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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contest in America, by John Stuart Mill
+
+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 Contest in America
+
+Author: John Stuart Mill
+
+Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5123]
+Last Updated: August 11, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTEST IN AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Curtis A. Weyant and David A. Maddock
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CONTEST IN AMERICA
+
+By John Stuart Mill
+
+
+Reprinted From Fraser's Magazine
+
+
+
+[Redactor's note:  Italics are indicated by underscores surrounding
+the _italicized text_.]
+
+
+
+THE CONTEST IN AMERICA
+
+
+
+The cloud which for the space of a month hung gloomily over the
+civilized world, black with far worse evils than those of simple war,
+has passed from over our heads without bursting. The fear has not been
+realized, that the only two first-rate Powers who are also free
+nations would take to tearing each other in pieces, both the one and
+the other in a bad and odious cause. For while, on the American side,
+the war would have been one of reckless persistency in wrong, on ours
+it would have been a war in alliance with, and, to practical purposes,
+in defence and propagation of, slavery. We had, indeed, been wronged.
+We had suffered an indignity, and something more than an indignity,
+which, not to have resented, would have been to invite a constant
+succession of insults and injuries from the same and from every other
+quarter. We could have acted no otherwise than we have done: yet it is
+impossible to think, without something like a shudder, from what we
+have escaped. We, the emancipators of the slave--who have wearied
+every Court and Government in Europe and America with our protests and
+remonstrances, until we goaded them into at least ostensibly
+coöperating with us to prevent the enslaving of the negro--we, who for
+the last half century have spent annual sums, equal to the revenue of
+a small kingdom, in blockading the African coast, for a cause in which
+we not only had no interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniary
+interest, and which many believed would ruin, as many among us still,
+though erroneously, believe that it has ruined, our colonies,--_we_
+should have lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most commanding
+positions of the world, a powerful republic, devoted not only to
+slavery, but to pro-slavery propagandism--should have helped to give a
+place in the community of nations to a conspiracy of slave-owners, who
+have broken their connection with the American Federation on the sole
+ground, ostentatiously proclaimed, that they thought an attempt would
+be made to restrain, not slavery itself, but their purpose of
+spreading slavery wherever migration or force could carry it.
+
+A nation which has made the professions that England has, does not
+with impunity, under however great provocation, betake itself to
+frustrating the objects for which it has been calling on the rest of
+the world to make sacrifices of what they think their interest. At
+present all the nations of Europe have sympathized with us; have
+acknowledged that we were injured, and declared with rare unanimity,
+that we had no choice but to resist, if necessary, by arms. But the
+consequences of such a war would soon have buried its causes in
+oblivion. When the new Confederate States, made an independent Power
+by English help, had begun their crusade to carry negro slavery from
+the Potomac to Cape Horn; who would then have remembered that England
+raised up this scourge to humanity not for the evil's sake, but
+because somebody had offered an insult to her flag? Or even if
+unforgotten, who would then have felt that such a grievance was a
+sufficient palliation of the crime? Every reader of a newspaper, to
+the farthest ends of the earth, would have believed and remembered one
+thing only--that at the critical juncture which was to decide whether
+slavery should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be trodden out
+at the moment of conflict between the good and the evil spirit--at the
+dawn of a hope that the demon might now at last be chained and flung
+into the pit, England stepped in, and, for the sake of cotton, made
+Satan victorious.
+
+The world has been saved from this calamity, and England from this
+disgrace. The accusation would indeed have been a calumny. But to be
+able to defy calumny, a nation, like an individual, must stand very
+clear of just reproach in its previous conduct. Unfortunately, we
+ourselves have given too much plausibility to the charge. Not by
+anything said or done by us as a Government or as a nation, but by the
+tone of our press, and in some degree, it must be owned, the general
+opinion of English society. It is too true, that the feelings which
+have been manifested since the beginning of the American contest--the
+judgments which have been put forth, and the wishes which have been
+expressed concerning the incidents and probable eventualities of the
+struggle--the bitter and irritating criticism which has been kept up,
+not even against both parties equally, but almost solely against the
+party in the right, and the ungenerous refusal of all those just
+allowances which no country needs more than our own, whenever its
+circumstances are as near to those of America as a cut finger is to an
+almost mortal wound,--these facts, with minds not favorably disposed
+to us, would have gone far to make the most odious interpretation of
+the war in which we have been so nearly engaged with the United
+States, appear by many degrees the most probable. There is no denying
+that our attitude towards the contending parties (I mean our moral
+attitude, for politically there was no other course open to us than
+neutrality) has not been that which becomes a people who are as
+sincere enemies of slavery as the English really are, and have made as
+great sacrifices to put an end to it where they could. And it has been
+an additional misfortune that some of our most powerful journals have
+been for many years past very unfavorable exponents of English feeling
+on all subjects connected with slavery: some, probably, from the
+influences, more or less direct, of West Indian opinions and
+interests: others from inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled by
+reason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is always adverse to it
+in feeling; which likes the spectacle of irresponsible power exercised
+by one person over others; which has no moral repugnance to the
+thought of human beings born to the penal servitude for life, to which
+for the term of a few years we sentence our most hardened criminals,
+but keeps its indignation to be expended on "rabid and fanatical
+abolitionists" across the Atlantic, and on those writers in England
+who attach a sufficiently serious meaning to their Christian
+professions, to consider a fight against slavery as a fight for God.
+
+Now, when the mind of England, and it may almost be said, of the
+civilized part of mankind, has been relieved from the incubus which
+had weighed on it ever since the _Trent_ outrage, and when we are no
+longer feeling towards the Northern Americans as men feel towards
+those with whom they may be on the point of struggling for life or
+death; now, if ever, is the time to review our position, and consider
+whether we have been feeling what ought to have been felt, and wishing
+what ought to have been wished, regarding the contest in which the
+Northern States are engaged with the South.
+
+In considering this matter, we ought to dismiss from our minds, as far
+as possible, those feelings against the North, which have been
+engendered not merely by the _Trent_ aggression, but by the previous
+anti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump orators. It is
+hardly worth while to ask how far these explosions of ill-humor are
+anything more than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplined
+minds, disappointed of the sympathy which they justly thought they had
+a right to expect from the great anti-slavery people, in their really
+noble enterprise. It is almost superfluous to remark that a democratic
+Government always shows worst where other Governments generally show
+best, on its outside; that unreasonable people are much more noisy
+than the reasonable; that the froth and scum are the part of a
+violently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but are not its body
+and substance. Without insisting on these things, I contend, that all
+previous cause of offence should be considered as cancelled, by the
+reparation which the American Government has so amply made; not so
+much the reparation itself, which might have been so made as to leave
+still greater cause of permanent resentment behind it; but the manner
+and spirit in which they have made it. These have been such as most of
+us, I venture to say, did not by any means expect. If reparation were
+made at all, of which few of us felt more than a hope, we thought that
+it would have been made obviously as a concession to prudence, not to
+principle. We thought that there would have been truckling to the
+newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters who were crying out for
+retaining the prisoners at all hazards. We expected that the
+atonement, if atonement there were, would have been made with
+reservations, perhaps under protest. We expected that the
+correspondence would have been spun out, and a trial made to induce
+England to be satisfied with less; or that there would have been a
+proposal of arbitration; or that England would have been asked to make
+concessions in return for justice; or that if submission was made, it
+would have been made, ostensibly, to the opinions and wishes of
+Continental Europe. We expected anything, in short, which would have
+been weak and timid and paltry. The only thing which no one seemed to
+expect, is what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Government have
+done none of these things. Like honest men, they have said in direct
+terms, that our demand was right; that they yielded to it because it
+was just; that if they themselves had received the same treatment,
+they would have demanded the same reparation; and that if what seemed
+to be the American side of a question was not the just side, they
+would be on the side of justice; happy as they were to find after
+their resolution had been taken, that it was also the side which
+America had formerly defended. Is there any one, capable of a moral
+judgment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of America and
+American statesmen, is not raised by such an act, done on such
+grounds? The act itself may have been imposed by the necessity of the
+circumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of action
+professed, were their own choice. Putting the worst hypothesis
+possible, which it would be the height of injustice to entertain
+seriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience,
+and that the profession of regard for justice was hypocrisy, even so,
+the ground taken, even if insincerely, is the most hopeful sign of the
+moral state of the American mind which has appeared for many years.
+That a sense of justice should be the motive which the rulers of a
+country rely on, to reconcile the public to an unpopular, and what
+might seem a humiliating act; that the journalists, the orators, many
+lawyers, the Lower House of Congress, and Mr. Lincoln's own naval
+secretary, should be told in the face of the world, by their own
+Government, that they have been giving public thanks, presents of
+swords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic honors to the author
+of an act which, though not so intended, was lawless and wrong, and
+for which the proper remedy is confession and atonement; that this
+should be the accepted policy (supposing it to be nothing higher) of a
+Democratic Republic, shows even unlimited democracy to be a better
+thing than many Englishmen have lately been in the habit of
+considering it, and goes some way towards proving that the aberrations
+even of a ruling multitude are only fatal when the better instructed
+have not the virtue or the courage to front them boldly. Nor ought it
+to be forgotten, to the honor of Mr. Lincoln's Government, that in
+doing what was in itself right, they have done also what was best
+fitted to allay the animosity which was daily becoming more bitter
+between the two nations so long as the question remained open. They
+have put the brand of confessed injustice upon that rankling and
+vindictive resentment with which the profligate and passionate part of
+the American press has been threatening us in the event of concession,
+and which is to be manifested by some dire revenge, to be taken, as
+they pretend, after the nation is extricated from its present
+difficulties. Mr. Lincoln has done what depended on him to make this
+spirit expire with the occasion which raised it up; and we shall have
+ourselves chiefly to blame if we keep it alive by the further
+prolongation of that stream of vituperative eloquence, the source of
+which, even now, when the cause of quarrel has been amicably made up,
+does not seem to have run dry. {1}
+
+
+{1. I do not forget one regrettable passage in Mr. Seward's letter,
+in which he said that "if the safety of the Union required the
+detention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of
+this Government to detain them." I sincerely grieve to find this
+sentence in the dispatch, for the exceptions to the general rules of
+morality are not a subject to be lightly or unnecessarily tampered
+with. The doctrine in itself is no other than that professed and
+acted on by all governments--that self-preservation, in a State, as
+in an individual, is a warrant for many things which at all other
+times ought to be rigidly abstained from. At all events, no nation
+which has ever passed "laws of exception," which ever suspended the
+Habeas Corpus Act or passed an Alien Bill in dread of a Chartist
+insurrection, has a right to throw the first stone at Mr. Lincoln's
+Government.}
+
+Let us, then, without reference to these jars, or to the declamations
+of newspaper writers on either side of the Atlantic, examine the
+American question as it stood from the beginning; its origin, the
+purpose of both the combatants, and its various possible or probable
+issues.
+
+There is a theory in England, believed perhaps by some, half believed
+by many more, which is only consistent with original ignorance, or
+complete subsequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of the
+contest. There are people who tell us that, on the side of the North,
+the question is not one of slavery at all. The North, it seems, have
+no more objection to slavery than the South have. Their leaders never
+say one word implying disapprobation of it. They are ready, on the
+contrary, to give it new guarantees; to renounce all that they have
+been contending for; to win back, if opportunity offers, the South to
+the Union by surrendering the whole point.
+
+If this be the true state of the case, what are the Southern chiefs
+fighting about? Their apologists in England say that it is about
+tariffs, and similar trumpery. _They_ say nothing of the kind. They
+tell the world, and they told their own citizens when they wanted
+their votes, that the object of the fight was slavery. Many years ago,
+when General Jackson was President, South Carolina did nearly rebel
+(she never was near separating) about a tariff; but no other State
+abetted her, and a strong adverse demonstration from Virginia brought
+the matter to a close. Yet the tariff of that day was rigidly
+protective. Compared with that, the one in force at the time of the
+secession was a free-trade tariff: This latter was the result of
+several successive modifications in the direction of freedom; and its
+principle was not protection for protection, but as much of it only as
+might incidentally result from duties imposed for revenue. Even the
+Morrill tariff (which never could have been passed but for the
+Southern secession) is stated by the high authority of Mr. H. C. Carey
+to be considerably more liberal than the reformed French tariff under
+Mr. Cobden's treaty; insomuch that he, a Protectionist, would be glad
+to exchange his own protective tariff for Louis Napoleon's free-trade
+one. But why discuss, on probable evidence, notorious facts? The world
+knows what the question between the North and South has been for many
+years, and still is. Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of.
+Slavery was battled for and against, on the floor of Congress and in
+the plains of Kansas; on the slavery question exclusively was the
+party constituted which now rules the United States: on slavery
+Fremont was rejected, on slavery Lincoln was elected; the South
+separated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as the one cause of
+separation.
+
+It is true enough that the North are not carrying on war to abolish
+slavery in the States where it legally exists. Could it have been
+expected, or even perhaps desired, that they should? A great party
+does not change suddenly, and at once, all its principles and
+professions. The Republican party have taken their stand on law, and
+the existing constitution of the Union. They have disclaimed all right
+to attempt anything which that constitution forbids. It does forbid
+interference by the Federal Congress with slavery in the Slave States;
+but it does not forbid their abolishing it in the District of
+Columbia; and this they are now doing, having voted, I perceive, in
+their present pecuniary straits, a million of dollars to indemnify the
+slave-owners of the District. Neither did the Constitution, in their
+own opinion, require them to permit the introduction of slavery into
+the territories which were not yet States. To prevent this, the
+Republican party was formed, and to prevent it, they are now fighting,
+as the slave-owners are fighting to enforce it.
+
+The present government of the United States is not an Abolitionist
+government. Abolitionists, in America, mean those who do not keep
+within the constitution; who demand the destruction (as far as slavery
+is concerned) of as much of it as protects the internal legislation of
+each State from the control of Congress; who aim at abolishing slavery
+wherever it exists, by force if need be, but certainly by some other
+power than the constituted authorities of the Slave States. The
+Republican party neither aim nor profess to aim at this object. And
+when we consider the flood of wrath which would have been poured out
+against them if they did, by the very writers who now taunt them with
+not doing it, we shall be apt to think the taunt a little misplaced.
+But though not an Abolitionist party, they are a Free-soil party. If
+they have not taken arms against slavery, they have against its
+extension. And they know, as we may know if we please, that this
+amounts to the same thing. The day when slavery can no longer extend
+itself, is the day of its doom. The slave-owners know this, and it is
+the cause of their fury. They know, as all know who have attended to
+the subject, that confinement within existing limits is its
+death-warrant. Slavery, under the conditions in which it exists in the
+States, exhausts even the beneficent powers of nature. So incompatible
+is it with any kind whatever of skilled labor, that it causes the
+whole productive resources of the country to be concentrated on one or
+two products, cotton being the chief, which require, to raise and
+prepare them for the market, little besides brute animal force. The
+cotton cultivation, in the opinion of all competent judges, alone
+saves North American slavery; but cotton cultivation, exclusively
+adhered to, exhausts in a moderate number of years all the soils which
+are fit for it, and can only be kept up by travelling farther and
+farther westward. Mr. Olmsted has given a vivid description of the
+desolate state of parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, once among the
+richest specimens of soil and cultivation in the world; and even the
+more recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is rapidly following in
+the same downhill track. To slavery, therefore, it is a matter of life
+and death to find fresh fields for the employment of slave labor.
+Confine it to the present States, and the owners of slave property
+will either be speedily ruined, or will have to find means of
+reforming and renovating their agricultural system; which cannot be
+done without treating the slaves like human beings, nor without so
+large an employment of skilled, that is, of free labor, as will widely
+displace the unskilled, and so depreciate the pecuniary value of the
+slave, that the immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction of
+slavery would be a nearly inevitable and probably rapid consequence.
+
+The Republican leaders do not talk to the public of these almost
+certain results of success in the present conflict. They talk but
+little, in the existing emergency, even of the original cause of
+quarrel. The most ordinary policy teaches them to inscribe on their
+banner that part only of their known principles in which their
+supporters are unanimous. The preservation of the Union is an object
+about which the North are agreed; and it has many adherents, as they
+believe, in the South generally. That nearly half the population of
+the Border Slave States are in favor of it is a patent fact, since
+they are now fighting in its defence. It is not probable that they
+would be willing to fight directly against slavery. The Republicans
+well know that if they can reëstablish the Union, they gain everything
+for which they originally contended; and it would be a plain breach of
+faith with the Southern friends of the Government, if, after rallying
+them round its standard for a purpose of which they approve, it were
+suddenly to alter its terms of communion without their consent.
+
+But the parties in a protracted civil war almost invariably end by
+taking more extreme, not to say higher grounds of principle, than they
+began with. Middle parties and friends of compromise are soon left
+behind; and if the writers who so severely criticize the present
+moderation of the Free-soilers are desirous to see the war become an
+abolition war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough they
+will be gratified. Without the smallest pretension to see further into
+futurity than other people, I at least have foreseen and foretold from
+the first, that if the South were not promptly put down, the contest
+would become distinctly an antislavery one; nor do I believe that any
+person, accustomed to reflect on the course of human affairs in
+troubled times, can expect anything else. Those who have read, even
+cursorily, the most valuable testimony to which the English public
+have access, concerning the real state of affairs in America--the
+letters of the _Times'_ correspondent, Mr. Russell--must have observed
+how early and rapidly he arrived at the same conclusion, and with what
+increasing emphasis he now continually reiterates it. In one of his
+recent letters he names the end of next summer as the period by which,
+if the war has not sooner terminated, it will have assumed a complete
+anti-slavery character. So early a term exceeds, I confess, my most
+sanguine hopes; but if Mr. Russell be right, Heaven forbid that the
+war should cease sooner; for if it lasts till then, it is quite
+possible that it will regenerate the American people.
+
+If, however, the purposes of the North may be doubted or
+misunderstood, there is at least no question as to those of the South.
+They make no concealment of _their_ principles. As long as they were
+allowed to direct all the policy of the Union; to break through
+compromise after compromise, encroach step after step, until they
+reached the pitch of claiming a right to carry slave property into the
+Free States, and, in opposition to the laws of those States, hold it
+as property there; so long, they were willing to remain in the Union.
+The moment a President was elected of whom it was inferred from his
+opinions, not that he would take any measures against slavery where it
+exists, but that he would oppose its establishment where it exists
+not,--that moment they broke loose from what was, at least, a very
+solemn contract, and formed themselves into a Confederation professing
+as its fundamental principle not merely the perpetuation, but the
+indefinite extension of slavery. And the doctrine is loudly preached
+through the new Republic, that slavery, whether black or white, is a
+good in itself, and the proper condition of the working classes
+everywhere.
+
+Let me, in a few words, remind the reader what sort of a thing this
+is, which the white oligarchy of the South have banded themselves
+together to propagate and establish, if they could, universally. When
+it is wished to describe any portion of the human race as in the
+lowest state of debasement, and under the most cruel oppression, in
+which it is possible for human beings to live, they are compared to
+slaves. When words are sought by which to stigmatize the most odious
+despotism, exercised in the most odious manner, and all other
+comparisons are found inadequate, the despots are said to be like
+slave-masters, or slave-drivers. What, by a rhetorical license, the
+worst oppressors of the human race, by way of stamping on them the
+most hateful character possible, are said to be, these men, in very
+truth, are. I do not mean that all of them are hateful personally, any
+more than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But the position
+which they occupy, and the abstract excellence of which they are in
+arms to vindicate, is that which the united voice of mankind
+habitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I will not
+bandy chicanery about the more or less of stripes or other torments
+which are daily requisite to keep the machine in working order, nor
+discuss whether the Legrees or the St. Clairs are more numerous among
+the slave-owners of the Southern States. The broad facts of the case
+suffice. One fact is enough. There are, Heaven knows, vicious and
+tyrannical institutions in ample abundance on the earth. But this
+institution is the only one of them all which requires, to keep it
+going, that human beings should be burnt alive. The calm and
+dispassionate Mr. Olmsted affirms that there has not been a single
+year, for many years past, in which this horror is not known to have
+been perpetrated in some part or other of the South. And not upon
+negroes only; the _Edinburgh Review_, in a recent number, gave the
+hideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northern
+huckster by Lynch law, on mere suspicion of having aided in the escape
+of a slave. What must American slavery be, if deeds like these are
+necessary under it?--and if they are not necessary and are yet done,
+is not the evidence against slavery still more damning? The South are
+in rebellion not for simple slavery; they are in rebellion for the
+right of burning human creatures alive.
+
+But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that
+the South had a _right_ to separate; that their separation ought to
+have been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready to
+fight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the
+same error and wrong which England committed in opposing the original
+separation of the thirteen colonies. This is carrying the doctrine of
+the sacred right of insurrection rather far. It is wonderful how easy
+and liberal and complying people can be in other people's concerns.
