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

Were further argument needed to establish this position, it is found in the fact that the seeds of rebellion are wanting in proportion to the absence of slavery. There is no reason to believe that Kentucky or Maryland, without slavery, would have been less loyal than Ohio. In Eastern Kentucky, Western Virginia, Eastern Tennessee, Western North-Carolina, a small portion of Georgia, and Northern Alabama, the Union cause finds a friend's country. These sections, in the main, contain a population dependent upon its own labor for subsistence. Schooled by diligent industry to habits of perseverance, and learning independence and manhood by relying on itself, it has preserved its patriotism and attachment to the Government under which it was born. It saw no cause of complaint, imaginary or real. Six or seven per cent of slave population has not proved sufficient as a slave interest, to prostrate or corrupt its national fidelity, nor to undermine its national pride. It still retains its representation in Congress against the influences of surrounding treason. There is a cheering satisfaction in the belief that this plateau of civil liberty and freedom, even unassisted, could not have been permanently held in subjection by the myrmidons of rebellion. The secessionists themselves bestow a high compliment to the patriotism of this people, when they complain of its 'idolatrous attachment to the old Government.'

The time has come when the American people, from necessity, must analyze to their root the whole aptitudes and incidents of slavery. They are now obliged to deal with it, unbridled by the check-rein of its apologists. Under the best behavior of slaveholders, the institution could not rise above the point of bare toleration. There is so much inherent in the system that will not bear analysis, so much of collateral mischief, so much tending to overturn and discourage the principles of justice that ought to be interwoven into the relationships of society, that it is impossible for the ingenuous mind to advocate slavery per se. It is not, however, to the bare dominion itself, that the objection is exclusively raised up. It is the inevitable result of that dominion, in connection with the worst cultivated passions of human nature, that the exception is more broadly taken. The dominion of the master over the slave involves in a great measure the necessary dominion over the persons and interests of the balance of society where it exists. The lust of power on the part of slaveholders, and on the part of the privileged classes in Europe, in nature, is the same. The determination through the artificial arrangements of power, to subsist on the toil of others, is the same. The arrogant assumption of the right to maintain as privilege what originated in atrocious wrong, is the same. The disposition to crush by force any attempt to vindicate natural rights, or to modify the status of society under the severity of oppression, is the same; and no tyranny has yet been found so tenacious or objectionable as the tyranny of a class held together by the 'bond of iniquity.' Our forefathers had a just conception of the nature of the case, on one hand, when they interdicted by fundamental law the establishment of any order of nobility. Many of them were sorely distressed at the contemplation of slavery on the other hand, in connection with its probable results upon the national welfare. Our calamity is but the fulfillment of their prophecies. They well knew the nature of the evil we have to deal with.

It is matter of astonishment to most minds that slaveholders should have contemplated the bold venture of subordinating the Democratic principle in government. It will be less astonishing, however, when it is duly considered that it is utterly impossible for Democracy and Slavery to abide long together. The one or the other must ere long have been prostrated under the laws of population, and it is not very likely that the twenty-seven millions and their increase would consent to be subordinated to the policy of three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders. Slavery must exist as the ruling political power, or it can not long exist at all. This the slaveholders well knew; hence the necessity of fortifying itself through some political arrangement against the Democratic power of the masses.

The South-Carolina platform for a new government had close resemblance to the ancient Roman—a patrician order of nobility, founded on the interested motive to uphold slavery; but allowing plebeian representation, to some extent, to the non-slaveholding classes. Others in the South had preference for constitutional monarchy, with a class of privileged legislators, and House of Commons, composing a government of checks and balances, analogous to the English government. Whatever the plan adopted, the leading idea was to institute a government that should be impervious, through one branch, to the future influence of the non-slaveholding majority.

