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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37890-8.txt b/37890-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..17cb589 --- /dev/null +++ b/37890-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15214 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brothers' War, by John Calvin Reed + +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 Brothers' War + +Author: John Calvin Reed + +Release Date: October 31, 2011 [EBook #37890] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROTHERS' WAR *** + + + + +Produced by Jana Srna, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive.) + + + + + + + + + +THE BROTHERS' WAR + + + + + THE BROTHERS' WAR + + + BY JOHN C. REED + OF GEORGIA + AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN LAW STUDIES," "CONDUCT OF LAWSUITS" + "THE OLD AND NEW SOUTH" + + + BOSTON + LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY + 1905 + + + + + _Copyright, 1905_, + BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. + + + _All rights reserved_ + + + Published October, 1905 + + + THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. + + + + +PREFACE + + +I would explain the real causes and greater consequences of the bloody +brothers' war. I pray that all of us be delivered, as far as may be, from +bias and prejudice. The return of old affection between the sections +showed gracious beginning in the centennial year. In the war with Spain +southerners rallied to the stars and stripes as enthusiastically as +northerners. Reconcilement has accelerated its pace every hour since. But +it is not yet complete. The south has these things to learn: + +1. A providence, protecting the American union, hallucinated Garrison, +Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Stowe, Sumner, and other radical abolitionists, as +to the negro and the effect of southern slavery upon him, its purpose +being to destroy slavery because it was the _sine qua non_ of southern +nationalization, the only serious menace ever made to that union. This +nationalization was stirring strongly before the federal constitution was +adopted. The abolitionists, as is the case with all forerunners of great +occurrences, were trained and educated by the powers directing evolution, +and they were constrained to do not their own will but that of these +mighty powers. + +2. The cruel cotton tax; the constitution amended to prevent repentance of +uncompensated emancipation, which is the greatest confiscation on record; +the resolute effort to put the southern whites under the negroes; and +other such measures; were but natural outcome of the frenzied +intersectional struggle of twenty-five years and the resulting terrible +war. Had there been another event, who can be sure that the south would +not have committed misdeeds of vengeance against citizens of the north? + +3. We of the south ought to tolerate the freest discussion of every phase +of the race question. We should ungrudgingly recognize that the difference +of the northern masses from us in opinion is natural and honest. Let us +hear their expressions with civility, and then without warmth and show of +disrespect give the reasons for our contrary faith. This is the only way +for us to get what we need so much, that is, audience from our brothers +across the line. Consider some great southerners who have handled most +exciting sectional themes without giving offence. There is no invective in +Calhoun's speech, of March 4, 1850, though he clearly discerned that +abolition was forcing the south into revolution. Stephens, who had been +vice-president of the Confederate States, reviewed in detail soon after +the brothers' war the conflict of opinion which caused it, and yet in his +two large volumes he spoke not a word of rancor. When congress was doing +memorial honor to Charles Sumner, it was Lamar, a southerner of +southerners, that made the most touching panegyric of the dead. And the +other day was Dixon's masterly effort to prove that the real, even if +unconscious, purpose of the training at Tuskegee is ultimately to promote +fusion, which the southern whites deem the greatest of evils. His language +is entirely free from passion or asperity. He wonders in admiration at the +marvellous rise of Booker Washington from lowest estate to unique +greatness. And he gives genuine sympathy to Professor DuBois, in whose +book, "The Souls of Black Folk," as he says, "for the first time we see +the naked soul of a negro beating itself to death against the bars in +which Aryan society has caged him." + +These examples of Calhoun, Stephens, Lamar, and Dixon should be the +emulation of every southerner speaking to the nation upon any subject that +divides north and south. This done, we will get the audience we seek. It +was this which not long ago gave Clark Howell's strong paper opposing +negro appointments to office in the south prominent place in _Collier's_, +and which last month obtained for Dixon's article just mentioned the first +pages of the _Saturday Evening Post_. When we get full audience, other +such discussions as those of Howell and Dixon, and that in which Tom +Watson, in the June number of his magazine, showed Dr. Booker Washington a +thing or two, will be digested by the northern public, to the great +advantage of the whole country. + +The last I have to say here is as to differing opinions upon social +recognition of prominent negroes. We of the south give them great honor +and respect. Could not Mr. Roosevelt have said to us of Georgia protesting +against his entertainment of Booker Washington, "Have I done worse than +you did when you had him to make that address at the opening of your +Exposition in 1895, and applauded it to the echo?" Suppose, as is true, +that hardly a man in the south would eat at the same table with Dr. +Washington or Professor DuBois, how can that justify us in heaping +opprobrium upon a northern man who does otherwise because he has been +taught to believe it right? What has been said in denunciation of the +president and Mr. Wanamaker for their conduct towards Booker Washington +seems to me rather a hullabaloo of antediluvian moss-backs than the voice +of the best and wisest southerners. + +Amid all her gettings let the south get complete calmness upon everything +connected with the race question--complete deliverance from morbid +sensitiveness and intemperate speech in its discussion. + +Now here is what the north should learn: + +1. Slavery in America was the greatest benefit that any large part of the +negro race ever received; and sudden and unqualified emancipation was woe +inexpressible to nearly all the freedmen. The counter doctrine of the +abolitionists who taught that the negro is equal to the Caucasian worked +beneficently to save the union, but it ought now to be rejected by all who +would understand him well enough to give him the best possible +development. The fifteenth amendment was a stupendous blunder. It took for +granted that the southern negroes were as ready for the ballot as the +whites. The fact is that they were as a race in a far lower stage of +evolution. Consider the collective achievement of this race, not in savage +West Africa, but where it has been long in contact with civilization, in +Hayti, and the south. Hayti has been independent for more than a hundred +years. "Sir Spencer St. John ... formerly British Minister Resident in +Hayti, after personally knowing the country for over twenty years, claims +that it is ... in rapid decadence, and regards the political future of the +Haytians as utterly hopeless. At the termination of his service on the +island, he said: 'I now quite agree with those who deny that the negro can +ever originate a civilization, and who assert that with the best of +educations he remains an inferior type of man.' + +"According to Sir Spencer, Hayti is sunk in misery, bloodshed, +cannibalism, and superstition of the most sensual and degrading character. +Ever since the republic has been established Haytians have been opposed to +progress, but of recent years retrogression has been particularly +rapid."[1] + +In the south, where reversion to West African society has been checked by +white government, this is a full catalogue of the main institutions +evolved by the freedmen. They have provided themselves with cheaply built +churches, in which their frequent and long worship is mainly sound and +fury. In the pinch of crop cultivation or gathering they flock away from +the fields to excursion trains and "protracted meetings." Perhaps their +most noticeable institutions are "societies," some prohibiting hiring as +domestic servants, except where subsistence cannot otherwise be had, and +others providing the means of decent burial. Compare these feeble negro +race performances with such white institutions, made in the same territory +and at the same time, as Memorial Day, which the north has adopted; the Ku +Klux Klan; enactment of stock laws when the freedmen's refusal to split +rails made much fencing impossible; and the white primary. + +Institutions--what I have just called the collective achievement of a +race--mark in their character its capacity for improvement, and also its +plane of development. When the negro, with his self-evolved institutions, +is compared with the race which has furnished itself with fit organs of +self-government all the way up from town-meeting to federal constitution, +and is now about to crown its grand work with direct legislation, it is +like comparing the camel dressed to counterfeit an elephant, of which dear +old Peter Parley told us in his school history, with a real elephant, or +trying to make a confederate dollar in an administrator's return of 1864 +count as a gold one. + +And yet the negro, Professor Kelly Miller, replying to Tom Watson, assumes +that Franks, Britons, Germans, Russians, and Aztecs have severally been in +historical times as incapable as West Africans of rising from savagery and +crossing barbarism into civilization. He outdoes even this--he would have +it believed that Hayti is now a close second behind Japan in striding +progress. + +Surely the good people of the north ought to learn the difference between +the negro race and the white. There is a small class of exceptional +negroes which is assumed by a great many at the north to be most fair +samples of the average negro of the south. Dr. Washington and Professor +DuBois severally lead the opposing sections of this class. It consists of +authors, editors, preachers, speakers, some who with small capital in +banking, farming, and other business, have each by Booker Washington's +blazon been exalted into a national celebrity, and others. Its +never-sleeping resolve, fondly cherished by the greater part, is to "break +into" white society and some day fuse with it. Its members are nearly all +at least half white, and many are more than half white. But when a Bourbon +snub to one of them is received, as it often is, with dignity and proper +behavior, Mr. Louis F. Post, and a few more, exclaim to the country, "See +how this coal-black and pure negro excels his would-be superiors!" This +man, almost white, is to them a coal-black, genuine, unmixed negro. Ought +not attention to facts incontrovertibly cardinal to rule here as +everywhere else? To what is due the great accomplishment of Dumas, +Douglass, and Booker Washington--to their negro blood or to their white +blood? If half negro blood can do so well, why is it that pure negro blood +does not do far better? + +I have seen it asserted that Professor Kelly Miller is pure negro. His +head has the shape of a white man's. The greyhound crossed once with the +bull-dog, as Youatt tells, and each succeeding generation of offspring +recrossed with pure greyhound until not a suggestion of bull-dog was +visible, occurs to me. Thus there was bred a greyhound, possessing the +desired trait of the bull-dog. Who can say that there is not among the +professor's American ancestors one of half white blood? If there is in +fact no such, he is, in his high attainment, almost a _lusus naturae_. + +The north, by due attention, will discern that the small number +constituting what I provisionally name the upper class of negroes, is +hardly involved in the race question. + +The negroes in the south outside of the upper class--the latter not +amounting to more than five percent of the entire black population--are +slowly falling away from the benign elevation above West Africa wrought by +slavery. That they are here, is felt every year to be more injurious. They +greatly retard the evolution of a white-labor class, which has become the +head-spring of all social amelioration in enlightened communities. There +appears to be but one salvation for them if they stay, which is fusion +with the whites. Though Herbert Foster, and a few others, confidently +assume that our weakening Caucasian strain would be bettered by infusion +of African blood, we see that while amalgamation would bless the negro it +would incalculably injure us. It would be stagnation and blight for +centuries, not only to the south but to the north also. Northerners are +more and more attracted to the south by climate and other advantages, and +intermarriage between the natives of each section increases all the while. +The powers, protecting America, inscrutably to contemporaries kept busy +certain agencies that saved the union. It seems to me that these same +powers are now in both sections increasing white hostility to the blacks, +of purpose to prevent their getting firm foothold and becoming desirable +in marriage to poorer whites. One will think at once of the frequent +lynchings in the south. But let him also think of how the strikers in +Chicago were moved to far greater passion by the few black than the many +white strike-breakers, the late inexplicable anti-negro riot in New York +City, and the negro church dynamited the other day in Carlisle, Indiana. +These powers, who have protected our country from the first settlement of +the English upon the Atlantic coast down to the present time, appear to +speak more plainly every day the fiat, "If Black and White are not +separated, Black shall perish utterly." I am convinced that at the close +of the century, if this separation has not been made long before, +Professor Willcox's apparently conservative estimate of what will then be +their numbers will prove to be gross exaggeration. In my judgment he comes +far short of allowing the anti-fusion forces their full destructiveness. + +Let the north purge itself from all delusion as to the negro, and help the +south do him justice and loving kindness, by transplanting him into +favorable environment. + +2. It is high time that the Ku Klux be understood. When in 1867 it was +strenuously attempted to give rule to scalawags and negroes, the very best +of the south led the unanimous revolt. Their first taste of political +power incited the negroes to license and riot imperilling every condition +of decent life. In the twinkling of an eye the Ku Klux organized. It +mustered, not assassins, thugs, and cutthroats, as has been often alleged, +but the choicest southern manhood. Every good woman knew that the order +was now the solitary defence of her purity, and she consecrated it with +all-availing prayers. In Georgia we won the election of December, 1870, in +the teeth of gigantic odds. This decisive deliverance from the most +monstrous and horrible misrule recorded among Anglo-Saxons was the +achievement of the Ku Klux. Its high mission performed, the Klan, burning +its disguises, ritual, and other belongings, disbanded two or three months +later. Its reputation is not to be sullied by what masked men--bogus Ku +Klux, as we, the genuine, called them--did afterwards. The exalted +glorification of Dixon is not all of the Klan's desert. It becomes dearer +in memory every year. I shall always remember with pride my service in the +famous 8th Georgia Volunteers. I was with it in the bloody pine thicket at +First Manassas, where it outfought four times its own number; at +Gettysburg, where, although thirty-two out of its thirty-six officers were +killed or wounded, there was no wavering; and in many other perilous +places, the last being Farmville, two days before Appomattox, where this +regiment and its sworn brother, the 7th Georgia, of Anderson's brigade, +coming up on the run, grappled hand-to-hand with a superior force pushing +back Mahone, and won the field. But I am prouder of my career in the Ku +Klux Klan. The part of it under my command rescued Oglethorpe county, in +which the negroes had some thousand majority, at the presidential election +of 1868,--the very first opportunity,--and held what had been the home of +William H. Crawford, George R. Gilmer, and Joseph H. Lumpkin, until +permanent victory perched upon the banners of the white race in Georgia. + +3. I observe that the north begins in some sort the learning of the two +lessons above mentioned. But now comes one which seems hard indeed. +Calhoun, Toombs, Davis, and the other pro-slavery leaders, ought to be +thoroughly studied and impartially estimated. They were not agitators, nor +factionists, nor conspirators. They were the extreme of conservatism. +Their conscientious faithfulness to country has never been surpassed. +Their country was the south, whose meat and bread depended upon slavery. +The man whose sight can pierce the heavy mists of the slavery struggle +still so dense cannot find in the world record of glorious stands for +countries doomed by fate superiors in moral worth and great exploit. In +their careers are all the comfort, dignity, and beauty of life, supreme +virtue, and happiness of that old south, inexpressibly fair, sweet and +dear to us who lived in it; and in these careers are also all the varied +details of its inexpressibly pathetic ruin. What is higher humanity than +to grieve with those who grieve? Brothers and sisters of the north, you +will never find your higher selves until you fitly admire the titanic +fight which these champions made for their sacred cause, and drop genuine +tears over their heart-breaking failure. + +The foregoing summarizes the larger obstacles which bar true sight of the +south and the north. The devastation attending Sherman's march beyond +Atlanta, the alleged inhumanity at Andersonville, and many other things +that were bitterly complained of during the brothers' war, and afterwards, +by one side or the other, seem to me almost forgotten and forgiven. +Brothers who wore the gray with me, brothers who wore the blue against me, +I would have all of you freed from the delusions which still keep you from +that perfect love which Webster, Lincoln, and Stephens gave south and +north alike. I am sure that you must make the corrections indicated above +before you can rightly begin the all-important subject of this book. With +this admonition I commit you to the opening chapter, which I hope you will +find to be a fit introduction. + +JOHN C. REED. + + ATLANTA, GA., + September, 1905. + + + + +Contents + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I. INTRODUCTORY 1 + + II. A BEGINNING MADE WITH SLAVERY 35 + + III. UNAPPEASABLE ANTAGONISM OF FREE AND SLAVE LABOR 45 + + IV. GENESIS, COURSE, AND GOAL OF SOUTHERN NATIONALIZATION 51 + + V. AMERICAN NATIONALIZATION, AND HOW IT MADE THE BOND OF + UNION STRONGER AND STRONGER 62 + + VI. ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS 84 + + VII. CALHOUN 93 + + VIII. WEBSTER 130 + + IX. "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" 161 + + X. SLAVERY IMPELLED INTO A DEFENSIVE AGGRESSIVE 208 + + XI. TOOMBS 212 + + XII. HELP TO THE UNION CAUSE BY POWERS IN THE UNSEEN 282 + + XIII. JEFFERSON DAVIS 296 + + XIV. THE CURSE AND BLESSING OF SLAVERY 330 + + XV. THE BROTHERS ON EACH SIDE WERE TRUE PATRIOTS AND + MORALLY RIGHT--BOTH THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR THE UNION + AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR THE CONFEDERACY 346 + + XVI. THE RACE QUESTION: GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY 359 + + XVII. THE RACE QUESTION: THE SITUATION IN DETAIL 378 + + APPENDIX 429 + + INDEX 451 + + + + +THE BROTHERS' WAR + + + + +CHAPTER I + +INTRODUCTORY + + +The inhabitants of the English colonies in Canada, Australia, and New +Zealand are all of the same race, language, religion, and institutions of +government. Such homogeneousness, as has long been recognized, works +powerfully for the political coalescence of separate communities. With the +adjacent ones of the colonies just mentioned there has always been trend +to such coalescence, as is impressively illustrated by the recent +establishment of the Australian Federation. The thirteen colonies out of +which the United States developed were likewise English, and there was the +same homogeneousness in their population, which made in due time, and also +maintained for a few generations, a union of them all--a continental +union. But there had crept in a heterogeneity, overlooked for many years, +during which time it acquired such force that it at last overcame the +homogeneousness just emphasized and carried a part of the inhabitants of +the United States out of the continental union. African slavery dying out +in the north, but prospering in the south, was this heterogeneity. By a +most natural course the south grew into a nation--the Confederate +States--whose end and purpose was to protect slavery, which had become +its fundamental economical interest, against the north standing by the +original union, and which having gained control of the federal government +was about to use its powers to extirpate slavery. The continental or +Pan-American nation--the American union, as we most generally think of +it--could not brook dismemberment, nor tolerate a continental rival, and +consequently it warred upon and denationalized the Confederate States. The +last two sentences tell how the brothers' war was caused, what was its +stake on each side, and the true result. This compendious summary is to +serve as a proposition, the proof of which we now purpose to outline. + +Our first step is to emphasize how the free-labor system which prevailed +in the north, and the slave-labor system which prevailed in the south, +were utterly incompatible. Free labor is far cheaper and more efficient +than slave labor. It had consequently superseded slavery in the entire +enlightened world. But certain exceptional peculiarities of climate, soil, +and products planted made slavery profitable in the south. + +To maintain the market value of the slaves two things were needed: (1) the +competition of free labor and the import of cheap slaves must be +rigorously prevented; (2) a vast reserve of virgin soil, both to replace +the plantations rapidly wearing out and to afford more land for the +multiplying slaves. The fact last mentioned made it vital to the south to +appropriate such parts of the soil of the Territories as suited her cotton +and other staples. Therefore whenever she made such an appropriation she +turned it into a slave State; for thus the competition of free labor would +be effectually excluded therefrom. The much more rapid increase of her +population made appropriation of lands in the Territories likewise vital +to the north. Hers were all free-labor interests, as the south's were all +slave-labor interests; and whenever the former appropriated any of the +Territories, she made a State prohibiting slavery in order to protect her +free-labor interests. The north was not excluded by nature from any part +of the public domain as the other section was. Her free labor could be +made productive everywhere in it, and she really needed the whole. + +Thus the brothers of the north and the brothers of the south commenced to +strive with one another over dividing their great inheritance. The former +wanted lands for themselves, their sons, and daughters in all the +Territories possible made into States protecting their free-labor system; +the latter wanted all of the Territories suiting them made into States +protecting their slave-labor system. What ought especially to be +recognized by us now is that this contention was between good, honest, +industrious, plain, free-labor people on one side, and good, honest, +industrious, plain, slave-labor people on the other, those on each side +doing their best, as is the most common thing in the world, to gain and +keep the advantage of those of the other. It was natural, it was right, it +was most laudable that every householder, whether northerner or +southerner, should do his utmost to get free land for himself and family. +This fact--which is really the central, foundation, and cardinal one of +all the facts which brought the brothers' war--must be thoroughly +understood, otherwise the longer one contemplates this exciting theme the +further astray from fact and reasonableness he gets. + +The foregoing shows in brief how there came an eager contention for the +public lands between parents, capitalists, workers, employers, +manufacturers, and so forth, bred to free labor and hostile to slavery on +the one side--that is, in the northern States; and the same classes bred +to slavery and hostile to free labor on the other side--that is, in the +southern States. The contention grew to a grapple. As this waxed hotter +the combating brothers became more and more angry, called one another +names more and more opprobrious; and at last each side, in the height of +righteous indignation, denounced their opponents as enemies of country, +morality, and religion. Here the root-and-branch abolitionist and the +fire-eater begin their several careers, and get more and more excited +audience, the former in the north and the other in the south. Both were +emissaries of the fates who had decreed that there must be a brothers' +war, to the end that slavery, the only peril to the American union, be +cast out. + +Under the necessity of defending slavery against free labor there came +early an involuntary concretion of the southern States. This was very +plainly discernible when the epoch-making convention was in session. It +was the beginning of a process which has been well-named nation-making. +After a while--say just before Toombs takes the southern lead from +Calhoun--it had developed, as we can now see, from concretion into +nationalization--not nationality, yet--of the south. It was bound, if +slavery was denied expansion over the suitable soil of the Territories and +the restoration of its runaways, to cause in the ripeness of time +secession and the founding of the Confederate States. But there was +another nationalization, older, of much deeper root and wider scope--what +we have already mentioned as the continental or Pan-American. Its origin +was in an involuntary concretion of all the colonies--both the northern +and the southern--antedating the commencement of the southern concretion +mentioned a moment ago. While southern nationalization was the guardian of +the social fabric, the property, the occupations, the means of subsistence +of the southern people, the greater nationalization was not only the +guardian of the same interests of the northern people, but it had a higher +office. This was in due time to give the whole continent everlasting +immunity from war and all its prospective, direct, and consequential +evils, by federating its different States under one democratic +government--this higher office was to perpetuate the American union. This +continental nationalization had probably ripened into at least the +inchoate American nation by 1776. It was this nation, as I am confident +the historical evidence rightly read shows, that made the declaration of +independence and the articles of confederation, carried the Revolutionary +war on to the grandest success ever achieved for real democracy, and then +drafted and adopted the federal constitution. The constitution was not the +creator of this nation, as lawyers and lawyer-bred statesmen hold, but the +union and the constitution are both its creatures. This nation is +constantly evolving, and as it does it modifies and unmakes the +constitution and system of government of the United States, and the same +of each State, as best suits itself. Why do we not trace our history from +the first colonial settlements down to the present, and learn that the +nation develops in both substance and form, in territory, in aims and +purposes, not under the leading hand of conventions, congress, president, +State authority, of even the fully decisive conquest of seceding States by +the armies of the rest, but by the guidance of powers in the unseen, which +we generally think of as the laws of evolution? To illustrate: For some +time after I had got home from Appomattox I was disheartened, as many +others were, at the menace of centralization. A vision of Caleb Cushing's +man on horseback--the coming American Cæsar--seared my eyeballs for a few +years. But after the south had been actually reconstructed I was cheered +to note that the evolutionary forces maintaining and developing local +self-government were holding their own with those maintaining and +developing union. To-day, you see the people of different localities all +over the north--in many cities, in a few States--driven forward by a power +which they do not understand, in a struggle which will never end till they +have rescued their liberties from the party machine wielded everywhere by +the public-service corporations. + +To resume what we were saying just before this short excursion. Of course +when the drifting of the south toward secession became decided and strong, +Pan-American nationalization set all of its forces in opposing array. As +soon as the southern confederacy was a fact, the brothers' war began. I +emphasize it specially here that this war was mortal rencounter between +two different nations. + +The successive stages by which her nationalization impelled the south to +secession are roughly these: + +1. The concretion mentioned above probably passes into the beginning of +nationalization when the south was aroused by the resistance of the +free-labor States to the admission of Missouri as a slave State. With a +most rude shock of surprise she was made to contemplate secession. +Although there was much angry discussion and the crisis was grave, you +ought to note that the root-and-branch abolitionist and fire-eater had not +come. That crisis over, which ended the first stage, there was apparently +profound peace between the free-labor communities and the slave-labor +communities for some while. + +2. The south rises against the tariff which taxes, as she believes, her +slave-grown staples for the profit of free-labor manufacturers. Here the +next stage begins. Perhaps the advent of nullification, proposed and +advocated by Calhoun as a union weapon with which a State might defend +itself against federal aggression, signalizes this stage more than +anything else. + +3. The second gives place to the third stage, when the congressional +debate over anti-slavery petitions opens. It is in this stage that the +root-and-branch abolitionist and the fire-eater begin their really +effective careers. Opposition to the restoration of fugitive slaves was +spreading through the north and steadily strengthening. It ought to be +realized by one who would understand these times that this actual +encouragement of the slaves to escape was a direct attack upon slavery in +the southern States, becoming stronger and more formidable as the +root-and-branch abolitionists became more zealous and influential, and +increased in numbers, and the slaveholder was bound to recognize what it +all portended to him. It was natural that when he had these +root-and-branch abolitionists before himself in mind, he should say of +them: + + "The lands of the Territories suiting slave labor are much less in + area than the due of the south therein. She will soon need all these + lands, as the slaves are multiplying rapidly, and the virgin soil of + her older States is going fast. With an excess of slaves and a lack of + fit land soon to come, if we are barred from the Territories our + property must depreciate until it is utterly worthless. But these + abolitionists attempt a further injury. They instigate our slaves to + fly into the north, and then encourage the north not to give them up + when we reclaim them. They deny our property the expansion into what + is really our part of the Territories which it ought to have in order + to maintain its value; and further they try to steal as many of our + slaves from us in the States as they can." + +This was the double peril, as it were, which gathered in full view against +the south. + +I cannot emphasize it enough that the hot indignation of such as Garrison +against slavery as a hideous wrong was not excited before the competition +between north and south over the public lands had become eager and +all-absorbing. It is nearly always the case that such excitement does not +appear until long after an actual menace by a rival to the personal or +selfish interest of another has shown itself. It is not until the menace +becomes serious that the latter wakes up to discover that the former is +violating some capital article of the decalogue. This was true of the +root-and-branch abolitionist. And his high-flown morality was made still +more Quixotic by his conscientiously assuming that the negro slave was in +all respects just such a human being as his white master. + +This third stage extends from about January, 1836, until the country was +alarmed as never before by the controversy of 1849-50 over the admission +of California, in southern latitude, with an anti-slavery constitution. At +its end the southern leadership of Calhoun standing upon nullification, a +remedy that contemplated remaining in the union, is displaced by that of +Toombs, who begins to feel strongly, if not to see clearly, that the south +cannot preserve slavery in the union. + +4. The fourth stage begins with the compromise of 1850. Afterwards during +the same year was an occurrence which cannot be overrated in importance by +the student of these times. That was the consideration of the pending +question in Georgia, and action upon it by a convention of delegates +elected for that special purpose. The Georgia Platform, promulgated by +that convention, is as follows: + + "To the end that the position of this State may be clearly apprehended + by her confederates of the south and of the north, and that she may be + blameless of all future consequences, _Be it resolved by the people + of Georgia in convention assembled_, _First_, that we hold the + American union secondary in importance only to the rights and + principles it was designed to perpetuate. That past associations, + present fruition, and future prospects, will bind us to it so long as + it continues to be the safeguard of these rights and principles. + + _Second._ That if the thirteen original parties to the compact, + bordering the Atlantic in a narrow belt, while their separate + interests were in embryo, their peculiar tendencies scarcely + developed, their Revolutionary trials and triumphs still green in + memory, found union impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of + this day may well yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion and + policy, to preserve that union which has extended the sway of + republican government over a vast wilderness to another ocean, and + proportionally advanced their civilization and national greatness. + + _Third._ That in this spirit the State of Georgia has considered the + action of congress, embracing a series of measures for the admission + of California into the union, the organization of territorial + governments for Utah and New Mexico, the establishment of a boundary + between the latter and the State of Texas, the suppression of the + slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the extradition of + fugitive slaves, and (connected with them) the rejection of + propositions to exclude slavery from the Mexican Territories, and to + abolish it in the District of Columbia; and, whilst she does not + wholly approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this + sectional controversy. + + _Fourth._ That the State of Georgia, in the judgment of this + convention, will and ought to resist, even--as a last resort--to a + disruption of every tie which binds her to the union, any future act + of congress abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, without + the consent and petition of the slaveholders thereof, or any act + abolishing slavery in places within the slaveholding States, purchased + by the United States for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, + dockyards, and other like purposes; or any act suppressing the + slave-trade between slaveholding States; or any refusal to admit as a + State any Territory applying, because of the existence of slavery + therein; or any act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the + Territories of Utah and New Mexico; or any act repealing or materially + modifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves. + + _Fifth._ That it is the deliberate opinion of this convention, that + upon the faithful execution of the fugitive slave bill by the proper + authorities depends the preservation of our much loved union." + +This platform was the work of statesmen who had added to the wisdom of the +fathers, making the declaration of independence, articles of +confederation, and the great constitution, worthy wisdom of their own from +a far more varied experience and better training in government. These +statesmen came indiscriminately from all parties. The people in the State, +from the highest in authority through every intermediate circle down to +the humblest citizen, deliberately, without excitement or passion, +endorsed this platform with practical unanimity. And all parties stood +upon it to the end. This was not an ignorant, debased, corrupt, +unrighteous people; but it was even better in everything that makes a +people great and good than the former generation which had given the +country Washington and Jefferson. + +Especially should the student meditate what this solemn declaration shows +was the sentiment of the people of the State at that time towards the +American union. Every one of the five planks contains its own most +convincing proof of deepest devotion. Think of the child who at last +resolves to fly from the home which had been inexpressibly sweet until the +stepmother came; of the father whose conscience commands him to save the +mother's life by killing the assailing son; of what the true Othello felt +when he had to execute the precious Desdemona for what he believed to be +her falseness--think of these examples, if you would realize the agony of +the better classes of the southern people when they at last discovered +that the union had changed from being their best friend into their most +fell enemy. + +The Georgia Platform was actually drafted, I believe, by A. H. Stephens, +then a whig. It was probably moulded in its substance--especially in the +fourth and fifth planks--more by Toombs, also a whig, than any other. +Howell Cobb, a democrat, approved, and was elected governor upon it the +next year, receiving the ardent support of Toombs and Stephens. Toombs was +just forty, Stephens a year or two, and Cobb some six or seven years, less +than forty. These three were the leading authors. Note how much younger +they were than Calhoun, who had a few months before died in his +sixty-ninth year. The platform indicates the new sentiment, not only of +Georgia but of the entire south. When its contents are compared with the +doctrine of nullification, it clearly shows as the production of a new era +in the history of southern nationalization; for it marks what we may +somewhat metaphorically distinguish as the close of the pro-union and +opening of the anti-union defence of slavery. The proclivity to secession +uninterruptedly increases from this point on. + +I would have it noted that the tactics of this fourth stage are +unaggressive. The Georgia Platform was no more than most grave and serious +warning against being driven to the wall. It did not bully nor hector. The +threat of what must be done in case certain menaced blows to slavery were +struck was so calmly, deprecatingly, and decorously made, that one wonders +it was not heeded. He ceases to wonder only when history reveals to him +that fate had become adverse to the good cause of this noble people. + +5. A change of tactics characterizes the fifth stage. The faster growing +population of the north, furnishing settlers in far greater number than +that of the south, was sweeping away all chance of new slave States. The +situation commanded that the defence of the south change to the +aggressive, just as Stoessel was constrained the other day to take the +offensive against 203 Meter Hill. In the first sortie the south got the +Missouri compromise repealed. Then she tried to make a slave State of +Kansas. She failed. When she had lost Kansas--like California in southern +latitude--she could not help recognizing that the outlook for slavery in +the union had become desperate. My northern countrymen, if you were as +free from the surviving influence of the old intersectional quarrel as we +all ought to be, you would applaud the ability and valor with which the +south had fought this losing fight for the welfare and comfort of her +people; and especially would you admire her supreme effort in behalf both +of that people, and also of the union which she loved next to the cause of +her people. Not quailing before odds incalculable, she was as brave and +self-sustained as Miltiades, coming forth with his little ten thousand to +fight the host of Mardonius hand-to-hand. The only thing for her now was +new aggression, to make a demand never seriously urged before. That was +that congress protect the master's property in every Territory until it +became a State. If this were done, she could, perhaps, keep slavery in +some of the Territories long enough for it to strike root permanently. If +it could not be done she must choose between her own cause and the union. +Her persistence in the demand mentioned--and she was obliged to +persist--split the democratic party, which had until this time been her +main upholder in the union. The north refused her demand by electing +Lincoln. This was the end of the fifth stage. Her nationality had become +fully ripe. She seceded into the Confederate States, her only opportunity +of conserving the property and occupation interests of her people. Of +course she expected to get her part of the public domain, and to enforce +extradition of her fugitive slaves. + +The foregoing is the barest outline of the rise and conflict between the +two nationalizations. The subject has been neglected too long. There +begins to be some faint understanding of the greater nationalization, but +that understanding is far short of completeness. There is hardly a +suspicion of the other. And yet as to our own special subject it is really +the more important, for in it is the initiative of the brothers' war. +There has been made by nobody any investigation at all of the main parts +of that train of events which I designate as southern nationalization. Not +Wilson's "The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in the United States," nor +any book by a partisan of either side in the struggle, gives any help +towards this investigation. The historical sources have never been studied +at all; such as the colonial records now publishing, the records and +papers of the probate court in some of the older and more important +counties of the south--especially the returns of administrators, +executors, and guardians, and files of newspapers advertising their +citations. Here can be found the prevailing prices of slaves, their rate +of multiplication, all details of their management, from the very +beginning. The trial and equity courts contain records of litigation about +slaves; of advice of chancellors to trustees seeking to make or change +investment; of wills manumitting slaves; and a thousand other relevant +matters. The course of legislation as to slaves from the first to the end +is also important. From these, from local literature such as "Georgia +Scenes," "Simon Suggs," biography, and various pamphlets, and other +original sources,--far better historical evidence than any which is now +generally invoked,--can be learned the real facts as to the growth of +slavery; and especially how in its economic potency consequent upon the +invention of the gin it supplanted or made dependent upon itself all other +property, and became the solitary foundation of every kind of production +and mode of making a living; so that even by 1820 to abolish slavery would +have been almost to beggar the southern people for two or three +generations. It is to be hoped that Professor Brown, finding the +opportunity which he desires, may yet exhaust not only the sources I have +mentioned, but also important ones that I have not even thought of, and +give the true ante-bellum history of the lower south. Some such work is +necessary to explain the active principle, the _raison d'etre_ of southern +nationalization. + +How north and south were sundered by the different nationalizations is yet +to be told in full detail without any censure of the people of either. +Practically every American was born into an occupation or way of life +connected with or founded upon either slave or free labor interests, and +so was born into one or the other of these two nationalizations, and his +conscience coerced him to stay with it. These nationalizations made two +different publics and two different countries in the United States. After +the slavery agitation had become active the masses in either public knew +but little of the other, and cared for it less; and when war broke out +between the two countries every man, woman, and child was ready to die, if +there was need, for his own. When the history of the times has been +impartially and adequately written the world will recognize that the +patriotism and moral worth of neither side excels that of the other, and +it will crown both. + +The evolution indicated above produced not only the two hostile peoples, +but also their leaders and representatives of every class. I have taken +pains in a relevant chapter to show how the fire-eaters and the +root-and-branch abolitionists were at last brought upon the stage. Every +fierce controversy in history has had their like on each side. Their +coming is late. The antagonists have become excited. The intelligence +guiding evolution deceives them as to the parts they must play. They +believe that their mission is to arouse the public conscience in order to +right some alleged moral wrong. Their real mission is to excite to angry +action. Cicero condemns the Peripatetics for asserting that proneness to +anger has been usefully given by nature.[2] He overlooked the fact that +the outbreak of the passion is intended to spur us into doing something +important for our own protection; and that it is therefore an +indispensable weapon in our self-defensive armory. These fanatics, as we +often call them, instigated north and south to quarrel more and more +fiercely, and finally to fight. The purpose of the powers in the unseen in +causing the fight has already been stated. + +What especially concerns us here is that we avoid adhering to the mistakes +of these partisans which still have injurious effect upon opinion. Thus +the fire-eater could see no good whatever in the yankees, as he called +them, denying them honesty, trustworthiness, and other elementary virtues; +accusing them of robbing us by the tariff and other measures, and hating +us for the prosperity and comfort which the slavery system had blessed us +with. Other of his false charges are still lodged in the memory of some +influential southerners. But the fire-eater's predictions were all +completely falsified by the result of the war; and he has become so much +discredited as an authority, there is no very great need for consuming +much time and effort in correcting his misstatements. On the other hand +the decisive success of their side has kept thousands at the north fully +believing the wildest fabrications of the root-and-branch abolitionists. +The latter believed that the African slave of the south was just such a +human being, ready for liberty and self-government in all particulars, as +civilized and enlightened whites. They believed that the condition of his +immediate ancestors in West Africa was one of high physical, mental, +moral, and social development, and that if there was in him now any +inferiority to his master it was entirely due to the sinister influence of +American slavery. They also believed that the system was fraught with such +cruelties as frequent separation of man and wife and of mother and young +children, under- feeding and clothing, and grinding overwork,--that, in +short, the average slave was daily exposed to something like the torture +of the Inquisition. All this was invention. American slavery found the +negro gabbling inarticulately and gave him English; it found him a +cannibal and fetishist and gave him the Christian religion; it found him a +slave to whom his savage master allowed no rights at all, and it gave him +an enlightened master bound by law to accord him the most precious human +rights; it found him an inveterate idler and gave him the work habit; it +found him promiscuous in the horde and gave him the benign beginning of +the monogamic family,--in short, as now appears very strongly probable, +American slavery gave him his sole opportunity to rise above the barbarism +of West Africa. + +These tremendous mistakes of fact, after knitting the north in solid +phalanx against dividing the Territories with the south and restoring +fugitive slaves and thus hasting forward the war, prompted that folly of +follies the fifteenth amendment, and have ever since kept the north from +understanding the race question. + +I am sure that it is high time that we of each section should school +ourselves into impartially appreciating the civil leaders of the other +side. The south has made more progress towards this than the north. +Certain causes have operated to help her onward. One of these is that +practically all of us recognize it is far better for the section that the +union side won. Another is that the great mass have learned that slavery +both effeminated and paralyzed the whites and was a smothering incubus +upon our due social and material development. It is natural that although +we give our pro-slavery political leaders and the confederate soldiers +increasing love, we should more and more commend the pro-union and +anti-slavery activity of the northern statesmen. Nothing like this has led +the north to revise the reprobation which in the heat and passion of the +conflict it bestowed upon the public men of the south. If I ever read a +good word from a northern writer as to them, it is for something in their +careers disconnected with the southern cause. Even Mr. Rhodes, the ablest +and most impartial of northern historians of the times, finds in Calhoun +only a closet spinner of utterly impractical theories. Further, I could +hardly believe it when I read it--and it is hard for me to believe it +yet--that, citing some flippant words of Parton in which a slander of +contemporary politics is toothsomely repeated as his voucher, he flatly +charges the lion-hearted knight of the south with playing the coward in +the most heroic episode of his grand career. My faith is strong that this +mode of treating the good and great southern leaders will soon go out of +fashion. + +I am greatly in earnest to vindicate these leaders--especially Calhoun, +Toombs, and Davis. Much of the public life of each one was concerned with +matters of national interest. To this I give special attention, for I want +my northern readers to know what true Americans they all were. Without +this they cannot have their full glory. And their justification is that of +their people. Such effective leaders are always representative. It is a +misnomer to call them leaders. They were really followers of their +constituents who were struggling for the subsistence of themselves and +their dear ones. During this time Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis, had they not +labored in every way to protect this great cause--the cause of their own +country--as they did, would have been as recreant as the confederate +soldier, skulking away from the line defending home and fireside. When our +country is in peril the unseen lords of its destiny do not take any one