+Because they are willing to surrender their own past, and have no
+objection to join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers, they
+never put themselves the question what they themselves would do in
+circumstances far less trying, under far less pressure of real
+national calamity. Would those who profess these ardent revolutionary
+principles consent to their being applied to Ireland, or India, or the
+Ionian Islands. How have they treated those who did attempt so to
+apply them? But the case can dispense with any mere _argumentum ad
+hominem_. I am not frightened at the word rebellion. I do not scruple
+to say that I have sympathized more or less ardently with most of the
+rebellions, successful and unsuccessful, which have taken place in my
+time. But I certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient
+title to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a rebel; that the act
+of taking arms against one's fellow-citizens was so meritorious in
+itself, was so completely its own justification, that no question need
+be asked concerning the motive. It seems to me a strange doctrine that
+the most serious and responsible of all human acts imposes no
+obligation on those who do it of showing that they have a real
+grievance; that those who rebel for the power of oppressing others,
+exercise as sacred a right as those who do the same thing to resist
+oppression practised upon themselves. Neither rebellion nor any other
+act which affects the interests of others, is sufficiently legitimated
+by the mere will to do it. Secession may be laudable, and so may any
+other kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime. It
+is the one or the other, according to the object and the provocation.
+And if there ever was an object which, by its bare announcement,
+stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of mankind,
+it is the one professed by the South. Their right to separate is the
+right which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to secede from their
+respective countries, because the laws of those countries would not
+suffer them to rob and murder on the highway. The only real difference
+is that the present rebels are more powerful than Cartouche or Turpin,
+and may possibly be able to effect their iniquitous purpose.
+
+Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the mere will to
+separate were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground for
+separation, I beg to be informed _whose_ will? The will of any knot of
+men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud,
+have got the reins of government into their hands? If the inmates of
+Parkhurst Prison were to get possession of the Isle of Wight, occupy
+its military positions, enlist one part of its inhabitants in their
+own ranks, set the remainder of them to work in chain gangs, and
+declare themselves independent, ought their recognition by the British
+Government to be an immediate consequence? Before admitting the
+authority of any persons, as organs of the will of the people, to
+dispose of the whole political existence of a country, I ask to see
+whether their credentials are from the whole, or only from a part. And
+first, it is necessary to ask, Have the slaves been consulted? Has
+their will been counted as any part in the estimate of collective
+volition? They are a part of the population. However natural in the
+country itself, it is rather cool in English writers who talk so
+glibly of the ten millions (I believe there are only eight), to pass
+over the very existence of four millions who must abhor the idea of
+separation. Remember, _we_ consider them to be human beings, entitled
+to human rights. Nor can it be doubted that the mere fact of belonging
+to a Union in some parts of which slavery is reprobated, is some
+alleviation of their condition, if only as regards future
+probabilities. But even of the white population, it is questionable if
+there was in the beginning a majority for secession anywhere but in
+South Carolina. Though the thing was pre-determined, and most of the
+States committed by their public authorities before the people were
+called on to vote; though in taking the votes terrorism in many places
+reigned triumphant; yet even so, in several of the States, secession
+was carried only by narrow majorities. In some the authorities have
+not dared to publish the numbers; in some it is asserted that no vote
+has ever been taken. Further (as was pointed out in an admirable
+letter by Mr. Carey), the Slave States are intersected in the middle,
+from their northern frontier almost to the Gulf of Mexico, by a
+country of free labor--the mountain region of the Alleghanies and
+their dependencies, forming parts of Virginia, North Carolina,
+Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, in which, from the nature of the
+climate and of the agricultural and mining industry, slavery to any
+material extent never did, and never will, exist. This mountain zone
+is peopled by ardent friends of the Union. Could the Union abandon
+them, without even an effort, to be dealt with at the pleasure of an
+exasperated slave-owning oligarchy? Could it abandon the Germans who,
+in Western Texas, have made so meritorious a commencement of growing
+cotton on the borders of the Mexican Gulf by free labor? Were the
+right of the slave-owners to secede ever so clear, they have no right
+to carry these with them; unless allegiance is a mere question of
+local proximity, and my next neighbor, if I am a stronger man, can be
+compelled to follow me in any lawless vagaries I choose to indulge.
+
+But (it is said) the North will never succeed in conquering the South;
+and since the separation must in the end be recognized, it is better
+to do at first what must be done at last; moreover, if it did conquer
+them, it could not govern them when conquered, consistently with free
+institutions. With no one of these propositions can I agree.
+
+Whether or not the Northern Americans will succeed in reconquering the
+South, I do not affect to foresee. That they _can_ conquer it, if
+their present determination holds, I have never entertained a doubt;
+for they are twice as numerous, and ten or twelve times as rich. Not
+by taking military possession of their country, or marching an army
+through it, but by wearing them out, exhausting their resources,
+depriving them of the comforts of life, encouraging their slaves to
+desert, and excluding them from communication with foreign countries.
+All this, of course, depends on the supposition that the North does
+not give in first. Whether they will persevere to this point, or
+whether their spirit, their patience, and the sacrifices they are
+willing to make, will be exhausted before reaching it, I cannot tell.
+They may, in the end, be wearied into recognizing the separation. But
+to those who say that because this may have to be done at last, it
+ought to have been done at first, I put the very serious question--On
+what terms? Have they ever considered what would have been the meaning
+of separation if it had been assented to by the Northern States when
+first demanded? People talk as if separation meant nothing more than
+the independence of the seceding States. To have accepted it under
+that limitation would have been, on the part of the South, to give up
+that which they have seceded expressly to preserve. Separation, with
+them, means at least half the Territories; including the Mexican
+border, and the consequent power of invading and overrunning Spanish
+America for the purpose of planting there the "peculiar institution"
+which even Mexican civilization has found too bad to be endured. There
+is no knowing to what point of degradation a country may be driven in
+a desperate state of its affairs; but if the North _ever_, unless on
+the brink of actual ruin, makes peace with the South, giving up the
+original cause of quarrel, the freedom of the Territories; if it
+resigns to them when out of the Union that power of evil which it
+would not grant to retain them in the Union--it will incur the pity
+and disdain of posterity. And no one can suppose that the South would
+have consented, or in their present temper ever will consent, to an
+accommodation on any other terms. It will require a succession of
+humiliation to bring them to that. The necessity of reconciling
+themselves to the confinement of slavery within its existing
+boundaries, with the natural consequence, immediate mitigation of
+slavery, and ultimate emancipation, is a lesson which they are in no
+mood to learn from anything but disaster. Two or three defeats in the
+field, breaking their military strength, though not followed by an
+invasion of their territory, may possibly teach it to them. If so,
+there is no breach of charity in hoping that this severe schooling may
+promptly come. When men set themselves up, in defiance of the rest of
+the world, to do the devil's work, no good can come of them until the
+world has made them feel that this work cannot be suffered to be done
+any longer. If this knowledge does not come to them for several years,
+the abolition question will by that time have settled itself. For
+assuredly Congress will very soon make up its mind to declare all
+slaves free who belong to persons in arms against the Union. When that
+is done, slavery, confined to a minority, will soon cure itself; and
+the pecuniary value of the negroes belonging to loyal masters will
+probably not exceed the amount of compensation which the United States
+will be willing and able to give.
+
+The assumed difficulty of governing the Southern States as free and
+equal commonwealths, in case of their return to the Union, is purely
+imaginary. If brought back by force, and not by voluntary compact,
+they will return without the Territories, and without a Fugitive Slave
+Law. It may be assumed that in that event the victorious party would
+make the alterations in the Federal Constitution which are necessary
+to adapt it to the new circumstances, and which would not infringe,
+but strengthen, its democratic principles. An article would have to be
+inserted prohibiting the extension of slavery to the Territories, or
+the admission into the Union of any new Slave State. Without any other
+guarantee, the rapid formation of new Free States would ensure to
+freedom a decisive and constantly increasing majority in Congress. It
+would also be right to abrogate that bad provision of the Constitution
+(a necessary compromise at the time of its first establishment)
+whereby the slaves, though reckoned as citizens in no other respect,
+are counted, to the extent of three fifths of their number, in the
+estimate of the population for fixing the number of representatives of
+each State in the Lower House of Congress. Why should the masters have
+members in right of their human chattels, any more than of their oxen
+and pigs? The President, in his Message, has already proposed that
+this salutary reform should be effected in the case of Maryland,
+additional territory, detached from Virginia, being given to that
+State as an equivalent: thus clearly indicating the policy which he
+approves, and which he is probably willing to make universal.
+
+As it is necessary to be prepared for all possibilities, let us now
+contemplate another. Let us suppose the worst possible issue of this
+war--the one apparently desired by those English writers whose moral
+feeling is so philosophically indifferent between the apostles of
+slavery and its enemies. Suppose that the North should stoop to
+recognize the new Confederation on its own terms, leaving it half the
+Territories, and that it is acknowledged by Europe, and takes its
+place as an admitted member of the community of nations. It will be
+desirable to take thought beforehand what are to be our own future
+relations with a new Power, professing the principles of Attila and
+Genghis Khan as the foundation of its Constitution. Are we to see with
+indifference its victorious army let loose to propagate their national
+faith at the rifle's mouth through Mexico and Central America? Shall
+we submit to see fire and sword carried over Cuba and Porto Rico, and
+Hayti and Liberia conquered and brought back to slavery? We shall soon
+have causes enough of quarrel on our own account. When we are in the
+act of sending an expedition against Mexico to redress the wrongs of
+private British subjects, we should do well to reflect in time that
+the President of the new Republic, Mr. Jefferson Davis, was the
+original inventor of repudiation. Mississippi was the first State
+which repudiated, Mr. Jefferson Davis was Governor of Mississippi, and
+the Legislature of Mississippi had passed a Bill recognizing and
+providing for the debt, which Bill Mr. Jefferson Davis vetoed. Unless
+we abandon the principles we have for two generations consistently
+professed and acted on, we should be at war with the new Confederacy
+within five years about the African slave-trade. An English Government
+will hardly be base enough to recognize them, unless they accept all
+the treaties by which America is at present bound; nor, it may be
+hoped, even if _de facto_ independent, would they be admitted to the
+courtesies of diplomatic intercourse, unless they granted in the most
+explicit manner the right of search. To allow the slave-ships of a
+Confederation formed for the extension of slavery to come and go free,
+and unexamined, between America and the African coast, would be to
+renounce even the pretence of attempting to protect Africa against the
+man-stealer, and abandon that Continent to the horrors, on a far
+larger scale, which were practised before Granville Sharp and Clarkson
+were in existence. But even if the right of intercepting their slavers
+were acknowledged by treaty, which it never would be, the arrogance of
+the Southern slave-holders would not long submit to its exercise.
+Their pride and self-conceit, swelled to an inordinate height by their
+successful struggle, would defy the power of England as they had
+already successfully defied that of their Northern countrymen. After
+our people by their cold disapprobation, and our press by its
+invective, had combined with their own difficulties to damp the spirit
+of the Free States, and drive them to submit and make peace, we should
+have to fight the Slave States ourselves at far greater disadvantages,
+when we should no longer have the wearied and exhausted North for an
+ally. The time might come when the barbarous and barbarizing Power,
+which we by our moral support had helped into existence, would require
+a general crusade of civilized Europe, to extinguish the mischief
+which it had allowed, and we had aided, to rise up in the midst of our
+civilization.
+
+For these reasons I cannot join with those who cry Peace, peace. I
+cannot wish that this war should not have been engaged in by the
+North, or that being engaged in, it should be terminated on any
+conditions but such as would retain the whole of the Territories as
+free soil. I am not blind to the possibility that it may require a
+long war to lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of
+the slave-owners, to the point of either returning to the Union, or
+consenting to remain out of it with their present limits. But war, in
+a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War
+is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
+degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing
+worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human
+instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service
+and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people.
+A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a
+war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is
+their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free
+choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has
+nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more
+about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature,
+who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the
+exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice
+have not terminated _their_ ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the
+affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do
+battle for the one against the other. I am far from saying that the
+present struggle, on the part of the Northern Americans, is wholly of
+this exalted character; that it has arrived at the stage of being
+altogether a war for justice, a war of principle. But there was from
+the beginning, and now is, a large infusion of that element in it; and
+this is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts, will in the
+end predominate. Should that time come, not only will the greatest
+enormity which still exists among mankind as an institution, receive
+far earlier its _coups de grâce_ than there has ever, until now,
+appeared any probability of; but in effecting this the Free States
+will have raised themselves to that elevated position in the scale of
+morality and dignity, which is derived from great sacrifices
+consciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of an inestimable
+benefit to all future ages, brought about by their own voluntary
+efforts.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Contest in America, by John Stuart Mill
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Contest in America, by John Stuart Mill
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contest in America, by John Stuart Mill
+
+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 Contest in America
+
+Author: John Stuart Mill
+
+Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5123]
+Last Updated: February 6, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTEST IN AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David A. Maddock and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE CONTEST IN AMERICA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By John Stuart Mill
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Reprinted From Fraser's Magazine
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE CONTEST IN AMERICA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      The cloud which for the space of a month hung gloomily over the civilized
+      world, black with far worse evils than those of simple war, has passed
+      from over our heads without bursting. The fear has not been realized, that
+      the only two first-rate Powers who are also free nations would take to
+      tearing each other in pieces, both the one and the other in a bad and
+      odious cause. For while, on the American side, the war would have been one
+      of reckless persistency in wrong, on ours it would have been a war in
+      alliance with, and, to practical purposes, in defence and propagation of,
+      slavery. We had, indeed, been wronged. We had suffered an indignity, and
+      something more than an indignity, which, not to have resented, would have
+      been to invite a constant succession of insults and injuries from the same
+      and from every other quarter. We could have acted no otherwise than we
+      have done: yet it is impossible to think, without something like a
+      shudder, from what we have escaped. We, the emancipators of the slave&mdash;who
+      have wearied every Court and Government in Europe and America with our
+      protests and remonstrances, until we goaded them into at least ostensibly
+      coöperating with us to prevent the enslaving of the negro&mdash;we, who
+      for the last half century have spent annual sums, equal to the revenue of
+      a small kingdom, in blockading the African coast, for a cause in which we
+      not only had no interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniary
+      interest, and which many believed would ruin, as many among us still,
+      though erroneously, believe that it has ruined, our colonies,&mdash;<i>we</i>
+      should have lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most commanding
+      positions of the world, a powerful republic, devoted not only to slavery,
+      but to pro-slavery propagandism&mdash;should have helped to give a place
+      in the community of nations to a conspiracy of slave-owners, who have
+      broken their connection with the American Federation on the sole ground,
+      ostentatiously proclaimed, that they thought an attempt would be made to
+      restrain, not slavery itself, but their purpose of spreading slavery
+      wherever migration or force could carry it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A nation which has made the professions that England has, does not with
+      impunity, under however great provocation, betake itself to frustrating
+      the objects for which it has been calling on the rest of the world to make
+      sacrifices of what they think their interest. At present all the nations
+      of Europe have sympathized with us; have acknowledged that we were
+      injured, and declared with rare unanimity, that we had no choice but to
+      resist, if necessary, by arms. But the consequences of such a war would
+      soon have buried its causes in oblivion. When the new Confederate States,
+      made an independent Power by English help, had begun their crusade to
+      carry negro slavery from the Potomac to Cape Horn; who would then have
+      remembered that England raised up this scourge to humanity not for the
+      evil's sake, but because somebody had offered an insult to her flag? Or
+      even if unforgotten, who would then have felt that such a grievance was a
+      sufficient palliation of the crime? Every reader of a newspaper, to the
+      farthest ends of the earth, would have believed and remembered one thing
+      only&mdash;that at the critical juncture which was to decide whether
+      slavery should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be trodden out at
+      the moment of conflict between the good and the evil spirit&mdash;at the
+      dawn of a hope that the demon might now at last be chained and flung into
+      the pit, England stepped in, and, for the sake of cotton, made Satan
+      victorious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world has been saved from this calamity, and England from this
+      disgrace. The accusation would indeed have been a calumny. But to be able
+      to defy calumny, a nation, like an individual, must stand very clear of
+      just reproach in its previous conduct. Unfortunately, we ourselves have
+      given too much plausibility to the charge. Not by anything said or done by
+      us as a Government or as a nation, but by the tone of our press, and in
+      some degree, it must be owned, the general opinion of English society. It
+      is too true, that the feelings which have been manifested since the
+      beginning of the American contest&mdash;the judgments which have been put
+      forth, and the wishes which have been expressed concerning the incidents
+      and probable eventualities of the struggle&mdash;the bitter and irritating
+      criticism which has been kept up, not even against both parties equally,
+      but almost solely against the party in the right, and the ungenerous
+      refusal of all those just allowances which no country needs more than our
+      own, whenever its circumstances are as near to those of America as a cut
+      finger is to an almost mortal wound,&mdash;these facts, with minds not
+      favorably disposed to us, would have gone far to make the most odious
+      interpretation of the war in which we have been so nearly engaged with the
+      United States, appear by many degrees the most probable. There is no
+      denying that our attitude towards the contending parties (I mean our moral
+      attitude, for politically there was no other course open to us than
+      neutrality) has not been that which becomes a people who are as sincere
+      enemies of slavery as the English really are, and have made as great
+      sacrifices to put an end to it where they could. And it has been an
+      additional misfortune that some of our most powerful journals have been
+      for many years past very unfavorable exponents of English feeling on all
+      subjects connected with slavery: some, probably, from the influences, more
+      or less direct, of West Indian opinions and interests: others from inbred
+      Toryism, which, even when compelled by reason to hold opinions favorable
+      to liberty, is always adverse to it in feeling; which likes the spectacle
+      of irresponsible power exercised by one person over others; which has no
+      moral repugnance to the thought of human beings born to the penal
+      servitude for life, to which for the term of a few years we sentence our
+      most hardened criminals, but keeps its indignation to be expended on
+      "rabid and fanatical abolitionists" across the Atlantic, and on those
+      writers in England who attach a sufficiently serious meaning to their
+      Christian professions, to consider a fight against slavery as a fight for
+      God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, when the mind of England, and it may almost be said, of the civilized
+      part of mankind, has been relieved from the incubus which had weighed on
+      it ever since the <i>Trent</i> outrage, and when we are no longer feeling
+      towards the Northern Americans as men feel towards those with whom they
+      may be on the point of struggling for life or death; now, if ever, is the
+      time to review our position, and consider whether we have been feeling
+      what ought to have been felt, and wishing what ought to have been wished,
+      regarding the contest in which the Northern States are engaged with the
+      South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In considering this matter, we ought to dismiss from our minds, as far as
+      possible, those feelings against the North, which have been engendered not
+      merely by the <i>Trent</i> aggression, but by the previous anti-British
+      effusions of newspaper writers and stump orators. It is hardly worth while
+      to ask how far these explosions of ill-humor are anything more than might
+      have been anticipated from ill-disciplined minds, disappointed of the
+      sympathy which they justly thought they had a right to expect from the
+      great anti-slavery people, in their really noble enterprise. It is almost
+      superfluous to remark that a democratic Government always shows worst
+      where other Governments generally show best, on its outside; that
+      unreasonable people are much more noisy than the reasonable; that the
+      froth and scum are the part of a violently fermenting liquid that meets
+      the eyes, but are not its body and substance. Without insisting on these
+      things, I contend, that all previous cause of offence should be considered
+      as cancelled, by the reparation which the American Government has so amply
+      made; not so much the reparation itself, which might have been so made as
+      to leave still greater cause of permanent resentment behind it; but the
+      manner and spirit in which they have made it. These have been such as most
+      of us, I venture to say, did not by any means expect. If reparation were
+      made at all, of which few of us felt more than a hope, we thought that it
+      would have been made obviously as a concession to prudence, not to
+      principle. We thought that there would have been truckling to the
+      newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters who were crying out for
+      retaining the prisoners at all hazards. We expected that the atonement, if
+      atonement there were, would have been made with reservations, perhaps
+      under protest. We expected that the correspondence would have been spun
+      out, and a trial made to induce England to be satisfied with less; or that
+      there would have been a proposal of arbitration; or that England would
+      have been asked to make concessions in return for justice; or that if
+      submission was made, it would have been made, ostensibly, to the opinions
+      and wishes of Continental Europe. We expected anything, in short, which
+      would have been weak and timid and paltry. The only thing which no one
+      seemed to expect, is what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Government
+      have done none of these things. Like honest men, they have said in direct
+      terms, that our demand was right; that they yielded to it because it was
+      just; that if they themselves had received the same treatment, they would
+      have demanded the same reparation; and that if what seemed to be the
+      American side of a question was not the just side, they would be on the
+      side of justice; happy as they were to find after their resolution had
+      been taken, that it was also the side which America had formerly defended.