It is difficult to make entirely clear the ambitious motives and mixed apprehensions that have combined to precipitate the Southern slaveholders into rebellion. The defectiveness of the educational system of the South, and the known responsibility of slaveholders for such defect and its consequences; the defect in the industrial policy, and the responsibility of slavery itself for the depressing consequences to the non-slaveholding population, were fearful charges. A knowledge that the causes of depression must soon be brought to the examination of Southern masses, in contrast with a better state of things in the North, filled the minds of slaveholders with jealous and fearful apprehensions toward the non-slaveholding population. They knew that its interests were identified with the Northern educational and industrial policy. They appreciated fully that through these interests, free labor in the South had every motive to affinity with the North, educationally, politically, and industrially. They were astute in the discovery that under the operation of the Democratic principle, free discussion, and fair play of reason, the pro-slavery prestige must soon go down in the South before the greater numerical force of Southern masses. It was, therefore, not only necessary, as supposed, to overturn the power of the masses in the South, but also to make them the instruments of their own overthrow as to political power.

The measurable acquiescence of the non-slaveholding population was indispensable to the revolutionary project. Without it, there was but little numerical force. It was, therefore, of entire consequence to make this population hate the North—to hate the National Government, and to train it for the purposes of rebellion. The press was suborned wherever it could be. The pulpit manifested equal alacrity, in order to keep pace with the workings of the virus of treason. Leading men, assuming to be statesmen and political economists, taxed their ingenuity in the invention of falsehood. The effort of the press and politicians was directed to misrepresenting and disparaging the condition of free labor in the North; whilst the Southern pulpit was religiously engaged in establishing the divinity of slavery. It would require a volume to delineate the arts and hypocrisy resorted to, and the false reasoning employed, to impose upon the masses of white labor South, and to make them contented with their disparaged condition. It is needless to say, the work of imposition was too effectually accomplished. It must be confessed that too much of the non-slaveholding population had been induced to follow the political Iagos of the South, and thus to assist the first act in the plan for its own subversion—separation from the North. The next step in the plan of subversion, the 'abrogation of a government of majorities,' was carefully kept from the public view.

The inquiry naturally arises, as to how or why this design for the arrangement of political power in the Southern Confederacy has been confined within such narrow degrees of disclosure. The answer is plain. A bold proposition to change the principles of their government would have alarmed the people of the South into an intensified opposition. The politicians of South-Carolina, more open and frank in the exposition of their views than other leaders in the South, have been obliged to submit the control of their discretion to the more crafty and subtle influences of other States. Policy required that the contemplated new form of government should be confined to the knowledge of the leading spirits only. It would not bear the hazards of submission to the people as a basis of revolution. Its success depended upon secresy and coupling the adoption of the plan with a sudden denouement after revolution. Any one conversant with the pages of De Bow's Review for the last ten years, and who has watched the drift of argument in reviling the masses, and contemning their connection with government; and accustomed also to the 'accidental droppings' from secessionists in their cups, has had little difficulty in determining the ultimatum in the designs of treason. He will have become convinced that it is nothing less than a warfare against the continuation of Democratic government in the South—that this warfare is stimulated by the fixed belief that a government of majorities must be superseded, in order to perpetuate the institution of slavery.