of +us, from the greatest to the humblest, into their confidence as to the +event. Every man of us must support in politics and on the field the cause +of our people. If that must go down it will make defeat glorious to go +down with it, as contentedly and bravely as did Demosthenes, Cicero, and +Davis. + +Whoever diligently studies the facts will be convinced that southern +nationalization, with a power superior to human resistance, carried the +southern people into secession, and that their so-called leaders were +carried with them. He will discern that the parts of the latter were +merely to serve as floats to mark the course of the current beneath. +Therefore be just to these leaders for justice' sake. Further, you +brothers and sisters of the north ought to bethink yourselves and keep in +mind how we regard them. The reputation of these our civil champions and +their graves are as dear to us as those of our mothers. If you adopted an +orphan, you would feel it to be unpardonable to speak slightingly to him +of his parents. Cleopatra, her conqueror sending her word to study on what +fair demands she would have, answered: + + "That majesty to keep decorum, must + No less beg than a kingdom." + +Let those who wore the blue and their descendants think over it long +enough to realize how unspeakably low and treacherous it would be in us to +abet any condemnation whatever of these men for their anti-union +acts--these men whom we or our fathers voted for and supported because of +these acts. If you deny justification to them, how can we keep decorum in +accepting it ourselves? + +I would say one more word, where perhaps I am a little over-earnest. These +southern leaders have contributed richly to the treasures of American +history. Their moral worth,--nay, moral grandeur,--their great natural +parts, their statesmanly ability, their eloquence, their heroic fidelity +to their people,--by these each has won indefeasible title to the best of +renown. Whenever the north has made real study of them, she will give them +as generous admiration as she now does to the charge of Pickett. I have +done my utmost to present Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis faithfully, using, as +I believe, all the main facts which are relevant and incontrovertible. I +am sure that every northerner who reads them, after he has laid aside all +prejudice, will admit that I did not claim too much when I was recounting +their merits a moment ago. + +I invite close consideration of all that I say of Webster. The purpose of +providence, bestowing birthplace, early environment, training, and career +as preparation for a paramount mission, shows more conspicuously in him +than in any other of America's great, with the solitary exception of +Washington. How the names of detracting agitators and mere politicians +written over his in the temple of fame are now fading off, and how the +invincible and lovable champion of the brother's union looms larger upon +us every year! + +I am painfully conscious of how certain omissions, unavoidable in my +limited space, mar the symmetry of my ground-plan. The average reader will +probably think that I ought to have sketched Lincoln, Grant, and Lee. I +was convinced that the public had already become reasonably instructed as +to them. + +John Q. Adams is one of the most conspicuous men of his day. Standing +aloof from parties, completely self-reliant, opulently endowed with every +high power of moderation, insight, and effective presentation, his good +genius gave him the championship in congress of the free-labor cause +during the critical years that it was preparing for the decisive meeting +with the slave-labor cause. In this time it seems to me that single-handed +he achieved more for the latter than all its other champions. A pleasant +parallel between him and Lee occurs to me. Each had filled the proudest +place in the chosen avocation of his life. Adams had been the chief +magistrate of the great republic, elected by the votes of a continent. Lee +had been the foremost general of the bravest and most puissant nation that +ever lost its existence by war. Each one of the two passed from power down +into what is usually a condition of inaction and accumulating rust till +the end of life, and to each was most kindly granted the achievement of +new fame and glory. In the national house of representatives, Adams, +during the last twelve years of his life,--1836-48,--did the great deeds +which we have just lauded. In the last years of his life Lee, as the head +of an humble institution of learning, showed not only the youth in his +charge, but all of his stricken people, how to conquer direst adversity +with such grand success in an example of unmurmuring endurance that every +future generation of men will give it more loving appreciation. + +John Q. Adams, as I have tried to explain, is almost an American epoch of +himself; but I could not give him the chapter that is his due. + +I felt that it would have been well to pair Stephen A. Douglas of the +north with Alexander H. Stephens of the south. They are in nearly exact +antithetical contrast. The former clung to the south, the other to the +union, until the clock struck the dread hour of separation. How they loved +each other and each other's people! They most strikingly exemplify the +adamantine grip which each one of the two nationalizations kept upon its +greatest and best. + +Wendell Phillips and William L. Yancey should be contrasted. Each one was +the very prince of sectional agitators, helping with great efficiency to +make the public opinion that carried forward Seward and Lincoln, the +actual leaders of the north, and Toombs, the actual leader of the south. +It is my strong conviction that Phillips and Yancey were the most gifted, +eloquent, and influential stump speakers in America since Patrick Henry. + +Chase steadily rises in my estimate. His solid parts, his consistent, +conscientious, and able anti-slavery career, and especially that decisive +speech in the Peace Congress,--these, and other relevancies that can be +mentioned, drew me powerfully. The firm candor with which he avowed in +that memorable speech that the north had decided against the expansion of +slavery, demonstrates the clearness of his vision. The part of it which +recurs to me most frequently is that in which he impressively recounts the +intersectional dissension over the fugitive slave law,--the south +believing slavery right, the north believing it wrong,--and proposes that +in place of the remedy given by that law the master be paid the value of +his slave. "Instead of judgment for rendition," he said, "let there be +judgment for compensation determined by the true value of the services, +and let the same judgment assure freedom to the fugitive. The cost to the +national treasury would be as nothing in comparison with the evils of +discord and strife. All parties would be gainers." + +Calhoun devised to restrain the sections from mutual aggression by +endowing each with an absolute veto against the other. Webster fondly +believed that if he could be president he would bring back the wrangling +brothers to love one another again as much as he loved them all. Chase +also had his pet impracticable project. Each one of the three recoiled and +racked all of his invention to save his country from the huge fraternal +slaughter that his divining soul whispered to him was near. + +The south will cherish the memory of Chase more and more fondly as she +learns better how he firmly stood for civil law against military rule, and +that he was heart and soul for universal amnesty. + +It was all I could do to deny a chapter to William H. Seward. He seems to +me to have been the only northern man whose foresight of the coming +convulsion equalled that of Calhoun. He did not become a Jeremiah as the +other did, for his section was not, after it had just emerged from a gulf +of blood, to be plunged and held for years in a gulf of poverty and +disorder. He was far less serious and much more optimistic in his nature +than Calhoun. Affectionate, sympathetic, rarely agreeable in his +manners--how well Mrs. Davis depicts him in what is to me one of the +pleasantest passages of her book.[3] He was spoils politician, able +popular leader, and great statesman in rare combination. While his heart +was extremely warm, his head was never turned by his feelings. Lincoln +ardently believed in his soul what Choate calls "the glittering +generalities" of the declaration of independence. But to Seward current +illusions were the same as they were to Napoleon Bonaparte--he was to lead +the masses with them just as far as possible, but not to deceive himself. +Read in your closet his two epochal speeches, the "higher law" one of +March 11, 1850, and that proclaiming the irrepressible conflict at +Rochester, October 25, 1858, then read that of Chase at the Peace +Congress, and you cannot avoid feeling that while Chase opposes slavery +mainly because he conceives it to be a gross moral wrong, the other +opposes because it is the belonging of an inferior civilization. In my +opinion no man of that time had such a clear conception as Seward of the +utter economical incompatibility of the free-labor system and the +slave-labor system, and of the doom of the latter in their conflict then +on. While he had this superior insight and wisdom it was the better way +for him to follow the tide of morbid moral sentiment and unreasoning zeal +carrying the country on to his goal. Following thus he proved a leader +unsurpassed. The longer I contemplate Seward the stronger becomes my +conviction that he is the most entertaining subject and the most +delightful in variety of parts and traits of all American statesmen for +the essayist portrait painter. To give a picture true to life demands the +very best and highest art. + +In my last two chapters I do all I can to clear up the race question, +which is now densely beclouded with northern misunderstanding and southern +prejudice. The negro has a nature that in some material particulars +differs so widely from that of the Caucasian that it ought to be duly +allowed for; and yet as people are so prone to think all others just like +themselves, this is hardly ever done. Now, forty years after emancipation, +we see that the promptings and consequences of his nature just emphasized +in combination with the social forces operating upon him have caused +changes in the situation, of the gravest import to him. His native +idleness, coming back stronger and stronger the further he gets in time +from the steady work of slavery, his lack of forecast, his vice, +inveterate pauperism, increasing disease and insanity, on one side; the +hostility excited against him by the inexpressibly unwise grant to him of +equal political rights, and the rapid invasion by white labor since the +early nineties of the province which he appropriated during the years when +the whites had not recovered from the paralyzing shock and surprise of +emancipation, on the other side, example these changes. There has evolved +a division of the southern negroes into two classes. One class, which I +most roughly distinguish as the upper, contains all those who are not +compelled by their circumstances to be unskilled laborers in country and +town. It hardly amounts to one-twentieth of the whole. The millions are +all in the other class, which I again most roughly distinguish as the +lower. Ponder what I tell you of them, their helplessness, their +accelerating degradation, their mounting death rate, their gloomy +prospects. I try hard also to have the upper class well understood. To a +southerner it is amazing how many outside people of education, +intelligence, and fair-mindedness assume that the multitude in the lower +class are the same in every material detail of character and ability as +those few who by various favors of fortune have found place in the upper +class. To stress here, in the beginning, a fact as its very great +importance demands, nearly all the negroes who get high station are part +white. Dumas, the father, was at least half white. The son Dumas was +probably three-quarters white. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Anglo-African +composer, is half white. Such as these are the samples by which nearly all +the continent and England, and many northerners, estimate the capacity of +the pure negroes of the south, grovelling in depths out of which one +climbs only now and then by a miracle. The men just mentioned are not real +negroes. It is the same with nearly all the so-called negroes of America, +from Douglass to Dr. Washington, who have become famous. They are but +examples of what whites can do against adversity. The coal-black equalling +these in achievement would be as rare among his fellows as Hans, the +Berlin thinker, is among horses. This palpable distinction between men who +are largely, if not nearly all, Caucasian, and men who are purely West +African in descent, is utterly overlooked by many most conscientious and +earnest ones of the north, like Mr. Louis F. Post, who is always telling +us of the south what the negro is--not, and how we should treat him, +magisterially reading us lessons in A B C democracy. + +There will be fewer and fewer part-white negroes in the south by reason of +the steadily increasing hostility of each race to mixed procreation. This +upper class has long shown a drift northward. Under the expulsion of many +of its members from certain occupations by white competition, lately +commenced and fast increasing, this drift now gathers strength. From what +I see every day it seems to me that the destiny of much the greater part +of this upper class is disappearance partly by absorption and partly by +euthanasy. + +It is the millions of the lower class that should be our deepest concern. +If they be left where their utopian emancipators and enfranchisers have +placed them, it is almost certain that nearly the whole will go into the +jaws of destruction, now opening wide before them and sucking them in. +Such a result of the three amendments--that is, to have annihilated hosts +upon hosts of pure negroes in order to make just a few part-whites +all-white--would be a fit monument to the statesmanship of the maddest +visionaries in all history. We must come resolutely and lovingly to the +help of these wretched creatures. I tell you at large how it is our duty +to give the black man his own State in our union, and supervise him in it +even better than we are now doing for the Philippine. + +I believe that the foregoing, re-enforced by a glance over the +chapter-titles, will give a reader the preconception which he ought to get +from an introduction to a book which he is about to begin. In dealing with +the causes and some of the more important consequences of the brothers' +war my method is rationale rather than narrative. My first purpose is to +indicate how everything happened according to laws that with cosmic force +reared two great economic powers, divided the whole land into a vast host +standing up for one of the two in the south, and a still larger host +standing up for the other in the north, and how these same laws were most +faithfully served by all the actors on each side. I try to set out and +explain what are the principles of evolution and the ways of human action, +and especially the commanding view-points, which must be rightly attended +to in their supreme importance before the greater one of the two critical +American eras can have its fit history. The man who writes it will be +entirely free from the monomania and orgiastic fury of both fire-eater and +root-and-branch abolitionist, from their excessively emotional +assumptions, their explosive and exclamatory argumentation; he will have +the industry, the undisturbed vision, and the perfect fairness of the +foremost sociologists of our time; he will show how each side was right +from first to last in upholding its own separate country,--all belonging +to it, statesmen, agitators, demagogues, fanatical fire-eaters and +abolitionists, generals and soldiers. He will show that such things which +in expedience ought not to have been done were unavoidable, and therefore +to be excused. He will show what erroneous judgments of each section +should now be challenged and kept from working injury. Especially do I +emphasize it, he will convince every average reader that north and south +were equally conscientious, honest, heroic, and lovable from beginning to +end. Such a history will be even greater than that by which Thucydides +realized his soaring ambition to give the world an everlasting possession; +and it will become the bible of America, treasured and loved alike by the +people both north and south. + +This bible is coming, as many signs show. I will illustrate by examples +from three northern authors, given not exactly in the order of time, but +in that of their approximation to full attainment. After a circumstantial +description of each one of the three days' fighting at Gettysburg, fair +and impartial in the extreme, Mr. Vanderslice eulogizes both sides, +without invidious distinction, for "their fidelity and gallantry, their +fortitude and valor," and because there was nothing done by either "to +tarnish their record as soldiers," and most becomingly emphasizes the +"martial fame and glory" thereby won "for the American soldier." But just +here he sounds a most unpleasantly discordant note by saying, "One was +right and the other wrong."