+      Is there any one, capable of a moral judgment or feeling, who will say
+      that his opinion of America and American statesmen, is not raised by such
+      an act, done on such grounds? The act itself may have been imposed by the
+      necessity of the circumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of
+      action professed, were their own choice. Putting the worst hypothesis
+      possible, which it would be the height of injustice to entertain
+      seriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience, and
+      that the profession of regard for justice was hypocrisy, even so, the
+      ground taken, even if insincerely, is the most hopeful sign of the moral
+      state of the American mind which has appeared for many years. That a sense
+      of justice should be the motive which the rulers of a country rely on, to
+      reconcile the public to an unpopular, and what might seem a humiliating
+      act; that the journalists, the orators, many lawyers, the Lower House of
+      Congress, and Mr. Lincoln's own naval secretary, should be told in the
+      face of the world, by their own Government, that they have been giving
+      public thanks, presents of swords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic
+      honors to the author of an act which, though not so intended, was lawless
+      and wrong, and for which the proper remedy is confession and atonement;
+      that this should be the accepted policy (supposing it to be nothing
+      higher) of a Democratic Republic, shows even unlimited democracy to be a
+      better thing than many Englishmen have lately been in the habit of
+      considering it, and goes some way towards proving that the aberrations
+      even of a ruling multitude are only fatal when the better instructed have
+      not the virtue or the courage to front them boldly. Nor ought it to be
+      forgotten, to the honor of Mr. Lincoln's Government, that in doing what
+      was in itself right, they have done also what was best fitted to allay the
+      animosity which was daily becoming more bitter between the two nations so
+      long as the question remained open. They have put the brand of confessed
+      injustice upon that rankling and vindictive resentment with which the
+      profligate and passionate part of the American press has been threatening
+      us in the event of concession, and which is to be manifested by some dire
+      revenge, to be taken, as they pretend, after the nation is extricated from
+      its present difficulties. Mr. Lincoln has done what depended on him to
+      make this spirit expire with the occasion which raised it up; and we shall
+      have ourselves chiefly to blame if we keep it alive by the further
+      prolongation of that stream of vituperative eloquence, the source of
+      which, even now, when the cause of quarrel has been amicably made up, does
+      not seem to have run dry. {1}
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+{1. I do not forget one regrettable passage in Mr. Seward's letter,
+in which he said that "if the safety of the Union required the
+detention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of
+this Government to detain them." I sincerely grieve to find this
+sentence in the dispatch, for the exceptions to the general rules of
+morality are not a subject to be lightly or unnecessarily tampered
+with. The doctrine in itself is no other than that professed and
+acted on by all governments&mdash;that self-preservation, in a State, as
+in an individual, is a warrant for many things which at all other
+times ought to be rigidly abstained from. At all events, no nation
+which has ever passed "laws of exception," which ever suspended the
+Habeas Corpus Act or passed an Alien Bill in dread of a Chartist
+insurrection, has a right to throw the first stone at Mr. Lincoln's
+Government.}
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Let us, then, without reference to these jars, or to the declamations of
+      newspaper writers on either side of the Atlantic, examine the American
+      question as it stood from the beginning; its origin, the purpose of both
+      the combatants, and its various possible or probable issues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a theory in England, believed perhaps by some, half believed by
+      many more, which is only consistent with original ignorance, or complete
+      subsequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of the contest. There are
+      people who tell us that, on the side of the North, the question is not one
+      of slavery at all. The North, it seems, have no more objection to slavery
+      than the South have. Their leaders never say one word implying
+      disapprobation of it. They are ready, on the contrary, to give it new
+      guarantees; to renounce all that they have been contending for; to win
+      back, if opportunity offers, the South to the Union by surrendering the
+      whole point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If this be the true state of the case, what are the Southern chiefs
+      fighting about? Their apologists in England say that it is about tariffs,
+      and similar trumpery. <i>They</i> say nothing of the kind. They tell the
+      world, and they told their own citizens when they wanted their votes, that
+      the object of the fight was slavery. Many years ago, when General Jackson
+      was President, South Carolina did nearly rebel (she never was near
+      separating) about a tariff; but no other State abetted her, and a strong
+      adverse demonstration from Virginia brought the matter to a close. Yet the
+      tariff of that day was rigidly protective. Compared with that, the one in
+      force at the time of the secession was a free-trade tariff: This latter
+      was the result of several successive modifications in the direction of
+      freedom; and its principle was not protection for protection, but as much
+      of it only as might incidentally result from duties imposed for revenue.
+      Even the Morrill tariff (which never could have been passed but for the
+      Southern secession) is stated by the high authority of Mr. H. C. Carey to
+      be considerably more liberal than the reformed French tariff under Mr.
+      Cobden's treaty; insomuch that he, a Protectionist, would be glad to
+      exchange his own protective tariff for Louis Napoleon's free-trade one.
+      But why discuss, on probable evidence, notorious facts? The world knows
+      what the question between the North and South has been for many years, and
+      still is. Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of. Slavery was
+      battled for and against, on the floor of Congress and in the plains of
+      Kansas; on the slavery question exclusively was the party constituted
+      which now rules the United States: on slavery Fremont was rejected, on
+      slavery Lincoln was elected; the South separated on slavery, and
+      proclaimed slavery as the one cause of separation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true enough that the North are not carrying on war to abolish
+      slavery in the States where it legally exists. Could it have been
+      expected, or even perhaps desired, that they should? A great party does
+      not change suddenly, and at once, all its principles and professions. The
+      Republican party have taken their stand on law, and the existing
+      constitution of the Union. They have disclaimed all right to attempt
+      anything which that constitution forbids. It does forbid interference by
+      the Federal Congress with slavery in the Slave States; but it does not
+      forbid their abolishing it in the District of Columbia; and this they are
+      now doing, having voted, I perceive, in their present pecuniary straits, a
+      million of dollars to indemnify the slave-owners of the District. Neither
+      did the Constitution, in their own opinion, require them to permit the
+      introduction of slavery into the territories which were not yet States. To
+      prevent this, the Republican party was formed, and to prevent it, they are
+      now fighting, as the slave-owners are fighting to enforce it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The present government of the United States is not an Abolitionist
+      government. Abolitionists, in America, mean those who do not keep within
+      the constitution; who demand the destruction (as far as slavery is
+      concerned) of as much of it as protects the internal legislation of each
+      State from the control of Congress; who aim at abolishing slavery wherever
+      it exists, by force if need be, but certainly by some other power than the
+      constituted authorities of the Slave States. The Republican party neither
+      aim nor profess to aim at this object. And when we consider the flood of
+      wrath which would have been poured out against them if they did, by the
+      very writers who now taunt them with not doing it, we shall be apt to
+      think the taunt a little misplaced. But though not an Abolitionist party,
+      they are a Free-soil party. If they have not taken arms against slavery,
+      they have against its extension. And they know, as we may know if we
+      please, that this amounts to the same thing. The day when slavery can no
+      longer extend itself, is the day of its doom. The slave-owners know this,
+      and it is the cause of their fury. They know, as all know who have
+      attended to the subject, that confinement within existing limits is its
+      death-warrant. Slavery, under the conditions in which it exists in the
+      States, exhausts even the beneficent powers of nature. So incompatible is
+      it with any kind whatever of skilled labor, that it causes the whole
+      productive resources of the country to be concentrated on one or two
+      products, cotton being the chief, which require, to raise and prepare them
+      for the market, little besides brute animal force. The cotton cultivation,
+      in the opinion of all competent judges, alone saves North American
+      slavery; but cotton cultivation, exclusively adhered to, exhausts in a
+      moderate number of years all the soils which are fit for it, and can only
+      be kept up by travelling farther and farther westward. Mr. Olmsted has
+      given a vivid description of the desolate state of parts of Georgia and
+      the Carolinas, once among the richest specimens of soil and cultivation in
+      the world; and even the more recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is
+      rapidly following in the same downhill track. To slavery, therefore, it is
+      a matter of life and death to find fresh fields for the employment of
+      slave labor. Confine it to the present States, and the owners of slave
+      property will either be speedily ruined, or will have to find means of
+      reforming and renovating their agricultural system; which cannot be done
+      without treating the slaves like human beings, nor without so large an
+      employment of skilled, that is, of free labor, as will widely displace the
+      unskilled, and so depreciate the pecuniary value of the slave, that the
+      immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction of slavery would be a nearly
+      inevitable and probably rapid consequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Republican leaders do not talk to the public of these almost certain
+      results of success in the present conflict. They talk but little, in the
+      existing emergency, even of the original cause of quarrel. The most
+      ordinary policy teaches them to inscribe on their banner that part only of
+      their known principles in which their supporters are unanimous. The
+      preservation of the Union is an object about which the North are agreed;
+      and it has many adherents, as they believe, in the South generally. That
+      nearly half the population of the Border Slave States are in favor of it
+      is a patent fact, since they are now fighting in its defence. It is not
+      probable that they would be willing to fight directly against slavery. The
+      Republicans well know that if they can reëstablish the Union, they gain
+      everything for which they originally contended; and it would be a plain
+      breach of faith with the Southern friends of the Government, if, after
+      rallying them round its standard for a purpose of which they approve, it
+      were suddenly to alter its terms of communion without their consent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the parties in a protracted civil war almost invariably end by taking
+      more extreme, not to say higher grounds of principle, than they began
+      with. Middle parties and friends of compromise are soon left behind; and
+      if the writers who so severely criticize the present moderation of the
+      Free-soilers are desirous to see the war become an abolition war, it is
+      probable that if the war lasts long enough they will be gratified. Without
+      the smallest pretension to see further into futurity than other people, I
+      at least have foreseen and foretold from the first, that if the South were
+      not promptly put down, the contest would become distinctly an antislavery
+      one; nor do I believe that any person, accustomed to reflect on the course
+      of human affairs in troubled times, can expect anything else. Those who
+      have read, even cursorily, the most valuable testimony to which the
+      English public have access, concerning the real state of affairs in
+      America&mdash;the letters of the <i>Times'</i> correspondent, Mr. Russell&mdash;must
+      have observed how early and rapidly he arrived at the same conclusion, and
+      with what increasing emphasis he now continually reiterates it. In one of
+      his recent letters he names the end of next summer as the period by which,
+      if the war has not sooner terminated, it will have assumed a complete
+      anti-slavery character. So early a term exceeds, I confess, my most
+      sanguine hopes; but if Mr. Russell be right, Heaven forbid that the war
+      should cease sooner; for if it lasts till then, it is quite possible that
+      it will regenerate the American people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, however, the purposes of the North may be doubted or misunderstood,
+      there is at least no question as to those of the South. They make no
+      concealment of <i>their</i> principles. As long as they were allowed to
+      direct all the policy of the Union; to break through compromise after
+      compromise, encroach step after step, until they reached the pitch of
+      claiming a right to carry slave property into the Free States, and, in
+      opposition to the laws of those States, hold it as property there; so
+      long, they were willing to remain in the Union. The moment a President was
+      elected of whom it was inferred from his opinions, not that he would take
+      any measures against slavery where it exists, but that he would oppose its
+      establishment where it exists not,&mdash;that moment they broke loose from
+      what was, at least, a very solemn contract, and formed themselves into a
+      Confederation professing as its fundamental principle not merely the
+      perpetuation, but the indefinite extension of slavery. And the doctrine is
+      loudly preached through the new Republic, that slavery, whether black or
+      white, is a good in itself, and the proper condition of the working
+      classes everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me, in a few words, remind the reader what sort of a thing this is,
+      which the white oligarchy of the South have banded themselves together to
+      propagate and establish, if they could, universally. When it is wished to
+      describe any portion of the human race as in the lowest state of
+      debasement, and under the most cruel oppression, in which it is possible
+      for human beings to live, they are compared to slaves. When words are
+      sought by which to stigmatize the most odious despotism, exercised in the
+      most odious manner, and all other comparisons are found inadequate, the
+      despots are said to be like slave-masters, or slave-drivers. What, by a
+      rhetorical license, the worst oppressors of the human race, by way of
+      stamping on them the most hateful character possible, are said to be,
+      these men, in very truth, are. I do not mean that all of them are hateful
+      personally, any more than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But
+      the position which they occupy, and the abstract excellence of which they
+      are in arms to vindicate, is that which the united voice of mankind
+      habitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I will not bandy
+      chicanery about the more or less of stripes or other torments which are
+      daily requisite to keep the machine in working order, nor discuss whether
+      the Legrees or the St. Clairs are more numerous among the slave-owners of
+      the Southern States. The broad facts of the case suffice. One fact is
+      enough. There are, Heaven knows, vicious and tyrannical institutions in
+      ample abundance on the earth. But this institution is the only one of them
+      all which requires, to keep it going, that human beings should be burnt
+      alive. The calm and dispassionate Mr. Olmsted affirms that there has not
+      been a single year, for many years past, in which this horror is not known
+      to have been perpetrated in some part or other of the South. And not upon
+      negroes only; the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, in a recent number, gave the
+      hideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northern huckster
+      by Lynch law, on mere suspicion of having aided in the escape of a slave.
+      What must American slavery be, if deeds like these are necessary under it?&mdash;and
+      if they are not necessary and are yet done, is not the evidence against
+      slavery still more damning? The South are in rebellion not for simple
+      slavery; they are in rebellion for the right of burning human creatures
+      alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that the
+      South had a <i>right</i> to separate; that their separation ought to have
+      been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready to fight for
+      it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the same error and
+      wrong which England committed in opposing the original separation of the
+      thirteen colonies. This is carrying the doctrine of the sacred right of
+      insurrection rather far. It is wonderful how easy and liberal and
+      complying people can be in other people's concerns. Because they are
+      willing to surrender their own past, and have no objection to join in
+      reprobation of their great-grandfathers, they never put themselves the
+      question what they themselves would do in circumstances far less trying,
+      under far less pressure of real national calamity. Would those who profess
+      these ardent revolutionary principles consent to their being applied to
+      Ireland, or India, or the Ionian Islands. How have they treated those who
+      did attempt so to apply them? But the case can dispense with any mere <i>argumentum
+      ad hominem</i>. I am not frightened at the word rebellion. I do not
+      scruple to say that I have sympathized more or less ardently with most of
+      the rebellions, successful and unsuccessful, which have taken place in my
+      time. But I certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient title to
+      my sympathy in the mere fact of being a rebel; that the act of taking arms
+      against one's fellow-citizens was so meritorious in itself, was so
+      completely its own justification, that no question need be asked
+      concerning the motive. It seems to me a strange doctrine that the most
+      serious and responsible of all human acts imposes no obligation on those
+      who do it of showing that they have a real grievance; that those who rebel
+      for the power of oppressing others, exercise as sacred a right as those
+      who do the same thing to resist oppression practised upon themselves.
+      Neither rebellion nor any other act which affects the interests of others,
+      is sufficiently legitimated by the mere will to do it. Secession may be
+      laudable, and so may any other kind of insurrection; but it may also be an
+      enormous crime. It is the one or the other, according to the object and
+      the provocation. And if there ever was an object which, by its bare
+      announcement, stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of
+      mankind, it is the one professed by the South. Their right to separate is
+      the right which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to secede from their
+      respective countries, because the laws of those countries would not suffer
+      them to rob and murder on the highway. The only real difference is that
+      the present rebels are more powerful than Cartouche or Turpin, and may
+      possibly be able to effect their iniquitous purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the mere will to separate
+      were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground for separation, I
+      beg to be informed <i>whose</i> will? The will of any knot of men who, by
+      fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud, have got the reins
+      of government into their hands? If the inmates of Parkhurst Prison were to
+      get possession of the Isle of Wight, occupy its military positions, enlist
+      one part of its inhabitants in their own ranks, set the remainder of them
+      to work in chain gangs, and declare themselves independent, ought their
+      recognition by the British Government to be an immediate consequence?
+      Before admitting the authority of any persons, as organs of the will of
+      the people, to dispose of the whole political existence of a country, I
+      ask to see whether their credentials are from the whole, or only from a
+      part. And first, it is necessary to ask, Have the slaves been consulted?
+      Has their will been counted as any part in the estimate of collective
+      volition? They are a part of the population. However natural in the
+      country itself, it is rather cool in English writers who talk so glibly of
+      the ten millions (I believe there are only eight), to pass over the very
+      existence of four millions who must abhor the idea of separation.
+      Remember, <i>we</i> consider them to be human beings, entitled to human
+      rights. Nor can it be doubted that the mere fact of belonging to a Union
+      in some parts of which slavery is reprobated, is some alleviation of their
+      condition, if only as regards future probabilities. But even of the white
+      population, it is questionable if there was in the beginning a majority
+      for secession anywhere but in South Carolina. Though the thing was
+      pre-determined, and most of the States committed by their public
+      authorities before the people were called on to vote; though in taking the
+      votes terrorism in many places reigned triumphant; yet even so, in several
+      of the States, secession was carried only by narrow majorities. In some
+      the authorities have not dared to publish the numbers; in some it is
+      asserted that no vote has ever been taken. Further (as was pointed out in
+      an admirable letter by Mr. Carey), the Slave States are intersected in the
+      middle, from their northern frontier almost to the Gulf of Mexico, by a
+      country of free labor&mdash;the mountain region of the Alleghanies and
+      their dependencies, forming parts of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee,
+      Georgia, and Alabama, in which, from the nature of the climate and of the
+      agricultural and mining industry, slavery to any material extent never
+      did, and never will, exist. This mountain zone is peopled by ardent
+      friends of the Union. Could the Union abandon them, without even an
+      effort, to be dealt with at the pleasure of an exasperated slave-owning
+      oligarchy? Could it abandon the Germans who, in Western Texas, have made
+      so meritorious a commencement of growing cotton on the borders of the
+      Mexican Gulf by free labor? Were the right of the slave-owners to secede
+      ever so clear, they have no right to carry these with them; unless
+      allegiance is a mere question of local proximity, and my next neighbor, if
+      I am a stronger man, can be compelled to follow me in any lawless vagaries
+      I choose to indulge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But (it is said) the North will never succeed in conquering the South; and
+      since the separation must in the end be recognized, it is better to do at
+      first what must be done at last; moreover, if it did conquer them, it
+      could not govern them when conquered, consistently with free institutions.
+      With no one of these propositions can I agree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or not the Northern Americans will succeed in reconquering the
+      South, I do not affect to foresee. That they <i>can</i> conquer it, if
+      their present determination holds, I have never entertained a doubt; for
+      they are twice as numerous, and ten or twelve times as rich. Not by taking
+      military possession of their country, or marching an army through it, but
+      by wearing them out, exhausting their resources, depriving them of the
+      comforts of life, encouraging their slaves to desert, and excluding them
+      from communication with foreign countries. All this, of course, depends on
+      the supposition that the North does not give in first. Whether they will
+      persevere to this point, or whether their spirit, their patience, and the
+      sacrifices they are willing to make, will be exhausted before reaching it,
+      I cannot tell. They may, in the end, be wearied into recognizing the
+      separation. But to those who say that because this may have to be done at
+      last, it ought to have been done at first, I put the very serious question&mdash;On
+      what terms? Have they ever considered what would have been the meaning of
+      separation if it had been assented to by the Northern States when first
+      demanded? People talk as if separation meant nothing more than the
+      independence of the seceding States. To have accepted it under that
+      limitation would have been, on the part of the South, to give up that
+      which they have seceded expressly to preserve. Separation, with them,
+      means at least half the Territories; including the Mexican border, and the
+      consequent power of invading and overrunning Spanish America for the
+      purpose of planting there the "peculiar institution" which even Mexican
+      civilization has found too bad to be endured. There is no knowing to what
+      point of degradation a country may be driven in a desperate state of its
+      affairs; but if the North <i>ever</i>, unless on the brink of actual ruin,
+      makes peace with the South, giving up the original cause of quarrel, the
+      freedom of the Territories; if it resigns to them when out of the Union
+      that power of evil which it would not grant to retain them in the Union&mdash;it
+      will incur the pity and disdain of posterity. And no one can suppose that
+      the South would have consented, or in their present temper ever will
+      consent, to an accommodation on any other terms. It will require a
+      succession of humiliation to bring them to that. The necessity of
+      reconciling themselves to the confinement of slavery within its existing
+      boundaries, with the natural consequence, immediate mitigation of slavery,
+      and ultimate emancipation, is a lesson which they are in no mood to learn
+      from anything but disaster. Two or three defeats in the field, breaking
+      their military strength, though not followed by an invasion of their
+      territory, may possibly teach it to them. If so, there is no breach of
+      charity in hoping that this severe schooling may promptly come. When men
+      set themselves up, in defiance of the rest of the world, to do the devil's
+      work, no good can come of them until the world has made them feel that
+      this work cannot be suffered to be done any longer. If this knowledge does
+      not come to them for several years, the abolition question will by that
+      time have settled itself. For assuredly Congress will very soon make up
+      its mind to declare all slaves free who belong to persons in arms against
+      the Union. When that is done, slavery, confined to a minority, will soon
+      cure itself; and the pecuniary value of the negroes belonging to loyal
+      masters will probably not exceed the amount of compensation which the
+      United States will be willing and able to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assumed difficulty of governing the Southern States as free and equal
+      commonwealths, in case of their return to the Union, is purely imaginary.
+      If brought back by force, and not by voluntary compact, they will return
+      without the Territories, and without a Fugitive Slave Law. It may be
+      assumed that in that event the victorious party would make the alterations
+      in the Federal Constitution which are necessary to adapt it to the new
+      circumstances, and which would not infringe, but strengthen, its
+      democratic principles. An article would have to be inserted prohibiting
+      the extension of slavery to the Territories, or the admission into the
+      Union of any new Slave State. Without any other guarantee, the rapid
+      formation of new Free States would ensure to freedom a decisive and
+      constantly increasing majority in Congress. It would also be right to
+      abrogate that bad provision of the Constitution (a necessary compromise at
+      the time of its first establishment) whereby the slaves, though reckoned
+      as citizens in no other respect, are counted, to the extent of three
+      fifths of their number, in the estimate of the population for fixing the
+      number of representatives of each State in the Lower House of Congress.
