The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 55, May, 1862

This purpose was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless to seek for the causes of actions in extraneous sources, when they are plainly but steps in the development of principles already known. Slave-breeding and Slavery-extension are necessities of the system. Like Romulus and Remus, "they are both suckled from one wolf."

But it was just here that the question became to the Free States a practical question. There could be no "fanaticism" in meeting it at this stage. What usually goes under the name of fanaticism is the habit of uncompromising assault on a thing because its principles are absurd or wicked; what usually goes under the name of common sense is the disposition to assail it at that point where, in the development of its principles, it has become immediately and pressingly dangerous. Now by no sophistry could we of the Free States evade the responsibility of being the extenders of Slavery, if we allowed Slavery to be extended. If we did not oppose it from a sense of right, we were bound to oppose it from a sense of decency. It may be said that we had nothing to do with Slavery at the South; but we had something to do with rescuing the national character from infamy, and unhappily we could not have anything to do with rescuing the national character from infamy without having something to do with Slavery at the South. The question with us was, whether we would allow the whole force of the National Government to be employed in upholding, extending, and perpetuating this detestable and nonsensical enormity?—especially, whether we would be guilty of that last and foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate planting of slave institutions on virgin soil? If this question had been put to any despot of Europe,—we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,—his answer would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. Yet the South confidently expected so to wheedle or bully us into dragging our common sense through the mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we should connive at the commission of this execrable crime!

There can be no doubt, that, if the question had been fairly put to the inhabitants of the Free States, their answer would have been at once decisive for freedom. Even the strongest conservatives would have been "Free-Soilers,"—not only those who are conservatives in virtue of their prudence, moderation, sagacity, and temper, but prejudiced conservatives, conservatives who are tolerant of all iniquity which is decorous, inert, long-established, and disposed to die when its time comes, conservatives as thorough in their hatred of change as Lamennais himself. "What a noise," says Paul Louis Courier, "Lamennais would have made on the day of creation, could he have witnessed it. His first cry to the Divinity would have been to respect that ancient chaos." But even to conservatives of this class, the attempt to extend Slavery, though really in the order of its natural development, must still have appeared a monstrous innovation, and they were bound to oppose the Marats and Robespierres of despotism who were busy in the bad work. Indeed, in our country, conservatism, through the presence of Slavery, has inverted its usual order. In other countries, the radical of one century is the conservative of the next; in ours, the conservative of one generation is the radical of the next. The American conservative of 1790 is the so-called fanatic of 1820; the conservative of 1820 is the fanatic of 1856. The American conservative, indeed, descended the stairs of compromise until his descent into utter abnegation of all that civilized humanity holds dear was arrested by the Rebellion. And the reason of this strange inversion of conservative principles was, that the movement of Slavery is towards barbarism, while the movement of all countries in which labor is not positively chattellized is towards freedom and civilization. True conservatism, it must never be forgotten, is the refusal to give up a positive, though imperfect good, for a possible, but uncertain improvement: in the United States it has been misused to denote the cowardly surrender of a positive good from a fear to resist the innovations of an advancing evil and wrong.

There was, therefore, little danger that Slavery would be extended through the conscious thought and will of the people, but there was danger that its extension might, somehow or other, occur. Misconception of the question, devotion to party or the memory of party, prejudice against the men who more immediately represented the Anti-Slavery principle, might make the people unconsciously slide into this crime. And it must be said that for the divisions in the Free States as to the mode in which the free sentiment of the people should operate the strictly Anti-Slavery men were to some extent responsible. It is difficult to convince an ardent reformer that the principle for which he contends, being impersonal, should be purified from the passions and whims of his own personality. The more fervid he is, the more he is identified in the public mind with his cause; and, in a large view, he is bound not merely to defend his cause, but to see that the cause, through him, does not become offensive. Men are ever ready to dodge disagreeable duties by converting questions of principles into criticisms on the men who represent principles; and the men who represent principles should therefore look to it that they make no needless enemies and give no needless shock to public opinion for the purpose of pushing pet opinions, wreaking personal grudges, or gratifying individual antipathies. The artillery of the North has heretofore played altogether too much on Northerners.

But to return. The South expected to fool the North into a compliance with its designs, by availing itself of the divisions among its professed opponents, and by dazzling away the attention of the people from the real nature of the wickedness to be perpetrated. Slavery was to be extended, and the North was to be an accomplice in the business; but the Slave Power did not expect that we should be active and enthusiastic in this work of self-degradation. It did not ask us to extend Slavery, but simply to allow its extension to occur; and in this appeal to our moral timidity and moral laziness, it contemptuously tossed us a few fig-leaves of fallacy and false statement to save appearances.