Were argument wanting to force this conclusion on the mind, it would be supplied in the established affinity between the emissaries of secession in Europe and the virulent haters of Democratic government there found. The liberalists of England and elsewhere have been sedulously avoided; not so those who would connive to bring Democratic government into disrepute. With these last-mentioned classes, the secessionists have met with a ready sympathy and encouragement, almost as much so, as if treason in America involved directly the stability of privileged power on that continent. The Tories of England, the Legitimists of France, the nauseous ingredients of the House of Hapsburg, the degenerate nobility of Spain, and from that down to the 'German Prince of a five-acre patch,' have been the congenial allies of secession emissaries in Europe. It mattered not to these haters of enfranchised masses how much misery might be inflicted on the American people. They cared little for the anguish of mind that was being every where felt by the supporters of liberalized opinions. They rejoiced at the supposed calamities of that government whose beneficent policy had always been to keep the peace, to avoid the necessity of standing armies, to foster industry and education, and in addition thereto, to encourage the depressed of Europe to come and accept homes and hospitable treatment on the soil of the country. These revilers of Democracy in Europe were long advised with, were consulted beforehand, and knew the plottings of the pro-slavery spirit, in its preparation for rebellion. They were indifferent as to the character or hateful deformity of the agency to be employed, provided it could be made instrumental in breaking the jurisdiction of a government, heretofore more esteemed by the enlightened liberalists of the world than any other that ever existed. Neither the secessionists nor their co-plotters in Europe required seducing or proselyting. They stood on the same level of affinity, the moment the secessionists proposed the overthrow of the Democratic principle. This was the promise, the condition precedent, and this the basis of alliance between the plotters of treason in free America and their coädjutors abroad. It would be both shallow and useless to charge the origin of sympathy with rebellion projects, expressed by political circles in Europe, to the mercenary motives of commerce, trade, or manufactures. Those were standing on a broad foundation of contented reciprocity, and were the first to dread the tumult that could not fail to prove prejudicial. We shall hunt in vain to find the motive for European sympathy in rebellion, elsewhere than in hatred of Democracy. We shall also search in vain to find the motive for the wide-spread sympathy expressed by the liberalists of Europe in the Union cause, elsewhere than in their attachment to liberalized institutions.

Having glanced at the compound motive for establishing the Southern Confederacy, that is, slavery perpetuation through prostration of the Democratic principle, it may not be amiss to refer to the contemplated management of its politico-economic interests. These were to be built up, of course; but not through a system of diversified industry; for free trade, as is well known, would have the effect to prostrate what little manufacturing had been commenced in the South, and afford a perpetual bar to the success of future undertakings. It was believed that the foul elements North and South, and the illicit traders of the world beside, could be brought together in the business of free trade and smuggling. The immense frontier would render it impossible for the Northern States to protect themselves to much extent from illicit trade, through any preventive service possible to be adopted. The Mexican frontier would be entirely helpless. Thus reasoned Secesh. This was to have been the basis of competition with Northern mechanism. The reasonings of the conspirators were consistent with the merits and morals of the conspiracy. They calculated upon the active coöperation of the mercenary in the North, and actually believed that the temptation to gain would prove predominant over any efforts the Northern Government could make to protect its revenue policy. They boldly ventured upon the assumption that the influences of illicit traffic would soon become too strong to be resisted, and that in this manner, in conjunction with the agency of 'King Cotton,' the commerce of the North would be transferred to the South.

Another item in Southern political economy was the project of reöpening the African slave-trade. The leaders of the secession programme had made this a prominent feature in starting the rebellion into growth. The various phases which this branch of the question afterward underwent, was owing to the opposition of the Border States. So much were the people of the Border States averse to being brought into competition with slave-breeding in Dahomey, that the original conspirators were obliged to forego, for a time at least, this incident in the motives of the earlier revolutionists.

A government founded on the supremacy of a class, and that class to be composed of slaveholders; a political economy founded on slave labor, free trade, illicit trade, and African kidnapping, were associations that would require great strength and influence to sustain them. The strongest military organization was therefore contemplated. In this, much employment could be given to the non-slaveholding masses, while military qualities of supposed superiority would enable the Southern Confederacy to enter into a successful contest with the North for empire. The potency of 'King Cotton' was to be made the powerful agency with which the rest of the civilized world was to be dragooned into acquiescence. On this delusive dream was built the fabric of that mighty empire, whose history, from its origin to its subversion, is nearly ready to be written.