+      Why should the masters have members in right of their human chattels, any
+      more than of their oxen and pigs? The President, in his Message, has
+      already proposed that this salutary reform should be effected in the case
+      of Maryland, additional territory, detached from Virginia, being given to
+      that State as an equivalent: thus clearly indicating the policy which he
+      approves, and which he is probably willing to make universal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it is necessary to be prepared for all possibilities, let us now
+      contemplate another. Let us suppose the worst possible issue of this war&mdash;the
+      one apparently desired by those English writers whose moral feeling is so
+      philosophically indifferent between the apostles of slavery and its
+      enemies. Suppose that the North should stoop to recognize the new
+      Confederation on its own terms, leaving it half the Territories, and that
+      it is acknowledged by Europe, and takes its place as an admitted member of
+      the community of nations. It will be desirable to take thought beforehand
+      what are to be our own future relations with a new Power, professing the
+      principles of Attila and Genghis Khan as the foundation of its
+      Constitution. Are we to see with indifference its victorious army let
+      loose to propagate their national faith at the rifle's mouth through
+      Mexico and Central America? Shall we submit to see fire and sword carried
+      over Cuba and Porto Rico, and Hayti and Liberia conquered and brought back
+      to slavery? We shall soon have causes enough of quarrel on our own
+      account. When we are in the act of sending an expedition against Mexico to
+      redress the wrongs of private British subjects, we should do well to
+      reflect in time that the President of the new Republic, Mr. Jefferson
+      Davis, was the original inventor of repudiation. Mississippi was the first
+      State which repudiated, Mr. Jefferson Davis was Governor of Mississippi,
+      and the Legislature of Mississippi had passed a Bill recognizing and
+      providing for the debt, which Bill Mr. Jefferson Davis vetoed. Unless we
+      abandon the principles we have for two generations consistently professed
+      and acted on, we should be at war with the new Confederacy within five
+      years about the African slave-trade. An English Government will hardly be
+      base enough to recognize them, unless they accept all the treaties by
+      which America is at present bound; nor, it may be hoped, even if <i>de
+      facto</i> independent, would they be admitted to the courtesies of
+      diplomatic intercourse, unless they granted in the most explicit manner
+      the right of search. To allow the slave-ships of a Confederation formed
+      for the extension of slavery to come and go free, and unexamined, between
+      America and the African coast, would be to renounce even the pretence of
+      attempting to protect Africa against the man-stealer, and abandon that
+      Continent to the horrors, on a far larger scale, which were practised
+      before Granville Sharp and Clarkson were in existence. But even if the
+      right of intercepting their slavers were acknowledged by treaty, which it
+      never would be, the arrogance of the Southern slave-holders would not long
+      submit to its exercise. Their pride and self-conceit, swelled to an
+      inordinate height by their successful struggle, would defy the power of
+      England as they had already successfully defied that of their Northern
+      countrymen. After our people by their cold disapprobation, and our press
+      by its invective, had combined with their own difficulties to damp the
+      spirit of the Free States, and drive them to submit and make peace, we
+      should have to fight the Slave States ourselves at far greater
+      disadvantages, when we should no longer have the wearied and exhausted
+      North for an ally. The time might come when the barbarous and barbarizing
+      Power, which we by our moral support had helped into existence, would
+      require a general crusade of civilized Europe, to extinguish the mischief
+      which it had allowed, and we had aided, to rise up in the midst of our
+      civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For these reasons I cannot join with those who cry Peace, peace. I cannot
+      wish that this war should not have been engaged in by the North, or that
+      being engaged in, it should be terminated on any conditions but such as
+      would retain the whole of the Territories as free soil. I am not blind to
+      the possibility that it may require a long war to lower the arrogance and
+      tame the aggressive ambition of the slave-owners, to the point of either
+      returning to the Union, or consenting to remain out of it with their
+      present limits. But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a
+      nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things:
+      the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks
+      nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human
+      instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and
+      for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to
+      protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give
+      victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war,
+      carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice&mdash;is often the
+      means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to
+      fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his
+      personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free,
+      unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As
+      long as justice and injustice have not terminated <i>their</i> ever
+      renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must
+      be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. I am
+      far from saying that the present struggle, on the part of the Northern
+      Americans, is wholly of this exalted character; that it has arrived at the
+      stage of being altogether a war for justice, a war of principle. But there
+      was from the beginning, and now is, a large infusion of that element in
+      it; and this is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts, will in
+      the end predominate. Should that time come, not only will the greatest
+      enormity which still exists among mankind as an institution, receive far
+      earlier its <i>coups de grâce</i> than there has ever, until now, appeared
+      any probability of; but in effecting this the Free States will have raised
+      themselves to that elevated position in the scale of morality and dignity,
+      which is derived from great sacrifices consciously made in a virtuous
+      cause, and the sense of an inestimable benefit to all future ages, brought
+      about by their own voluntary efforts.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contest in America, by John Stuart Mill
+
+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 Contest in America
+
+Author: John Stuart Mill
+
+Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5123]
+Last Updated: August 11, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTEST IN AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Curtis A. Weyant and David A. Maddock
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CONTEST IN AMERICA
+
+By John Stuart Mill
+
+
+Reprinted From Fraser's Magazine
+
+
+
+[Redactor's note:  Italics are indicated by underscores surrounding
+the _italicized text_.]
+
+
+
+THE CONTEST IN AMERICA
+
+
+
+The cloud which for the space of a month hung gloomily over the
+civilized world, black with far worse evils than those of simple war,
+has passed from over our heads without bursting. The fear has not been
+realized, that the only two first-rate Powers who are also free
+nations would take to tearing each other in pieces, both the one and
+the other in a bad and odious cause. For while, on the American side,
+the war would have been one of reckless persistency in wrong, on ours
+it would have been a war in alliance with, and, to practical purposes,
+in defence and propagation of, slavery. We had, indeed, been wronged.
+We had suffered an indignity, and something more than an indignity,
+which, not to have resented, would have been to invite a constant
+succession of insults and injuries from the same and from every other
+quarter. We could have acted no otherwise than we have done: yet it is
+impossible to think, without something like a shudder, from what we
+have escaped. We, the emancipators of the slave--who have wearied
+every Court and Government in Europe and America with our protests and
+remonstrances, until we goaded them into at least ostensibly
+cooeperating with us to prevent the enslaving of the negro--we, who for
+the last half century have spent annual sums, equal to the revenue of
+a small kingdom, in blockading the African coast, for a cause in which
+we not only had no interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniary
+interest, and which many believed would ruin, as many among us still,
+though erroneously, believe that it has ruined, our colonies,--_we_
+should have lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most commanding
+positions of the world, a powerful republic, devoted not only to
+slavery, but to pro-slavery propagandism--should have helped to give a
+place in the community of nations to a conspiracy of slave-owners, who
+have broken their connection with the American Federation on the sole
+ground, ostentatiously proclaimed, that they thought an attempt would
+be made to restrain, not slavery itself, but their purpose of
+spreading slavery wherever migration or force could carry it.
+
+A nation which has made the professions that England has, does not
+with impunity, under however great provocation, betake itself to
+frustrating the objects for which it has been calling on the rest of
+the world to make sacrifices of what they think their interest. At
+present all the nations of Europe have sympathized with us; have
+acknowledged that we were injured, and declared with rare unanimity,
+that we had no choice but to resist, if necessary, by arms. But the
+consequences of such a war would soon have buried its causes in
+oblivion. When the new Confederate States, made an independent Power
+by English help, had begun their crusade to carry negro slavery from
+the Potomac to Cape Horn; who would then have remembered that England
+raised up this scourge to humanity not for the evil's sake, but
+because somebody had offered an insult to her flag? Or even if
+unforgotten, who would then have felt that such a grievance was a
+sufficient palliation of the crime? Every reader of a newspaper, to
+the farthest ends of the earth, would have believed and remembered one
+thing only--that at the critical juncture which was to decide whether
+slavery should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be trodden out
+at the moment of conflict between the good and the evil spirit--at the
+dawn of a hope that the demon might now at last be chained and flung
+into the pit, England stepped in, and, for the sake of cotton, made
+Satan victorious.
+
+The world has been saved from this calamity, and England from this
+disgrace. The accusation would indeed have been a calumny. But to be
+able to defy calumny, a nation, like an individual, must stand very
+clear of just reproach in its previous conduct. Unfortunately, we
+ourselves have given too much plausibility to the charge. Not by
+anything said or done by us as a Government or as a nation, but by the
+tone of our press, and in some degree, it must be owned, the general
+opinion of English society. It is too true, that the feelings which
+have been manifested since the beginning of the American contest--the
+judgments which have been put forth, and the wishes which have been
+expressed concerning the incidents and probable eventualities of the
+struggle--the bitter and irritating criticism which has been kept up,
+not even against both parties equally, but almost solely against the
+party in the right, and the ungenerous refusal of all those just
+allowances which no country needs more than our own, whenever its
+circumstances are as near to those of America as a cut finger is to an
+almost mortal wound,--these facts, with minds not favorably disposed
+to us, would have gone far to make the most odious interpretation of
+the war in which we have been so nearly engaged with the United
+States, appear by many degrees the most probable. There is no denying
+that our attitude towards the contending parties (I mean our moral
+attitude, for politically there was no other course open to us than
+neutrality) has not been that which becomes a people who are as
+sincere enemies of slavery as the English really are, and have made as
+great sacrifices to put an end to it where they could. And it has been
+an additional misfortune that some of our most powerful journals have
+been for many years past very unfavorable exponents of English feeling
+on all subjects connected with slavery: some, probably, from the
+influences, more or less direct, of West Indian opinions and
+interests: others from inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled by
+reason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is always adverse to it
+in feeling; which likes the spectacle of irresponsible power exercised
+by one person over others; which has no moral repugnance to the
+thought of human beings born to the penal servitude for life, to which
+for the term of a few years we sentence our most hardened criminals,
+but keeps its indignation to be expended on "rabid and fanatical
+abolitionists" across the Atlantic, and on those writers in England
+who attach a sufficiently serious meaning to their Christian
+professions, to consider a fight against slavery as a fight for God.
+
+Now, when the mind of England, and it may almost be said, of the
+civilized part of mankind, has been relieved from the incubus which
+had weighed on it ever since the _Trent_ outrage, and when we are no
+longer feeling towards the Northern Americans as men feel towards
+those with whom they may be on the point of struggling for life or
+death; now, if ever, is the time to review our position, and consider
+whether we have been feeling what ought to have been felt, and wishing
+what ought to have been wished, regarding the contest in which the
+Northern States are engaged with the South.
+
+In considering this matter, we ought to dismiss from our minds, as far
+as possible, those feelings against the North, which have been
+engendered not merely by the _Trent_ aggression, but by the previous
+anti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump orators. It is
+hardly worth while to ask how far these explosions of ill-humor are
+anything more than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplined
+minds, disappointed of the sympathy which they justly thought they had
+a right to expect from the great anti-slavery people, in their really
+noble enterprise. It is almost superfluous to remark that a democratic
+Government always shows worst where other Governments generally show
+best, on its outside; that unreasonable people are much more noisy
+than the reasonable; that the froth and scum are the part of a
+violently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but are not its body
+and substance. Without insisting on these things, I contend, that all
+previous cause of offence should be considered as cancelled, by the
+reparation which the American Government has so amply made; not so
+much the reparation itself, which might have been so made as to leave
+still greater cause of permanent resentment behind it; but the manner
+and spirit in which they have made it. These have been such as most of
+us, I venture to say, did not by any means expect. If reparation were
+made at all, of which few of us felt more than a hope, we thought that
+it would have been made obviously as a concession to prudence, not to
+principle. We thought that there would have been truckling to the
+newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters who were crying out for
+retaining the prisoners at all hazards. We expected that the
+atonement, if atonement there were, would have been made with
+reservations, perhaps under protest. We expected that the
+correspondence would have been spun out, and a trial made to induce
+England to be satisfied with less; or that there would have been a
+proposal of arbitration; or that England would have been asked to make
+concessions in return for justice; or that if submission was made, it
+would have been made, ostensibly, to the opinions and wishes of
+Continental Europe. We expected anything, in short, which would have
+been weak and timid and paltry. The only thing which no one seemed to
+expect, is what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Government have
+done none of these things. Like honest men, they have said in direct
+terms, that our demand was right; that they yielded to it because it
+was just; that if they themselves had received the same treatment,
+they would have demanded the same reparation; and that if what seemed
+to be the American side of a question was not the just side, they
+would be on the side of justice; happy as they were to find after
+their resolution had been taken, that it was also the side which
+America had formerly defended. Is there any one, capable of a moral
+judgment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of America and
+American statesmen, is not raised by such an act, done on such
+grounds? The act itself may have been imposed by the necessity of the
+circumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of action
+professed, were their own choice. Putting the worst hypothesis
+possible, which it would be the height of injustice to entertain
+seriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience,
+and that the profession of regard for justice was hypocrisy, even so,
+the ground taken, even if insincerely, is the most hopeful sign of the
+moral state of the American mind which has appeared for many years.
+That a sense of justice should be the motive which the rulers of a
+country rely on, to reconcile the public to an unpopular, and what
+might seem a humiliating act; that the journalists, the orators, many
+lawyers, the Lower House of Congress, and Mr. Lincoln's own naval
+secretary, should be told in the face of the world, by their own
+Government, that they have been giving public thanks, presents of
+swords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic honors to the author
+of an act which, though not so intended, was lawless and wrong, and
+for which the proper remedy is confession and atonement; that this
+should be the accepted policy (supposing it to be nothing higher) of a
+Democratic Republic, shows even unlimited democracy to be a better
+thing than many Englishmen have lately been in the habit of
+considering it, and goes some way towards proving that the aberrations
+even of a ruling multitude are only fatal when the better instructed
+have not the virtue or the courage to front them boldly. Nor ought it
+to be forgotten, to the honor of Mr. Lincoln's Government, that in
+doing what was in itself right, they have done also what was best
+fitted to allay the animosity which was daily becoming more bitter
+between the two nations so long as the question remained open. They
+have put the brand of confessed injustice upon that rankling and
+vindictive resentment with which the profligate and passionate part of
+the American press has been threatening us in the event of concession,
+and which is to be manifested by some dire revenge, to be taken, as
+they pretend, after the nation is extricated from its present
+difficulties. Mr. Lincoln has done what depended on him to make this
+spirit expire with the occasion which raised it up; and we shall have
+ourselves chiefly to blame if we keep it alive by the further
+prolongation of that stream of vituperative eloquence, the source of
+which, even now, when the cause of quarrel has been amicably made up,
+does not seem to have run dry. {1}
+
+
+{1. I do not forget one regrettable passage in Mr. Seward's letter,
+in which he said that "if the safety of the Union required the
+detention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of
+this Government to detain them." I sincerely grieve to find this
+sentence in the dispatch, for the exceptions to the general rules of
+morality are not a subject to be lightly or unnecessarily tampered
+with. The doctrine in itself is no other than that professed and
+acted on by all governments--that self-preservation, in a State, as
+in an individual, is a warrant for many things which at all other
+times ought to be rigidly abstained from. At all events, no nation
+which has ever passed "laws of exception," which ever suspended the
+Habeas Corpus Act or passed an Alien Bill in dread of a Chartist
+insurrection, has a right to throw the first stone at Mr. Lincoln's
+Government.}
+
+Let us, then, without reference to these jars, or to the declamations
+of newspaper writers on either side of the Atlantic, examine the
+American question as it stood from the beginning; its origin, the
+purpose of both the combatants, and its various possible or probable
+issues.
+
+There is a theory in England, believed perhaps by some, half believed
+by many more, which is only consistent with original ignorance, or
+complete subsequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of the
+contest. There are people who tell us that, on the side of the North,
+the question is not one of slavery at all. The North, it seems, have
+no more objection to slavery than the South have. Their leaders never
+say one word implying disapprobation of it. They are ready, on the
+contrary, to give it new guarantees; to renounce all that they have
+been contending for; to win back, if opportunity offers, the South to
+the Union by surrendering the whole point.
+
+If this be the true state of the case, what are the Southern chiefs
+fighting about? Their apologists in England say that it is about
+tariffs, and similar trumpery. _They_ say nothing of the kind. They
+tell the world, and they told their own citizens when they wanted
+their votes, that the object of the fight was slavery. Many years ago,
+when General Jackson was President, South Carolina did nearly rebel
+(she never was near separating) about a tariff; but no other State
+abetted her, and a strong adverse demonstration from Virginia brought
+the matter to a close. Yet the tariff of that day was rigidly
+protective. Compared with that, the one in force at the time of the
+secession was a free-trade tariff: This latter was the result of
+several successive modifications in the direction of freedom; and its
+principle was not protection for protection, but as much of it only as
+might incidentally result from duties imposed for revenue. Even the
+Morrill tariff (which never could have been passed but for the
+Southern secession) is stated by the high authority of Mr. H. C. Carey
+to be considerably more liberal than the reformed French tariff under
+Mr. Cobden's treaty; insomuch that he, a Protectionist, would be glad
+to exchange his own protective tariff for Louis Napoleon's free-trade
+one. But why discuss, on probable evidence, notorious facts? The world
+knows what the question between the North and South has been for many
+years, and still is. Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of.
+Slavery was battled for and against, on the floor of Congress and in
+the plains of Kansas; on the slavery question exclusively was the
+party constituted which now rules the United States: on slavery
+Fremont was rejected, on slavery Lincoln was elected; the South
+separated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as the one cause of
+separation.
+
+It is true enough that the North are not carrying on war to abolish
+slavery in the States where it legally exists. Could it have been
+expected, or even perhaps desired, that they should? A great party
+does not change suddenly, and at once, all its principles and
+professions. The Republican party have taken their stand on law, and
+the existing constitution of the Union. They have disclaimed all right
+to attempt anything which that constitution forbids. It does forbid
+interference by the Federal Congress with slavery in the Slave States;
+but it does not forbid their abolishing it in the District of
+Columbia; and this they are now doing, having voted, I perceive, in
+their present pecuniary straits, a million of dollars to indemnify the
+slave-owners of the District. Neither did the Constitution, in their
+own opinion, require them to permit the introduction of slavery into
+the territories which were not yet States. To prevent this, the
+Republican party was formed, and to prevent it, they are now fighting,
+as the slave-owners are fighting to enforce it.
+
+The present government of the United States is not an Abolitionist
+government. Abolitionists, in America, mean those who do not keep
+within the constitution; who demand the destruction (as far as slavery
+is concerned) of as much of it as protects the internal legislation of
+each State from the control of Congress; who aim at abolishing slavery
+wherever it exists, by force if need be, but certainly by some other
+power than the constituted authorities of the Slave States. The
+Republican party neither aim nor profess to aim at this object. And
+when we consider the flood of wrath which would have been poured out
+against them if they did, by the very writers who now taunt them with
+not doing it, we shall be apt to think the taunt a little misplaced.
+But though not an Abolitionist party, they are a Free-soil party. If
+they have not taken arms against slavery, they have against its
+extension. And they know, as we may know if we please, that this
+amounts to the same thing. The day when slavery can no longer extend
+itself, is the day of its doom. The slave-owners know this, and it is
+the cause of their fury. They know, as all know who have attended to
+the subject, that confinement within existing limits is its
+death-warrant. Slavery, under the conditions in which it exists in the
+States, exhausts even the beneficent powers of nature. So incompatible
+is it with any kind whatever of skilled labor, that it causes the
+whole productive resources of the country to be concentrated on one or
+two products, cotton being the chief, which require, to raise and
+prepare them for the market, little besides brute animal force. The
+cotton cultivation, in the opinion of all competent judges, alone
+saves North American slavery; but cotton cultivation, exclusively
+adhered to, exhausts in a moderate number of years all the soils which
+are fit for it, and can only be kept up by travelling farther and
+farther westward. Mr. Olmsted has given a vivid description of the
+desolate state of parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, once among the
+richest specimens of soil and cultivation in the world; and even the
+more recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is rapidly following in
+the same downhill track. To slavery, therefore, it is a matter of life
+and death to find fresh fields for the employment of slave labor.
+Confine it to the present States, and the owners of slave property
+will either be speedily ruined, or will have to find means of
+reforming and renovating their agricultural system; which cannot be
+done without treating the slaves like human beings, nor without so
+large an employment of skilled, that is, of free labor, as will widely
+displace the unskilled, and so depreciate the pecuniary value of the
+slave, that the immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction of
+slavery would be a nearly inevitable and probably rapid consequence.
+
+The Republican leaders do not talk to the public of these almost
+certain results of success in the present conflict. They talk but
+little, in the existing emergency, even of the original cause of
+quarrel. The most ordinary policy teaches them to inscribe on their
+banner that part only of their known principles in which their
+supporters are unanimous. The preservation of the Union is an object
+about which the North are agreed; and it has many adherents, as they
+believe, in the South generally. That nearly half the population of
+the Border Slave States are in favor of it is a patent fact, since
+they are now fighting in its defence. It is not probable that they
+would be willing to fight directly against slavery. The Republicans
+well know that if they can reestablish the Union, they gain everything
+for which they originally contended; and it would be a plain breach of
+faith with the Southern friends of the Government, if, after rallying
+them round its standard for a purpose of which they approve, it were
+suddenly to alter its terms of communion without their consent.