We were informed, for instance, that by the equality of men is meant the equality of those whom Providence has made equal. But this is exactly the sense in which no sane man ever understood the doctrine of equality; for Providence has palpably made men unequal, white men as well as black.

Then we were told that the white and black races could dwell together only in the relation of masters and slaves,—and, in the same breath, that in this relation the slaves were steadily advancing in civilization and Christianity. But, if steadily advancing in civilization and Christianity, the time must inevitably come when they would not submit to be slaves; and then what becomes of the statement that the white and black races cannot dwell together as freemen? Why boast of their improvement, when you are improving them only that you may exterminate them, or they you?

Then, with a composure of face which touches the exquisite in effrontery, we were assured that this antithesis of master and slave, of tyrant and abject natures, is really a perfect harmony. Slavery—so said these logicians of liberticide—has solved the great social problem of the working-classes, comfortably for capital, happily for labor; and has effected this by an ingenious expedient which could have occurred only to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the expedient, namely, of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But Slavery exhibits this struggle in its earliest and most savage stage, a stage answering to the rude energies and still ruder conceptions of barbarians. The issue of the struggle, it is plain, will not be that capital will own labor, but that labor will own capital, and no man be owned.

Still we were vehemently told, that, though the slaves, for their own good, were deprived of their rights as men, they were in a fine state of physical comfort. This was not and could not be true; but even if it were, it only represented the slaveholder as addressing his slave in some such words of derisive scorn as Byron hurls at Duke Alphonso,—

"Thou! born to eat, and be despised, and die, Even as the brutes that perish,"– though we doubt if he could truly add,—

"save that thou Hast a more splendid trough and wider sty."

Then we were solemnly warned of our patriotic duty to "know no North and no South." This was the very impudence of ingratitude; for we had long known no North, and unhappily had known altogether too much South.

Then we were most plaintively adjured to to comply with the demands of the Slave Power, in order to save the Union. But how save the Union? Why, by violating the principles on which the Union was formed, and scouting the objects it was intended to serve.

But lastly came the question, on which the South confidently relied as a decisive argument, "What could we do with our slaves, provided we emancipated them?" The peculiarity which distinguished this question from all other interrogatories ever addressed to human beings was this, that it was asked for the purpose of not being answered. The moment a reply was begun, the ground was swiftly shifted, and we were overwhelmed with a torrent of words about State Rights and the duty of minding our own business.

But it is needless to continue the examination of these substitutes and apologies for fact and reason, especially as their chief characteristic consisted in their having nothing to do with the practical question before the people. They were thrown out by the interested defenders of Slavery, North and South, to divert attention from the main issue. In the fine felicity of their in appropriateness to the actual condition of the struggle between the Free and Slave States, they were almost a match for that renowned sermon, preached by a metropolitan bishop before an asylum for the blind, the halt, and the legless, on "The Moral Dangers of Foreign Travel." But still they were infinitely mischievous, considered as pretences under which Northern men could skulk from their duties, and as sophistries to lull into a sleepy acquiescence the consciences of those political adventurers who are always seeking occasions for being tempted and reasons for being rogues. They were all the more influential from the circumstance that their show of argument was backed by the solid substance of patronage. These false facts and bad reasons were the keys to many fat offices. The South had succeeded in instituting a new political test, namely, that no man is qualified serve the United States unless he is the champion or the sycophant of the Slave Power. Proscription to the friends of American freedom, honors and emoluments to the friends of American slavery,—adopt that creed, or you did not belong to any "healthy" political organization! Now we have heard of civil disabilities for opinion's sake before. In some countries no Catholics are allowed to hold office, in others no Protestants, in others no Jews. But it is not, we believe, in Protestant countries that Protestants are proscribed; it is not in Catholic countries that Catholics are incompetent to serve the State. It was left for a free country to establish, practically, civil disabilities against freemen,—for Republican America to proscribe Republicans! Think of it,—that no American, whatever his worth, talents, or patriotism,—could two years ago serve his country in any branch of its executive administration, unless he was unfortunate enough to agree with the slaveholders, or base enough to sham an agreement with them! The test, at Washington, of political orthodoxy was modelled on the pattern of the test of religious orthodoxy established by Napoleon's minister of police. "You are not orthodox," he said to a priest "In what," inquired the astonished ecclesiastic, "have I sinned against orthodoxy?" "You have not pronounced the eulogium of the Emperor, or proved the righteousness of the conscription."

