled them to readily concentrate their forces. But +the United States navy, hovering around their coast-line, not only +neutralized but turned this advantage into a weakness, thus compelling +the Confederates to scatter their armies. Every port had to be guarded. + +In the West the Federals were almost uniformly successful in the greater +battles, the Confederates winning in these but two decisive victories, +Chickamauga and Sabine Cross Roads, in Louisiana. Estimating, according +to the method of military experts, the percentage of losses of the +victor only, Chickamauga was the bloodiest battle of the world, from and +including Waterloo down to the present time. Gettysburg and Sharpsburg +also rank as high in losses as any battle fought elsewhere in this long +period, which takes in the Franco-German and the Russo-Japanese wars. At +Sharpsburg or Antietam the losses exceeded those in any other one day's +battle.[87] + + [87] According to that standard work, E. P. Alexander's "Memoirs," pp. + 244, 245, and 274, the Confederates, who stood their ground at + Sharpsburg on the day of battle and the day after, lost in killed and + wounded thirty-two per cent. The French army at Waterloo entirely + dissolved, with a loss in killed and wounded of only thirty-one per + cent. (See figures in Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson.") + +The Confederates were successful, excepting Antietam or Sharpsburg and +Gettysburg, and perhaps Seven Pines or Fair Oaks, in all the great +battles in the East, down to the time when the shattered remnant of +Lee's army was overwhelmed at Petersburg and surrendered at Appomattox. +The _elan_ the Southerners acquired in the many victories they won +fighting for their homes is not to be overlooked. But the failure of the +North with its overwhelming numbers and resources, to overcome the +resistance of the half-famished Confederates until nearly four years had +elapsed, can only be fully accounted for, in fairness to the undoubted +courage of the Union armies, by the fact, on which foreign military +critics are agreed, that the North had no such generals as Lee and +Stonewall Jackson. Only by the superior generalship of their leaders +could the Confederates have won as many battles as they did against +vastly superior numbers. + +But against the United States navy the brilliant generalship of the +Confederates and their marvellous courage were powerless. + +Accepted histories of the war have been written largely by the army and +its friends, and, strangely enough, the general historians have been so +attracted by the gallantry displayed in great land battles, and the +immediate results, that they have utterly failed to appreciate the +services of the United States navy. + +The Southerners accomplished remarkable results with torpedoes with the +_Merrimac_ or _Virginia_ and their little fleet of commerce destroyers; +but the United States navy, by its effective blockade, starved the +Confederacy to death. The Southern government could not market its +cotton, nor could it import or manufacture enough military supplies. +Among its extremest needs were rails and rolling stock to refit its +lines of communication. For want of transportation it was unable to +concentrate its armies, and for the same reason its troops were not half +fed. + +In addition to its services on the blockade, which, in Lord Wolseley's +opinion, decided the war, the navy, with General Grant's help, cut the +Confederacy in twain by way of the Mississippi. It penetrated every +Southern river, severing Confederate communications and destroying +depots of supplies. It assisted in the capture, early in the war, of +Forts Henry and Donelson, and it conducted Union troops along the +Tennessee River into east Tennessee and north Alabama. It furnished +objective points and supplies at Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington, +to Sherman on his march from Atlanta; and finally Grant, the great Union +general, who had failed to reach Richmond by way of the Wilderness, +Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor, achieved success only when the navy was +at his back, holding his base, while he laid a nine months' siege to +Petersburg. + +That distinguished author, Charles Francis Adams, himself a Union +general in the Army of the Potomac, says that the United States navy was +the deciding factor in the Civil War. He even says that every single +successful operation of the Union forces "hinged and depended on naval +supremacy." + +The following is from the preface to "The Crisis of the Confederacy," in +which, published in 1905, a foreign expert, Captain Cecil Battine, of +the King's Hussars, condenses all that needs further to be said here +about the purely military side of the Civil War: + + The history of the American Civil War still remains the most + important theme for the student and the statesman because it was + waged between adversaries of the highest intelligence and courage, + who fought by land and sea over an enormous area with every device + within the reach of human ingenuity, and who had to create every + organization needed for the purpose after the struggle had begun. + The admiration which the valor of the Confederate soldiers, + fighting against superior numbers and resources, excited in Europe; + the dazzling genius of some of the Confederate generals, and in + some measure jealousy at the power of the United States, have + ranged the sympathies of the world during the war and ever since to + a large degree on the side of the vanquished. Justice has hardly + been done to the armies which arose time and again from sanguinary + repulses, and from disasters more demoralizing than any repulse in + the field, because they were caused by political and military + incapacity in high places, to redeem which the soldiers freely shed + their blood as it seemed in vain. If the heroic endurance of the + Southern people and the fiery valor of the Southern armies thrill + us to-day with wonder and admiration, the stubborn tenacity and + courage which succeeded in preserving intact the heritage of the + American nation, and which triumphed over foes so formidable, are + not less worthy of praise and imitation. The Americans still hold + the world's record for hard fighting. + +The great majority of the Union soldiers enlisted for the preservation +of the Union and not for the abolition of slavery. But among these +soldiers there was an abolition element, and very soon the tramp of +federal regiments was keeping time to + + "John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the ground, + As we go marching on." + +Early in the war Generals Fremont and Butler issued orders declaring +free the slaves within the Union lines; these orders President Lincoln +rescinded. But Abolition sentiment was growing in the army and at the +North, and the pressure upon the President to strike at slavery was +increasing. The Union forces were suffering repeated defeats; slaves at +home were growing food crops and caring for the families of Confederates +who were fighting at the front, and in September, 1862, President +Lincoln issued his preliminary proclamation of emancipation, basing it +on the ground of military necessity. It was to become effective January +1, 1863. + +And here was the same Lincoln who had declared in 1858 his opinion that +whites and blacks could not live together as equals, socially and +politically; and it was the very same Lincoln who had repeatedly said he +cherished no ill-will against his Southern brethren. If the slaves were +to be freed, they and the whites should not be left together. He +therefore _sought diligently to find some home for the freedmen in a +foreign country_. But unfortunately, as already seen, the American +negro, a bone of contention at home, was now a pariah to other peoples. +Most nations welcome immigrants, but no country was willing to shelter +the American freedman, save only Liberia, long before a proven failure, +and Hayti, where, under the blacks, anarchy had already been chronic for +half a century. Hume tells us, in "The Abolitionists," that for a time +Mr. Lincoln even considered setting Texas apart as a home for the negro. + +Later the surrender of the Confederate armies, together with the +adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, consummated +emancipation, foreseeing which President Lincoln formulated his plan of +Reconstruction. Suffrage