It must be acknowledged that the leading influences of the rebellion were as sharp-sighted as political vice, or political immorality is ever capable of becoming. Like all other vice, however, it based its reasonings and supposititious strength exclusively on its powers of deception, in conjunction with the iniquitous aptitudes of itself and its coadjutors. It found co-plotters in Mozart Hall, in the stockholders of the African Slave-trade Association, scattered from Maine to Texas, and in its suborned press in New-York, Baltimore, Charleston, and New-Orleans. It had bargained with the politically vitiated portion of the Northern Democracy for assistance, and had received a wicked though fallacious assurance from the Northern kidnappers, to the effect, that the Democracy of the North would neutralize any attempt to oppose secession by force. They had arranged for their diplomatic influence on the other side of the Atlantic, and bargained for the subversion of Democracy in the South. It planned beforehand for arming treason and disarming the Union, and most adroitly were its plans in this respect carried into effect. It had gained over to its side most of the Southern material in the little army and navy of the country, and prepared it for perfidy, in committing devastation or theft on the public property. Thus allied and thus equipped, in the confidence of its pernicious strength, it commenced its warfare on society.

'How much injury can we inflict upon the North? How much of the debts owing to Northern citizens can we confiscate? How much property in the South owned by Northern men can we appropriate? How much can we make Northern commerce suffer by depression of business, privateering, or otherwise? To what extent can we paralyze Northern mechanical industry, subvert Northern trade, and lay it under disabilities? How much can we distress the laboring classes in England, in France, in other countries in Europe, whereby we may compel them to clamor for the intervention of their respective governments against the North, and against its attempts to uphold the Union?' The whole reasoning of the conspirators was based on the supposed power, coupled with the intent and effort to inflict wide-spread and common injury. The scheme and all its contemplated and attempted incidents of management were such as the pro-slavery spirit in politics only could engender.

It required many years of gradual development, in connection with the ultimate culmination of treason, to shake the confidence of the North in the disposition of the people of the South. There was, and could be, no possible intelligent motive for the masses of the South to change their form of government, or to enter into rebellion against it. The arguments of the plotters of treason against a 'government of majorities'—the doctrine of 'State rights,' with the right to secede at the option of a State—the quasi repudiation of the 'white trash,' so called, as an element of political equality, were regarded as the ebullitions of a politically vitiated class who would be willing to overthrow the National Government, but who were supposed to be too few in numbers to taint with poisonous fatality the political mind of the South. It is not established as yet that the Southern political mind in the main has become depraved. It is, however, established, that the leading political influences South have cajoled and terrorized the bulk of the Southern population into apparent acquiescence in treason. It yet remains to be seen what disposition will be disclosed by the Southern people, as soon as protection is guaranteed to them against the tyranny and usurpations of the rebel influence. It is prophesied that there will be found a heart in the bulk of the Southern population; that it will still cling with affection and pride to that government which was their guarantee, and which no power now on earth is competent to shake. It is not against the deluded, the timid, or the helpless of the South that we would make the indictment for political crime. It is the perfidious pro-slavery spirit in politics that we seek to arraign.

The analysis of developed motives in which the slaveholders' rebellion had its origin, must naturally excite the inquiry in the American mind, as to how far the slaveholding element can be trusted. As a political force, we find it sowing the seeds of political discontent. As an anti-democratic element, we find it plotting the overthrow of democratic government. In its efforts to denationalize republican government in America, it has not scrupled to seek aid from, and alliance with, the haters of republican institutions every where. Under such calamitous teachings as it has inflicted, can we longer conclude that it can, from its aptitudes and nature, be converted into an element of national strength? There is a South, and a great South, and would continue to be, were there not a negro or slaveholder sojourning there. The seven millions non-slaveholding population in the Southern States have rights, social and political, based on the motive to maintain republican government. The Constitution of the Union, as the highest principle of fundamental law, guarantees in express terms, to every State, the form of a republican government; and not less by implication, the essential qualities of an actual one. It matters not how much the non-slaveholding population of the South may have been deluded, nor how much it may have been incited, under that delusion, to act as the instrument of its own overthrow. This population is not less the object of just political solicitude than any equal number of people North. That its general education has not been advanced to the appreciative point, is its misfortune. That it has been surrounded by a pro-slavery influence, selfish, arrogant, and contemptuous of the interest of the masses, is equally so. That it has been less favored than its brother-hood of free labor in the North—that it has been placed under disabilities in the comparison, are only additional reasons for increased solicitude for the welfare and future advancement of this portion of Southern population. While it has been imposed upon, and much of it deluded in its motives to action, its actual condition is in reality coupled with every natural incentive to alliance and adhesion to the National Government. It has drunk the bitter cup of calamity in rebellion. It has tasted the dregs of treason that lie at the bottom of political vice, and been victimized by destitution, by the diseases of camp-life, by the casualties of the battle-field, and by the widowhood and orphanage that have followed the train of rebellion. This population is a natural element of national strength, having the same incentives as its brotherhood in the North. Arms will soon remove the blockade to its intercourse with the North, and civil liberty once established, will most likely secure it to the side of national patriotism.

