The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862

It is now accredited generally that several members of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet were conspirators, and that they used the power confided to them for the purpose of destroying the government itself. Hence it appears, whatever the test applied, that the present rebellion is distinguished from all others in the fact that it does not depend upon any of the causes on which national dissensions have been usually based.

The public discontents in Ireland, in their causes, bore a slight analogy to our own. There were existing in that country various systems and customs that were prejudicial to the prosperity of the island. Among these may be mentioned the Encumbered Estates and Absenteeism; and it is worthy of remark that whatever has been done by the British government for the promotion of the prosperity of Ireland, and the pacification of its people, has been by a reformation of the institutions of the country.

Rebels in arms may be overthrown and dispersed by superior force, but the danger of rebellion will continue so long as the disposition to rebel animates the people. This disposition can not be reached by military power merely; the exciting cause must be removed, or, at least, so limited and modified as to impair its influence as a disturbing force in the policy of the country. As we have failed to trace this rebellion to any of the causes that have led to civil disturbances in other countries, it only remains to suggest that cause which in its relations and conditions is peculiar to the United States. All are agreed that slavery is the cause of the rebellion. Yet slavery exists in other countries,—as Brazil, for example,—and thus far without exhibiting its malign influence in conspiracy and rebellion. This is no doubt true; but it should be borne in mind that, in the United States, slavery has power in the government as the basis of representation, and that the slave States are associated in the government with free States. If the institution of slavery had not been a basis of political power, or had all the States maintained slavery, it is probable that the rebellion would never have been organized, or, if organized, it could never have attained its present gigantic proportions.

We have now reached a point where we can see the error of our public national life. The doctrine announced by President Lincoln, while he was only Mr. Lincoln, of Springfield, that the nation must be all free or all slave, was not new with him. The men who framed the constitution acted under the same idea, though they may not have so distinctly expressed the truth. There is, however, abundant circumstantial evidence that they so believed, and that their only hope for the country was based on the then reasonable expectation that slavery would disappear, and that the nation would be all free. It was reserved for modern political alchemists to discover the idea on which the leading politicians have been acting for thirty or forty years, that one half of a nation might believe in the fundamental principle on which the government is based, and the other half deny it, and yet the government go on harmoniously, wielding its powers acceptably and safely to all. This is the error. Our failure is not in the plan of government; the error is not that our fathers supposed that a government could be based and permanently sustained upon slavery and freedom advancing pari passu. They indulged in no such delusion. The error is modern. When slavery demanded concessions, and freedom yielded; when slavery suggested compromises, and freedom accepted them; when slavery, unrebuked, claimed equal rights under the constitution, and freedom acknowledged the justice of the claim,—then came the test whether the government itself should be administered in the service of slavery or in behalf of freedom. Two considerations influenced the slaveholders. First, even should they be permitted to wield the government, they foresaw that its provisions were inadequate to meet the exigencies of slavery. No despotism can be sustained by the voluntary efforts of its subjects. Slavery is a despotism; and as such can only be supported by power independent of that of the slaves themselves, and always sufficient for their control. The slaves were yearly increasing in numbers and gaining in knowledge. These changes indicated the near approach of the time when the slaves of the South would reenact the scenes of St. Domingo. The plantations of the cotton region are remote from each other, and the proportion of slaves on a single plantation is often as many as fifty for every free person, The sale of negroes from the northern slave States has introduced an element upon the plantations at once intelligent and hostile, and, of course, dangerous, The time must come when the white populations of plantations, districts, or States even, would disappear in a single night, In such a moment of terror and massacre how, and to what extent, would the United States government, acting under the constitution, afford protection, aid, or even secure a barren vengeance? These were grave questions, and admitted only of an unsatisfactory answer at best. The government has power to put down insurrections; but for what good would a body of troops be marched to a scene of desolation and blood a fortnight or a month after the servile outbreak had done its work? These considerations controlled the intelligent minds of the South, and they were driven irresistibly to the conclusion that the government of the United States was insufficient for the institution of slavery, even though the friends of slavery were entrusted with the administration. What hope beyond? They dared to believe that by separation and the establishment of a military slaveholding oligarchy, to which the public opinion and public policy of the seceded States now tend, they would be able to guard the institution against all tumults from within and all attacks from without. If success were to crown their present undertakings, is it probable that the government contemplated would be strong enough for the task proposed? If Russia could not hold her serfs in bondage, can the South set up a government which can guard, and defend, and secure slavery? Or will a French or English protectorate render that stable which the government of the United States was incompetent to uphold? These questions remain, but the one first suggested is settled:—That the government of the United States, howsoever and by whomsoever administered, constitutionally, is inadequate to meet the exigencies of slavery.