in the reconstructed States under his plan was +to be limited to those who were qualified to vote at the date of +secession, which meant the whites. The sole exception he ever made to +this rule was a suggestion to Governor Hahn, of Louisiana, that it might +be well for the whites (of Louisiana) to give the ballot to a few of the +most intelligent of the negroes and to such as had served in the army. + +The part the soldiers played, Federal and Confederate, in restoring the +Union, is a short story. The clash between them settled without reserve +the only question that was really in issue--secession; slavery, that had +been the origin of sectional dissensions, was eliminated because it +obstructed the success of the Union armies. By their gallantry in battle +and conduct toward each other the men in blue and the men in gray +restored between the North and the South the mutual respect that had +been lost in the bitterness of sectional strife, and without which +there could be no fraternal Union. + +Mr. Gladstone, when the war was on, said that the North was endeavoring +to "propagate free institutions at the point of the sword." The North +was not seeking to propagate in the South any new institution whatever. +Mr. Gladstone's paradox loses its point because both sections were +fighting for the preservation of the same system of government. + +The time has now happily come when, to use the language of Senator Hoar, +as Americans, we can, North and South, discuss the causes that brought +about our terrible war "in a friendly and quiet spirit, without +recrimination and without heat, each understanding the other, each +striving to help the other, as men who are bearing a common burden and +looking forward with a common hope." + +The country, it is believed, has already reached the conclusions that +the South was absolutely honest in maintaining the right of secession +and absolutely unswerving in its devotion to its ideas of the +Constitution, and that the North was equally honest and patriotic in +its fidelity to the Union. We need to advance one step further. Somebody +was to blame for starting a quarrel between brethren who were dwelling +together in amity. If Americans can agree in fixing that blame, the +knowledge thus acquired should help them to avoid such troubles +hereafter. + +It seems to be a fair conclusion that the _initial cause of all our +troubles was the formation by Garrison of those Abolition societies_ +which the Boston people in their resolutions of August 1, 1835, +"disapproved of" and described as "associations instituted in the +non-slave-holding States, with the intent to act, within the +slave-holding States, on the subject of slavery in those States, without +their consent." And further, that it was the creation of these +societies, the methods they resorted to, and their explicit defiance of +the Constitution that roused the fears and passions of the South and +caused that section to take up the quarrel that, afterward became +sectional; and that, after much hot dispute and many regrettable +incidents, North and South, resulted in secession and war. + +In every dispute about slavery prior to 1831, the Constitution was +always regarded by every disputant as supreme. _The quarrel that was +fatal to the peace of the Union began when the New Abolitionists put in +the new claim, that slavery in the South was the concern of the North, +as well as of the South, and that there was a higher law than the +Constitution. If the conscience of the individual, instead of human law, +is to prescribe rules of conduct, society is at the mercy of anarchists. +Czolgosz was conscientious when he murdered McKinley._ + +Had all Americans continued to agree, after 1831, as they did before +that time, that the Constitution of the United States was the supreme +law of the land, there would have been no fatal sectional quarrel, no +secession, and no war between the North and South. + + * * * * * + +The immediate surrender everywhere of the Confederates in obedience to +the orders of their generals was an imposing spectacle. There was no +guerilla warfare. The Confederates accepted their defeat in good faith +and have ever since been absolutely loyal to the United States +Government, but they have never changed their minds as to the justice of +the cause they fought for. They fought for liberty regulated by law, and +against the idea that there can be, under our system, any higher law +than the Constitution of our country. That the Constitution should +always be the supreme law of the land, they still believe, and the +philosophic student of past and current history should be gratified to +see the tenacity with which Southern people still cling to that idea. It +suggests that not only will the Southerners be always ready to stand for +our country against a foreign foe, but that whenever our institutions +shall be assailed, as they will often be hereafter by visionaries who +are impatient of restraints, the cause of liberty, regulated by law, +will find staunch defenders in the Southern section of our country. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +RECONSTRUCTION, LINCOLN-JOHNSON PLAN AND CONGRESSIONAL. + + +President Lincoln's theory was that acts of secession were void, and +that when the seceded States came back into the Union those who were +entitled to vote, by the laws existing at the date of the attempted +secession, and had been pardoned, should have, and should control, the +right of suffrage. Mr. Lincoln had acted on this theory in Tennessee, +Louisiana, and Texas, and he further advised Congress, in his message of +December, 1863, that this was his plan. Congress, after a long debate, +responded in July, 1864, by an act claiming for itself power over +Reconstruction. The President answered by a pocket veto, and after that +veto Mr. Lincoln was, in November, 1864, re-elected on a platform +extolling his "practical wisdom," etc. Congress, during the session that +began in December, 1864, did not attempt to reassert its authority but +adjourned, March 4, 1865, in sight of the collapse of the Confederacy, +leaving the President an open field for his declared policy. + +But unhappily, on the 14th of April, 1865, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, +and his death just at this time was the most appalling calamity that +ever befell the American people. The blow fell chiefly upon the South, +and it was the South the assassin had thought to benefit. + +Had the great statesman lived he might, and it is fully believed he +would, like Washington, have achieved a double success. Washington, +successful in war, was successful in guiding his country through the +first eight stormy years of its existence under a new constitution. +Lincoln had guided the country through four years of war, and the Union +was now safe. With Lee's surrender the war was practically at an end. + +Gideon Welles says that on the 10th of April, 1865, Mr. Lincoln, "while +I was with him at the White House, was informed that his fellow-citizens +would call to congratulate him on the fall of Richmond and surrender of +Lee; but he requested their visit should be delayed that he might have +time to put his thoughts on paper, for he desired that his utterances on +such an occasion should be deliberate and not liable to misapprehension, +misinterpretation, or misconstruction. He therefore addressed the people +on the following evening, Tuesday the 11th, in a carefully prepared +speech intended to promote harmony and union. + +"In this remarkable speech, delivered three days before his +assassination, he stated he had prepared a plan for the reinauguration +of the sectional authority and reconstruction in 1863, which would be +acceptable to the executive government, and that every member of the +cabinet fully approved the plan," etc.