There is a question of equal magnitude respecting the colored population, not only of the South, but of the whole country. It is involved in the inquiry: Can the colored population be converted into an element of national strength? Physiologically and mentally, the native negro race stands as the middle-man in the five races—the Caucasian and Malay being above, and the American aborigines and the Alforian below. The mixture of blood with the Caucasian in America, places the negro element of the United States at least upon a level with the Malay race in natural powers, and from association, much the superior in practical intelligence. Notwithstanding the crushing laws designed by slaveholders to perpetuate the ignorance and helplessness of the negro, he would improve. Notwithstanding the brutal and studied policy of slaveholders to slander and disparage the negro capacity for improvement, all the arts of lying hypocrisy have occasionally been set at naught by some convincing exhibition of truth, springing from a fair experiment on the colored man's susceptibilities. The white man's dishonoring inclination to strike the helpless—made helpless by brutal laws—has occasionally recoiled in an exposure of the atrocious practice. The late attempt to introduce a bill into the South-Carolina Legislature, providing for the sale of the free negroes of the State into slavery, led to a disclosure worthy of contemplation. The Committee to whom the bill was referred stated that—

'Apart from the consideration that many of the class were good citizens, patterns of industry, sobriety, and irreproachable conduct, there were difficulties of a practical character in the way of those who advocated the bill. The free colored population of Charleston alone pay taxes on $1,561,870 worth of property; and the aggregate taxes reach $27,209.18. What will become of the one and a half millions of property which belongs to them in Charleston alone, to say nothing of their property elsewhere in the State? Can it enter into the mind of any Carolina Legislature to confiscate this property, and pot it in the Treasury? We forbear to consider any thing so full of injustice and wickedness. While we are battling for our rights, liberties, and institutions, can we expect the smiles and countenance of the Arbiter of all events, when we make war on the impotent and unprotected, enslave them against all justice, and rob them of the property acquired by their own honest toil and industry, under your former protection and sense of justice?'⁵

This slight exhibition in the Carolina Legislature presents an epitome of the whole argument of cultivated brutality on the one hand, and of humane sense and rationality on the other. What were the protection and sense of justice here spoken of; and what the sequences flowing from such protection and justice? The whole question is answered in three words: Improvement, following encouragement. What was the 'robbery' proposed by the bill, other than the concomitants of slavery, that have robbed the colored man from generation to generation, not only of his toil, but of every practical motive To Be a Man? It would be needless, however, to discuss the question of the colored man's capacity to improve, were it not for considerations that now make it necessary, under national calamity, to take it into truthful account. The white man's cultivation of barbarity under the teachings of slaveholders has hitherto proved an overmatch for the colored man's claims in the abstract. Things and conditions are now changed. The slaveholders' rebellion has softened the obduracy of manufactured prejudice, and necessity has become allied with humanity. Tho pro-slavery spirit in politics is now discovered to be little short of a demon—a snake's egg that hatches treason. The American mind is nearly forced to the conclusion, that as long as colored women are compelled to breed slaves, their white mistresses will continue to breed rebels. Slavery, of course, must yield to the necessity of national security. A remnant may exist for a while, and linger through modifications of a broken and hopeless pro-slavery prestige, the duration depending entirely upon the disposition of slaveholders to become subordinated to law. Perpetuation, however, has become a word that has no meaning in connection with the duration of slavery. The word in that sense has become obsolete; and what shall become of the colored man, and how shall he be treated, is, and is to be, the sequence of the conspiracy to overthrow the jurisdiction of the Government. It being established that the pro-slavery spirit, by nature, is the antagonist of the democratic principle—the antagonist of the interests of the masses, the hot-bed for the cultivation of brutality, devoid of fidelity, and a rebel by practice, it has become an intolerable element of national weakness. We can not avoid the inquiry, now to be made on the basis of humanity: Can the colored man, by proper and just encouragement, be converted into an element of patriotism and national strength?