+
+But the parties in a protracted civil war almost invariably end by
+taking more extreme, not to say higher grounds of principle, than they
+began with. Middle parties and friends of compromise are soon left
+behind; and if the writers who so severely criticize the present
+moderation of the Free-soilers are desirous to see the war become an
+abolition war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough they
+will be gratified. Without the smallest pretension to see further into
+futurity than other people, I at least have foreseen and foretold from
+the first, that if the South were not promptly put down, the contest
+would become distinctly an antislavery one; nor do I believe that any
+person, accustomed to reflect on the course of human affairs in
+troubled times, can expect anything else. Those who have read, even
+cursorily, the most valuable testimony to which the English public
+have access, concerning the real state of affairs in America--the
+letters of the _Times'_ correspondent, Mr. Russell--must have observed
+how early and rapidly he arrived at the same conclusion, and with what
+increasing emphasis he now continually reiterates it. In one of his
+recent letters he names the end of next summer as the period by which,
+if the war has not sooner terminated, it will have assumed a complete
+anti-slavery character. So early a term exceeds, I confess, my most
+sanguine hopes; but if Mr. Russell be right, Heaven forbid that the
+war should cease sooner; for if it lasts till then, it is quite
+possible that it will regenerate the American people.
+
+If, however, the purposes of the North may be doubted or
+misunderstood, there is at least no question as to those of the South.
+They make no concealment of _their_ principles. As long as they were
+allowed to direct all the policy of the Union; to break through
+compromise after compromise, encroach step after step, until they
+reached the pitch of claiming a right to carry slave property into the
+Free States, and, in opposition to the laws of those States, hold it
+as property there; so long, they were willing to remain in the Union.
+The moment a President was elected of whom it was inferred from his
+opinions, not that he would take any measures against slavery where it
+exists, but that he would oppose its establishment where it exists
+not,--that moment they broke loose from what was, at least, a very
+solemn contract, and formed themselves into a Confederation professing
+as its fundamental principle not merely the perpetuation, but the
+indefinite extension of slavery. And the doctrine is loudly preached
+through the new Republic, that slavery, whether black or white, is a
+good in itself, and the proper condition of the working classes
+everywhere.
+
+Let me, in a few words, remind the reader what sort of a thing this
+is, which the white oligarchy of the South have banded themselves
+together to propagate and establish, if they could, universally. When
+it is wished to describe any portion of the human race as in the
+lowest state of debasement, and under the most cruel oppression, in
+which it is possible for human beings to live, they are compared to
+slaves. When words are sought by which to stigmatize the most odious
+despotism, exercised in the most odious manner, and all other
+comparisons are found inadequate, the despots are said to be like
+slave-masters, or slave-drivers. What, by a rhetorical license, the
+worst oppressors of the human race, by way of stamping on them the
+most hateful character possible, are said to be, these men, in very
+truth, are. I do not mean that all of them are hateful personally, any
+more than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But the position
+which they occupy, and the abstract excellence of which they are in
+arms to vindicate, is that which the united voice of mankind
+habitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I will not
+bandy chicanery about the more or less of stripes or other torments
+which are daily requisite to keep the machine in working order, nor
+discuss whether the Legrees or the St. Clairs are more numerous among
+the slave-owners of the Southern States. The broad facts of the case
+suffice. One fact is enough. There are, Heaven knows, vicious and
+tyrannical institutions in ample abundance on the earth. But this
+institution is the only one of them all which requires, to keep it
+going, that human beings should be burnt alive. The calm and
+dispassionate Mr. Olmsted affirms that there has not been a single
+year, for many years past, in which this horror is not known to have
+been perpetrated in some part or other of the South. And not upon
+negroes only; the _Edinburgh Review_, in a recent number, gave the
+hideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northern
+huckster by Lynch law, on mere suspicion of having aided in the escape
+of a slave. What must American slavery be, if deeds like these are
+necessary under it?--and if they are not necessary and are yet done,
+is not the evidence against slavery still more damning? The South are
+in rebellion not for simple slavery; they are in rebellion for the
+right of burning human creatures alive.
+
+But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that
+the South had a _right_ to separate; that their separation ought to
+have been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready to
+fight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the
+same error and wrong which England committed in opposing the original
+separation of the thirteen colonies. This is carrying the doctrine of
+the sacred right of insurrection rather far. It is wonderful how easy
+and liberal and complying people can be in other people's concerns.
+Because they are willing to surrender their own past, and have no
+objection to join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers, they
+never put themselves the question what they themselves would do in
+circumstances far less trying, under far less pressure of real
+national calamity. Would those who profess these ardent revolutionary
+principles consent to their being applied to Ireland, or India, or the
+Ionian Islands. How have they treated those who did attempt so to
+apply them? But the case can dispense with any mere _argumentum ad
+hominem_. I am not frightened at the word rebellion. I do not scruple
+to say that I have sympathized more or less ardently with most of the
+rebellions, successful and unsuccessful, which have taken place in my
+time. But I certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient
+title to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a rebel; that the act
+of taking arms against one's fellow-citizens was so meritorious in
+itself, was so completely its own justification, that no question need
+be asked concerning the motive. It seems to me a strange doctrine that
+the most serious and responsible of all human acts imposes no
+obligation on those who do it of showing that they have a real
+grievance; that those who rebel for the power of oppressing others,
+exercise as sacred a right as those who do the same thing to resist
+oppression practised upon themselves. Neither rebellion nor any other
+act which affects the interests of others, is sufficiently legitimated
+by the mere will to do it. Secession may be laudable, and so may any
+other kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime. It
+is the one or the other, according to the object and the provocation.
+And if there ever was an object which, by its bare announcement,
+stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of mankind,
+it is the one professed by the South. Their right to separate is the
+right which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to secede from their
+respective countries, because the laws of those countries would not
+suffer them to rob and murder on the highway. The only real difference
+is that the present rebels are more powerful than Cartouche or Turpin,
+and may possibly be able to effect their iniquitous purpose.
+
+Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the mere will to
+separate were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground for
+separation, I beg to be informed _whose_ will? The will of any knot of
+men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud,
+have got the reins of government into their hands? If the inmates of
+Parkhurst Prison were to get possession of the Isle of Wight, occupy
+its military positions, enlist one part of its inhabitants in their
+own ranks, set the remainder of them to work in chain gangs, and
+declare themselves independent, ought their recognition by the British
+Government to be an immediate consequence? Before admitting the
+authority of any persons, as organs of the will of the people, to
+dispose of the whole political existence of a country, I ask to see
+whether their credentials are from the whole, or only from a part. And
+first, it is necessary to ask, Have the slaves been consulted? Has
+their will been counted as any part in the estimate of collective
+volition? They are a part of the population. However natural in the
+country itself, it is rather cool in English writers who talk so
+glibly of the ten millions (I believe there are only eight), to pass
+over the very existence of four millions who must abhor the idea of
+separation. Remember, _we_ consider them to be human beings, entitled
+to human rights. Nor can it be doubted that the mere fact of belonging
+to a Union in some parts of which slavery is reprobated, is some
+alleviation of their condition, if only as regards future
+probabilities. But even of the white population, it is questionable if
+there was in the beginning a majority for secession anywhere but in
+South Carolina. Though the thing was pre-determined, and most of the
+States committed by their public authorities before the people were
+called on to vote; though in taking the votes terrorism in many places
+reigned triumphant; yet even so, in several of the States, secession
+was carried only by narrow majorities. In some the authorities have
+not dared to publish the numbers; in some it is asserted that no vote
+has ever been taken. Further (as was pointed out in an admirable
+letter by Mr. Carey), the Slave States are intersected in the middle,
+from their northern frontier almost to the Gulf of Mexico, by a
+country of free labor--the mountain region of the Alleghanies and
+their dependencies, forming parts of Virginia, North Carolina,
+Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, in which, from the nature of the
+climate and of the agricultural and mining industry, slavery to any
+material extent never did, and never will, exist. This mountain zone
+is peopled by ardent friends of the Union. Could the Union abandon
+them, without even an effort, to be dealt with at the pleasure of an
+exasperated slave-owning oligarchy? Could it abandon the Germans who,
+in Western Texas, have made so meritorious a commencement of growing
+cotton on the borders of the Mexican Gulf by free labor? Were the
+right of the slave-owners to secede ever so clear, they have no right
+to carry these with them; unless allegiance is a mere question of
+local proximity, and my next neighbor, if I am a stronger man, can be
+compelled to follow me in any lawless vagaries I choose to indulge.
+
+But (it is said) the North will never succeed in conquering the South;
+and since the separation must in the end be recognized, it is better
+to do at first what must be done at last; moreover, if it did conquer
+them, it could not govern them when conquered, consistently with free
+institutions. With no one of these propositions can I agree.
+
+Whether or not the Northern Americans will succeed in reconquering the
+South, I do not affect to foresee. That they _can_ conquer it, if
+their present determination holds, I have never entertained a doubt;
+for they are twice as numerous, and ten or twelve times as rich. Not
+by taking military possession of their country, or marching an army
+through it, but by wearing them out, exhausting their resources,
+depriving them of the comforts of life, encouraging their slaves to
+desert, and excluding them from communication with foreign countries.
+All this, of course, depends on the supposition that the North does
+not give in first. Whether they will persevere to this point, or
+whether their spirit, their patience, and the sacrifices they are
+willing to make, will be exhausted before reaching it, I cannot tell.
+They may, in the end, be wearied into recognizing the separation. But
+to those who say that because this may have to be done at last, it
+ought to have been done at first, I put the very serious question--On
+what terms? Have they ever considered what would have been the meaning
+of separation if it had been assented to by the Northern States when
+first demanded? People talk as if separation meant nothing more than
+the independence of the seceding States. To have accepted it under
+that limitation would have been, on the part of the South, to give up
+that which they have seceded expressly to preserve. Separation, with
+them, means at least half the Territories; including the Mexican
+border, and the consequent power of invading and overrunning Spanish
+America for the purpose of planting there the "peculiar institution"
+which even Mexican civilization has found too bad to be endured. There
+is no knowing to what point of degradation a country may be driven in
+a desperate state of its affairs; but if the North _ever_, unless on
+the brink of actual ruin, makes peace with the South, giving up the
+original cause of quarrel, the freedom of the Territories; if it
+resigns to them when out of the Union that power of evil which it
+would not grant to retain them in the Union--it will incur the pity
+and disdain of posterity. And no one can suppose that the South would
+have consented, or in their present temper ever will consent, to an
+accommodation on any other terms. It will require a succession of
+humiliation to bring them to that. The necessity of reconciling
+themselves to the confinement of slavery within its existing
+boundaries, with the natural consequence, immediate mitigation of
+slavery, and ultimate emancipation, is a lesson which they are in no
+mood to learn from anything but disaster. Two or three defeats in the
+field, breaking their military strength, though not followed by an
+invasion of their territory, may possibly teach it to them. If so,
+there is no breach of charity in hoping that this severe schooling may
+promptly come. When men set themselves up, in defiance of the rest of
+the world, to do the devil's work, no good can come of them until the
+world has made them feel that this work cannot be suffered to be done
+any longer. If this knowledge does not come to them for several years,
+the abolition question will by that time have settled itself. For
+assuredly Congress will very soon make up its mind to declare all
+slaves free who belong to persons in arms against the Union. When that
+is done, slavery, confined to a minority, will soon cure itself; and
+the pecuniary value of the negroes belonging to loyal masters will
+probably not exceed the amount of compensation which the United States
+will be willing and able to give.
+
+The assumed difficulty of governing the Southern States as free and
+equal commonwealths, in case of their return to the Union, is purely
+imaginary. If brought back by force, and not by voluntary compact,
+they will return without the Territories, and without a Fugitive Slave
+Law. It may be assumed that in that event the victorious party would
+make the alterations in the Federal Constitution which are necessary
+to adapt it to the new circumstances, and which would not infringe,
+but strengthen, its democratic principles. An article would have to be
+inserted prohibiting the extension of slavery to the Territories, or
+the admission into the Union of any new Slave State. Without any other
+guarantee, the rapid formation of new Free States would ensure to
+freedom a decisive and constantly increasing majority in Congress. It
+would also be right to abrogate that bad provision of the Constitution
+(a necessary compromise at the time of its first establishment)
+whereby the slaves, though reckoned as citizens in no other respect,
+are counted, to the extent of three fifths of their number, in the
+estimate of the population for fixing the number of representatives of
+each State in the Lower House of Congress. Why should the masters have
+members in right of their human chattels, any more than of their oxen
+and pigs? The President, in his Message, has already proposed that
+this salutary reform should be effected in the case of Maryland,
+additional territory, detached from Virginia, being given to that
+State as an equivalent: thus clearly indicating the policy which he
+approves, and which he is probably willing to make universal.
+
+As it is necessary to be prepared for all possibilities, let us now
+contemplate another. Let us suppose the worst possible issue of this
+war--the one apparently desired by those English writers whose moral
+feeling is so philosophically indifferent between the apostles of
+slavery and its enemies. Suppose that the North should stoop to
+recognize the new Confederation on its own terms, leaving it half the
+Territories, and that it is acknowledged by Europe, and takes its
+place as an admitted member of the community of nations. It will be
+desirable to take thought beforehand what are to be our own future
+relations with a new Power, professing the principles of Attila and
+Genghis Khan as the foundation of its Constitution. Are we to see with
+indifference its victorious army let loose to propagate their national
+faith at the rifle's mouth through Mexico and Central America? Shall
+we submit to see fire and sword carried over Cuba and Porto Rico, and
+Hayti and Liberia conquered and brought back to slavery? We shall soon
+have causes enough of quarrel on our own account. When we are in the
+act of sending an expedition against Mexico to redress the wrongs of
+private British subjects, we should do well to reflect in time that
+the President of the new Republic, Mr. Jefferson Davis, was the
+original inventor of repudiation. Mississippi was the first State
+which repudiated, Mr. Jefferson Davis was Governor of Mississippi, and
+the Legislature of Mississippi had passed a Bill recognizing and
+providing for the debt, which Bill Mr. Jefferson Davis vetoed. Unless
+we abandon the principles we have for two generations consistently
+professed and acted on, we should be at war with the new Confederacy
+within five years about the African slave-trade. An English Government
+will hardly be base enough to recognize them, unless they accept all
+the treaties by which America is at present bound; nor, it may be
+hoped, even if _de facto_ independent, would they be admitted to the
+courtesies of diplomatic intercourse, unless they granted in the most
+explicit manner the right of search. To allow the slave-ships of a
+Confederation formed for the extension of slavery to come and go free,
+and unexamined, between America and the African coast, would be to
+renounce even the pretence of attempting to protect Africa against the
+man-stealer, and abandon that Continent to the horrors, on a far
+larger scale, which were practised before Granville Sharp and Clarkson
+were in existence. But even if the right of intercepting their slavers
+were acknowledged by treaty, which it never would be, the arrogance of
+the Southern slave-holders would not long submit to its exercise.
+Their pride and self-conceit, swelled to an inordinate height by their
+successful struggle, would defy the power of England as they had
+already successfully defied that of their Northern countrymen. After
+our people by their cold disapprobation, and our press by its
+invective, had combined with their own difficulties to damp the spirit
+of the Free States, and drive them to submit and make peace, we should
+have to fight the Slave States ourselves at far greater disadvantages,
+when we should no longer have the wearied and exhausted North for an
+ally. The time might come when the barbarous and barbarizing Power,
+which we by our moral support had helped into existence, would require
+a general crusade of civilized Europe, to extinguish the mischief
+which it had allowed, and we had aided, to rise up in the midst of our
+civilization.
+
+For these reasons I cannot join with those who cry Peace, peace. I
+cannot wish that this war should not have been engaged in by the
+North, or that being engaged in, it should be terminated on any
+conditions but such as would retain the whole of the Territories as
+free soil. I am not blind to the possibility that it may require a
+long war to lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of
+the slave-owners, to the point of either returning to the Union, or
+consenting to remain out of it with their present limits. But war, in
+a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War
+is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
+degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing
+worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human
+instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service
+and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people.
+A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a
+war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is
+their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free
+choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has
+nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more
+about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature,
+who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the
+exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice
+have not terminated _their_ ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the
+affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do
+battle for the one against the other. I am far from saying that the
+present struggle, on the part of the Northern Americans, is wholly of
+this exalted character; that it has arrived at the stage of being
+altogether a war for justice, a war of principle. But there was from
+the beginning, and now is, a large infusion of that element in it; and
+this is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts, will in the
+end predominate. Should that time come, not only will the greatest
+enormity which still exists among mankind as an institution, receive
+far earlier its _coups de grace_ than there has ever, until now,
+appeared any probability of; but in effecting this the Free States
+will have raised themselves to that elevated position in the scale of
+morality and dignity, which is derived from great sacrifices
+consciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of an inestimable
+benefit to all future ages, brought about by their own voluntary
+efforts.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Contest in America, by John Stuart Mill
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contest in America, by John Stuart Mill
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+Title: The Contest in America
+
+Author: John Stuart Mill
+
+Release Date: February, 2004  [EBook #5123]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 5, 2002]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CONTEST IN AMERICA ***
+
+
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+Redacted by Curtis A. Weyant <curtis@pluckerbooks.com>
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+Proofed by David A. Maddock <dave@pluckerbooks.com>
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+
+
+                      THE CONTEST IN AMERICA
+
+                       BY JOHN STUART MILL
+
+                 REPRINTED FROM FRASER'S MAGAZINE
+
+
+
+                      The Contest in America
+
+
+
+
+The cloud which for the space of a month hung gloomily over the
+civilized world, black with far worse evils than those of simple war,
+has passed from over our heads without bursting. The fear has not been
+realized, that the only two first-rate Powers who are also free
+nations would take to tearing each other in pieces, both the one and
+the other in a bad and odious cause. For while, on the American side,
+the war would have been one of reckless persistency in wrong, on ours
+it would have been a war in alliance with, and, to practical purposes,
+in defence and propagation of, slavery. We had, indeed, been wronged.
+We had suffered an indignity, and something more than an indignity,
+which, not to have resented, would have been to invite a constant
+succession of insults and injuries from the same and from every other
+quarter. We could have acted no otherwise than we have done: yet it is
+impossible to think, without something like a shudder, from what we
+have escaped. We, the emancipators of the slave--who have wearied
+every Court and Government in Europe and America with our protests and
+remonstrances, until we goaded them into at least ostensibly
+coöperating with us to prevent the enslaving of the negro--we, who for
+the last half century have spent annual sums, equal to the revenue of
+a small kingdom, in blockading the African coast, for a cause in which
+we not only had no interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniary
+interest, and which many believed would ruin, as many among us still,
+though erroneously, believe that it has ruined, our colonies,--_we_
+should have lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most commanding
+positions of the world, a powerful republic, devoted not only to
+slavery, but to pro-slavery propagandism--should have helped to give a
+place in the community of nations to a conspiracy of slave-owners, who
+have broken their connection with the American Federation on the sole
+ground, ostentatiously proclaimed, that they thought an attempt would
+be made to restrain, not slavery itself, but their purpose of
+spreading slavery wherever migration or force could carry it.
+
+A nation which has made the professions that England has, does not
+with impunity, under however great provocation, betake itself to
+frustrating the objects for which it has been calling on the rest of
+the world to make sacrifices of what they think their interest. At
+present all the nations of Europe have sympathized with us; have
+acknowledged that we were injured, and declared with rare unanimity,
+that we had no choice but to resist, if necessary, by arms. But the
+consequences of such a war would soon have buried its causes in
+oblivion. When the new Confederate States, made an independent Power
+by English help, had begun their crusade to carry negro slavery from
+the Potomac to Cape Horn; who would then have remembered that England
+raised up this scourge to humanity not for the evil's sake, but
+because somebody had offered an insult to her flag? Or even if
+unforgotten, who would then have felt that such a grievance was a
+sufficient palliation of the crime? Every reader of a newspaper, to
+the farthest ends of the earth, would have believed and remembered one
+thing only--that at the critical juncture which was to decide whether
+slavery should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be trodden out
+at the moment of conflict between the good and the evil spirit--at the
+dawn of a hope that the demon might now at last be chained and flung
+into the pit, England stepped in, and, for the sake of cotton, made
+Satan victorious.
+
+The world has been saved from this calamity, and England from this
+disgrace. The accusation would indeed have been a calumny. But to be
+able to defy calumny, a nation, like an individual, must stand very
+clear of just reproach in its previous conduct. Unfortunately, we
+ourselves have given too much plausibility to the charge. Not by
+anything said or done by us as a Government or as a nation, but by the
+tone of our press, and in some degree, it must be owned, the general
+opinion of English society. It is too true, that the feelings which
+have been manifested since the beginning of the American contest--the
+judgments which have been put forth, and the wishes which have been
+expressed concerning the incidents and probable eventualities of the
+struggle--the bitter and irritating criticism which has been kept up,
+not even against both parties equally, but almost solely against the
+party in the right, and the ungenerous refusal of all those just
+allowances which no country needs more than our own, whenever its
+circumstances are as near to those of America as a cut finger is to an
+almost mortal wound,--these facts, with minds not favorably disposed
+to us, would have gone far to make the most odious interpretation of
+the war in which we have been so nearly engaged with the United
+States, appear by many degrees the most probable. There is no denying
+that our attitude towards the contending parties (I mean our moral
+attitude, for politically there was no other course open to us than
+neutrality) has not been that which becomes a people who are as
+sincere enemies of slavery as the English really are, and have made as
+great sacrifices to put an end to it where they could. And it has been
+an additional misfortune that some of our most powerful journals have
+been for many years past very unfavorable exponents of English feeling
+on all subjects connected with slavery: some, probably, from the
+influences, more or less direct, of West Indian opinions and
+interests: others from inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled by
+reason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is always adverse to it
+in feeling; which likes the spectacle of irresponsible power exercised
+by one person over others; which has no moral repugnance to the
+thought of human beings born to the penal servitude for life, to which
+for the term of a few years we sentence our most hardened criminals,
+but keeps its indignation to be expended on "rabid and fanatical
+abolitionists" across the Atlantic, and on those writers in England
+who attach a sufficiently serious meaning to their Christian
+professions, to consider a fight against slavery as a fight for God.