[4] He forgot that brothers who fight as those +did at Gettysburg are all right, and that whenever one falls on either +side flights of angels sing him to his rest. + +In June, 1902, Mr. Charles F. Adams, making an academic address at +Chicago, startled many of his auditors with this outspoken vindication of +the south: + + "Legally and technically,--_not morally_,-- ... and wholly + irrespective of humanitarian considerations,--to which side did the + weight of argument incline during the great debate which culminated in + our civil war?... If we accept the judgment of some of the more modern + students and investigators of history,--either wholly unprejudiced or + with a distinct union bias,--it would seem as if the weight of + argument falls into what I will term the confederate scale."[5] + +Mr. Adams, having made further inquiry of his own, December 22 of the same +year, announced a still more advanced conclusion. He had said at Chicago +that the confederate scale preponderated; but now his vision having become +more certain he said the scales hung even.[6] Note that in the passage +just quoted from him I have italicized the two words "not morally." I do +not understand that in the Charleston speech he meant to revoke the +italicized words, and to say anything more than that each side was right +in its own view of the nature of the government. Even with this +reservation, the utterances of Mr. Adams evince a grateful improvement +upon the dogmatism which characterizes nearly every other northerner or +southerner who has treated the subject. + +Professor Wendell sees clearly that both sides were morally right, and he +is impartially just and equally loving to both. I feel that the quotations +from a late work of his which I now make are the chief merits of this +chapter. Considering the controversy between the sections, he says, with +the truest insight, "The constitution of the United States was presenting +itself more and more in the light of an agreement between two incompatible +sets of economic institutions, assuming to each the right freely to exist +within its own limits."[7] + +In this next passage as to the same subject, rising above Mr. Adams to the +high frankness which the facts demand, he says, "The truth is that an +irrepressible social conflict was at hand, and that both sides were as +honorable as were both sides during the American Revolution, or during the +civil wars of England."[8] + +How just to north and south each, and how fraternally compassionate +towards the south is this: "Solemn enough to the uninvaded north, the war +meant more than northern imagination has yet realized to those southern +States into whose heart its horrors were slowly, surely carried. Such a +time was too intense for much expression; it was a moment rather for +heroic action; and in south and north alike it found armies of heroes. Of +these there are few more stirring records than a simple ballad made by Dr. +Ticknor, of Georgia, concerning a confederate soldier."[9] And then he +quotes "Little Giffen" in full. + +Professor Wendell reaches a still greater height when he decorates the +Tyrtæus of the Confederate States and the supereminent anti-slavery +lyricist of the north with equal homage and admiration. He says: + + "The civil war brought forth no lines more fervent [than the + concluding thirty-six of Timrod's 'The Cotton Boll,' which are set + out], and few whose fervor rises to such lyric height. In the days of + conflict, north regarded south, and south north, as the incarnation of + evil. Time, however, has begun its healing work; at last our country + begins to understand itself better than ever before; and as our new + patriotism strengthens, we cannot prize too highly such verses as + Whittier's, honestly phrasing noble northern sentiment, or as + Timrod's, who with equal honesty phrased the noble sentiment of the + south. A literature which in the same years could produce work so + utterly antagonistic in superficial sentiment, and yet so harmonious + in their common sincerity and loftiness of feeling, is a literature + from which riches may come."[10] + +These words are more golden than I can tell. They parallel the elevation +of Webster, showing the same love for South Carolina and Massachusetts, in +the pertinent parts of the reply to Hayne, which since my boyhood I have +cherished as a nonpareil. It is cheering to a faithful southerner to +receive such sure proof that the day must soon come when all obloquy will +be lifted from the fame of Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis. What a grand +triumph of contrast, almost surpassing the best achievement of Shakspeare, +it will be when some honest Griffith, having shown Webster, Lincoln, and +Grant in all the worth which merited their unspeakably happy lot, each +radiant with the victor's glory, places opposite the great civic heroes of +the southern nation, their due renown at last fitly blazoned. That renown +will be that they devoted the very greatest human powers and virtues all +their lives, with never remitted effort and spotless fidelity, to save a +doomed country,--the imperishable renown of grand failure in a cause which +adverse fate cannot keep from being ever dear to all humanity. + +My last word as to what I have just quoted from the three northern authors +is that all of us--and especially the fast widening public of +readers--ought to be forever in earnest to applaud such sentiments and +chide every manifestation of excessive sectional bias or prejudice from +either northerner or southerner. This has been my incessantly kept faith +for years. As proof I refer to my article, "The Old and New South," nearly +all of it written in the early part of 1875--thirty years ago--and which I +published the next year. I give an exact copy of it in the Appendix. As +you go through it remember these things of the author: The election of +Lincoln made me believe, as it did thousands of other southerners, that +secession was the only patriotic course. I therefore voted for secession +delegates to the State convention. I served in the confederate army all +the war, taking part in the First Manassas and many other battles; and +when I had been surrendered and paroled at Appomattox I walked back to my +home in Georgia. Ten years after this I had found full solace and comfort +for the direful event to the south of the brothers' war; and I had learned +that the brothers on each side had complete justification in conscience +for their contrary parts as statesmen, public leaders, voters, and at the +end as soldiers. I want my readers of each section to see that I have long +practised what I am now preaching. + +I beg attention to the article on another score. It shows that the +opinions expressed in this book have not been formed in haste. Nearly all +of the more important will be found therein, in embryo, at least; and the +present book will show, I hope, that they have prosperously grown. There +are passages in the article, such as those touching the relations of the +races, the future of the negro, the maintenance by the decentralizing +forces of the union of their balance with the counter ones, and also +others, which I might now justly claim to have proved prophetic; and I do +not believe that a serious misprediction can be found in the entire +article. This is, I hope, such corroboration by after occurrences as +indicates that even my early studies of the transcendently important +theme were not unfruitful. + +Further, the article serves in some sort to mark a definite stage in +evolution. To give but one illustration: Although my close attention to +planting interests at the time and for the seven or eight preceding years +had kept me closely watching the negro, I had not then discovered even the +beginning of that division of the race into two classes which is now so +plain to me. + +Possibly some readers may shy away from my book, deeming that its subject +is hackneyed and worn out. They will exclaim, What can this author say +that has not been said in the vast library of books already written upon +the civil war? This will be asked, I am sure, only by the unobservant and +unreflecting. If one but turn away from the assumptions, dogmas, and +philippics, with which north and south cannonaded each other's morality +with increasing fury from 1831 to 1861, to the _rerum causæ_, the play of +resistless social forces, and the other actualities and great things +indicated above, their huge stores of varied novelty, interest, romance, +and wisdom will greatly embarass him--as has been my painful +experience--both in making the best selection and in his felt inability to +give what he does at last select its fit presentation. + +As illustration I will say that every thoroughly impartial northern reader +who meditates what I narrate as to Toombs will, I believe, be astonished +to learn that one so prodigally gifted with supreme virtue and supreme +genius, and who was of unexampled success in doing all the common and all +the extraordinary duties of high place, has become worse than forgotten in +almost his own day; and such a reader will suspect, as I do myself, that +there is much more of value in his career that I have overlooked. + +Perhaps this chapter is too long already. But I pray my reader to allow me +to say a little more. We are upon the threshold of a new American era. +Evidently because of our western coast we are to dominate the Pacific +ocean commerce and to develop it into proportions so enormous as to be now +almost inconceivable. That coast will soon outstrip the Atlantic in +population and great cities. Our people, safe against wars on the +continent, maintaining armies only of workers, taught better methods every +year by practice and science, will soon be far in advance of their present +enviable prosperity and comfort. Cheering as is the promise of their +material progress, that of their progress in virtue and good government is +still more cheering. Everywhere in the north--which was not impoverished, +deprived of familiar modes of production, and paralyzed with a race +question by the event of the brothers' war--the State electorates are +rebelling successfully against the party machine, cashiering the boss, and +subverting the corporation oligarchy. That in the last election the voters +most intelligently split their tickets assures the early expulsion of +spoilsmen, grafters, and public-service franchise-grabbers from the +control of our politics, legislation, and administration of government, +and the real and permanent elevation of the people to being their own +absolute governors. In several States--one of these a southern--the vote +was for the most democratic and anti-plutocratic president since Lincoln, +while at the same time the anti-plutocratic State candidates, either of +the other party or independent, were elected. Our population will soon +outstrip all the world in average riches, comfort, virtue, and education. +The special note to be made of this new American era now beginning is that +we are to lead the nations into a war-abolishing United States of the +world, which in the end will make and keep them our equals in solid +welfare and happiness. With this prospect in view, the brighter and more +enrapturing as I cannot keep from contrasting it with the black and +hopeless future which settled around me at Appomattox, I would do all that +I can to bring about that better understanding between north and south +which befits the good time near at hand. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A BEGINNING MADE WITH SLAVERY + + +As a distinguished southerner, familiar with the subject, says, slavery in +the United States was "a stupendous anachronism."[11] It is almost +incredible to the average northerner of to-day that the enlightened people +of the south sank backwards in social development a thousand years or +more, and hugged to their bosoms for several generations such a monstrous +evil and peril. + +The co-operation of two facts fully explains the wonder just noted. Now +let us try to understand this. + +The first fact is the part played by tobacco and cotton before the +anti-slavery sentiment became influential. At a time when there was +practically no industry but agriculture these two staples became the most +lucrative of all common American crops. Tobacco found its true soil in +Virginia, and cotton farther south. It developed in time that both could +be made far more profitably with African slaves than by free white labor, +the only other labor to be had. Of course you are to remember that slave +cultivation of tobacco did not become general in Virginia until near the +end of the seventeenth century, and that it was the invention of the gin +soon after the adoption of the federal constitution in 1789 that started +cotton production on a large scale. What you are especially to grasp here +is the economic conditions which naturally spread slavery from its +beginning at Jamestown, first over Virginia, and then throughout the +entire south, either settled in large measure from Virginia, or looking +thither for example. The Virginian who could not replace his exhausted +fields with virgin soil at home went with his slaves either west or south, +and hacked down enough of the primeval forest to give his working force +its quantum of arable land. We need not stop here to tell of rice and +cane, nor of other crops and industries which for a while engaged slave +labor in northern regions of the south where the soil did not suit +tobacco. The foregoing suggests adequately for this place how slavery +became general in the south. + +The second fact is that the prevalent opinion of that time was far +different from that of to-day, for certain reasons, to which I would now +have you attend. + +Long before the discovery of America personal slavery had fallen under the +ban of the christian church and become in Europe a thing of the past. The +Divine Comedy catalogues in detail the religious, political, moral, and +social events of its age. It is utterly silent throughout as to slavery. +Dante died in 1321, soon after he had finished the Divine Comedy. That was +nearly three hundred years before the appearance of African slavery in +Virginia. + +Now for something of very great importance to us here, which occurred soon +afterwards, and before the introduction of African slavery into America. +It is that by the Renascence the literature of slaveholding Greece and +Rome suddenly acquired and long held commanding influence upon almost +every educator of the public in the enlightened world. It was in the last +quarter of the fourteenth century--some fifty years after Dante had +died--that the classics revived in Italy. Spreading thence over Europe, +they are found dominating the great Elizabethan divines, philosophers, +poets, and other opinion-forming writers at the end of the fifteenth +century. And during all of the time from the landing of the twenty +Africans at Jamestown by the Dutch man-of-war in 1619 until slavery had +become the solitary prop of southern industry and property, the Greek and +Latin ancient writers were in our mother country almost the sole subjects +of school or university education, and the main reading of all those that +read at all. And every page of this literature, studied with enthusiastic +worship and resorted to day in and day out for instruction and +inspiration, disclosed that in Greece and Rome the average family was +dependent for its maintenance upon slaves; and that so far from slavery +being a relic of barbarism, as the American root-and-branch abolitionists +afterwards fulminated in a platform, it was the very foundation of the +state in those two great nations whose philosophy, learning, science, +jurisprudence, poetry, art, and eloquence are still the models in every +enlightened land. Naturally the educated classes, now that it had been +several hundred years since slavery was a burning question, had forgotten +or had never heard of the old disinclination of the church, and could not +see any evil in that which their most admired and dearest ones had all +practised. The classics did not stop with giving slavery the negative +support just mentioned. Although such authors as Quintilian and Seneca, +and the later jurists--all of the discredited silver, and not of the +glorified Ciceronian and Augustan ages--do express, theatrically and +academically, anti-slavery opinions, yet what they say was merely dust in +the balance when weighed against the commendations of the institution to +be found in the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero, who had now +become the great idols of intellectual society.[12] + +The church would not stay out in the cold and dark, whither it had been +suddenly and rudely cast by the Renascence. It woke up to discover that as +the African was a heathen barbarian it was God's mercy to kidnap him for a +christian master, and thus give him his only opportunity of saving his +soul. And although it is not right to enslave other races, the descendants +of Ham are an exception, who by reason of Noah's curse are to be the +servants of servants to the end of time--that is what Holy Church taught +by precept and example. + +"Sir John Hawkins has the unenviable distinction of being the first +English captain of a slave-ship, about the year 1552."[13] His venture +proved a great success. Good Queen Bess reproached him for his +mistreatment of human beings. He answered that it was far better for the +African thus to become a slave in a christian community, than to live the +rest of his life in his native home of idolatry; and this was so +convincing that "in the subsequent expeditions of this most heartless +man-stealer, she was a partner and protector."