[88] + + [88] Gideon Welles in an essay, "Lincoln and Johnson," _The Galaxy_, + April, 1872. + +In view of his death three days later, this, his last and deliberate +public utterance, may be regarded as Abraham Lincoln's will, devising as +a legacy to his countrymen his plan of reconstruction. That plan in the +hands of his successor was defeated by a partisan and radical Congress. +That it was a wise plan the world now knows. + +Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, was one of the most influential of those +who succeeded in defeating it, and yet he lived to say, in his book +published in 1895,[89] Andrew Johnson "adopted substantially the plan +proposed and acted on by Mr. Lincoln. After this long lapse of time I am +convinced that Mr. Johnson's scheme of reorganization was wise and +judicious. It was unfortunate that it had not the sanction of Congress +and that events soon brought the President and Congress into hostility." + + [89] "John Sherman's Recollections," vol. I, p. 361. + +And the present senator, Shelby Cullom, of Illinois, who as a member of +the House of Representatives voted to overthrow the Lincoln-Johnson plan +of Reconstruction, has furnished us further testimony. He says in his +book, published in 1911:[90] + + [90] "Fifty Years of Public Service," Cullom, p. 146. + +"To express it in a word, the motive of the opposition to the Johnson +plan of Reconstruction was a firm conviction that its success would +wreck the Republican party and, by restoring the Democracy to power, +bring back Southern supremacy and Northern vassalage." + +The Republican party, then dominant in Congress, felt when confronting +Reconstruction that it was facing a crisis in its existence. The +Democratic party, unitedly opposed to negro suffrage, was still in +Northern States a power to be reckoned with. Allied with the Southern +whites, that old party might again control the government unless, by +giving the negro the ballot, the Republicans could gain, as Senator +Sumner said, the "allies it needed." But the masses at the North were +opposed to negro suffrage, and only two or three State constitutions +sanctioned it. Indeed, it may be safely said that when Congress convened +in December, 1865, a majority of the people of the North were ready to +follow Johnson and approve the Lincoln plan of Reconstruction. But the +extremists in both branches of the Congress had already determined to +defeat the plan and to give the ballot to the ex-slave. To prepare the +mind of the Northern people for their programme, they had resolved to +rekindle the passions of the war, which were now smouldering, and +utilize all the machinery, military and civilian, that Congress could +make effective. + +Andrew Johnson,[91] who as vice-president now succeeded to the +presidency, though a man of ability, had little personal influence and +none of Lincoln's tact. Johnson retained Lincoln's cabinet, and +McCullough, who was Secretary of the Treasury under both presidents, +says in his "Men and Measures of Half a Century," p. 378: + + [91] The final estimate of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under + both Lincoln and Johnson, is this: "He (Johnson) has been faithful to + the Constitution, although his administrative capabilities and + management may not equal some of his predecessors. Of measures he was a + good judge but not always of men."--"Diary of Gideon Welles," vol. III, + p. 556. + +"The very same instrument for restoring the national authority over +North Carolina and placing her where she stood before her secession, +which had been approved by Mr. Lincoln, was, by Mr. Stanton, presented +at the first cabinet which was held at the executive mansion after Mr. +Lincoln's death, and, having been carefully considered at two or three +meetings, was adopted as the Reconstruction policy of the +administration." + +Johnson carried out this plan. All the eleven seceding States repealed +their ordinances of secession. Their voters, from which class many +leaders had been excluded by the presidential proclamation, all took +the oath of allegiance, and reconstructed their State governments. From +most of the reconstructed States, senators and representatives were in +Washington asking to be seated when Congress convened, December 4, 1865. + +The presidential plan of Reconstruction had been promptly accepted by +the people of the prostrate States. Almost without exception they had, +when permitted, taken the oath and returned to their allegiance. + +The wretchedness of these people in the spring of 1865 was +indescribable. The labor system on which they depended for most of their +money-producing crops was destroyed. Including the disabled, twenty per +cent of the whites, who would now have been bread-winners, were gone. +The credit system had been universal, and credit was gone. Banks were +bankrupt. Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. Provisions were +scarce and money even scarcer. Many landholders had not even plough +stock with which to make a crop. + +There was some cotton, however, that had escaped the ravages of war, and +a large part of this also escaped the rapacious United States agents, +who were seizing it as Confederate property. This cotton was a godsend. +There was another supply of money that came from an unexpected source. +The old anti-slavery controversy had made it seem perfectly clear to +many moneyed men, North, that free labor was always superior to slave +labor; and now, when cotton was bringing a good price, enterprising men +carried their money, altogether some hundreds of thousands of dollars, +into the several cotton States, to buy plantations and make cotton with +free negro labor. Free negro labor was not a success. Those who had +reckoned on it lost their money; but this money went into circulation +and was helpful. + +Above all else loomed the negro problem. Five millions of whites and +three and a half millions of blacks were to live together. Thomas +Jefferson had said, "Nothing is more certainly written in the Book of +Fate than that these people are to be free; _nor is it less certain that +the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government_. +_Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines between them._"[92] +And it may truly be said of Jefferson that he was, as quite recently he +was declared to be by Dr. Schurman, President of Cornell University, the +"apostle of reason, and reason alone." + + [92] "Jefferson's Works," vol. I, p. 48. + +What system of laws could Southern conventions and legislatures frame, +that would enable them to accomplish what Jefferson had declared was +impossible? This was the question before these bodies when called +together in 1865-66 by Johnson to rehabilitate their States. Two dangers +confronted them. One was, armed bands of negroes, headed by returning +negro soldiers. Mr. Lincoln had feared this. Early in April of that very +year, 1865, he said to General Butler: "I can hardly believe that the +South and North can live in peace unless we can get rid of the negroes, +whom we have armed and disciplined, and who have fought with us, to the +amount, I believe, of one hundred and fifty thousand." Mississippi, and +perhaps one other State, to guard against the danger from this source, +enacted that negroes were only to bear arms when licensed. This law was +to be fiercely attacked. + +The other chief danger was that idleness among the negroes would lead to +crime. It soon became apparent that the negro idea was that freedom +meant freedom from work. They would not work steadily, even for their +Northern friends, who were offering ready money for labor in their +cotton fields, and multitudes were loitering in towns and around +Freedmen's Bureau offices. Nothing seemed better than the old-time +remedies, apprenticeship and vagrancy laws, then found in every body of +British or American statutes. These laws Southern legislatures copied, +with what appeared to be necessary modifications, and these laws were +soon assailed as evidence of an intent to reduce the negro again to +slavery. Mr. James G. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years," selected the +Alabama statutes for his attack. In the writer's book, "Why the Solid +South," pp. 31-36, the Alabama statutes cited by Mr. Blaine are shown to +be very similar to and largely copied from the statutes of Vermont, +Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. + +Had Mr. Lincoln been living he would have sympathized with these +Southern law-makers in their difficult task. But to the radicals in +Congress nothing could have been satisfactory that did not give Mr. +Sumner's party the "allies it needed." + +The first important step of the Congress that convened December 4, 1865, +was to refuse admission to the congressmen from the States reconstructed +under the Lincoln-Johnson plan, and pass a joint resolution for the +appointment of a Committee of Fifteen to inquire into conditions in +those States. + +The temper of that Congress may be gauged by the following extract from +the speech of Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, on the passage of the joint +resolution: + +"They framed iniquity and universal murder into law.... Their pirates +burned your unarmed commerce on the sea. They carved the bones of your +dead heroes into ornaments, and drank from goblets made out of their +skulls. They poisoned your fountains; put mines under your soldiers' +prisons; organized bands, whose leaders were concealed in your homes; +and commissions ordered the torch and yellow fever to be carried to your +cities and to your women and children. They planned one universal +bonfire of the North from Lake Ontario to the Missouri," etc. + +Congress, while refusing admission to senators elected by the +legislatures of the reconstructed States, was permitting these very +bodies to pass on amendments to the Federal Constitution; and such votes +were counted. Congress now proposed the Fourteenth Amendment, Section +III of which provided that no person should hold office under the United +States who, having taken an oath, as a Federal or State officer, to +support the Constitution, had subsequently engaged in the war against +the Union. The Southerners would not vote for a provision that would +disfranchise their leaders; they refused to ratify the Fourteenth +Amendment, and this helped further to inflame the radicals of the North. + +After the Committee of Fifteen had been appointed, Congress proceeded to +put the reconstructed States under military control. In the debate on +the measure, February 18, 1867, James A. Garfield, who was, at a later +date, to become generous and conservative, said exultingly: "This bill +sets out by laying its hands on the rebel governments and taking the +very breath of life out of them; in the next place, it puts the bayonet +at the breast of every rebel in the South; in the next place, it leaves +in the hands of Congress utterly and absolutely the work of +Reconstruction." + +And Congress did its work. Lincoln was in his grave, and Johnson, even +with his vetoes, was powerless. By the acts of March 2 and March 23, +1867, the reconstructed governments were swept away. Universal suffrage +was given to the negro and most of the prominent whites were +disfranchised. + +The first suffrage bill was for the District of Columbia, during the +debate on which Senator Sumner said: "Now, to my mind, nothing is +clearer than the absolute necessity of suffrage for all colored persons +in the disorganized States. It will not be enough, if you give it to +those who can read and write; you will not in this way acquire the +voting force you need there for the protection of Unionists, whether +white or black. You will not acquire the new allies who are essential to +the national cause." + +In the forty-first Congress, beginning March 4, 1871, the twelve +reconstructed States, including West Virginia, were represented by +twenty-two Republicans and two Democrats in the Senate, and forty-eight +Republicans and twelve Democrats in the House of Representatives. + +Mr. Sumner's "new allies" were ready to answer to the roll-call. + + * * * * * + +When Congress had convened in December, 1865, its radical leaders were +already bent on universal suffrage for the negro, but the Northern mind +was not yet prepared for so radical a measure. The "Committee of +Fifteen" was the first step in the programme, which was to hold the +Southern States out of the Union and make an appeal to the passions and +prejudices of Northern voters in the congressional elections of +November, 1866. Valuable material for the coming campaign was already +being furnished by the agents of the Freedmen's Bureau. These +"adventurers, broken down preachers, and politicians," as Senator +Fessenden, of Maine, called them, were, and had been for some time, +reporting "outrages," swearing negroes into midnight leagues, and +selecting the offices they hoped to fill. + +But the chief source of the material relied upon in the congressional +campaign of 1866 to exasperate the North, and prod voters to the point +of sanctioning negro suffrage in the South, was the official information +from the Committee of Fifteen. Its subcommittee of three, to take +testimony as to Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, +Mississippi, and Arkansas, were _all Republicans_. The doings of this +subcommittee in Alabama illustrate their methods. Only five persons, who +claimed to be citizens, were examined. These were all Republican +politicians. The testimony of each was bitterly partisan. "Under the +government of the State as it then existed, no one of these witnesses +could hope for official preferment. When this Reconstruction plan had +been completed the first of these five witnesses became governor of his +State; the second became a senator in Congress; the third secured a life +position in one of the departments in Washington; the fourth became a +circuit judge in Alabama, and the fifth a judge of the Supreme Court of +the District of Columbia--all as Republicans. There was no Democrat in +the subcommittee which examined these gentlemen, to cross-examine them; +and not a citizen of Alabama was called before that subcommittee to +confute or explain their evidence."[93] + + [93] "Why the Solid South," p. 20. + +With the material gathered by these means and from these sources, the +honest voters of the North were deluded into the election of a Congress +that went to Washington, in December, 1866, armed with authority to pass +the Reconstruction laws of March, 1867. + +Southern counsels were now much divided. Many good men, like Governor +Brown, of Georgia; General Longstreet and ex-Senator Albert Gallatin +Brown, of Mississippi, advised acquiescence and assistance, "not because +we approve the policy of Reconstruction, but because it is the best we +can do." These advisers hoped that good men, well known to the negroes, +might control them for the country's good; and zealous efforts were made +along this line in every State, but they were futile. The blacks had +already, before they got the suffrage, accepted the leadership of those +claiming to be the "men who had freed them." These leaders were not only +bureau agents but army camp-followers; and there was still another +brood, who espied from afar a political Eden in the prostrate States +and forthwith journeyed to it. All these Northern adventurers were +called "carpet-baggers"--they carried their worldly goods in their +hand-bags. The Southerners who entered into a joint-stock business with +them became "scalawags." These people mustered the negroes into leagues, +and everywhere whispered it into their ears that the aim of the Southern +whites was to reenslave them. + +Politics in the South in the days before the war had always been more or +less intense, partly because there were so many who had leisure, and +partly because the general rule was joint political discussions. The +seams that had divided Whigs and Democrats, Secessionists and Union men, +had not been entirely closed up, even by the melting fires of the Civil +War. Old feuds for a time played their part in Southern politics, even +after March, 1867. These old feuds made it difficult for Southern whites +to get together as a race; and, in fact, conservative men dreaded the +idea. It tended toward an actual race war which, for many years, had +been a nightmare; but in every reconstructed State the negro and his +allies finally forced the race issue. + +The new rulers not only increased taxes and misappropriated the revenues +of counties, cities, and States; they bartered away the credit of State +after State. Some of the States, after they were redeemed, scaled their +debts by compromising with creditors; others have struggled along with +their increased burdens. + +There were hundreds of negro policemen, constables, justices of the +peace, and legislators who could not write their names. Justice was in +many localities a farce. Ex-slaves became judges, representatives in +Congress, and United States senators. The eleven Confederate States had +been divided into military districts. Many of the officers and men who +were scattered over the country to uphold negro rule sympathized with +the whites and evidenced their sympathy in various ways. Others, either +because they were radicals at heart, or to commend themselves to their +superiors, who were some of them aspiring to political places, were +super-serviceable; and