+
+Now, when the mind of England, and it may almost be said, of the
+civilized part of mankind, has been relieved from the incubus which
+had weighed on it ever since the _Trent_ outrage, and when we are no
+longer feeling towards the Northern Americans as men feel towards
+those with whom they may be on the point of struggling for life or
+death; now, if ever, is the time to review our position, and consider
+whether we have been feeling what ought to have been felt, and wishing
+what ought to have been wished, regarding the contest in which the
+Northern States are engaged with the South.
+
+In considering this matter, we ought to dismiss from our minds, as far
+as possible, those feelings against the North, which have been
+engendered not merely by the _Trent_ aggression, but by the previous
+anti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump orators. It is
+hardly worth while to ask how far these explosions of ill-humor are
+anything more than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplined
+minds, disappointed of the sympathy which they justly thought they had
+a right to expect from the great anti-slavery people, in their really
+noble enterprise. It is almost superfluous to remark that a democratic
+Government always shows worst where other Governments generally show
+best, on its outside; that unreasonable people are much more noisy
+than the reasonable; that the froth and scum are the part of a
+violently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but are not its body
+and substance. Without insisting on these things, I contend, that all
+previous cause of offence should be considered as cancelled, by the
+reparation which the American Government has so amply made; not so
+much the reparation itself, which might have been so made as to leave
+still greater cause of permanent resentment behind it; but the manner
+and spirit in which they have made it. These have been such as most of
+us, I venture to say, did not by any means expect. If reparation were
+made at all, of which few of us felt more than a hope, we thought that
+it would have been made obviously as a concession to prudence, not to
+principle. We thought that there would have been truckling to the
+newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters who were crying out for
+retaining the prisoners at all hazards. We expected that the
+atonement, if atonement there were, would have been made with
+reservations, perhaps under protest. We expected that the
+correspondence would have been spun out, and a trial made to induce
+England to be satisfied with less; or that there would have been a
+proposal of arbitration; or that England would have been asked to make
+concessions in return for justice; or that if submission was made, it
+would have been made, ostensibly, to the opinions and wishes of
+Continental Europe. We expected anything, in short, which would have
+been weak and timid and paltry. The only thing which no one seemed to
+expect, is what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Government have
+done none of these things. Like honest men, they have said in direct
+terms, that our demand was right; that they yielded to it because it
+was just; that if they themselves had received the same treatment,
+they would have demanded the same reparation; and that if what seemed
+to be the American side of a question was not the just side, they
+would be on the side of justice; happy as they were to find after
+their resolution had been taken, that it was also the side which
+America had formerly defended. Is there any one, capable of a moral
+judgment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of America and
+American statesmen, is not raised by such an act, done on such
+grounds? The act itself may have been imposed by the necessity of the
+circumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of action
+professed, were their own choice. Putting the worst hypothesis
+possible, which it would be the height of injustice to entertain
+seriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience,
+and that the profession of regard for justice was hypocrisy, even so,
+the ground taken, even if insincerely, is the most hopeful sign of the
+moral state of the American mind which has appeared for many years.
+That a sense of justice should be the motive which the rulers of a
+country rely on, to reconcile the public to an unpopular, and what
+might seem a humiliating act; that the journalists, the orators, many
+lawyers, the Lower House of Congress, and Mr. Lincoln's own naval
+secretary, should be told in the face of the world, by their own
+Government, that they have been giving public thanks, presents of
+swords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic honors to the author
+of an act which, though not so intended, was lawless and wrong, and
+for which the proper remedy is confession and atonement; that this
+should be the accepted policy (supposing it to be nothing higher) of a
+Democratic Republic, shows even unlimited democracy to be a better
+thing than many Englishmen have lately been in the habit of
+considering it, and goes some way towards proving that the aberrations
+even of a ruling multitude are only fatal when the better instructed
+have not the virtue or the courage to front them boldly. Nor ought it
+to be forgotten, to the honor of Mr. Lincoln's Government, that in
+doing what was in itself right, they have done also what was best
+fitted to allay the animosity which was daily becoming more bitter
+between the two nations so long as the question remained open. They
+have put the brand of confessed injustice upon that rankling and
+vindictive resentment with which the profligate and passionate part of
+the American press has been threatening us in the event of concession,
+and which is to be manifested by some dire revenge, to be taken, as
+they pretend, after the nation is extricated from its present
+difficulties. Mr. Lincoln has done what depended on him to make this
+spirit expire with the occasion which raised it up; and we shall have
+ourselves chiefly to blame if we keep it alive by the further
+prolongation of that stream of vituperative eloquence, the source of
+which, even now, when the cause of quarrel has been amicably made up,
+does not seem to have run dry. {1}
+
+
+{1. I do not forget one regrettable passage in Mr. Seward's letter,
+in which he said that "if the safety of the Union required the
+detention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of
+this Government to detain them." I sincerely grieve to find this
+sentence in the dispatch, for the exceptions to the general rules of
+morality are not a subject to be lightly or unnecessarily tampered
+with. The doctrine in itself is no other than that professed and
+acted on by all governments--that self-preservation, in a State, as
+in an individual, is a warrant for many things which at all other
+times ought to be rigidly abstained from. At all events, no nation
+which has ever passed "laws of exception," which ever supended the
+Habeas Corpus Act or passed an Alien Bill in dread of a Chartist
+insurrection, has a right to throw the first stone at Mr. Lincoln's
+Government.}
+
+Let us, then, without reference to these jars, or to the declamations
+of newspaper writers on either side of the Atlantic, examine the
+American question as it stood from the beginning; its origin, the
+purpose of both the combatants, and its various possible or probable
+issues.
+
+There is a theory in England, believed perhaps by some, half believed
+by many more, which is only consistent with original ignorance, or
+complete subsequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of the
+contest. There are people who tell us that, on the side of the North,
+the question is not one of slavery at all. The North, it seems, have
+no more objection to slavery than the South have. Their leaders never
+say one word implying disapprobation of it. They are ready, on the
+contrary, to give it new guarantees; to renounce all that they have
+been contending for; to win back, if opportunity offers, the South to
+the Union by surrendering the whole point.
+
+If this be the true state of the case, what are the Southern chiefs
+fighting about? Their apologists in England say that it is about
+tariffs, and similar trumpery. _They_ say nothing of the kind. They
+tell the world, and they told their own citizens when they wanted
+their votes, that the object of the fight was slavery. Many years ago,
+when General Jackson was President, South Carolina did nearly rebel
+(she never was near separating) about a tariff; but no other State
+abetted her, and a strong adverse demonstration from Virginia brought
+the matter to a close. Yet the tariff of that day was rigidly
+protective. Compared with that, the one in force at the time of the
+secession was a free-trade tariff: This latter was the result of
+several successive modifications in the direction of freedom; and its
+principle was not protection for protection, but as much of it only as
+might incidentally result from duties imposed for revenue. Even the
+Morrill tariff (which never could have been passed but for the
+Southern secession) is stated by the high authority of Mr. H. C. Carey
+to be considerably more liberal than the reformed French tariff under
+Mr. Cobden's treaty; insomuch that he, a Protectionist, would be glad
+to exchange his own protective tariff for Louis Napoleon's free-trade
+one. But why discuss, on probable evidence, notorious facts? The world
+knows what the question between the North and South has been for many
+years, and still is. Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of.
+Slavery was battled for and against, on the floor of Congress and in
+the plains of Kansas; on the slavery question exclusively was the
+party constituted which now rules the United States: on slavery
+Fremont was rejected, on slavery Lincoln was elected; the South
+separated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as the one cause of
+separation.
+
+It is true enough that the North are not carrying on war to abolish
+slavery in the States where it legally exists. Could it have been
+expected, or even perhaps desired, that they should? A great party
+does not change suddenly, and at once, all its principles and
+professions. The Republican party have taken their stand on law, and
+the existing constitution of the Union. They have disclaimed all right
+to attempt anything which that constitution forbids. It does forbid
+interference by the Federal Congress with slavery in the Slave States;
+but it does not forbid their abolishing it in the District of
+Columbia; and this they are now doing, having voted, I perceive, in
+their present pecuniary straits, a million of dollars to indemnify the
+slave-owners of the District. Neither did the Constitution, in their
+own opinion, require them to permit the introduction of slavery into
+the territories which were not yet States. To prevent this, the
+Republican party was formed, and to prevent it, they are now fighting,
+as the slave-owners are fighting to enforce it.
+
+The present government of the United States is not an Abolitionist
+government. Abolitionists, in America, mean those who do not keep
+within the constitution; who demand the destruction (as far as slavery
+is concerned) of as much of it as protects the internal legislation of
+each State from the control of Congress; who aim at abolishing slavery
+wherever it exists, by force if need be, but certainly by some other
+power than the constituted authorities of the Slave States. The
+Republican party neither aim nor profess to aim at this object. And
+when we consider the flood of wrath which would have been poured out
+against them if they did, by the very writers who now taunt them with
+not doing it, we shall be apt to think the taunt a little misplaced.
+But though not an Abolitionist party, they are a Free-soil party. If
+they have not taken arms against slavery, they have against its
+extension. And they know, as we may know if we please, that this
+amounts to the same thing. The day when slavery can no longer extend
+itself, is the day of its doom. The slave-owners know this, and it is
+the cause of their fury. They know, as all know who have attended to
+the subject, that confinement within existing limits is its
+death-warrant. Slavery, under the conditions in which it exists in the
+States, exhausts even the beneficent powers of nature. So incompatible
+is it with any kind whatever of skilled labor, that it causes the
+whole productive resources of the country to be concentrated on one or
+two products, cotton being the chief, which require, to raise and
+prepare them for the market, little besides brute animal force. The
+cotton cultivation, in the opinion of all competent judges, alone
+saves North American slavery; but cotton cultivation, exclusively
+adhered to, exhausts in a moderate number of years all the soils which
+are fit for it, and can only be kept up by travelling farther and
+farther westward. Mr. Olmsted has given a vivid description of the
+desolate state of parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, once among the
+richest specimens of soil and cultivation in the world; and even the
+more recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is rapidly following in
+the same downhill track. To slavery, therefore, it is a matter of life
+and death to find fresh fields for the employment of slave labor.
+Confine it to the present States, and the owners of slave property
+will either be speedily ruined, or will have to find means of
+reforming and renovating their agricultural system; which cannot be
+done without treating the slaves like human beings, nor without so
+large an employment of skilled, that is, of free labor, as will widely
+displace the unskilled, and so depreciate the pecuniary value of the
+slave, that the immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction of
+slavery would be a nearly inevitable and probably rapid consequence.
+
+The Republican leaders do not talk to the public of these almost
+certain results of success in the present conflict. They talk but
+little, in the existing emergency, even of the original cause of
+quarrel. The most ordinary policy teaches them to inscribe on their
+banner that part only of their known principles in which their
+supporters are unanimous. The preservation of the Union is an object
+about which the North are agreed; and it has many adherents, as they
+believe, in the South generally. That nearly half the population of
+the Border Slave States are in favor of it is a patent fact, since
+they are now fighting in its defence. It is not probable that they
+would be willing to fight directly against slavery. The Republicans
+well know that if they can reëstablish the Union, they gain everything
+for which they originally contended; and it would be a plain breach of
+faith with the Southern friends of the Government, if, after rallying
+them round its standard for a purpose of which they approve, it were
+suddenly to alter its terms of communion without their consent.
+
+But the parties in a protracted civil war almost invariably end by
+taking more extreme, not to say higher grounds of principle, than they
+began with. Middle parties and friends of compromise are soon left
+behind; and if the writers who so severely criticize the present
+moderation of the Free-soilers are desirous to see the war become an
+abolition war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough they
+will be gratified. Without the smallest pretension to see further into
+futurity than other people, I at least have foreseen and foretold from
+the first, that if the South were not promptly put down, the contest
+would become distinctly an antislavery one; nor do I believe that any
+person, accustomed to reflect on the course of human affairs in
+troubled times, can expect anything else. Those who have read, even
+cursorily, the most valuable testimony to which the English public
+have access, concerning the real state of affairs in America--the
+letters of the _Times'_ correspondent, Mr. Russell--must have observed
+how early and rapidly he arrived at the same conclusion, and with what
+increasing emphasis he now continually reiterates it. In one of his
+recent letters he names the end of next summer as the period by which,
+if the war has not sooner terminated, it will have assumed a complete
+anti-slavery character. So early a term exceeds, I confess, my most
+sanguine hopes; but if Mr. Russell be right, Heaven forbid that the
+war should cease sooner; for if it lasts till then, it is quite
+possible that it will regenerate the American people.
+
+If, however, the purposes of the North may be doubted or
+misunderstood, there is at least no question as to those of the South.
+They make no concealment of _their_ principles. As long as they were
+allowed to direct all the policy of the Union; to break through
+compromise after compromise, encroach step after step, until they
+reached the pitch of claiming a right to carry slave property into the
+Free States, and, in opposition to the laws of those States, hold it
+as property there; so long, they were willing to remain in the Union.
+The moment a President was elected of whom it was inferred from his
+opinions, not that he would take any measures against slavery where it
+exists, but that he would oppose its establishment where it exists
+not,--that moment they broke loose from what was, at least, a very
+solemn contract, and formed themselves into a Confederation professing
+as its fundamental principle not merely the perpetuation, but the
+indefinite extension of slavery. And the doctrine is loudly preached
+through the new Republic, that slavery, whether black or white, is a
+good in itself, and the proper condition of the working classes
+everywhere.
+
+Let me, in a few words, remind the reader what sort of a thing this
+is, which the white oligarchy of the South have banded themselves
+together to propagate and establish, if they could, universally. When
+it is wished to describe any portion of the human race as in the
+lowest state of debasement, and under the most cruel oppression, in
+which it is possible for human beings to live, they are compared to
+slaves. When words are sought by which to stigmatize the most odious
+despotism, exercised in the most odious manner, and all other
+comparisons are found inadequate, the despots are said to be like
+slave-masters, or slave-drivers. What, by a rhetorical license, the
+worst oppressors of the human race, by way of stamping on them the
+most hateful character possible, are said to be, these men, in very
+truth, are. I do not mean that all of them are hateful personally, any
+more than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But the position
+which they occupy, and the abstract excellence of which they are in
+arms to vindicate, is that which the united voice of mankind
+habitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I will not
+bandy chicanery about the more or less of stripes or other torments
+which are daily requisite to keep the machine in working order, nor
+discuss whether the Legrees or the St. Clairs are more numerous among
+the slave-owners of the Southern States. The broad facts of the case
+suffice. One fact is enough. There are, Heaven knows, vicious and
+tyrannical institutions in ample abundance on the earth. But this
+institution is the only one of them all which requires, to keep it
+going, that human beings should be burnt alive. The calm and
+dispassionate Mr. Olmsted affirms that there has not been a single
+year, for many years past, in which this horror is not known to have
+been perpetrated in some part or other of the South. And not upon
+negroes only; the _Edinburgh Review_, in a recent number, gave the
+hideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northern
+huckster by Lynch law, on mere suspicion of having aided in the escape
+of a slave. What must American slavery be, if deeds like these are
+necessary under it?--and if they are not necessary and are yet done,
+is not the evidence against slavery still more damning? The South are
+in rebellion not for simple slavery; they are in rebellion for the
+right of burning human creatures alive.
+
+But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that
+the South had a _right_ to separate; that their separation ought to
+have been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready to
+fight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the
+same error and wrong which England committed in opposing the original
+separation of the thirteen colonies. This is carrying the doctrine of
+the sacred right of insurrection rather far. It is wonderful how easy
+and liberal and complying people can be in other people's concerns.
+Because they are willing to surrender their own past, and have no
+objection to join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers, they
+never put themselves the question what they themselves would do in
+circumstances far less trying, under far less pressure of real
+national calamity. Would those who profess these ardent revolutionary
+principles consent to their being applied to Ireland, or India, or the
+Ionian Islands. How have they treated those who did attempt so to
+apply them? But the case can dispense with any mere _argumentum ad
+hominem_. I am not frightened at the word rebellion. I do not scruple
+to say that I have sympathized more or less ardently with most of the
+rebellions, successful and unsuccessful, which have taken place in my
+time. But I certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient
+title to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a rebel; that the act
+of taking arms against one's fellow-citizens was so meritorious in
+itself, was so completely its own justification, that no question need
+be asked concerning the motive. It seems to me a strange doctrine that
+the most serious and responsible of all human acts imposes no
+obligation on those who do it of showing that they have a real
+grievance; that those who rebel for the power of oppressing others,
+exercise as sacred a right as those who do the same thing to resist
+oppression practised upon themselves. Neither rebellion nor any other
+act which affects the interests of others, is sufficiently legitimated
+by the mere will to do it. Secession may be laudable, and so may any
+other kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime. It
+is the one or the other, according to the object and the provocation.
+And if there ever was an object which, by its bare announcement,
+stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of mankind,
+it is the one professed by the South. Their right to separate is the
+right which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to secede from their
+respective countries, because the laws of those countries would not
+suffer them to rob and murder on the highway. The only real difference
+is that the present rebels are more powerful than Cartouche or Turpin,
+and may possibly be able to effect their iniquitous purpose.
+
+Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the mere will to
+separate were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground for
+separation, I beg to be informed _whose_ will? The will of any knot of
+men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud,
+have got the reins of government into their hands? If the inmates of
+Parkhurst Prison were to get possession of the Isle of Wight, occupy
+its military positions, enlist one part of its inhabitants in their
+own ranks, set the remainder of them to work in chain gangs, and
+declare themselves independent, ought their recognition by the British
+Government to be an immediate consequence? Before admitting the
+authority of any persons, as organs of the will of the people, to
+dispose of the whole political existence of a country, I ask to see
+whether their credentials are from the whole, or only from a part. And
+first, it is necessary to ask, Have the slaves been consulted? Has
+their will been counted as any part in the estimate of collective
+volition? They are a part of the population. However natural in the
+country itself, it is rather cool in English writers who talk so
+glibly of the ten millions (I believe there are only eight), to pass
+over the very existence of four millions who must abhor the idea of
+separation. Remember, _we_ consider them to be human beings, entitled
+to human rights. Nor can it be doubted that the mere fact of belonging
+to a Union in some parts of which slavery is reprobated, is some
+alleviation of their condition, if only as regards future
+probabilities. But even of the white population, it is questionable if
+there was in the beginning a majority for secession anywhere but in
+South Carolina. Though the thing was pre-determined, and most of the
+States committed by their public authorities before the people were
+called on to vote; though in taking the votes terrorism in many places
+reigned triumphant; yet even so, in several of the States, secession
+was carried only by narrow majorities. In some the authorities have
+not dared to publish the numbers; in some it is asserted that no vote
+has ever been taken. Further (as was pointed out in an admirable
+letter by Mr. Carey), the Slave States are intersected in the middle,
+from their northern frontier almost to the Gulf of Mexico, by a
+country of free labor--the mountain region of the Alleghanies and
+their dependencies, forming parts of Virginia, North Carolina,
+Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, in which, from the nature of the
+climate and of the agricultural and mining industry, slavery to any
+material extent never did, and never will, exist. This mountain zone
+is peopled by ardent friends of the Union. Could the Union abandon
+them, without even an effort, to be dealt with at the pleasure of an
+exasperated slave-owning oligarchy? Could it abandon the Germans who,
+in Western Texas, have made so meritorious a commencement of growing
+cotton on the borders of the Mexican Gulf by free labor? Were the
+right of the slave-owners to secede ever so clear, they have no right
+to carry these with them; unless allegiance is a mere question of
+local proximity, and my next neighbor, if I am a stronger man, can be
+compelled to follow me in any lawless vagaries I choose to indulge.
+
+But (it is said) the North will never succeed in conquering the South;
+and since the separation must in the end be recognized, it is better
+to do at first what must be done at last; moreover, if it did conquer
+them, it could not govern them when conquered, consistently with free
+institutions. With no one of these propositions can I agree.
+
+Whether or not the Northern Americans will succeed in reconquering the
+South, I do not affect to foresee. That they _can_ conquer it, if
+their present determination holds, I have never entertained a doubt;
+for they are twice as numerous, and ten or twelve times as rich. Not
+by taking military possession of their country, or marching an army
+through it, but by wearing them out, exhausting their resources,
+depriving them of the comforts of life, encouraging their slaves to
+desert, and excluding them from communication with foreign countries.
+All this, of course, depends on the supposition that the North does
+not give in first. Whether they will persevere to this point, or
+whether their spirit, their patience, and the sacrifices they are
+willing to make, will be exhausted before reaching it, I cannot tell.