[14] Until the end of the +seventeenth century the masses regarded the negro as being rather wild +beast than man, showing no more scruples in catching and making a drudge +of him than later generations did in lassoing wild horses and working them +under curb-bit, spur, and whip. And the more understanding ones, who +recognized that the negro belonged to humanity, re-enforced Aristotle[15] +and Pliny[16] with much that they found both in the Old and New +Testaments.[17] The many who preached liberty or the true religion posed +as humanitarians, pharisaically comparing themselves with the best +characters of Greece and Rome. The citizens of those great republics, they +said, in spite of their advanced democracy, tore men and women of their +own race and blood away from home and country and forced them with the +scourge to toil in chains, while we do that only with savages and +heathens, who cannot be civilized or christianized in any other way. We +eschew slavery in the abstract. We tolerate it only in the concrete, which +is the slavery of those destined for it by God and nature. Slave-catcher, +slaveholder, and the public seriously and conscientiously held this creed. + +You must now add to the list of influences planting and stimulating +slavery in America the protection it got in the constitution under which +the federal government started in 1789. As Mr. Blaine says: + + "The compromises on the slavery question, inserted in the + constitution, were among the essential conditions upon which the + federal government was organized. If the African slave-trade had not + been permitted to continue for twenty years, if it had not been + conceded that three-fifths of the slaves should be counted in the + apportionment of representatives in congress, if it had not been + agreed that fugitives from service should be returned to their owners, + the thirteen States would not have been able in 1787 'to form a more + perfect union.'"[18] + +Think over it until you can fully take in the prodigious favor to slavery +which this countenance of it by the American bible of bibles naturally +created in the north and south. + +The forces rapidly sketched in the foregoing were so powerful in their +co-operation to bring in slavery that its establishment and a long era of +vigorous growth were inevitable. Note the years during which they met no +sensible or only a fitful opposition. The first anti-slavery agitation +that shook the entire country was that over the Missouri question, which +having lasted a little more than two years ended in 1821, thirty-two years +after the adoption of the constitution. This agitation was only against +the extension of slavery. It was not until 1835 that the presentation to +Congress of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of +Columbia disclosed to the far-seeing Calhoun alone that serious and mighty +aggression upon slavery in the States was commencing. Here we may date the +beginning of the abolition movement. But that movement did not become +respectable with the great mass of northern people until the application +of California in 1850 for admission into the union as a free State widened +the chasm between the sections so that it commenced to show to the dullest +eye, and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which came out in 1852, stirred the north to +its depths. The growth of slavery was then and had been for a quarter of a +century complete. The soil, climate, and best agricultural interests of +the south, at a time when she was to be wholly agricultural or +economically nothing at all, the practice and precepts of the sages of +Greece and Rome, of the patriarchs of Israel, of Jesus and his disciples +and apostles, of the great and good of modern times,--all these had, with +oracular consensus, led her understanding and conscience into adopting, +nurturing, and on into extending slavery over her territory. Thus when +abolition first emerged into open day, slavery had become the very +economical life of the south. It had so permeated and informed the +combined property, social, and political structure, that abolition would +subvert the community fabric and beggar the population of the southern +States now living in content and comfort. + +I trust that the foregoing shows you that it is not so strange after all +that slavery ran the career just described. + +But some one says, how could the southerners as Americans, the especial +champions of liberty, stultify themselves by slaveholding? how could they +forget the world-arousing words of the declaration of independence that +all men are created equal, and endowed with unalienable rights to life, +liberty, and pursuit of happiness? + +This has already been answered. The slaveholding republics of Greece and +Rome had advanced in democracy so far beyond anything to be found in +Europe at the revival of learning, that from that time on for many years +the political doctrine in the recovered classics was the very greatest of +all the intellectual influences that made for mere democracy. The +celebrated passage in which Burke eulogizes the stubborn maintenance of +their freedom by free slaveholders has been the text of speakers from +Pinkney, addressing the United States senate on the Missouri question, to +Toombs, lecturing in Tremont Temple, Boston, and it has never been +confuted. History shows no instance where such men ever reproached +themselves for slaveholding, and while it was profitable put it aside +because it is undemocratic. + +As to the words which you quote from the declaration of independence, +Jefferson, the draftsman, doubtless, meant them to include the African; +but the majority of the congress making it, and the American people +actually ratifying it, almost unanimously held that the African was not +enough of man to come within the words. + +A Roman law parallel aptly illustrates. In the Institutes it is said that +slavery is contrary to the law of nature, for under this every one is born +free;[19] and again, that slavery was established by the _jus gentium_ +under which a man is made subject to the dominion of another _contra +naturam_, that is, against nature, against _jus naturale_, or the law of +nature.[20] And in the Pandects this is weakly echoed.[21] But the actual +enactment of the _corpus juris civilis_ fortifies slavery as it had been +established all over the world by the _jus gentium_ with these plain +words: "The master has power of life and death over his slave; and +whatever property the slave acquires, he acquires for the master."[22] + +Our forefathers making the declaration of independence, and the Romans of +Justinian's time, sentimentalized in the same words over the natural right +to equality and liberty of all human beings, and also resolutely held on +to their slaves. The solemn assertion that all men are created equal and +of inalienable liberty made by American slaveholders was but a repetition +of what Roman slaveholders had already said; and it is curious that the +fact has not attracted due attention. + +I fancy that my objector now shoots his last bolt. He exclaims that +southerners were incredibly dull and obtuse not to discern that +resistlessly puissant economical, political, moral, and intellectual +forces, not of America only but of the entire world, were leaguing +together against slavery, and therefore they ought to have fled in time +from the coming wrath and evil day. + +A satisfactory reply need not postulate any other than ordinary +intelligence and alertness for the south. Note how people dwell near +overflowing rivers, or a sea of tidal waves, or live volcanoes, or in +earthquake districts, or near a tribe of scalping redskins, where they, +their wives and children, keep merry as the day is long until calamity +comes. The warning of the abolitionists was too late. Suppose we had given +the inhabitants of Herculaneum or Pompeii or St. Pierre timely counsel to +abandon their homes and settle beyond the reach of eruption. How many +would have done it? I knew hundreds of people, and among all of them there +was but one who showed by his actions that he foresaw the early fall of +slavery. That was Mr. Frank L. Upson of Lexington, Georgia, a highly +accomplished and well-informed man. In 1856, I think it was, he sold all +of his slaves, declaring as his reason that he believed if he kept them he +would see them freed without compensation. He was so serious that he +declared this even to his purchasers. They merely laughed, and everybody +else laughed too, to think how green he was to give them the good bargain +that he did. But after the war he enjoyed comfort from the money those +slaves had brought him, when all his neighbors had been plunged into hard +times by emancipation. There may have been others that did like him. There +could not have been many such, for I have never been able to hear of a +single one. + +We did like the rest of mankind do or would have done. We stuck to our +homes and business until the tidal wave washed them away. Yet there are +wise ones who are positive that had we not been far more dull and +unforeseeing than the average we would have understood many years before +the final convulsion that the forces arrayed against slavery were +irresistible, and surrendered it in time to get compensated emancipation. +Look at the monopolists now preying upon the public in every corner of the +land. They are confident that their holdings are impregnable against +democracy coming invincibly against them. Look at the great mass of our +population, shutting the fresh air out of their houses in order to be +comfortably warm, and thereby rearing parents--especially mothers--who +unawares are incessantly developing tuberculosis to destroy themselves and +their children. Some years hence when resumption by government of its +functions now granted to private persons has dispossessed all the +monopolists, and when every dwelling-house is kept perfectly ventilated +and free from infected air, there will be other wise ones to believe that +hindsight is just the same as foresight, and to inveigh against the +monopolists and parents just mentioned for their unwonted stupidity and +improvidence. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +UNAPPEASABLE ANTAGONISM OF FREE LABOR AND SLAVE LABOR, AND THEIR MORTAL +COMBAT OVER THE PUBLIC LANDS + + +Now a brief explanation of the antagonism between free and slave labor. +The expense of his slaves to the farmer is the same whether they are +resting or at work. Sundays, days and even seasons of unfavorable weather, +in long do-nothing intervals succeeding the making and also the gathering +of the crop, they cost him just as much as when he can work them from sun +to sun. But this is not all of his load. The year round he must subsist +the numerous non-workers in the families of his laborers, whether young, +superannuated, or afflicted. Suppose another farmer to be on adjoining +land who can employ laborers just as he wants them, and discharge them as +soon as he has no further use for them. Do you not perceive that this +free-labor farmer can produce far more cheaply than the slave farmer? And +do you not also perceive that if there is a supply of free labor to be had +in a slave country, and it can be got by every farmer _ad libitum_, slaves +must lose their value as property and be driven to the wall? Free labor +was kept out of the south by the repugnance of the white laborer to the +negro. Note also that when the number of slaves had become considerable +their owners would naturally combine to protect the market value of their +property by preventing the coming in of cheaper labor. This was the real +reason why Virginia and Delaware opposed the extension of the African +slave-trade from 1800 to 1808, and the Confederate States' constitution +refused to reopen it. Slavery made some headway in the north. But not +finding there the stimulus of such products as tobacco and cotton, it +could not become so widespread and deep-seated as to sweep out free labor. +The latter under favorable conditions commenced the competition in which +it could not fail to win; and in due time slavery died out in the north. +We especially desire to emphasize the attitude towards extension of +slavery that free labor was bound to take. That it had already ejected +slavery from every other enlightened community will occur to the reader at +once as weighty proof that the two cannot live together.[23] Think of the +free worker's suffrage, and you cannot believe that he could long be +induced to vote for the protection and further spread of a system taking +the bread out of his own mouth, and degrading him by engendering profound +disrespect for his class; and then think of the vast and rapidly growing +numbers of the free laborers of the north, receiving every day great +accessions of foreign immigrants avoiding the south as they would the +plague; think of all these, and you begin to discern what a mighty power +was rising against slavery. + +This has brought us to the place where we can properly treat the +contention for the Territories. Consider their vast area. Remember that +our people have settled thereon in such numbers that thirty-two new States +have been added to the old thirteen, and others still are to be added. +Here for some generations was land for the landless; the full meaning of +which Henry George has made us plainly see. The adventurous and +enterprising of the old States of each section set their faces +thitherward in a constantly swelling stream. Attend to the only material +difference for us between the northerner and the southerner going west. +Each settler wanted a community like his native one. The northerner had +not been trained to manage slave labor and property; he did not like it; +he thought it out of date and vastly inferior to free labor; and he could +not endure to have himself and family live among negroes, repulsive to him +because of unfamiliarity. He had learned from its history in the south +that wherever slavery established itself it superseded all other labor. +Therefore he would none of it in his new home; and he settled in a +non-slave community. Of course the southerner, knowing nothing of free +labor and bred into a love of the slave system, settled among +slaveholders. And so for a generation or two free and slave States were +steadily added to the union in pairs. + +But the unsettled lands were diminishing in area. Its population +multiplying so marvellously, the north felt urgent need for the whole of +these lands. The great majority of settlers going thence into the +Territories were farmers. Note some of the more influential classes left +behind them. The parents, relatives, and friends who wanted them suited in +the west--this was the largest class of all, and it was of prodigious +intellectual, political, and moral potency. Then the manufacturers of +agricultural implements, and of many articles, all of which the +southerners either had their mechanic slaves to make by hand, and of +oldtime fashion, or did without; the millers, and many sorts of wholesale +merchants who had found slave owners poor and the employers of free labor +good customers; and these manufacturers and merchants were greedy for the +new markets which they could get only in free States. + +These are but the merest hints, but they serve somewhat to suggest the +all-powerful motives which at last united the great majority of northern +people, east and west, in intelligent and inveterate opposition to the +further spread of slavery. + +Now look at the southern situation. At the outset, note that his slaves +were the southerner's only laborers, and practically his only property. +And note especially that this property was not only self-supporting, but +it was also the most rapidly self-reproducing that Tom, Dick, and Harry +ever had in all history. A reliable witness tells this: "On my father's +plantation an aged negro woman could call together more than one hundred +of her lineal descendants. I saw this old negro dance at the wedding of +her great-granddaughter."