it was not uncommon for a military officer, in a +case where a negro was a party, to order a judge to leave the bench and +himself take the place. In communities where negro majorities were +overwhelming there were usually two factions, and when political +campaigns were on agents for these clans often scoured the fields clear +of laborers to recruit their marching bands. In cities these bands made +night hideous with shouts and the noise of fifes and drums. The negro +would tolerate no defection from his ranks to the whites, and negro +women were more intolerant than the men. It sometimes happened that a +bloody clash between the races was imminent when white men sought to +protect a negro who had dared to speak in favor of the Democratic and +Conservative party. In truth, the civilization of the South was being +changed from white to negroid. + +The final triumph of good government in all the States was at last +accomplished by accepting the race issue, as in Alabama in 1874. The +first resolution in the platform of the "Democratic and Conservative +party" in that State then was, "The radical and dominant faction of the +Republican party in this State persistently, and by fraudulent +representations, have inflamed the passions and prejudices of the +negroes, as a race, against the white people, and have thereby made it +necessary for the white people to unite and act together in self-defence +and for the preservation of white civilization." + +The people of North Carolina recovered the right of self-government in +1870. Other States followed from time to time, the last two being +Louisiana and South Carolina in 1877. + +Edwin L. Godkin, who was for long at the head of the _Nation_ and the +_Evening Post_, of New York, is thought by some competent judges to have +been the ablest editor this country has ever had. After the last of the +negro governments set up in the South had passed away, looking back over +the whole bad business, Mr. Godkin, in a letter to his friend Charles +Eliot Norton, written from Sweet Springs, West Virginia, September 3, +1877, said: "I do not see in short how the negro is ever to be worked +into a system of government for which you and I could have much +respect."[94] + + [94] Ogden's "Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin," vol. II, p. + 114. + +Garrison is dead. At the centenary of his birth, December 12, 1904, an +effort was made to arouse enthusiasm. There was only a feeble response; +but we still have extremists. Professor Josiah Royce, of Harvard, in +"Race Questions" (1906), speaking of race antipathies as "trained +hatred," says, pp. 48-49: "We can remember that they are childish +phenomena in our lives, phenomena on a level with the dread of snakes or +of mice, phenomena that we share with the cats and with the dogs, not +noble phenomena, but caprices of our complex nature." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE SOUTH UNDER SELF-GOVERNMENT + + +For now more than thirty years, whites and blacks, both free, have lived +together in the reconstructed States. In some of them there have been +local clashes, but in none of them has there been race war, predicted by +Jefferson and feared by Lincoln; and there probably never will be such a +war, unless it shall come through the intervention of such an outside +force as produced in the South the conflict between the races at the +polls in 1868-76. + +Every State government set up under the plan of Congress had wrought +ruin, and the ruin was always more complete where the negroes were most +numerous, as in South Carolina and Louisiana. + +The rule of the carpet-bagger and the negro was now superseded by +governments based on Abraham Lincoln's idea, the idea he expressed in +the debate with Douglas in 1858, when he said: "While they [the two +races] do remain together _there must be the position of inferior and +superior_, and I, as much as any other man, _am in favor of having the +superior position assigned to the white man_." + +Conducted on this basis, the present governments in the reconstructed +States have endured now for periods varying from thirty-six to forty-two +years, and in every State, without any exception, the prosperity of both +whites and blacks has been wonderful, and this in spite of the still +existent abnormal animosities engendered by congressional +reconstruction. + +In the present State governments the race problem seems to have reached, +in its larger lines, its only practicable solution. There is still, +however, much friction between whites and blacks. Higher culture among +the masses, especially of the dominant race, and wise leadership in both +races, will in time minimize this, but it is not to be expected, nor is +it ever to be desired, that racial antipathies should entirely cease to +exist. The result of such cessation would be amalgamation, a solution +that American whites will never tolerate. + +Deportation, as a solution of the negro problem, is impracticable. Mr. +Lincoln, much as he desired the separation of the races, could not +accomplish it, even when he had all the war power of the government in +his hands. He was, as we have seen, unable to find a country that would +take the 3,500,000 of blacks then in the seceded States. Now, there are +in the South, including Delaware, according to the census of 1910, +8,749,390, and, quite naturally, the American negro is more unwilling +than ever to leave America. + +Another solution sometimes suggested in the South is the repeal of the +Fifteenth Amendment, which declares that the negro shall not be deprived +of the ballot because of his race, but agitation for this would appear +to be worse than useless. + +The negro vote in the reconstructed States is, and has for years been, +quite small, not large enough to be considered a factor in any of them. +One cause of this is that the whites enforce against the blacks rigidly +the tests required by law, but the chief reason is, that the negro, who +is qualified, does not often apply for registration. He finds work now +more profitable than voting. He can not, he knows, control, nor can he, +if disposed to do so, sell his ballot as he once did. One of the most +signal and durable evils of Congressional Reconstruction was the utter +debasement of the suffrage in eleven States where the ballot had +formerly been notably pure. Gideon Welles saw clearly when he said in +his diary, June 23, 1867 (p. 102, vol. III): "Under the pretence of +elevating the negro the radicals are degrading the whites and debasing +the elective franchise, bringing elections into contempt." During the +rule of the negro and the alien, in every black county, where the negro +majority was as two to one, there were, as a rule, two Republican +candidates for every fat office, and an election meant, for the negro, a +golden harvest. Rival candidates were mercilessly fleeced by their black +constituencies, and the belief South is that as a rule the +carpet-baggers, in their hegira, returned North as poor as when they +came. + +In the Reconstruction era the whites fought fraud with fraud; and even +after recovering control they, the whites, felt justified in continuing +to defraud the negro of his vote. To restore the purity of the +ballot-box was the chief reason for the amendments to State +constitutions, by means of which amendments, having in view the +limitations of the Federal Constitution, as many negroes and as few +whites as was practicable were excluded. + +This accounts in part for the smallness of the negro vote South. A more +potent reason is that the Democratic party, dominated by whites, selects +its candidates in primaries; and the negro, seeing no chance to win, +does not care to pay a poll tax or otherwise qualify for registration. + +Southern whites have now for more than three decades been governing the +blacks in their midst. It is the most difficult task that has ever been +undertaken in all the history of popular government, but sad experience +has demonstrated that legal restriction of the negro vote in the South +there must be. + +Party spirit tends always to blind the vision, and, as we have seen in +this review of the past, it often stifles conscience; and this even +where the masses of the people are approximately homogeneous. Southern +statesmen are now dealing not only with party spirit, but with +perpetual race friction manifesting itself in various forms. Failure +there must be in minor