What is the solution of the riddle as it respects the strength of democratic government? It has heretofore been said by the revilers of the masses in America, that 'for two hundred years the scum, the crime, and poverty of Europe have been cast upon the shores of the Atlantic.' It is immaterial to the question of humanity, whether such has been the seed from which a new nation has been raised up in the wilderness. A few months since, 'Democracy on its trial,' was the favorite theme of democracy-haters in Europe. The indictment against our free institutions was freighted with fearful charges. The government of the Union was a 'delusive Utopia.' 'The people of the North had degenerated into a mob.' 'Society was drifting into the maelstrom of anarchy, and law and order becoming extinct.' A little time, and an apparently unwarlike people had changed into an astonishing organization, disciplined for warfare. Seven hundred thousand bayonets, as if by enchantment, bristled in menace to the slaveholders' rebellion. The navy-yards and arsenals resounded with the clang of hammers, and soon the suddenly created armaments appeared on the waters. Power in finance exhibited by the Government, based on the confidence and patriotism of the people, was no less astonishing. New inventions of warfare changed the scoffings in Europe into alarm for their own security. The trans-Atlantic revilers of republicanism in America have discovered a people who had a heart in them. Patriotism in America is reassured of success by the exhibition of a deep-seated attachment on the part of the Northman to his Government. Seven words suffice to solve the riddle of free democratic strength—the masses converted into beings of power. This is the theory, the basis, the strength of free institutions in America. They have no other foundation. They have nothing else to rely on for enduring support.

Let the Southern rebel attempt to disguise it as he may, the colored man of the South is already a patriot on the side of the Union. He has heard of a people in the North who believed that every human being, by nature, was entitled 'to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' He knows that his oppressor hates this people of the North, and for the sole reason that they entertain this generous sentiment. While the Pharisaic theologian of the Southern pulpit is expounding his Bible-doctrine in justification of kidnapping, and appealing to Heaven for assistance, the colored man turns in disgust at the impiety, and turns into secret places to beseech Omnipotence to favor the success of the national arms. Perhaps there is an interfering Providence already manifest in results. If the plagues of Egypt had been visited on the rebellious States by an overruling Power, they would scarcely have afforded a parallel to the calamity which rebel slaveholders have inflicted on their country. They have exhausted and destroyed much of what the long toil of the colored man South had assisted to raise up. Devastation has followed the train of rebellion. The blood of the first and of the second-born has been the sacrifice on the altar of slavery. The brutal ruffianism of the pro-slavery spirit has far enough disclosed its natural aptitudes to have become disgustingly odious in comparison with the positively better characteristics of the colored man. The rebel himself has taught a lesson to the world, which he can never unteach. The twenty-seven millions of free labor in the Union have learned a lesson through the teachings of slaveholders in rebellion, which they can not forget. This teaching is nothing less than that the colored man is capable, by protection and encouragement, of being converted into a better element of national strength and national prosperity than slaveholders, as such, would ever become.