+They may, in the end, be wearied into recognizing the separation. But
+to those who say that because this may have to be done at last, it
+ought to have been done at first, I put the very serious question--On
+what terms? Have they ever considered what would have been the meaning
+of separation if it had been assented to by the Northern States when
+first demanded? People talk as if separation meant nothing more than
+the independence of the seceding States. To have accepted it under
+that limitation would have been, on the part of the South, to give up
+that which they have seceded expressly to preserve. Separation, with
+them, means at least half the Territories; including the Mexican
+border, and the consequent power of invading and overrunning Spanish
+America for the purpose of planting there the "peculiar institution"
+which even Mexican civilization has found too bad to be endured. There
+is no knowing to what point of degradation a country may be driven in
+a desperate state of its affairs; but if the North _ever_, unless on
+the brink of actual ruin, makes peace with the South, giving up the
+original cause of quarrel, the freedom of the Territories; if it
+resigns to them when out of the Union that power of evil which it
+would not grant to retain them in the Union--it will incur the pity
+and disdain of posterity. And no one can suppose that the South would
+have consented, or in their present temper ever will consent, to an
+accommodation on any other terms. It will require a succession of
+humiliation to bring them to that. The necessity of reconciling
+themselves to the confinement of slavery within its existing
+boundaries, with the natural consequence, immediate mitigation of
+slavery, and ultimate emancipation, is a lesson which they are in no
+mood to learn from anything but disaster. Two or three defeats in the
+field, breaking their military strength, though not followed by an
+invasion of their territory, may possibly teach it to them. If so,
+there is no breach of charity in hoping that this severe schooling may
+promptly come. When men set themselves up, in defiance of the rest of
+the world, to do the devil's work, no good can come of them until the
+world has made them feel that this work cannot be suffered to be done
+any longer. If this knowledge does not come to them for several years,
+the abolition question will by that time have settled itself. For
+assuredly Congress will very soon make up its mind to declare all
+slaves free who belong to persons in arms against the Union. When that
+is done, slavery, confined to a minority, will soon cure itself; and
+the pecuniary value of the negroes belonging to loyal masters will
+probably not exceed the amount of compensation which the United States
+will be willing and able to give.
+
+The assumed difficulty of governing the Southern States as free and
+equal commonwealths, in case of their return to the Union, is purely
+imaginary. If brought back by force, and not by voluntary compact,
+they will return without the Territories, and without a Fugitive Slave
+Law. It may be assumed that in that event the victorious party would
+make the alterations in the Federal Constitution which are necessary
+to adapt it to the new circumstances, and which would not infringe,
+but strengthen, its democratic principles. An article would have to be
+inserted prohibiting the extension of slavery to the Territories, or
+the admission into the Union of any new Slave State. Without any other
+guarantee, the rapid formation of new Free States would ensure to
+freedom a decisive and constantly increasing majority in Congress. It
+would also be right to abrogate that bad provision of the Constitution
+(a necessary compromise at the time of its first establishment)
+whereby the slaves, though reckoned as citizens in no other respect,
+are counted, to the extent of three fifths of their number, in the
+estimate of the population for fixing the number of representatives of
+each State in the Lower House of Congress. Why should the masters have
+members in right of their human chattels, any more than of their oxen
+and pigs? The President, in his Message, has already proposed that
+this salutary reform should be effected in the case of Maryland,
+additional territory, detached from Virginia, being given to that
+State as an equivalent: thus clearly indicating the policy which he
+approves, and which he is probably willing to make universal.
+
+As it is necessary to be prepared for all possibilities, let us now
+contemplate another. Let us suppose the worst possible issue of this
+war--the one apparently desired by those English writers whose moral
+feeling is so philosophically indifferent between the apostles of
+slavery and its enemies. Suppose that the North should stoop to
+recognize the new Confederation on its own terms, leaving it half the
+Territories, and that it is acknowledged by Europe, and takes its
+place as an admitted member of the community of nations. It will be
+desirable to take thought beforehand what are to be our own future
+relations with a new Power, professing the principles of Attila and
+Genghis Khan as the foundation of its Constitution. Are we to see with
+indifference its victorious army let loose to propagate their national
+faith at the rifle's mouth through Mexico and Central America? Shall
+we submit to see fire and sword carried over Cuba and Porto Rico, and
+Hayti and Liberia conquered and brought back to slavery? We shall soon
+have causes enough of quarrel on our own account. When we are in the
+act of sending an expedition against Mexico to redress the wrongs of
+private British subjects, we should do well to reflect in time that
+the President of the new Republic, Mr. Jefferson Davis, was the
+original inventor of repudiation. Mississippi was the first State
+which repudiated, Mr. Jefferson Davis was Governor of Mississippi, and
+the Legislature of Mississippi had passed a Bill recognizing and
+providing for the debt, which Bill Mr. Jefferson Davis vetoed. Unless
+we abandon the principles we have for two generations consistently
+professed and acted on, we should be at war with the new Confederacy
+within five vears about the African slave-trade. An English Government
+will hardly be base enough to recognize them, unless they accept all
+the treaties by which America is at present bound; nor, it may be
+hoped, even if _de facto_ independent, would they be admitted to the
+courtesies of diplomatic intercourse, unless they granted in the most
+explicit manner the right of search. To allow the slave-ships of a
+Confederation formed for the extension of slavery to come and go free,
+and unexamined, between America and the African coast, would be to
+renounce even the pretence of attempting to protect Africa against the
+man-stealer, and abandon that Continent to the horrors, on a far
+larger scale, which were practised before Granville Sharp and Clarkson
+were in existence. But even if the right of intercepting their slavers
+were acknowledged by treaty, which it never would be, the arrogance of
+the Southern slave-holders would not long submit to its exercise.
+Their pride and self-conceit, swelled to an inordinate height by their
+successful struggle, would defy the power of England as they had
+already successfully defied that of their Northern countrymen. After
+our people by their cold disapprobation, and our press by its
+invective, had combined with their own difficulties to damp the spirit
+of the Free States, and drive them to submit and make peace, we should
+have to fight the Slave States ourselves at far greater disadvantages,
+when we should no longer have the wearied and exhausted North for an
+ally. The time might come when the barbarous and barbarizing Power,
+which we by our moral support had helped into existence, would require
+a general crusade of civilized Europe, to extinguish the mischief
+which it had allowed, and we had aided, to rise up in the midst of our
+civilization.
+
+For these reasons I cannot join with those who cry Peace, peace. I
+cannot wish that this war should not have been engaged in by the
+North, or that being engaged in, it should be terminated on any
+conditions but such as would retain the whole of the Territories as
+free soil. I am not blind to the possibility that it may require a
+long war to lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of
+the slave-owners, to the point of either returning to the Union, or
+consenting to remain out of it with their present limits. But war, in
+a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War
+is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
+degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing
+worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human
+instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service
+and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people.
+A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a
+war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is
+their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free
+choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has
+nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more
+about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature,
+who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the
+exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice
+have not terminated _their_ ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the
+affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do
+battle for the one against the other. I am far from saying that the
+present struggle, on the part of the Northern Americans, is wholly of
+this exalted character; that it has arrived at the stage of being
+altogether a war for justice, a war of principle. But there was from
+the beginning, and now is, a large infusion of that element in it; and
+this is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts, will in the
+end predominate. Should that time come, not only will the greatest
+enormity which still exists among mankind as an institution, receive
+far earlier its _coups de grâce_ than there has ever, until now,
+appeared any probability of; but in effecting this the Free States
+will have raised themselves to that elevated position in the scale of
+morality and dignity, which is derived from great sacrifices
+consciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of an inestimable
+benefit to all future ages, brought about by their own voluntary
+efforts.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CONTEST IN AMERICA ***
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg EBook of
+<br>The Contest in America, by John Stuart Mill</h1>
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+Title: The Contest in America
+
+Author: John Stuart Mill
+
+Release Date: February, 2004  [EBook #5123]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CONTEST IN AMERICA ***
+</pre>
+
+<p>Redacted by Curtis A. Weyant &lt;<a href="mailto:curtis@pluckerbooks.com">curtis@pluckerbooks.com</a>&gt;</p>
+<p>Proofed by David A. Maddock &lt;<a href="mailto:dave@pluckerbooks.com">dave@pluckerbooks.com</a>&gt;</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+<p><br></p>
+
+<center>
+<h1>THE CONTEST IN AMERICA</h1>
+<h2>B<span style="font-variant: small-caps">Y</span> JOHN STUART MILL</h2>
+<h4>REPRINTED FROM FRASER'S MAGAZINE</h4>
+</center>
+
+
+<p><br></p>
+<p><br></p>
+
+<center><h1>The Contest in America</h1></center>
+
+<p><br></p>
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>The cloud which for the space of a month hung
+gloomily over the civilized world, black with far
+worse evils than those of simple war, has passed
+from over our heads without bursting. The fear
+has not been realized, that the only two first-rate
+Powers who are also free nations would take to
+tearing each other in pieces, both the one and the
+other in a bad and odious cause. For while, on the
+American side, the war would have been one of reckless persistency in wrong, on ours it would have
+been a war in alliance with, and, to practical purposes, in defence and propagation of, slavery.  We
+had, indeed, been wronged.  We had suffered an
+indignity, and something more than an indignity,
+which, not to have resented, would have been to invite a constant succession of insults and injuries from
+the same and from every other quarter.  We could
+have acted no otherwise than we have done: yet it is
+impossible to think, without something like a shudder,
+from what we have escaped. We, the emancipators
+of the slave--who have wearied every Court and
+Government in Europe and America with our protests and remonstrances, until we goaded them into
+at least ostensibly coöperating with us to prevent
+the enslaving of the negro--we, who for the last
+half century have spent annual sums, equal to the
+revenue of a small kingdom, in blockading the African coast, for a cause in which we not only had no
+interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniary
+interest, and which many believed would ruin, as
+many among us still, though erroneously, believe that it has ruined, our colonies,--<em>we</em> should have
+lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most commanding positions of the world, a powerful republic, devoted not only to slavery, but to pro-slavery
+propagandism--should have helped to give a place
+in the community of nations to a conspiracy of
+slave-owners, who have broken their connection with
+the American Federation on the sole ground, ostentatiously proclaimed, that they thought an attempt
+would be made to restrain, not slavery itself, but
+their purpose of spreading slavery wherever migration or force could carry it.</p>
+
+<p>A nation which has made the professions that
+England has, does not with impunity, under however great provocation, betake itself to frustrating
+the objects for which it has been calling on the rest
+of the world to make sacrifices of what they think
+their interest. At present all the nations of Europe
+have sympathized with us; have acknowledged that
+we were injured, and declared with rare unanimity,
+that we had no choice but to resist, if necessary, by
+arms.  But the consequences of such a war would
+soon have buried its causes in oblivion.  When the
+new Confederate States, made an independent Power
+by English help, had begun their crusade to carry
+negro slavery from  the Potomac to Cape Horn;
+who would then have remembered that England
+raised up this scourge to humanity not for the evil's
+sake, but because somebody had offered an insult to
+her flag?  Or even if unforgotten, who would then
+have felt that such a grievance was a sufficient palliation of the crime?  Every reader of a newspaper,
+to the farthest ends of the earth, would have believed
+and remembered one thing only--that at the critical juncture which was to decide whether slavery
+should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be
+trodden out at the moment of conflict between
+the good and the evil spirit--at the dawn of a
+hope that the demon might now at last be chained
+and flung into the pit, England stepped in, and, for
+the sake of cotton, made Satan victorious.</p>
+
+<p>The world has been saved from this calamity, and
+England from this disgrace.  The accusation would
+indeed have been a calumny. But to be able to
+defy calumny, a nation, like an individual, must
+stand very clear of just reproach in its previous
+conduct.  Unfortunately, we ourselves have given
+too much plausibility to the charge. Not by anything said or done by us as a Government or as a
+nation, but by the tone of our press, and in some
+degree, it must be owned, the general opinion of
+English society.  It is too true, that the feelings
+which have been manifested since the beginning of
+the American contest--the judgments which have
+been put forth, and the wishes which have been expressed concerning the incidents and probable eventualities of the struggle--the bitter and irritating
+criticism which has been kept up, not even against
+both parties equally, but almost solely against the
+party in the right, and the ungenerous refusal of all
+those just allowances which no country needs more
+than our own, whenever its circumstances are as
+near to those of America as a cut finger is to an
+almost mortal wound,--these facts, with minds not
+favorably disposed to us, would have gone far to
+make the most odious interpretation of the war in
+which we have been so nearly engaged with the
+United States, appear by many degrees the most
+probable.  There is no denying that our attitude
+towards the contending parties (I mean our moral
+attitude, for politically there was no other course
+open to us than neutrality) has not been that which
+becomes a people who are as sincere enemies of
+slavery as the English really are, and have made as
+great sacrifices to put an end to it where they could.
+And it has been an additional misfortune that some
+of our most powerful journals have been for many
+years past very unfavorable exponents of English
+feeling on all subjects connected with slavery: some,
+probably, from the influences, more or less direct,
+of West Indian opinions and interests: others from
+inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled by
+reason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is always adverse to it in feeling; which likes the spectacle of irresponsible power exercised by one person
+over others; which has no moral repugnance to the
+thought of human beings born to the penal servitude for life, to which for the term of a few years
+we sentence our most hardened criminals, but keeps
+its indignation to be expended on "rabid and fanatical abolitionists" across the Atlantic, and on those
+writers in England who attach a sufficiently serious
+meaning to their Christian professions, to consider a
+fight against slavery as a fight for God.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when the mind of England, and it may
+almost be said, of the civilized part of mankind, has
+been relieved from the incubus which had weighed
+on it ever since the <em>Trent</em> outrage, and when we are
+no longer feeling towards the Northern Americans
+as men feel towards those with whom they may be
+on the point of struggling for life or death; now, if
+ever, is the time to review our position, and consider
+whether we have been feeling what ought to have
+been felt, and wishing what ought to have been
+wished, regarding the contest in which the Northern
+States are engaged with the South.</p>
+
+<p>In considering this matter, we ought to dismiss
+from our minds, as far as possible, those feelings
+against the North, which have been engendered not
+merely by the <em>Trent</em> aggression, but by the previous
+anti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump
+orators. It is hardly worth while to ask how far
+these explosions of ill-humor are anything more
+than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplined
+minds, disappointed of the sympathy which they justly thought they had a right to expect from the great
+anti-slavery people, in their really noble enterprise.
+It is almost superfluous to remark that a democratic
+Government always shows worst where other Governments generally show best, on its outside; that
+unreasonable people are much more noisy than the
+reasonable; that the froth and scum are the part of
+a violently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but
+are not its body and substance.  Without insisting
+on these things, I contend, that all previous cause
+of offence should be considered as cancelled, by the
+reparation which the American Government has so
+amply made; not so much the reparation itself,
+which might have been so made as to leave still
+greater cause of permanent resentment behind it;
+but the manner and spirit in which they have made
+it. These have been such as most of us, I venture
+to say, did not by any means expect.  If reparation
+were made at all, of which few of us felt more than
+a hope, we thought that it would have been made
+obviously as a concession to prudence, not to principle. We thought that there would have been truckling to the newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters
+who were crying out for retaining the prisoners at
+all hazards.  We expected that the atonement, if
+atonement there were, would have been made with
+reservations, perhaps under protest.  We expected
+that the correspondence would have been spun out,
+and a trial made to induce England to be satisfied
+with less; or that there would have been a proposal
+of arbitration; or that England would have been
+asked to make concessions in return for justice; or
+that if submission was made, it would have been
+made, ostensibly, to the opinions and wishes of Continental Europe.  We expected anything, in short,
+which would have been weak and timid and paltry.
+The only thing which no one seemed to expect, is
+what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Government have done none of these things.  Like
+honest men, they have said in direct terms, that our
+demand was right; that they yielded to it because it
+was just; that if they themselves had received the
+same treatment, they would have demanded the same
+reparation; and that if what seemed to be the American side of a question was not the just side, they
+would be on the side of justice; happy as they were
+to find after their resolution had been taken, that it
+was also the side which America had formerly defended. Is there any one, capable of a moral judgment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of
+America and American statesmen, is not raised by
+such an act, done on such grounds? The act itself
+may have been imposed by the necessity of the circumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of
+action professed, were their own choice. Putting
+the worst hypothesis possible, which it would be the
+height of injustice to entertain seriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience, and
+that the profession of regard for justice was hypocrisy, even so, the ground taken, even if insincerely,
+is the most hopeful sign of the moral state of the
+American mind which has appeared for many years. That a sense of justice should be the motive which
+the rulers of a country rely on, to reconcile the public to an unpopular, and what might seem a humiliating act; that the journalists, the orators, many
+lawyers, the Lower House of Congress, and Mr.
+Lincoln's own naval secretary, should be told in the
+face of the world, by their own Government, that
+they have been giving public thanks, presents of
+swords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic honors to the author of an act which, though not so intended, was lawless and wrong, and for which the
+proper remedy is confession and atonement; that
+this should be the accepted policy (supposing it to
+be nothing higher) of a Democratic Republic, shows
+even unlimited democracy to be a better thing than
+many Englishmen have lately been in the habit of
+considering it, and goes some way towards proving
+that the aberrations even of a ruling multitude are
+only fatal when the better instructed have not the
+virtue or the courage to front them boldly.  Nor
+ought it to be forgotten, to the honor of Mr. Lincoln's Government, that in doing what was in itself
+right, they have done also what was best fitted to
+allay the animosity which was daily becoming more
+bitter between the two nations so long as the question
+remained open. They have put the brand of confessed injustice upon that rankling and vindictive
+resentment with which the profligate and passionate
+part of the American press has been threatening us
+in the event of concession, and which is to be manifested by some dire revenge, to be taken, as they
+pretend, after the nation is extricated from its present difficulties. Mr. Lincoln has done what depended on him to make this spirit expire with the occasion which raised it up; and we shall have ourselves
+chiefly to blame if we keep it alive by the further
+prolongation of that stream of vituperative eloquence, the source of which, even now, when the
+cause of quarrel has been amicably made up, does
+not seem to have run dry. {1}</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>{1. I do not forget one regrettable passage in Mr. Seward's letter,
+in which he said that "if the safety of the Union required the detention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of
+this Government to detain them." I sincerely grieve to find this
+sentence in the dispatch, for the exceptions to the general rules of
+morality are not a subject to be lightly or unnecessarily tampered
+with. The doctrine in itself is no other than that professed and
+acted on by all governments--that self-preservation, in a State,
+as in an individual, is a warrant for many things which at all other
+times ought to be rigidly abstained from. At all events, no nation
+which has ever passed "laws of exception," which ever supended
+the Habeas Corpus Act or passed an Alien Bill in dread of a Chartist insurrection, has a right to throw the first stone at Mr. Lincoln's
+Government.}</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Let us, then, without reference to these jars, or
+to the declamations of newspaper writers on either
+side of the Atlantic, examine the American question
+as it stood from the beginning; its origin, the purpose of both the combatants, and its various possible or probable issues.</p>
+
+<p>There is a theory in England, believed perhaps
+by some, half believed by many more, which is only
+consistent with original ignorance, or complete subsequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of the
+contest. There are people who tell us that, on the
+side of the North, the question is not one of slavery
+at all. The North, it seems, have no more objection to slavery than the South have. Their leaders
+never say one word implying disapprobation of it.
+They are ready, on the contrary, to give it new
+guarantees; to renounce all that they have been
+contending for; to win back, if opportunity offers,
+the South to the Union by surrendering the whole
+point.</p>
+
+<p>If this be the true state of the case, what are
+the Southern chiefs fighting about?  Their apologists in England say that it is about tariffs, and
+similar trumpery.  <em>They</em> say nothing of the kind.
+They tell the world, and they told their own citizens when they wanted their votes, that the object
+of the fight was slavery. Many years ago, when
+General Jackson was President, South Carolina did
+nearly rebel (she never was near separating) about
+a tariff; but no other State abetted her, and a strong
+adverse demonstration from Virginia brought the
+matter to a close.  Yet the tariff of that day was
+rigidly protective. Compared with that, the one in
+force at the time of the secession was a free-trade
+tariff: This latter was the result of several successive modifications in the direction of freedom; and
+its principle was not protection for protection, but
+as much of it only as might incidentally result
+from duties imposed for revenue. Even the Morrill
+tariff (which never could have been passed but for
+the Southern secession) is stated by the high authority of Mr. H. C. Carey to be considerably more
+liberal than the reformed French tariff under Mr.
+Cobden's treaty; insomuch that he, a Protectionist,
+would be glad to exchange his own protective tariff
+for Louis Napoleon's free-trade one.  But why discuss, on probable evidence, notorious facts? The
+world knows what the question between the North
+and South has been for many years, and still is.
+Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of. Slavery was battled for and against, on the floor of
+Congress and in the plains of Kansas; on the slavery question exclusively was the party constituted
+which now rules the United States: on slavery Fremont was rejected, on slavery Lincoln was elected;
+the South separated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as the one cause of separation.</p>
+
+<p>It is true enough that the North are not carrying
+on war to abolish slavery in the States where it legally exists. Could it have been expected, or even perhaps desired, that they should?  A great party does
+not change suddenly, and at once, all its principles
+and professions. The Republican party have taken
+their stand on law, and the existing constitution of
+the Union. They have disclaimed all right to attempt anything which that constitution forbids.  It
+does forbid interference by the Federal Congress
+with slavery in the Slave States; but it does not
+forbid their abolishing it in the District of Columbia; and this they are now doing, having voted, I
+perceive, in their present pecuniary straits, a million
+of dollars to indemnify the slave-owners of the
+District. Neither did the Constitution, in their own
+opinion, require them to permit the introduction of
+slavery into the territories which were not yet States.