matters and in certain localities; the progress +that has been made can only be fairly estimated by considering general +results. Those who sympathize with the South think they see there among +the whites a growing spirit of altruism, begotten of responsibility, and +this promises much for the amelioration of race friction. + +Since obtaining control of their State governments the whites in the +Southern States have as a rule increased appropriations for common +schools by at least four hundred per cent, and though paying themselves +by far the greater proportion of these taxes, they have continued to +divide revenues pro rata between the white and colored schools. + +Industrial results have been amazing. The following figures, taken from +the Annual Blue Book, 1911 edition, of the _Manufacturers' Record_, +Baltimore, Maryland, include West Virginia among the reconstructed +States. + +The population of these States was, in 1880, 13,608,703; in 1910, +23,613,533. + +Manufacturing capital, 1880, $147,156,624. In 1900--twenty years--it was +$1,019,056,200. + +Cotton crop, whole South, 1880, 5,761,252 bales. In 1911 it was about +15,000,000. + +Of this cotton crop Southern mills took, in 1880, 321,337 bales, and in +1910, 2,344,343 bales. + +In 1880 the twelve reconstructed States cut, of lumber, board measure, +2,981,274,000 feet; and in 1909 22,445,000,000 feet. + +Their output of pig-iron was, in 1880, 264,991 long tons; in 1910, +3,048,000 tons. The assessed value of taxable property was, in 1880, +$2,106,971,271; in 1910, $6,522,195,139. + +The negro, though the white man, with his superior energy and capacity, +far outstrips him, has shared in this material prosperity. His property +in these States has been estimated as high as $500,000,000. + +During the last decade, 1900-1910, the white population of the South +increased by 24.4 per cent, while the negro population in the same +States increased only 10.4 per cent. There has been a very considerable +gain of whites over blacks since 1880, the result largely of a greater +natural increase of whites over blacks, immigrants not counted. All +this indicates that the negro problem is gradually being minimized. + +Taken in the aggregate, the shortcomings of the negro are numerous and +regrettable, but not greater than was to be expected. The general +advance of an inferior race will never equal that of one which is +superior by nature and already centuries ahead. The laggard and +thriftless among the inferior people will naturally be more, and it is +from these classes that prison houses are filled. + +There is a very considerable class of negroes who are improving mentally +and morally, but improvidence is a characteristic of the race, and very +many of them, even though they labor more or less steadily, will never +accumulate. The third class, much larger than among the whites, is +composed of those who are idle, dissipated, and criminal. Taken +altogether, however, what Booker Washington says is true: "There cannot +be found, in the civilized or uncivilized world, a like number of +negroes whose economic, educational, and religious life is so far +advanced as that of the ten millions within this country."[95] This +advancement is one of the results of slavery. When the negroes come to +recognize this, as some of their leaders already do,[96] and come to +appreciate the advantages for further improvement they have had since +their emancipation, they will cease to repine over the bondage of their +ancestors. There were undoubtedly evils in slavery, but, after all, +there was some reason in the advice given by the good Spanish Bishop Las +Casas to the King of Spain--that it would be rightful to enslave and +thus Christianize and civilize the African savage. Herbert Spencer, +"Illustrations of Universal Progress" (p. 444), says: "Hateful though it +is to us, and injurious as it would be now, slavery was once beneficial, +was one of the _necessary phases of human progress_." + + [95] Pickett, pp. 399-400. + + [96] "The Negro Problem," Pickett, 1909, pp. 399-400. + +Sir Harry Johnston, African explorer and student of the negro race, in +both the old and the new world, and perhaps the most eminent authority +on a question he has, in a fashion, made his own, says: "Intellectually, +and perhaps physically, he (the negro) has attained the highest degree +of advancement as yet in the United States."[97] + + [97] "The Negro in the New World," Sir Harry Johnston, p. 478. + +"In Alabama (most of all) the American negro is seen at his best, as +peasant, peasant proprietor, artisan, professional man, and member of +society."[98] + + [98] _Ib._, p. 470. + +Race animosities are now abnormal, both South and North. The prime +reasons for this are two: + +1. The bitter conflict during reconstruction for race supremacy and the +false hopes once held out to the negro of ultimate social equality with +the whites. Among the early measures of congressional reconstruction was +a "civil rights" enactment which the negroes regarded as giving to them +all the rights of the white man. Their Supreme Court in Alabama decided, +in "Burns vs. The State," that the "civil rights" laws conferred the +right to intermarriage. Negroes, North, no doubt also believed in this +construction. But the Supreme Court of the United States later held that +the States, and not Congress, had jurisdiction over the marriage +relation within the States. All the Southern and a number of the +Northern States have since forbidden the intermarriage of whites and +blacks, and so the negro's hopes of equal rights in this regard have +vanished. + +This disappointment and his utter failure to secure the social equality +that once seemed his, have tended to embitter the negro against the +white man. + +2. Whites have been embittered against blacks by the frequency in later +years of the crime of the negro against white women. This horrible +offence began to be common in the South some thirty-two or three years +since, or perhaps a little earlier, and somewhat later it appeared in +the North, where it seems to have been as common, negro population +considered, as in the South. The crime was almost invariably followed by +lynching, which, however, was not always for the same crime. The +following is the list of lynchings in the sections, as kept by the +_Chicago Tribune_ since it began to compile them: + +1885 184 + +1886 138 + +1887 122 + +1888 142 + +1889 176 + +1890 127 + +1891 192 + +1892 205 + +1893 200 + +1894 190 + +1895 171 + +1896 181 + +1897 166 + +1898 127 + +1899 107 + +1900 107 + +1901 185 + +1902 96 + +1903 104 + +1904 87 + +1905 66 + +1906 66 + +1907 68 + +1908 100 + +1909 87 + +1910 74 + +The general decrease, while population is increasing, is encouraging; +but lynching itself is a horrible crime; and lynching for one crime +begets lynching for another. Of the total number lynched last year, nine +were whites; sixty-five were negroes, among them three women; and only +twenty-two were for crimes of negroes against white women. The other +crimes were murder, attempts to murder, robbery, arson, etc. + +Census returns indicate that in the country at large the criminality of +the negro, as compared with that of the white man, is nearly three times +greater, and that the ratio of negro criminality is much higher North +than South. Such returns also indicate that so far education has not +lessened negro criminality,[99] but it is not known that any +well-educated negro has been guilty of the crime against white women. + + [99] "The Negro Problem," William Pickett, pp. 136-38. Rare Traits, + etc., of the Negro, Statistician, Prudential Ins. Co. of America, p. 219 + _et seq._ + +In the South the negro is excluded from many occupations for which the +best of them are fitted, but in the North his industrial conditions are +worse. Fewer occupations are open to him and the wisest members of his +race are counselling him to remain in the more favorable industrial +atmosphere of the South. + +The dislike of negroes for whites has been increased South by the laws +which separate them from whites in schools, public conveyances, etc. But +it is to be remembered that these laws were intended to prevent +intermarriage; they are in part the result of race antipathies. But the +sound reason for them is that they tend to prevent intimacies which, at +the points where the races are in closest touch with each other, might +result in intermarriage. Professor