Secondly. The leaders of the rebellion foresaw, a long time since, that slavery had no security that the government would be administered in the interest of that institution. The admission of California, followed by the admission of three other free States, forced the slaveholders into a hopeless minority in the Senate of the United States. The census of 1860 promised to reduce the delegation of the slave States in the House of Representatives. Previous to 1870 other free States were likely to be admitted into the Union; and thus by successive and unavoidable events, the government was sure to pass into the hands of the non-slave States. It would not be just to the South to omit to say that apprehensions there existed that the North would disregard the constitution. These apprehensions were fostered for unholy purposes; and so sealed is the South to the progress of truth, through the domination of the slaveholders over the press and public men, and by the consequent ignorance of the mass of the people, that these misapprehensions have never been removed in any degree by the declarations of Congress or of political parties in the North.

The mind of the South was thus brought logically to two conclusions: First, that the government of the United States was inadequate to meet the exigencies of slavery, even though it should be administered uniformly by the friends of slavery. Secondly, that the administration of the government would be controlled by the ideas of the free States.

These conclusions would have been sufficiently unwelcome to the Southern leaders, if they had had no purpose or policy beyond the maintenance of slavery where it exists; but they had already determined to extend the institution southward over Mexico and Central America, and they knew full well the necessity of destroying the Union and the government before such an enterprise could be undertaken with any hope of success. Hence they denied the right of the majority to rule unless they ruled in obedience to the will of the minority. Thus the slaveholders came naturally and unavoidably to the denial of the fundamental principle of the government; and, having denied the principle, there remained no reason why they should not undertake the overthrow of the government itself. And thus the conspiracy and the rebellion sprung naturally and unavoidably from the institution of slavery.

Further, slavery is the support of the conspiracy and the rebellion both in Europe and America. However disastrous slavery may be to the mass of the whites, it affords to the governing class the opportunity and means for constant attention to public affairs.

In all our history the North has felt the force of this advantage. As a general thing, a northern member occupies a seat in Congress for one or two terms, and then his place is taken by an untried man. And even during his term of service, his attention is given in part to his private affairs, or to plans and schemes designed to secure a re-election. The Southern member takes his seat with a conscious independence due to the fact that his slaves are making crops upon his plantation, and that his re-election does not depend upon the hot breath of the multitude. He enjoys a long and independent experience in the public service; and he thus acquires a power to serve his party, his country or his section, which is disproportionate even to his experience. A good deal of the consideration which the South enjoys abroad, and especially in England, is due to the fact that in the South a governing class is recognized, which corresponds to the governing classes wherever an aristocracy or monarchism exists. By a community of ideas the South commands the sympathy, and enjoys the confidence and secret support of the enemies of democracy the world over. Through the political and pecuniary support which the public men of that section have derived from slavery, they have been able to take and maintain social positions at Washington, which, by circumstances, were denied to much the larger number of northern representatives, and thus they have influenced the politics of this country and the opinions of other nations. Consider by how many sympathies and interests England is bound to encourage the policy and promote the fortunes of the South. There is the sympathy of the governing class in England for the governing class in the South, even though they are slaveholders; there is the hostility of the ignorant operatives in their manufacturing towns, who, through exterior influences, have been led to believe that whatever hardships they are brought to endure are caused by the desire of the North to subjugate the South; there is the purpose of English merchants and manufacturers to cripple, or if possible to destroy the manufactures and commerce of the North; and, finally, there is the hope of all classes that by the alienation or separation of the two sections England would derive additional commercial advantages, and that the scheme of here establishing a continental republic would be abandoned, never to be again revived. There is, moreover, a reasonable expectation, founded in the nature of things, and possibly already supported by positive promises and pledges, that England is to stand in the relation of protector to the confederated States. Nor will she be in the least disturbed by the institution of slavery, if perchance that institution survives the struggle. If she can be secure in the monopoly of the best cotton lands on the globe, if she can be manufacturer and shop-keeper for the South, if she can deprive the North of one half of its legitimate commerce, if she can obtain the control of the gulf of Mexico, of the mouth of the Mississippi, if she can command the line of sea-coast from Galveston to Fortress Monroe or even to Charleston, and thus compel us to make our way to the Pacific by the passes of the Rocky Mountains exclusively, there is no sacrifice of men, or of money, or of principle, or of justice, that would be deemed too great by the English people and government. But what then? Are we to make war upon England because her sympathies and interests run thus with the South? Is it not wiser to consider why it is that the South is sustained by the interests and sympathies of England? If slavery for fifty years had been unknown among us, could there be found a hundred men, within the limits of the United States, who would accept a British protectorate under any circumstances or for any purpose whatever? And is it not therein manifest, that our foreign and domestic perils are alike due to slavery? And shall we not have dealt successfully with all our foreign difficulties when we shall have established the jurisdiction of the United States over the territory claimed by the rebels? But until that happy day arrives, we shall not be relieved for an instant from the danger of a foreign war; and if the rebellion last six months longer, there is no reason to suppose that a foreign war can be averted. When we offer so tempting a prize to nations that wish us ill, can we expect them to put aside the opportunity which we have not the courage and ability to master? We have observed the hot haste of England to recognize the rebels as belligerents; we have seen the flimsy covering of neutrality that she has thrown over the illegitimate commerce that her citizens have carried on with the South, and from the time, manner, and nature of her demand for the release of Mason and Slidell, we are forced to infer that she will seize every opportunity to bring about an open rupture with the United States. And though Mr. Seward has carried the country successfully through the difficulty of the Trent, we ought to expect the presentation of demands which we can not so readily and justly meet. Indeed, enough is known of the Mexican question to suggest the most serious apprehensions of foreign war on that account.