[24] + +Let me repeat that slaves were not only money-making laborers, but also +things of valuable property, which of themselves multiplied as dollars do +at compound interest. Let the northern man unfamiliar with slavery try to +understand this one of its phases by supposing that he has orchards +abundantly yielding a fruit which is in good demand, and that the trees +plant and tend themselves, gather and store the fruit, set out other +orchards, and do all things else necessary to care for the property and +keep it steadily growing. Such trees with their yearly produce and +prodigious increase--each by an easy organic or natural, and not by a +difficult artificial, process, relieving the owner from all but the +slightest attention and labor of superintendence--would soon be the only +ones in their entire zone of production; bringing it about that all other +occupations and property therein would be dependent upon this main and +really only industry. Such orchards would be somewhat like the slaves in +their automatic production and accumulation, but they would be much +inferior as marketable property in many particulars. + +Although the profits of slave-planting were considerable, the greatest +profit of all was what the master thought of and talked of all the day +long,--the natural increase of his slaves, as he called it. His negroes +were far more to him than his land. His planting was the furthest removed +of all from a proper restorative agriculture. Quickly exhausting his new +cleared fields, he looked elsewhere for other virgin soil to wear out. The +number of the slaves in the south was growing fast, and the new lands in +the older slave States were nearly gone. To keep the hens laying the +golden eggs of natural increase, nests must be found for them on the +cotton, sugar, and rice lands of the Territories. In other words, the area +of slave culture must be extended; for whenever there is no land for a +considerable number of our workers, it is evident that we have a surplus +of slaves; and the effect of that will be at the first to lower the market +value of our only property, and then gradually to destroy it. So the +instincts of the southerners whispered in their ears. + +We hope that we now have helped you to an understanding of the active +principles each of free labor and of slave labor; how by reason of them +the interests of north and south in dividing the public domain were in +irreconcilable conflict; and how it was natural that the free States +should band together against, and the slave States band together for, +slavery. Thus the country split into two geographical though not political +sections, the political division which ripened later being as yet only +imminent and inchoate. That these sections had been made by deadly war +between free labor and slave labor is all that we have to say here. The +development went further, as we shall explain in the next chapter--all of +it under the propulsion of the two active principles. They were always the +ultimate and supreme motors. Often they are not to be seen at all. Still +more often what they did was disguised. To read the facts of that time +aright you must always and everywhere look for their work. Do that +patiently, and you will detect every one of the many controversies over +matters affecting an interest of either section as such--whether questions +apparently of national politics, of morals, or religion, in newspapers, +pamphlets, reviews, books, and all the vast contemporary literature, in +the pulpit, on the platform, and in every place and corner of the entire +land where policy and impolicy or right and wrong were mooted--to be but a +part of one or the other of two great complexes of machinery, each geared +to its particular motor and kept going by its mighty push. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +GENESIS, COURSE, AND GOAL OF SOUTHERN NATIONALIZATION + + +Nationalization is the process by which a nation makes itself. The process +may be active for a long while without completion, as we see in the case +of Ireland; it may form a nation, but to be overturned and wiped out, as +the southern confederacy was; or it may find its consummation in such a +powerful one as the United States. The most conspicuous effect of the +process we now have in hand is to make one of many communities. But +sometimes a part breaks off from a nation and sets up and maintains its +independence as a country. Thus a portion of the territory of Mexico was +settled over from our States, and after a while these settlers tore +themselves loose from Mexico and became the nation of Texas. We shall tell +you more fully in another chapter how the separate colonies became +nationalized into the United States, and what we say here of southern +nationalization will illustrate to the reader that important +transformation, to understand which is of especial moment to us in +examining the brothers' war. But we must emphasize the characteristic +feature of the nationalization of the south. I have searched the pages of +history in vain for an example like it. The idiosyncrasy is that the south +was homogeneous in origin, race, language, religion, institutions, and +customs with the north, and yet she developed away from the north into a +separate nation. I have long been accustomed to parallel the case of +Ireland's repulsion from Great Britain, but I always had to admit that +there was dissimilarity in everything except the strong drift towards +independence and the struggle to win it;[25] for the Irish are largely +different from the English in origin, race, language, religion, +institutions, and customs. The more you consider it the more striking +becomes this uniqueness of southern nationalization. Think of it for a +moment. Thirteen adjacent colonies; each a dependency of the same nation; +all settled promiscuously from every part and parcel of one mother +country, and therefore the settlers rapidly becoming in time more like one +another everywhere than the English were who at home were clinging to +their several localities and dialects; governed alike; standing together +against Indians, French, and Spanish, and after a while against the mother +country;--where can you find another instance of so many common ties and +tendencies, all prompting incessantly and mightily to union in a political +whole, which is ever the goal of the nationalizing process. That the +colonies did grow into a political whole is not at all wonderful to the +historical student. The wonder is that after they had done this a number +of them just like the others in the particulars above pointed out, which +fuse adjacent communities into a nation, turn away from the old union and +seek to form one of their own. The southern States all did the same thing +with such practical unanimity that even the foreigner may know that the +same cause was at work in every one of them. Manifestly there was a +nationalizing element in them which was not in the others, and which made +the former homogeneous with one another and heterogeneous to the rest. +And that element which differenced the south from the rest of the union so +greatly that it was, from a time long before either she or the north had +become conscious of it, impelling her irresistibly towards an independent +nationality of her own, all of us natives know was the constructive and +plastic principle of her slave industrial and property system. + +It is not the purpose of the foregoing expatiation to prove to you such a +familiar and well-known fact as that slavery parted north and south and +caused the brothers' war. Its purpose is to arouse you to consider +nationalization, and have you see how it acts according to a will of its +own and not of man, and now and then works out most stupendous results +contrary to all that mortals deem probabilities. You ought to recognize +that the forces which produced the Confederate States were just as +all-powerful and opposeless as those which produced the United States; +that in fact they were exactly the same in kind, that is, the forces of +nationalization. + +To have you see that even at the time of making the federal constitution +the south had grown into a pro-slavery section and was far on the road +towards independence, it is necessary to correct the prevalent opinion +that there was then below Mason and Dixon's line a very widespread and +influential hostility to slavery. The manumission of his slaves by +Washington, the fearless and outspoken opposition to the institution by +Jefferson and some other prominent persons, and certain facts indicating +unfavorable sentiment, have been too hastily accepted by even historians +as demonstrations that the opinion is true. Here are the facts which prove +it to be utterly untrue. In 1784, three years before our epochal +convention assembled, Jefferson, as chairman of an appropriate committee +consisting besides himself of Chase of Maryland and Howell of Rhode +Island, reported to congress a plan for the temporary government of the +West Territory. This region contained not only all the territory that was +subsequently covered by the famous ordinance of 1787, but such a vast deal +more that it was proposed to make seventeen States out of the whole. +Consider this provision of the report, the suggestion and work of +Jefferson: + + "That after the year 1800 of the christian era there shall be neither + slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of said States, otherwise + than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been + convicted to have been personally guilty." + +When the report was taken up by congress, Spaight of North Carolina made a +motion to strike out the provision just quoted, and it was seconded by +Reed of South Carolina. On the vote North Carolina was divided; but all +the other southern States represented, to wit, Maryland, Virginia, and +South Carolina, voted for the motion, the colleagues of Jefferson of +Virginia and those of Chase of Maryland out-voting these two southerners +standing by the provision. All the northern States represented, which were +the then four New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania, voted for +the provision. But as it failed to get the necessary seven States it was +not retained. + +Thus it appears that at the close of the Revolutionary war the interest of +the south in and her attachment to slavery were so great that by her +representatives in congress she appears to be almost unanimous against the +proposal to keep the institution from extending. + +This action of the south shows that both Virginia in ceding that part of +the West Territory which was three years afterwards by the ordinance of +1787 put under Jefferson's provision which had been rejected when it had +been proposed for all the territory, and the south in voting unanimously +for the ordinance, were not actuated by hostility to slavery. The soil of +the territory north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi to which the +ordinance applied probably may have been thought by Virginians unsuited to +tobacco, the then sole crop upon which slave labor could be lucratively +used. Be that as it may, that the southern States in subsequent cessions +made not long afterwards guarded against slavery prohibition must be kept +in mind. When they are, it is proved that always from the time that +Jefferson's provision failed to carry in 1784, as has been told above, the +prevalent sentiment of the southern people overwhelmingly favored slavery. + +Let us illustrate from later times. Writers who claim that the south, +meditating secession, purposed to reopen the African slave-trade, adduce +some relevant evidence which at first flush appears to be very weighty, if +not convincing. They show that A. H. Stephens of Georgia, who afterwards +became vice-president of the confederacy, in 1859 used language indicating +that he thought it vital to the south, in her struggle to extend the area +of slavery, to get more Africans; and they further show similar utterances +made at the time by certain papers and other prominent men of the south. + +But the constitution of the Confederate States, adopted in 1861, contains +this provision: + + "The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign + country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the + United States of America is hereby forbidden, and congress is required + to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same." + +Of course this solemn act unanimously voted for by the members of the +congress, Stephens being one of them, counts incalculably more in weight +to prove that predominant southern sentiment was against reopening the +African slave-trade, than the counter evidence just stated. Likewise all +that Washington, Jefferson, and other of their contemporaries may have +done or said against slavery is outweighed by the contemporary pro-slavery +legislation and measures dictated by the south. It is very probable that +during the time we are now contemplating anti-slavery men were really as +few in the south as union men were after the first blood spilled in the +brothers' war. + +Recall the three compromises between north and south, mentioned above, by +which the union was formed, and you will understand that the fathers were +preaching but to stones when they impugned slavery. And at this point +meditate the language of Madison in the historic convention, which shows +that he saw accurately even then the permanence of slavery, and the +unequivocal geographical division it had made. He was discussing the +apprehension of the small States, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island, +that under the union proposed they would be absorbed by the larger +adjacent States. He affirmed there was no such danger; and that the only +danger arose from the antagonism between the slave and the non-slave +sections. To avert this danger he proposed to arm north and south each +with defensive power against the other by conceding to the former the +superiority it would get in one branch of the federal legislature by +reason of its greater population if the members thereof came in equal +numbers from every State, large or small, and at the same time giving the +south superiority in the other branch by allowing it increased +representation therein for all its slaves counted as free inhabitants. +This prepares you for the language which we now give from the report, and +which we would have you meditate: + + "He [Madison] admitted that every peculiar interest, whether in any + class of citizens, or any description of States, ought to be secured + as far as possible. Wherever there is danger of attack, there ought to + be given a constitutional power of defence. But he contended that the + States were divided into different interests, not by their difference + of size, but by other circumstances; the most material of which + resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of + their having or not having slaves. These causes concurred in forming + the great division of interests in the United States. It did not lie + between the large and small States. It lay between the northern and + southern; and if any defensive power were necessary, it ought to be + mutually given to these two interests. He was so strongly impressed + with this important truth, that he had been casting about in his mind + for some expedient that would answer the purpose. The one which had + occurred was that, instead of proportioning the votes of the States in + both branches to their respective number of inhabitants, computing the + slaves in the ratio of 5 to 3, they should be represented in one + branch according to the number of free inhabitants only; and in the + other according to their whole number, counting the slaves as free. By + this arrangement the southern scale would have the advantage in one + house and the northern in the other." + +Madison meant to say that the great danger of disunion was that--we +emphasize his statement by repeating and italicizing the essential +part--"_the States were divided into different interests ... principally +from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These causes +concurred in forming the great division of interests in the United +States_." + +How truly he expresses the economical antagonism of the southern and +northern States, although he hints nothing of the nationalizing tendency +of the former which was bound in time to show itself as one of "the +effects of their having slaves." + +It seems to me that Mr. Adams overeulogizes the political instinct and +prophecy evinced by Madison at this tune. I cannot see that the latter +does anything more than merely recognize the fact then plain to all. Note +as proof this other passage quoted by Mr. Adams from Madison in the +convention, in which the material words are given by me in italics: "_It +seems now well understood_ that the real difference of interests lies, not +between the large and small, but between the northern and southern +States." + +If the historical expert but duly consider the important facts marshalled +in the foregoing he must find them to be incontrovertible proofs that in +1787, when our fathers were making the federal constitution, and for some +years before, southern nationalization was not simply inchoate, but that +it was growing so rapidly its course could be stopped in but one way; that +is, by the extirpation of slavery, which was both its germ and active +principle. This was before the invention of the gin. After that the lower +south and west quickly added a vast territory to the empire of slavery, +and southern nationalization received throughout its whole domain a new, a +lasting, and a far more powerful impetus. And when the cotton States, as +we call them, had really developed their industry, the southern +confederacy was inevitable. + +The fact of this nationalization is indisputable. When the confederates +organized their government at Montgomery, everybody looking on felt and +said that a new nation was born. Why ignore what is so plain and so +important? Thus Mr. Adams most graphically contrasts the two widely +different northern and southern civilizations which were flourishing side +by side,[26] and with a momentary inadvertence he ascribes national +development only to the civilization north of the Potomac and Ohio, and +treats State sovereignty as anti-national. The fact is that a +nationalization, the end of which was southern independence, had been long +active, as we have perhaps too copiously shown, and the doctrine of State +sovereignty was really nothing but its instrument, nurse, and organ. Every +southern State that invoked State sovereignty and seceded was shortly +afterwards found in the new southern nation. Had that nation prospered, +the doctrine would soon have died a natural death even in the confederacy. +Nationalization is the cardinal fact, the _vis major_, on each side. The +free-labor nationalization of the north, purposing to appropriate and hold +the continent, fashioned a self-preserving weapon of the assumption that +the fathers made by the constitution an indissoluble