E. D. Cope, of the University of +Pennsylvania, one of the very highest of American authorities on the +race question, in a powerful article published in 1890,[100] advocated +the deportation of the negroes from the South, no matter at what cost. +Otherwise he predicted eventual amalgamation, which would be the +destruction of a large portion of the finest race in the world. + + [100] "Two Perils of the Indo-European," _The Open Court_, January 23, + 1890, p. 2052. + + * * * * * + +This little study now comes to a close. An effort has been made to +sketch briefly in this chapter the difficulties the South has +encountered in dealing with the negro problem, and to outline the +measure of success it has achieved. However imperfectly the author may +have performed his task, it must be clear to the reader that no such +problem as the present was ever before presented to a self-governing +people. Never was there so much need of that culture from which alone +can come a high sense of duty to others. The negro must be encouraged to +be self-helpful and useful to the community. If he is to do all this and +remain a separate race, he must have leadership among his own people. In +the Mississippi Black Belt there is now a town of some 4,000 negroes, +Mound Bayou, completely organized and prospering. It may be that in the +future negroes seeking among themselves the amenities of life may +congregate into communities of their own, cultivating adjacent lands, as +the French do in their agricultural villages. Wherever they may be, +they must practise the civic virtues, honesty, and obedience to law. W. +H. Councill, a negro teacher, of Huntsville, Alabama, said some years +since in a magazine article: "When the gray-haired veterans who followed +Lee and Jackson pass away, the negro will have lost his best friends." +This is true, but it is hoped that time and culture, while not producing +social equality, will allay race animosities and bring the negro other +friends to take the place of the departing veterans. + +The white man, with his pride of race, must more and more be made to +feel that _noblesse oblige_. His sense of duty to others must measure up +to his responsibilities and opportunities. He must accord to the negro +all his rights under the laws as they exist. + +The South is exerting itself to better its common schools, but it cannot +compete in this regard with the North. Northern philanthropists are +quite properly contributing to education in the South. They should +consider well the needs of both races. Any attempt to give to the +negroes advantages superior to those of the whites, who are now +treating the negro fairly in this respect, might look like another +attempt to put, in negro language, "the bottom rail on top." + +Looking over the whole field covered by this sketch, it is wonderful to +note how the chain of causation stretches back into the past. +Reconstruction was a result of the war; secession and war resulted from +a movement in the North, in 1831, against conditions then existing in +the South. The negro, the cause of the old quarrel between the sections, +is located now much as he was then. How full of lessons, for both the +South and the North, is the history of the last eighty years! + +There is even a chord that connects the burning of a negro at +Coatesville, Pennsylvania, by an excited mob on the 13th of August, +1911, with the burning of the Federal Constitution at Framingham, +Massachusetts, by that other excited mob of madmen, under Garrison, on +the fourth day of July, 1854. One body of outlaws was defying the laws +of Pennsylvania; the other was defying the fundamental laws of the +nation. + + + + +INDEX + + + Abolitionists, mobbed, 71; + burn U. S. Constitution, 72; + private lives of leaders irreproachable, 89; + become factor in national politics; Boston captured by; + "slave-catchers" now mobbed; national election turns on + vote, 95-6; + anti-slavery in Faneuil Hall, 97; + election again turns on vote of, 99; + impartial observer on influence of, 105; + Professor Smith on, 106 + + Abolition petitions in Congress, influence of, 102 + + Abolition societies, in 1840, 93 + + Adams, John Quincy, becomes champion of Abolitionists, 90; + defends right of petition, 91 + + Alien and Sedition laws, 1798, 18; + nature of, 19 + + Americans, world's record for hard fighting, 201 + + Andrews, Prof. E. A., slavery conditions South, 79 + + Anti-slavery people and Abolitionists grouped, 104; + Douglas charged "Black Republican" party with favoring "negro + citizenship and negro equality," 167 + + Aristocracy in South, 159, 160, 161 + + Articles of Confederation, 15 + + Author, antecedents, explanation of, 10-11 + + Author's conclusions, 242-3-4 + + + Biglow Papers, 97-8 + + Birney, James G., mobbed, 87 + + Boston meeting, Dr. Hart overlooks, 73 + + Boston Resolutions, 64 + + Burke, Edmund, on conciliation, 109; + spirit of liberty in slave-holding communities, 158 + + + Calhoun, John C., prophecy of, 167-8 + + Cause of sectional conflict, Abolition societies and their methods, 205 + + Channing, Dr. Wm. E., encomium on Great Britain, 39; + letter to Webster, 47; + opinion of Abolitionists, 87; + his change, 88 + + Characters and careers, of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, 188-192 + + Churches, North and South, opposition to slavery; a stupendous + change, 67; + "whole cloth arrayed against" Garrison, 68; + Southern churches still defend slavery; Northern changed; Methodist + church disrupted, 70 + + Coatesville lynching, 224 + + Colonies, juxtaposed, not united, 15 + + Colonization Society, origin of and purposes, 44; + its supporters, 45; + making progress; Abolitionists halted it, 46 + + Compromise of 1850; excitement in Congress, 106; + great leaders in; Webster on 7th of March, 107; + Clay's speech, 112; + new fugitive slave law gave offence, 128 + + Confederate States with old Constitution--changes slight, 186 + + Constitution, Alien and Sedition Laws first palpable infringement, 3; + powers conferred by discussed, 16; + as supreme law Southerners still cling to, 207 + + Cope, Prof. E. D., advocated deportation to prevent amalgamation, 241 + + Cotton gin, accepted theory as to denied, 12 + + Courage of, and losses in, both armies, 195 + + Criminality, of negroes greater than of whites, 240 + + Cromwell and the Great Revolution, analogy to, 8 + + Curtis, George Ticknor, quotation from "Life of Buchanan," 14 + + + Davis, Jefferson, farewell speech, 181; + doubts about success--sadness, 190 + + Democrats, North, opposed negro suffrage, 212 + + Deportation, no country ready to take negro, 82 + + Disunion, project among Federalist leaders, 1803-4, 25; + sentiment in Congress, 1794, 24 + + + Emancipation, easy North; difficult South, 40; + Federal government, no power over, 41; + status North in 1830, 52 + + Emancipations, South, what accomplished in 1831, 50; + census tables, 51 + + Embargo of 1807, why repealed, 26 + + Emerson, Ralph Waldo, eulogizes John Brown, 15 + + Everett, Edward, denunciation of John Brown expedition, 152 + + Extradition, refused, of abductors of slaves, Supreme Court + powerless, 176 + + + Federalists, construed Constitution liberally, 17 + + Fite, Professor at Yale, declares Republicans in 1860 hoped to destroy + slavery, 175; + justification of secession, 182 + + Freedman's Bureau, its composition, 221 + + Free speech, Channing defends Abolitionists as champions of, 87; + John Quincy Adams becomes advocate, 90 + + Fugitive slave law, North not opposing in 1828, 53; + Missouri Compromise provided for, 54 + + + Garrison, William Lloyd, began _Liberator_; personality and + characteristics, 56; + key-note, slavery the concern of all; slave-holders to be made + odious, 58 + + Godkin, E. L., on negro as factor in politics, 237 + + Greeley, Horace, draws comfort from John Brown's raid, 153 + + + Hartford Convention, 28 + + Helper, Hinton Rowan, his book, 165 + + Higher law idea, prompted Abolition Crusade--and Czolgosz to murder + McKinley, 206 + + + Immigration and Union sentiment; number of immigrants, 33; + few South, 34 + + Incendiary literature, sent South, 62; + North aroused; Andrew Jackson's message, 63; + Boston Resolutions, 64; + indictment in Alabama; requisition on Governor of New York, 98 + + Incompatibility of slavery and freedom; Lincoln's Springfield + speech, 81; + Garrison first to announce doctrine; Abraham Lincoln next; + then Seward, 147-8 + + Insurrections, Denmark Vesey plot at Charleston, 59; + Nat Turner in Virginia; Walker's pamphlet, 60 + + Irish patriots, Mitchel and Meagher, divide on secession, 35 + + + John Brown's raid, 149; + his secret committee, 151 + + Johnson, Andrew, succeeding Lincoln, carried out plan, 213 + + Johnston, Sir Harry, on negro in South, highest degree of + advancement, 237 + + + Kansas, fierce struggles in; Sumner's bitter speech, 142-3 + + Kansas-Nebraska Act, Douglas originated, 135; + aggravated sectionalism, 136 + + Kentucky Resolutions, 1798, 19; + Jefferson the author, 20; + copy of first of, 21 + + Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798-9; + Secessionists relied on, 21; + Jefferson and Madison's reasons for, 22 + + Know-Nothing party, its origin; purposes; appeal for the Union, + 140-1-2 + + + Las Casas, Bishop, advice to King of Spain, 237 + + Liberia, sending negroes to, called "expatriation"; enterprise a + failure, 46; + Lincoln's hopes of, 81; + why it failed--Miss Mahoney's account, 169-70-71 + + Lincoln, South no more responsible for slavery than North, 49; + speech at Charleston, Ill., 81; + finds no country ready to take American negro, 82; + South in 1860 thought him radical; had favored white supremacy + in 1858, 185; + speech at Peoria, 186; + assassination of, 209 + + Lodge, Henry Cabot, declares popular verdict against Webster, 118; + he had undertaken the impossible, 120; + his argument good, he not man to make it, 121 + + Lundy, Benjamin, attempts to stir up North against slavery South, 47 + + Lynchings, tables, 239; + comments on, 240 + + + McMaster, affirms Webster behind the times (note), 100 + + Missouri, controversy over slavery, 52; + distinct from that begun later by "New Abolitionists," 53 + + Mobs, Garrison mobbed; many anti-slavery riots North, 71; + violence toward Abolitionists in North reacted, 85; + opponents became defenders, 86 + + Mound Bayou, a negro town, 242 + + + Nationality, spirit of; causes of, development of, 30; + grows, North; South on old lines, 35 + + Navy, U. S., deciding factor in war, 198-9 + + Negro, the, located now much as in 1860, 7; + Lincoln could find no home abroad for, 206; + reasons for smallness of vote South, 233; + improvement; Booker Washington's opinion, 236; + benefited by slavery; attained South highest degree of + advancement, 237; + best opportunities South, 241; + Confederate veterans best friends there, 243 + + + Ohio, Resolutions looking to co-operative emancipation; responses + of other States to, 42; + Southern reason for, 43; + Northern, kindly temper of, 44 + + Otis, Harrison Gray, on Boston Resolutions, 65 + + + Pamphlets, venomous one cited, 75 + + Personal liberty laws, eleven States passed; Alexander Johnston + says absolutely without excuse, 177 + + Petition, right of, in Congress, 90; + "gag resolution," 92 + + Political conditions, North and South compared, 162-3-4 + + "Poor whites," discussion of, and of social conditions South, 155-6-7 + + Presidential campaign 1860, excitement, 171 + + Press, Northern slandering South, 153; + Southern slandering North, 154 + + + Race animosities, negro's aspirations to social equality; legal + enactments, 238; + whites embittered by crime against white women, 239 + + Reagan, "Republican rule on Abolition principles," 105 + + Reconstruction, Lincoln's theory; veto of resolution asserting power + of Congress over, 208; + last speech, adhering to plan, 210 + + Reconstruction by Johnson under Lincoln plan; wisdom of Lincoln-Johnson + plan, John Sherman; opposition to it partisan, Senator Cullom, 211; + South accepts plan; senators and representatives, 214; + negro problem and Jefferson's prediction, 215; + apprenticeship and vagrancy laws, Blaine's attack on, 217 + + Reconstruction, Congressional, extremists bent on negro suffrage when + Congress convened in 1865, 212; + preparations for; committee of fifteen; Shellabarger's appeal to war + passions, 215; + South denied representation; Southerners reject Fourteenth Amendment; + Garfield denounces rebel government, 219; + Johnson's reconstructed State governments swept away; universal + suffrage for negro; South sends Republicans to Congress, 220; + witnesses before "Committee of Fifteen" rewarded; Southern counsels + divided, 223; + carpet-baggers and scalawags, 224; + intolerable political conditions; race issue forced upon whites, 226; + whites recover self-government, 227 + + Republican party, the modern; its origin; Mr. Rhodes on, 138-139; + nominates Fremont and Dayton; denounces slavery; excitement; + defeated, 144 + + Resources, war, North and South compared, 191-2-3 + + + Salem Church monument, 9 + + Santo Domingo, memory of massacre in, 80 + + Seceded States, wretched conditions in 1865, 214 + + Seceding States, desire to preserve Constitution, 179 + + Secession, early threats of not connected with slavery, 26; + Josiah Quincy threatens, 1811; Massachusetts legislature endorses + him, 28; + in early days belief in general, 28; + Massachusetts legislature threatens, 1844, 29; + eleven States seceded, 179; + Prof. Fite justifies, his ground, 182; + motives for in 1860-1, 183 + + Self-government restored; local clashes, no race war; based on Lincoln's + idea, superiority of white man, 229; + constitutional amendments to restore purity of ballot, 233; + industrial results amazing, 234-5; + negro vote small--reasons, 231 + + Seward, leader of Republican party, 178 + + Situation in Alabama in 1835--letter of John W. Womack, 79 + + Slavery, Great Britain abolishes, compensates owners, 39; + South's "calamity not crime," 48; + debate in Virginia Assembly, 61 + + Slaves, protect masters' families during war, 132-3; + a surprise to North, 133-4 + + Slave-trade, New England's part in, 37; + South protests against; sentiment against arises in England, sweeps + over America, 38 + + Social conditions South, 155-60 + + South unwilling to accept idea of incompatibility of slave and free + States, 94-5; + bitterness in, 101; + on defensive-aggressive, 126; + excited; filibustering; importation of slaves, 145 + + Spencer, Herbert, slavery once a necessary phase of human progress, 237 + + Sprague, Peleg, on Boston Resolutions, 66 + + Suffrage, Lincoln thought Southerners themselves should control, 203 + + Sumner, Charles, philippic against South; Brooks's attack on, 143-4; + negro suffrage to give "Unionists" new allies, 220 + + + Texas, application for admission, 93; + Channing threatens secession if admitted, 94 + + Tilden, Samuel J., letter to Kent, secession inevitable if Lincoln + elected, 172-3-4 + + + Underground railroads, Professor Hart's picture of, 103 + + Union, the, Webster's great speech for in 1830, 31; + effect of, 32 + + Union sentiment South; Whigs, 34 + + "Uncle Tom's Cabin," influence on Northern sentiment, 129-133 + + + War, the, nature of, 180 + + Washington, a Federalist, 18; + his appeal for Union, 30 + + Webster, on 7th of March, 107; + his sole concession, 111; + condemns personal liberty laws and Abolitionists, 115; + congratulated and denounced, 117; + "Ichabod," 119; + Rhodes's estimate of, 122; + his speech for "The Constitution and the Union"; Wilkinson's estimate + of, 122; + E. P. Wheeler's estimate of, 125; + Webster's opinion of Abolitionists and Free-soilers, 126 + + Welles, Gideon, opinion in 1867 as to debasing elective franchise, 232 + + Whites, South, fought fraud with fraud during Reconstruction, till + Constitution amended continued it, 232; + difficulties of their task, 233; + growing spirit of altruism; school taxes divided pro rata, 234 + + Wilmot proviso, 111 + + Wisconsin nullifies fugitive slave law, 178 + + Women, devotion of during war, North and South, 195 + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Page 49: 'Prior to the rise of the Abolitionists in 1831, +emancipationists in the South had been free to grapple with conditions +as they found them.' + +The words "in the" have been supplied by the transcriber. + +Hyphenation is inconsistent. + +Obvious printer's errors have been corrected. + +Index reference to Johnston, Sir Harry: the transcriber has changed +page 257 to read 237. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABOLITION CRUSADE AND ITS +CONSEQUENCES*** + + +******* This file should be named 39720.txt or 39720.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/9/7/2/39720 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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