+To prevent this, the Republican party was formed,
+and to prevent it, they are now fighting, as the
+slave-owners are fighting to enforce it.</p>
+
+<p>The present government of the United States is
+not an Abolitionist government. Abolitionists, in
+America, mean those who do not keep within the
+constitution; who demand the destruction (as far
+as slavery is concerned) of as much of it as protects the internal legislation of each State from the
+control of Congress; who aim at abolishing slavery
+wherever it exists, by force if need be, but certainly
+by some other power than the constituted authorities
+of the Slave States. The Republican party neither
+aim nor profess to aim at this object. And when
+we consider the flood of wrath which would have
+been poured out against them if they did, by the
+very writers who now taunt them with not doing
+it, we shall be apt to think the taunt a little misplaced. But though not an Abolitionist party, they
+are a Free-soil party. If they have not taken arms
+against slavery, they have against its extension.
+And they know, as we may know if we please, that
+this amounts to the same thing. The day when
+slavery can no longer extend itself, is the day of its
+doom. The slave-owners know this, and it is the
+cause of their fury. They know, as all know who
+have attended to the subject, that confinement within
+existing limits is its death-warrant. Slavery, under
+the conditions in which it exists in the States, exhausts even the beneficent powers of nature.  So
+incompatible is it with any kind whatever of skilled
+labor, that it causes the whole productive resources
+of the country to be concentrated on one or two
+products, cotton being the chief, which require, to
+raise and prepare them for the market, little besides
+brute animal force. The cotton cultivation, in the
+opinion of all competent judges, alone saves North
+American slavery; but cotton cultivation, exclusively adhered to, exhausts in a moderate number
+of years all the soils which are fit for it, and can
+only be kept up by travelling farther and farther
+westward.   Mr. Olmsted has given a vivid description of the desolate state of parts of Georgia
+and the Carolinas, once among the richest specimens
+of soil and cultivation in the world; and even the
+more recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is
+rapidly following in the same downhill track. To
+slavery, therefore, it is a matter of life and death to
+find fresh fields for the employment of slave labor.
+Confine it to the present States, and the owners of
+slave property will either be speedily ruined, or will
+have to find means of reforming and renovating
+their agricultural system; which cannot be done
+without treating the slaves like human beings, nor
+without so large an employment of skilled, that is,
+of free labor, as will widely displace the unskilled,
+and so depreciate the pecuniary value of the slave,
+that the immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction
+of slavery would be a nearly inevitable and probably
+rapid consequence.</p>
+
+<p>The Republican leaders do not talk to the public of these almost certain results of success in the
+present conflict. They talk but little, in the existing
+emergency, even of the original cause of quarrel.
+The most ordinary policy teaches them to inscribe
+on their banner that part only of their known principles in which their supporters are unanimous.
+The preservation of the Union is an object about
+which the North are agreed; and it has many adherents, as they believe, in the South generally.
+That nearly half the population of the Border
+Slave States are in favor of it is a patent fact,
+since they are now fighting in its defence.  It is
+not probable that they would be willing to fight
+directly against slavery.  The Republicans well
+know  that if they can reëstablish the Union, they
+gain everything for which they originally contended; and it would be a plain breach of faith with
+the Southern friends of the Government, if, after
+rallying them round its standard for a purpose of
+which they approve, it were suddenly to alter its
+terms of communion without their consent.</p>
+
+<p>But the parties in a protracted civil war almost
+invariably end by taking more extreme, not to say
+higher grounds of principle, than they began with.
+Middle parties and friends of compromise are soon
+left behind; and if the writers who so severely
+criticize the present moderation of the Free-soilers
+are desirous to see the war become an abolition
+war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough
+they will be gratified.  Without the smallest pretension to see further into futurity than other people, I at least have foreseen and foretold from the
+first, that if the South were not promptly put
+down, the contest would become distinctly an antislavery one; nor do I believe that any person, accustomed to reflect on the course of human affairs
+in troubled times, can expect anything else.  Those
+who have read, even cursorily, the most valuable
+testimony to which the English public have access,
+concerning the real state of affairs in America--the letters of the <em>Times</em>' correspondent, Mr. Russell--must have observed how early and rapidly
+he arrived at the same conclusion, and with what
+increasing emphasis he now continually reiterates
+it.  In one of his recent letters he names the end
+of next summer as the period by which, if the
+war has not sooner terminated, it will have assumed
+a complete anti-slavery character.  So early a term
+exceeds, I confess, my most sanguine hopes; but
+if Mr. Russell be right, Heaven forbid that the
+war should cease sooner; for if it lasts till then, it
+is quite possible that it will regenerate the American people.</p>
+
+<p>If, however, the purposes of the North may
+be doubted or misunderstood, there is at least no
+question as to those of the South.  They make
+no concealment of <em>their</em> principles.  As long
+as they were allowed to direct all the policy of
+the Union; to break through compromise after
+compromise, encroach step after step, until they
+reached the pitch of claiming a right to carry
+slave property into the Free States, and, in opposition to the laws of those States, hold it as
+property there; so long, they were willing to remain in the Union. The moment a President
+was elected of whom  it was inferred from  his
+opinions, not that he would take any measures
+against slavery where it exists, but that he would
+oppose its establishment where it exists not,--that
+moment they broke loose from what was, at least,
+a very solemn  contract, and formed themselves
+into a Confederation professing as its fundamental
+principle not merely the perpetuation, but the indefinite extension of slavery.  And the doctrine is
+loudly preached through the new Republic, that
+slavery, whether black or white, is a good in itself,
+and the proper condition of the working classes
+everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Let me, in a few words, remind the reader what
+sort of a thing this is, which the white oligarchy
+of the South have banded themselves together to
+propagate and establish, if they could, universally.
+When it is wished to describe any portion of the
+human race as in the lowest state of debasement,
+and under the most cruel oppression, in which it
+is possible for human beings to live, they are compared to slaves. When words are sought by which
+to stigmatize the most odious despotism, exercised
+in the most odious manner, and all other comparisons are found inadequate, the despots are said to
+be like slave-masters, or slave-drivers.  What, by
+a rhetorical license, the worst oppressors of the
+human race, by way of stamping on them the
+most hateful character possible, are said to be,
+these men, in very truth, are.  I do not mean
+that all of them are hateful personally, any more
+than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But
+the position which they occupy, and the abstract
+excellence of which they are in arms to vindicate,
+is that which the united voice of mankind habitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities.  I
+will not bandy chicanery about the more or less
+of stripes or other torments which are daily requisite to keep the machine in working order, nor
+discuss whether the Legrees or the St. Clairs are
+more numerous among the slave-owners of the
+Southern States. The broad facts of the case suffice. One fact is enough. There are, Heaven
+knows, vicious and tyrannical institutions in ample
+abundance on the earth.  But this institution is
+the only one of them all which requires, to keep
+it going, that human beings should be burnt alive.
+The calm and dispassionate Mr. Olmsted affirms
+that there has not been a single year, for many
+years past, in which this horror is not known to
+have been perpetrated in some part or other of
+the South. And not upon negroes only; the <em>Edinburgh Review</em>, in a recent number, gave the
+hideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northern huckster by Lynch law, on mere
+suspicion of having aided in the escape of a slave.
+What must American slavery be, if deeds like
+these are necessary under it?--and if they are
+not necessary and are yet done, is not the evidence
+against slavery still more damning?   The South
+are in rebellion not for simple slavery; they are
+in rebellion for the right of burning human creatures alive.</p>
+
+<p>But we are told, by a strange misapplication of
+a true principle, that the South had a <em>right</em> to
+separate; that their separation ought to have been
+consented to, the moment they showed themselves
+ready to fight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the same error and
+wrong which England committed in opposing the
+original separation of the thirteen colonies.  This
+is carrying the doctrine of the sacred right of insurrection rather far.  It is wonderful how easy
+and liberal and complying people can be in other
+people's concerns.  Because they are willing to
+surrender their own past, and have no objection to
+join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers,
+they never put themselves the question what they
+themselves would do in circumstances far less trying, under far less pressure of real national calamity.
+Would those who profess these ardent revolutionary principles consent to their being applied to
+Ireland, or India, or the Ionian Islands.   How
+have they treated those who did attempt so to apply them?  But the case can dispense with any
+mere <em>argumentum ad hominem</em>. I am not frightened at the word rebellion.  I do not scruple to
+say that I have sympathized more or less ardently
+with most of the rebellions, successful and unsuccessful, which have taken place in my time. But I
+certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient
+title to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a
+rebel; that the act of taking arms against one's
+fellow-citizens was so meritorious in itself, was so
+completely its own justification, that no question
+need be asked concerning the motive.  It seems to
+me a strange doctrine that the most serious and responsible of all human acts imposes no obligation
+on those who do it of showing that they have a
+real grievance; that those who rebel for the power
+of oppressing others, exercise as sacred a right as
+those who do the same thing to resist oppression
+practised upon themselves.  Neither rebellion nor
+any other act which affects the interests of others,
+is sufficiently legitimated by the mere will to do it.
+Secession may be laudable, and so may any other
+kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime.  It is the one or the other, according
+to the object and the provocation.  And if there
+ever was an object which, by its bare announcement, stamped rebels against a particular community
+as enemies of mankind, it is the one professed by
+the South.  Their right to separate is the right
+which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to secede from their respective countries, because the
+laws of those countries would not suffer them  to
+rob and murder on the highway. The only real
+difference is that the present rebels are more powerful than Cartouche or Turpin, and may possibly
+be able to effect their iniquitous purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that
+the mere will to separate were in this case, or in
+any case, a sufficient ground for separation, I beg
+to be informed <em>whose</em> will? The will of any knot
+of men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation,
+terrorism, or fraud, have got the reins of government into their hands? If the inmates of Parkhurst Prison were to get possession of the Isle of
+Wight, occupy its military positions, enlist one part
+of its inhabitants in their own ranks, set the remainder of them to work in chain gangs, and
+declare themselves independent, ought their recognition by the British Government to be an immediate consequence?  Before admitting the authority
+of any persons, as organs of the will of the people,
+to dispose of the whole political existence of a
+country, I ask to see whether their credentials are
+from the whole, or only from a part. And first,
+it is necessary to ask, Have the slaves been consulted? Has their will been counted as any part
+in the estimate of collective volition?  They are a
+part of the population.   However natural in the
+country itself, it is rather cool in English writers
+who talk so glibly of the ten millions (I believe
+there are only eight), to pass over the very existence of four millions who must abhor the idea of
+separation.  Remember, <em>we</em> consider them  to be
+human beings, entitled to human rights. Nor can
+it be doubted that the mere fact of belonging to a
+Union in some parts of which slavery is reprobated,
+is some alleviation of their condition, if only as regards future probabilities. But even of the white
+population, it is questionable if there was in the
+beginning a majority for secession anywhere but in
+South Carolina. Though the thing was pre-determined, and most of the States committed by their
+public authorities before the people were called on
+to vote; though in taking the votes terrorism in
+many places reigned triumphant; yet even so, in
+several of the States, secession was carried only by
+narrow majorities.  In some the authorities have
+not dared to publish the numbers; in some it is
+asserted that no vote has ever been taken.  Further
+(as was pointed out in an admirable letter by Mr.
+Carey), the Slave States are intersected in the middle, from their northern frontier almost to the Gulf
+of Mexico, by a country of free labor--the mountain region of the Alleghanies and their dependencies, forming parts of Virginia, North Carolina,
+Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, in which, from
+the nature of the climate and of the agricultural
+and mining industry, slavery to any material extent
+never did, and never will, exist.  This mountain
+zone is peopled by ardent friends of the Union. Could the Union abandon them, without even an
+effort, to be dealt with at the pleasure of an exasperated slave-owning oligarchy?  Could it abandon
+the Germans who, in Western Texas, have made
+so meritorious a commencement of growing cotton
+on the borders of the Mexican Gulf by free labor?
+Were the right of the slave-owners to secede ever
+so clear, they have no right to carry these with
+them; unless allegiance is a mere question of local
+proximity, and my next neighbor, if I am a stronger man, can be compelled to follow me in any lawless vagaries I choose to indulge.</p>
+
+<p>But (it is said) the North will never succeed in
+conquering the South; and since the separation
+must in the end be recognized, it is better to do at
+first what must be done at last; moreover, if it did
+conquer them, it could not govern them when conquered, consistently with free institutions.  With
+no one of these propositions can I agree.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not the Northern Americans will
+succeed in reconquering the South, I do not affect
+to foresee.  That they <em>can</em> conquer it, if their present determination holds, I have never entertained
+a doubt; for they are twice as numerous, and ten
+or twelve times as rich.  Not by taking military
+possession of their country, or marching an army
+through it, but by wearing them out, exhausting
+their resources, depriving them of the comforts of
+life, encouraging their slaves to desert, and excluding them from communication with foreign countries. All this, of course, depends on the supposition that the North does not give in first. Whether
+they will persevere to this point, or whether their
+spirit, their patience, and the sacrifices they are
+willing to make, will be exhausted before reaching
+it, I cannot tell.  They may, in the end, be wearied
+into recognizing the separation. But to those who
+say that because this may have to be done at last,
+it ought to have been done at first, I put the very
+serious question--On what terms? Have they
+ever considered what would have been the meaning of separation if it had been assented to by the
+Northern States when first demanded?  People
+talk as if separation meant nothing more than the
+independence of the seceding States.  To have accepted it under that limitation would have been, on
+the part of the South, to give up that which they
+have seceded expressly to preserve.  Separation,
+with them, means at least half the Territories; including the Mexican border, and the consequent
+power of invading and overrunning Spanish America
+for the purpose of planting there the "peculiar institution" which even Mexican civilization has found
+too bad to be endured. There is no knowing to
+what point of degradation a country may be driven
+in a desperate state of its affairs; but if the North
+<em>ever</em>, unless on the brink of actual ruin, makes
+peace with the South, giving up the original cause
+of quarrel, the freedom of the Territories; if it resigns to them when out of the Union that power of
+evil which it would not grant to retain them in the
+Union--it will incur the pity and disdain of posterity.  And no one can suppose that the South
+would have consented, or in their present temper
+ever will consent, to an accommodation on any other
+terms.  It will require a succession of humiliation
+to bring them to that.  The necessity of reconciling
+themselves to the confinement of slavery within its
+existing boundaries, with the natural consequence,
+immediate mitigation of slavery, and ultimate emancipation, is a lesson which they are in no mood to
+learn from anything but disaster.  Two or three
+defeats in the field, breaking their military strength,
+though not followed by an invasion of their territory, may possibly teach it to them.  If so, there
+is no breach of charity in hoping that this severe
+schooling may promptly come.  When men set
+themselves up, in defiance of the rest of the world,
+to do the devil's work, no good can come of them
+until the world has made them feel that this work
+cannot be suffered to be done any longer.  If this
+knowledge does not come to them for several years,
+the abolition question will by that time have settled
+itself. For assuredly Congress will very soon make
+up its mind to declare all slaves free who belong to
+persons in arms against the Union. When that is
+done, slavery, confined to a minority, will soon cure
+itself; and the pecuniary value of the negroes belonging to loyal masters will probably not exceed
+the amount of compensation which the United States
+will be willing and able to give.</p>
+
+<p>The assumed difficulty of governing the Southern
+States as free and equal commonwealths, in case of
+their return to the Union, is purely imaginary.  If
+brought back by force, and not by voluntary compact, they will return without the Territories, and
+without a Fugitive Slave Law. It may be assumed
+that in that event the victorious party would make
+the alterations in the Federal Constitution which
+are necessary to adapt it to the new circumstances,
+and which would not infringe, but strengthen, its
+democratic principles.  An article would have to be
+inserted prohibiting the extension of slavery to the
+Territories, or the admission into the Union of any
+new Slave State. Without any other guarantee, the
+rapid formation of new Free States would ensure
+to freedom a decisive and constantly increasing
+majority in Congress.  It would also be right to
+abrogate that bad provision of the Constitution (a
+necessary compromise at the time of its first establishment) whereby the slaves, though reckoned as
+citizens in no other respect, are counted, to the extent of three fifths of their number, in the estimate
+of the population for fixing the number of representatives of each State in the Lower House of
+Congress.  Why should the masters have members
+in right of their human chattels, any more than of
+their oxen and pigs? The President, in his Message, has already proposed that this salutary reform
+should be effected in the case of Maryland, additional territory, detached from Virginia, being given
+to that State as an equivalent: thus clearly indicating the policy which he approves, and which he is
+probably willing to make universal.</p>
+
+<p>As it is necessary to be prepared for all possibilities, let us now contemplate another.  Let us suppose the worst possible issue of this war--the one
+apparently desired by those English writers whose
+moral feeling is so philosophically indifferent between the apostles of slavery and its enemies. Suppose that the North should stoop to recognize the
+new Confederation on its own terms, leaving it half
+the Territories, and that it is acknowledged by Europe, and takes its place as an admitted member of
+the community of nations.  It will be desirable to
+take thought beforehand what are to be our own
+future relations with a new Power, professing the
+principles of Attila and Genghis Khan as the foundation of its Constitution.  Are we to see with indifference its victorious army let loose to propagate
+their national faith at the rifle's mouth through
+Mexico and Central America?  Shall we submit to
+see fire and sword carried over Cuba and Porto
+Rico, and Hayti and Liberia conquered and brought
+back to slavery?   We shall soon have causes
+enough of quarrel on our own account.  When we
+are in the act of sending an expedition against
+Mexico to redress the wrongs of private British
+subjects, we should do well to reflect in time that
+the President of the new Republic, Mr. Jefferson
+Davis, was the original inventor of repudiation.
+Mississippi was the first State which repudiated,
+Mr. Jefferson Davis was Governor of Mississippi,
+and the Legislature of Mississippi had passed a
+Bill recognizing and providing for the debt, which
+Bill Mr. Jefferson Davis vetoed.  Unless we abandon the principles we have for two generations consistently professed and acted on, we should be at
+war with the new Confederacy within five vears
+about the African slave-trade.  An English Government will hardly be base enough to recognize
+them, unless they accept all the treaties by which
+America is at present bound; nor, it may be hoped,
+even if <em>de facto</em> independent, would they be admitted to the courtesies of diplomatic intercourse, unless they granted in the most explicit manner the
+right of search. To allow the slave-ships of a
+Confederation formed for the extension of slavery
+to come and go free, and unexamined, between
+America and the African coast, would be to renounce even the pretence of attempting to protect
+Africa against the man-stealer, and abandon that
+Continent to the horrors, on a far larger scale,
+which were practised before Granville Sharp and
+Clarkson were in existence. But even if the right
+of intercepting their slavers were acknowledged by
+treaty, which it never would be, the arrogance of
+the Southern slave-holders would not long submit to
+its exercise. Their pride and self-conceit, swelled
+to an inordinate height by their successful struggle,
+would defy the power of England as they had already successfully defied that of their Northern
+countrymen.  After our people by their cold disapprobation, and our press by its invective, had combined with their own difficulties to damp the spirit
+of the Free States, and drive them to submit and
+make peace, we should have to fight the Slave
+States ourselves at far greater disadvantages, when
+we should no longer have the wearied and exhausted North for an ally. The time might come when
+the barbarous and barbarizing Power, which we by
+our moral support had helped into existence, would
+require a general crusade of civilized Europe, to
+extinguish the mischief which it had allowed, and
+we had aided, to rise up in the midst of our civilization.</p>
+
+<p>For these reasons I cannot join with those who
+cry Peace, peace.  I cannot wish that this war
+should not have been engaged in by the North, or
+that being engaged in, it should be terminated on
+any conditions but such as would retain the whole
+of the Territories as free soil.  I am not blind to
+the possibility that it may require a long war to
+lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of the slave-owners, to the point of either returning to the Union, or consenting to remain out
+of it with their present limits. But war, in a good
+cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can
+suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest
+of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral
+and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a
+war, is worse.  When a people are used as mere
+human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting
+bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes
+of a master, such war degrades a people. A war
+to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of
+right and good, and which is their own war, carried
+on for an honest purpose by their free choice--is
+often the means of their regeneration. A man who
+has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing
+which he cares more about than he does about his
+personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no
+chance of being free, unless made and kept so by
+the exertions of better men than himself.  As long
+as justice and injustice have not terminated <em>their</em>
+ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of
+mankind, human beings must be willing, when need
+is, to do battle for the one against the other.  I am
+far from  saying  that the present struggle, on the
+part of the Northern Americans, is wholly of this
+exalted character; that it has arrived at the stage
+of being altogether a war for justice, a war of principle.  But there was from the beginning, and now
+is, a large infusion of that element in it; and this
+is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts,
+will in the end predominate.  Should  that time
+come, not only will the greatest enormity which still
+exists among mankind as an institution, receive far
+earlier its <em>coups de grâce</em> than there has ever, until
+now, appeared any probability of; but in effecting
+this the Free States will have raised themselves to
+that elevated position in the scale of morality and
+dignity, which is derived from  great sacrifices consciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of
+an inestimable benefit to all future ages, brought
+about by their own voluntary efforts.</p>
+
+
+<pre>
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+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
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