Now we had been often warned of the danger of sectional parties, on account of their tendency to break up the Government. The people gave heed to this warning; for here was a sectional party in possession of the Government. We had been often advised not to form political combinations on one idea. The people gave heed to this advice; for here was a triumphant political combination, formed not only on one idea, but that the worst idea that ever animated any political combination. Here was an association of three hundred and fifty thousand persons, spread over some nine hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory, and wielding its whole political power, engaged in the work of turning the United States into a sort of slave plantation, of which they were to be overseers. We opposed them by argument, passion, and numerical power; and they read us long homilies on the beauty of law and order,—order sustained by Border Ruffians, law which was but the legalizing of criminal instincts,—law and order which, judged by the code established for Kansas, seemed based on legislative ideas imported from the Fegee Islands. We opposed them again, and they talked to us about the necessity of preserving the Union;—as if, in the Free States, the love of the Union had not been a principle and a passion, proof against many losses, and insensible to many humiliations; as if, with our teachers, disunion had not been for half a century a stereotyped menace to scare us into compliance with their rascalities; as if it were not known that only so long as they could wield the powers of the National Government to accomplish their designs, were they loyal to the Union! We opposed them again, and they clamored about their Constitutional rights and our Constitutional obligations; but they adopted for themselves a theory of the Constitution which made each State the judge of the Constitution in the last resort, while they held us to that view of it which made the Supreme Court the judge in the last resort. Written constitutions, by a process of interpretation, are always made to follow the drift of great forces; they are twisted and tortured into conformity with the views of the power dominant in the State; and our Constitution, originally a charter of freedom, was converted into an instrument which the slaveholders seemed to possess by right of squatter sovereignty and eminent domain.

Did any one suppose that we could retard the ever-onward movement of their unscrupulous force and defiant wills by timely compromises and concessions? Every compromise we made with them only stimulated their rapacity, heightened their arrogance, increased their demands. Every concession we made to their insolent threats was only a step downwards to a deeper abasement; and we parted with our most cherished convictions of duty to purchase, not their gratitude, but their contempt. Every concession, too, weakened us and strengthened them for the inevitable struggle, into which the Free States were eventually goaded, to preserve what remained of their dignity, their honor, and their self-respect. In 1850 we conceded the application of the Wilmot Proviso; in 1856 we were compelled to concede the principle of the Wilmot Proviso. In 1850 we had no fears that slaves would enter New Mexico; in 1861 we were threatened with a view of the flag of the rattlesnake floating over Faneuil Hall. If any principle has been established by events, with the certainty of mathematical demonstration, it is this, that concession to the Slave Power is the suicide of Freedom. We are purchasing this fact at the expense of arming five hundred thousand men and spending a thousand millions of dollars. More than this, if any concessions were to be made, they ought, on all principles of concession, to have been made to the North. Concessions, historically, are not made by freedom to privilege, but by privilege to freedom. Thus King John conceded Magna Charta; thus King Charles conceded the Petition of Right; thus Protestant England conceded Catholic Emancipation to Ireland; thus aristocratic England conceded the Reform Bill to the English middle class. And had not we, the misgoverned many, a right to demand from the slaveholders, the governing few, some concessions to our sense of justice and our prejudices for freedom? Concession indeed! If any class of men hold in their grasp one of the dear-bought chartered "rights of man," it is infamous to concede it.

"Make it the darling of your precious eye! To lose or give 't away were such perdition As nothing else could match."

Considerations so obvious as these could not, by any ingenuity of party-contrivance, be prevented from forcing themselves by degrees into the minds of the great body of the voters of the Free States. The common sense, the "large roundabout common sense" of the people, slowly, and somewhat reluctantly, came up to the demands of the occasion. The sophistries and fallacies of the Northern defenders of the pretensions of the slave-holding sectional minority were gradually exposed, and were repudiated in the lump. The conviction was implanted in the minds of the people of the Free States, that the Slave Power, representing only a thirtieth part of the population of the Slave States, and a ninth part of the property of the country, was bent on governing the nation, and on subordinating all principles and all interests to its own. Not being ambitious of having the United States converted into a Western Congo, with the traffic in "niggers" as its fundamental idea, the people elected Abraham Lincoln, in a perfectly Constitutional way, President. As the majority of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the Supreme Court was still left, by this election, on the side of the "rights of the South," (humorously so styled,) and as the President could do little to advance Republican principles with all the other branches of the Government opposed to him, the people naturally imagined that the slaveholders would acquiesce in their decision.