The necessity for speedily crushing the rebellion is as strong as it was at the moment when Lord Lyons made the demand for the release of the persons taken from the deck of the Trent.

Is there any reason, even the slightest, to suppose that by military and naval means alone the rebellion can be crushed by the 19th of April next?

Yet every day's delay gives the confederate States additional strength, and renders them in the estimation of mankind more and more worthy of recognition and independent government. Their recognition will be followed by treaties of friendship and alliance; and those treaties will give strength to the rebels and increase the embarrassments of our own government. It is the necessity of our national life that the settlement of this question should not be much longer postponed.

By some means we must satisfy the world, and that speedily, that the rebellion is a failure. Nor can we much longer tender declarations of what we intend to do, or offer promises as to what we will do, in the face of the great fact that for eight months the capital of the Republic has been in a state of siege. If, in these circumstances of necessity and peril to us, the armies of the rebels be not speedily dispersed, and the leaders of the rebellion rendered desperate, will the government allow the earth to again receive seed from the hand of the slave, under the dictation of the master, and for the support of the enemies of the constitution and the Union? If there were any probability that the States would return to their allegiance, then indeed we might choose to add to our own burthens rather than interfere their internal affairs. But there is no hope whatever that the seceded States will return voluntarily to the Union.

There could be no justifying cause for the emancipation of the slaves in time of peace by the action of the general government; and now it must be demanded and defended as the means by which the war is to be closed, and a permanent peace secured. If before the return of seed-time the emancipation of the slaves in several or in all of the disloyal States be declared as a military necessity, and the blacks be invited to the sea-coast where we have and may have possession, they will raise supplies for themselves, and the rebellion will come to an ignominious end, through the inability of the masters, when deprived of the services of their slaves, to procure the means of carrying on the war.

SHE SITS ALONE

She sits alone, with folded hands,  While from her full and lustrous eyesImperial light wakes love to life,—  Love that, unheeded, quickly dies.She sits alone, among them all  So near, and yet so far,—they seemBut our coarse waking thoughts, while she  Is the reflection of a dream.She sits alone, so still, so calm,  So queenly in her grand repose,You wish that Love would slap her cheeks  And make the white a blush-red rose!

LITERARY NOTICES

CHEAP COTTON BY FREE LABOR. By a Cotton Manufacturer. Second edition. Boston: A. Williams & Company, 100 Washington Street. 1861. Price 12 cents.

It seldom happens that we find so many weighty facts within so short a compass as are given in this pamphlet. For many years the assertion that only the negro, and the negro as a slave, could be profitably employed in raising cotton in America, has been accepted most implicitly by the whole country, and this has been the great basis of pro-slavery argument. But of late years, doubt has been thrown, from time to time, on this assumption, and in the little work before us there is given an array of concise statements, which, until their absolute falsehood is proved, must be regarded as conclusive of the fact, that the white man is better adapted than the negro to labor at the cultivation of cotton.