But such was not the result. The election was in November. The new President could not assume office until March. The triumphs of the Slave Power had been heretofore owing to its willingness and readiness to peril everything on each question as it arose, and each event as it occurred. South Carolina, perhaps the only one of the Slave States that was thoroughly in earnest, at once "seceded." The "Gulf States" and others followed its example, not so much from any fixed intention of forming a Southern Confederacy as for the purpose of intimidating the Free States into compliance with the extreme demands of the South. The Border Slave States were avowedly neutral between the "belligerents," but indicated their purpose to stand by their "Southern brethren," in case the Government of the United States attempted to carry out the Constitution and the laws in the seceded States by the process of "coercion."

The combination was perfect. The heart of the Rebellion was in South Carolina, a State whose free population was about equal to that of the city of Brooklyn, and whose annual productions were exceeded by those of Essex County, in the State of Massachusetts. Around this centre was congregated as base a set of politicians as ever disgraced human nature. A conspiracy was formed to compel a first-class power, representing thirty millions of people, to submit to the dictation of about three hundred thousand of its citizens. The conspirators did not dream of failure. They were sure, as they thought, of the Gulf States and of the Border States, of the whole Slave Power, in fact. They also felt sure of that large minority in the Free States which had formerly acted with them, and obeyed their most humiliating behests. They therefore entered the Congress of the nation with a confident front, knowing that President Buchanan and the majority of his Cabinet were practically on their side. Before Mr. Lincoln could be inaugurated they imagined they could accomplish all their designs, and make the Government of the United States a Pro-Slavery power in the eyes of all the nations of the world. Mr. Calhoun's paradoxes had heretofore been indorsed only by majorities in the national legislature and by the Supreme Court. What a victory it would be, if, by threatening rebellion, they could induce the people of the United States to incorporate those paradoxes into the fundamental law of the nation, dominant over both Congress and the Court! All their previous "compromises" had been merely legislative compromises, which, as their cause advanced, they had themselves annulled. They now seized the occasion, when the "people" had risen against them, to compel the people to sanction their most extreme demands. They determined to convert defeat, sustained at the polls, into a victory which would have far transcended any victory they might have gained by electing their candidate, Breckinridge, as President.

A portion of the Republicans, seeing clearly the force arrayed against them, and disbelieving that the population of the Free States would be willing, en masse, to sustain the cause of free labor by force of arms, tried to avert the blow by proposing a new compromise. Mr. Seward, the calmest, most moderate, and most obnoxious statesman of the Republican party, offered to divide the existing territories of the United States by the Missouri line, all south of which should be open to slave labor. As he at the same time stated that by natural laws the South could obtain no material advantage by his seeming concession, the concession only made him enemies among the uncompromising champions of the Wilmot Proviso. The conspirators demanded that the Missouri line should be the boundary, not only between the territories which the United States then possessed, but between the territories they might hereafter acquire. As the country north of the Missouri line was held by powerful European States which it would be madness to offend, and as the country south of that line was held by feeble States which it would be easy to conquer, no Northern or Western statesman could vote for such a measure without proving himself a rogue or a simpleton. Hence all measures of "compromise" necessarily failed during the last days of the administration of James Buchanan.

It is plain, that, when Mr. Lincoln—after having escaped assassination from the "Chivalry" of Maryland, and after having been subjected to a virulence of invective such as no other President had incurred—arrived at Washington, his mind was utterly unaffected by the illusions of passion. His Inaugural Message was eminently moderate. The Slave Power, having failed to delude or bully Congress, or to intimidate the people,—having failed to murder the elected President on his way to the capital,—was at wits' end. It thought it could still rely on its Northern supporters, as James II. of England thought he could rely on the Church of England. While the nation, therefore, was busy in expedients to call back the seceded States to their allegiance, the latter suddenly bombarded Fort Sumter, trampled on the American flag, threatened to wave the rattlesnake rag over Faneuil Hall, and to make the Yankees "smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel." All this was done with the idea that the Northern "Democracy" would rally to the support of their "Southern brethren." The result proved that the South was, in the words of Mr. Davis's last and most melancholy Message, the victim of "misplaced confidence" in its Northern "associates." The moment a gun was fired, the honest Democratic voters of the North were even more furious than the Republican voters; the leaders, including those who had been the obedient servants of Slavery, were ravenous for commands in the great army which was to "coerce" and "subjugate" the South; and the whole organization of the "Democratic party" of the North melted away at once in the fierce fires of a reawakened patriotism. The slaveholders ventured everything on their last stake, and lost. A North, for the first time, sprang into being; and it issued, like Minerva from the brain of Jove, full-armed. The much-vaunted engineer, Beauregard, was "hoist with his own petard."