Our 'cotton manufacturer' begins properly by bursting the enormous bubble of the failure of free labor in the British West Indies; showing, what is too little known, that the decrease in the export of sugar from Jamaica began and rapidly continued for thirty years before the emancipation of slaves, but has since been well-nigh arrested. With this decrease of export the import of food has decreased, although the population, has increased; but, at the present day, the aggregate value of the exports of all the British West Indies is now nearly as great as it was in the palmiest days of slavery, while on an average the free blacks now earn far more for themselves than they formerly did for their masters, and are therefore 'better off.' Even those who regard the negro, whether a slave or free, as fulfilling his whole earthly mission in proportion to the profit which he yields Lancashire spinners, have no just grounds of complaint. But as regards the United States, there are certain facts to be considered. According to the census of 1850, there were in our slave States, 'where it is frequently asserted that white men can not labor in the fields,' eight hundred thousand free whites over fifteen years of age employed exclusively in agriculture, and over one million exclusively in out-door labor. Again, wherever the free-white labor and small-farm system of growing cotton has been tried, it has invariably proved more productive than that of employing slaves. It can not be denied that, deducting the expense of maintaining decrepit and infant slaves, every field hand costs $20 per month, and German labor could be hired for less than this, the success of such labor in Texas fully establishing its superiority,—and Texas contains cotton and sugar land enough to supply three times the entire crop now raised in this country. Such being the case, has not free labor a right to demand that these fields be thrown open to it, without being degraded by comparison to and competition with slaves? Our author consequently suggests that Texas, at least, shall be made free, and a limit thereby established to slavery in the older States. It would cost less than one hundred millions of dollars to purchase all the slaves now there, and the completion of the Galveston railroad would have the effect of giving to Texas well-nigh the monopoly of the cotton supply. Such are, in brief, the main points of this pamphlet, which we trust will be carefully read, and so far as possible tested by every one desirous of obtaining information on the greatest social and economical question of the day.

A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL.D. Boston: Swan, Brewer & Tileston. 1862.

To boldly declare in favor of any one dictionary at the present day, would be as bold, and we may add as untimely and illogical a proceeding as to endorse any one grammar, when nothing can be clearer to the student of language than that our English tongue is more unfixed and undergoing changes more rapidly than any other which boasts a truly great literature. The scholar, consequently, generally pursues an eclectic system, if timid conforming as nearly as may be to 'general usage,' if bold and 'troubled with originality,' making up words for himself, after the manner of CARLYLE, which if 'apt,' after being more or less ridiculed, are tacitly and generally adopted. But, amid the 'war of words' and of rival systems, people must have dictionaries, and fortunately there is this of WORCESTER'S, which has of late risen immensely in public favor. We say fortunately, for whatever discords and inconvenience may arise at the time from the rivalry of different dictionaries, it can not be doubted that each effort contributes vastly to enrich our mother-tongue, and render easier the future task of the 'coming man' who is, years hence, to form from the whole one perfect work. Our own verdict in the matter would, accordingly, be, that we should most unwillingly dispense with either of the great candidates for popular orthographic favor.

RELIGIO MEDICI, A LETTER TO A FRIEND, CHRISTIAN MORALS, URN BURIAL, AND OTHER PAPERS. By Sir Thomas Browne, Kt., M.D. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1862.

Beautiful indeed is the degree of typographic art displayed in this edition of one of the raciest and most readable of our sterling English classics. The antique lettering of the title alone, in which words of carmine-red alternate with the 'letters blake,' the counterpart portrait, and the neat red-illumined capitals of every chapter, not to mention the type and binding, all render this volume one of the most appropriate of gift-books for a friend of true scholarly tastes. Few writers are so perfectly loved as Sir THOMAS BROWNE is by such 'friends;' as in BACON'S or MONTAIGNE'S essays, his every sentence has its weight of wisdom, and he who should read this volume until every sentence were cut deeply in memory, would never deem the time lost which was thus spent. Yet, while so deeply interesting to the most general reader, let it not be forgotten that it was with the greatest truth that Dr. JOHNSON testified of him that 'there is scarcely a writer to be found, whose profession was not divinity, that has so frequently testified his belief of the sacred writings, has appealed to them with such unlimited submission, or mentioned them with such unvaried reverence.'

TRAGEDY OF ERRORS. Aux plus déshérités le plus d'amour. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

The extraordinary conception of a blank verse dramatic novel of Southern slave life. We can not agree with its very talented author in finding so much that is touching and beautiful in the negro, believing that the motto which prefaces this work is simply a sentimental mistake. The negro is degraded, vile if you please, and not admirable at all, and therefore we should work hard, and induce him too to work, rise, and purify himself. Apart from this little difference as to a fact, we have only praise for this work, which is most admirably written, abounding in noble passages of brave poetry, and bearing, like the 'Record of an Obscure Man,' genial evidence of scholarship and refined thoughts and instincts. It will, we sincerely hope, be very widely read, and we are confident that all who do read it will be impressed, as we have been, by the true genius of the author, even though they may dissent, as we do, from the idealization of the negro as is here done. The cause of the poor was never yet aided by false gilding.