union; the slave +nationalization of the south, purposing to appropriate and hold that part +of the continent suiting its special staples, assumed that the fathers +preserved State sovereignty intact in the federal union. + +The closer you look the plainer you will see that the United States held +within itself two nationalities so inveterately hostile to each other that +gemination was long imminent before it actually occurred. The hostility +between the statesmen of Virginia and her daughter States and those of the +north, and especially New England,--Jefferson on one side and Hamilton and +Adams on the other,--the party following the former calling itself +republican and that following the latter calling itself federalist, was +really rooted in the hostility of the two nationalities; and a survival of +this hostility is now unpleasantly vigorous between many northern and +southern writers and lecturers, each class claiming too much of the good +in our past history for its own section and ascribing too much of the bad +to the other. As a lady friend, a native of Michigan who has lived in the +south some years, remarked to me not long since, as soon as one going +north crosses the Ohio he feels that he has entered another country; +behind him is a land of corn-pone, biscuit, three cooked meals a day, and +houses tended untidily by darkey servants; before him is a land of bakers' +bread of wheat, where there is hardly more than one warm meal a day, and +the houses are kept as neat as a pin by the mothers and daughters of the +family. Greater public activity of the county while there is hardly any at +all of its subdivisions, the representative system almost everywhere in +the municipalities, no government by town-meeting and no direct +legislation except occasionally, a most crude and feeble rural common +school system, distinguish and characterize the south; buoyant energy of +the township in public affairs, government by town-meeting instead of by +representatives, a common-school system energetically improving, +distinguish and characterize the north. The manners and customs of +southerners are peculiar. To use an expressive cant word, they "gush" more +than northeners. In cars and public meetings they give their seats to +ladies, while northerners do not. Southerners are quick to return a blow +for insulting words, and in the consequent rencounter they are prone to +use deadly weapons; while northerners are generally as averse to personal +violence as were the Greeks and Romans in their palmiest time. The +battle-cry of the confederates was a wild cheering--a fox-hunt yell, as we +called it; that of the union soldiers was huzza! huzza! huzza! From the +beginning to the end, even at Franklin and Bentonville, and at Farmville, +just two days before I was surrendered at Appomattox, the confederates +always, if possible, took the offensive; the union soldiers were like the +sturdy Englishmen, whose tactics from Hastings to Waterloo have generally +been defensive. + +This battle yell, this impetuous charge after charge until the field is +won, marks the fighting of the Americans at King's Mountain--all of them +southerners; and it is another weighty proof of the early coalescence of +the south as a community on its way to independence. + +Many other contrasts could be suggested. Think over the foregoing. They +are the respective effects of two different causes,--a free-labor +nationalization above, and a slave-labor nationalization below, Mason and +Dixon's line. The latter--its origin and course--is the especial subject +of this chapter. I believe that the proofs marshalled above demonstrate to +the fair and unprejudiced reader that southern nationalization commenced +before the making of the federal constitution, and afterwards went +directly on, gathering force and power all the while, until it culminated +in + + "A storm-cradled nation that fell." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AMERICAN NATIONALIZATION, AND HOW IT MADE THE BOND OF UNION STRONGER AND +STRONGER + + +Greece was going down in her contest with Macedon when she gave the world +to come the Achæan league, the first historical example of full-grown +federation. As Freeman says of such a federal government: "Its perfect +form is a late growth of a very high state of political culture."[27] This +historian thus summarizes its essentials: + + "Two requisites seem necessary to constitute federal government in + this its most perfect form. On the one hand, each of the members of + the union must be wholly independent in those matters which concern + each member only. On the other hand, all must be subject to a common + power in those matters which concern the whole body of members + collectively."[28] + +No author has yet shown a better-considered and more accurate appreciation +of the benefits to different communities of federal union. But the +islander could not conceive--even at the centre of the British empire +spread over the world--the advanced phase of Anglo-Saxon federation in +America and Australia, which for want of a better name we may call, using +a grand word of our fathers, continental federation. + +And Americans of every generation have misunderstood the true nature of +our union, and especially how it was made and how it could be unmade. The +fathers were as much mistaken as to the real authorship of the +declaration of independence, the articles of confederation, and the +federal constitution, as Burke and many people of his time were as to the +true causes of the French revolution, or as the brothers were as to those +of their war. In all that the fathers did they were sure that they acted +as agents solely of their respective colonies or States, which they +believed to be independent and sovereign. Therefore they maintained that +the authorship of the three great documents just mentioned was that of the +separate States, when in truth it was that of the union. When the latter, +which had been long forming its rudiments, came into something like +consciousness, it at once spurred our fathers to make the declaration of +independence. The declaration corresponds to the later ordinances of +secession. And this union, gathering strength, led our fathers to make the +old confederation; and its articles and the belonging government are +closely paralleled by the constitution of the Confederate States and its +belonging government. As southern nationalization brought forth the +southern confederacy, so it was American nationalization that caused +secession from England, the declaration of independence, and the +confederation which won the Revolutionary war. To summarize the foregoing: +Southern nationalization evolved the southern union, and American +nationalization evolved the American union. The fathers, with the usual +undiscernment of contemporaries, by a most natural _hysteron proteron_ +conceived the latter union to be the work, product, and result of the +constitution. In the intersectional contention, the south accepted the +mistakes of the fathers and rested her cause upon them, and the north, +instead of correcting them, substituted a huge and glaring mistake of her +own. Advocating the maintenance of the constitution over all the States, +she sought to refute the doctrine of State sovereignty urged by the south +with the arguments of those who had opposed the adoption of the federal +constitution. Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane--we omit the others--argued +that the constitution, if ratified, would really wipe out State lines and +make the central government supreme in authority over the States, and +actually sovereign. Could the people of the thirteen States have been made +to believe this, they would have unanimously rejected the instrument. +Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and many others competent to advise, stood +in solid phalanx on the other side, and the people were convinced by them +that adoption would have no such effect. They decided that the arguments +were not good, and the constitution was ratified. But the discredited +arguments were afterwards, by a very queer psychological process, taken up +by Story, Webster, and a great host, and paraded as unanswerable +refutation of the doctrine of State sovereignty, and demonstration that by +the constitution the United States had acquired absolute supremacy over +the different States.[29] At a later place we will try to show you how +Webster's glory outshines that of every other actor, except Lincoln, in +the great struggle between north and south. But here we must emphasize +how, when supporting the fallacies of Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane, he +met the one real and signal defeat of his life, to which the drubbing he +received from Binney in the Girard College case was a small affair--a +defeat none the less signal because at the time, and long afterwards, it +was and still is crowned as a glorious victory by thousands upon +thousands. + +The force-bill had just been introduced into the senate of the United +States. It provided for the collection of the revenue in defiance of the +nullification ordinance of South Carolina. The next day, January 22, 1833, +Calhoun offered in that body his famous resolutions, embodying his +doctrine of nullification, under which he justified the ordinance just +mentioned. The 16th of the next month, Webster discussed the two cardinal +ones of these resolutions at length. As he summarized them, they affirmed: + + "1. That the political system under which we live, and under which + congress is now assembled, is a compact, to which the people of the + several States, as separate and sovereign communities, are the + parties. + + 2. That these sovereign parties have a right to judge, each for + itself, of any alleged violation of the constitution by congress; and + in case of such violation, to choose, each for itself, its own mode + and measure of redress." + +He had not long before contemplated making an address to the public in +answer to Calhoun's pro-nullification letter to Governor Hamilton in the +form of a letter from himself to Kent; and it cannot be doubted that he +had got himself ready for this; nor can it be doubted that in the +twenty-five days' interim he had not only worked over and adapted the +unused materials of the address mentioned, but he had most diligently made +special preparation for his speech--in short, it may be assumed that he +had bestowed upon the subject of the resolutions the most searching +examination and profound meditation of which, with his superhuman powers, +he was capable. In spite of all his conscientious labors, as I am now +especially concerned to impress upon you, he injured and set back the +cause of the union by defending it with answerable arguments--nay, rather, +with arguments helping the other side. + +At the outset he severely and sternly rebukes two terms of Calhoun's, one +being the use of _constitutional compact_ for _constitution_, and the +other being _the accession of a State to the constitution_. These terms +are utterly impermissible, and are to be scouted. If we accept them, _we +must acquiesce in the monstrous conclusions which the author of the +resolutions draws from them_. That is really what Webster says. Note the +confident positiveness of his pertinent language, some of which we +subjoin: + + "It is easy, quite easy, to see why the honorable gentleman has used + it [constitutional compact] in these resolutions. He cannot open the + book, and look upon our written frame of government, without seeing + that it is called a _constitution_. This may well be appalling to him. + It threatens his whole doctrine of compact, and its darling + derivatives, nullification and secession, with instant confutation. + Because, if he admits our instrument of government to be a + _constitution_, then, for that very reason, it is not a compact + between sovereigns; a constitution of government and a compact between + sovereign powers being things essentially unlike in their very + natures, and incapable of ever being the same. + + We know no more of a constitutional compact between sovereign powers + than we know of a _constitutional_ indenture of copartnership, a + _constitutional_ bill of exchange. But we know what the _constitution_ + is; we know what the bond of our union and the security of our + liberties is; and we mean to maintain and to defend it, in its plain + sense and unsophisticated meaning." + +This is enough of the exorcism of that malignant spirit, constitutional +compact. Now as to the other malignant spirit. Webster says: + + "The first resolution declares that the people of the several States + '_acceded_' to the constitution, or to the constitutional compact, as + it is called. This word 'accede,' not found either in the constitution + itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of the States, has + been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without a well-considered + purpose. + + The natural converse of _accession_ is _secession_; and, therefore, + when it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the union, + it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. _If in + adopting the constitution, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, + nothing would seem necessary to break it up, but to secede from the + same compact._ But the term is wholly out of place.... The people of + the United States have used no such form of expression in establishing + the present government. They do not say that they _accede_ to a + league, but they declare that they _ordain and establish_ a + constitution. Such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in + all the States, without exception, the language used by their + conventions was, that they '_ratified_ the constitution;' some of them + employing the additional words 'assented to' and 'adopted,' but all of + them 'ratifying.'" + +Note that I have italicized in the quotation certain admissions of +Webster, which, in case his premises should be disproved, concede the +cause to his adversary. And we will now tell you how Calhoun did disprove +those premises. + +He showed that Webster himself had in a senate speech called the +constitution a _constitutional compact_; and that President Washington, in +his official announcement to congress, described North Carolina as +_acceding_ to the union by the ratification she had at last made of the +constitution. + +As to these two points Calhoun further sustained himself with +unquestionable authority and also argument inconfutable by one who, like +Webster, did not find the true _ratio decidendi_, that is, the effect of +evolution to bring forth the nation. + +The rest of Calhoun's answer will be considered a little later. But what +of it has already been given covers the essentials of the controversy. In +supporting his proposition that the States were sovereign when they made +the constitution, and kept their entire sovereignty intact afterwards, he +was too strong for his antagonist. And yet had his knowledge of the facts +been fuller, how much better he could have done. He could have quoted from +all the great men who made the constitution and secured its ratification +language, in which _accede_ is used again and again in the same sense as +it is in his resolutions. + +Likewise, he could have quoted language in which they designated the +constitution as a compact or something synonymous. Madison--to mention +only one of many instances--advocating ratification in the Virginia +convention, called the constitution "a government of _a federal nature_, +consisting of _many coequal sovereignties_." What an effective _argumentum +ad hominem_ could Calhoun have found in the provision of the constitution +of the State of Webster, to wit: that Massachusetts is free, sovereign, +and independent, retaining every power which she has not expressly +delegated to the United States.[30] + +Webster also made blunders in construing the context of the constitution, +as well as the clauses specially involved, in contrasting the constitution +with the articles of confederation, and in his reading of our +constitutional history. These blunders were exhaustively, ably, +relentlessly exposed. + +We who are trained either in forensic or parliamentary debate well know +the conquering and demolishing reply. Although, as we have just shown, +Calhoun's reply could have been far more effective than it really was, +still its success and triumph were so evident that when he closed, John +Randolph, who had heard it, wanted a hat obstructing his sight removed, so +that, as he said, he might see "Webster die, muscle by muscle." + +Master the question at issue, and read the two speeches as impartially as +you strive to read the discussion of Æschines and Demosthenes, and if you +are qualified to judge of debate between intellectual giants you must +admit that Webster was driven from every inch of ground chosen by him as +his very strongest, and which he confidently believed that he could hold +against the world. + +Yet the union men, who were hosts in the north and numerous even in the +south at that time, accepted Webster's speech as the bible of their +political faith, and as its reward ennobled him with the pre-eminent title +of Expounder of the Constitution. They ignored, or they never learned of, +the pulverizing refutation. But the State-rights men and the south +generally understood. Webster also understood. He did not make any real +rejoinder. And his subsequent utterances are in harmony with the +State-rights doctrine to which Calhoun seems to have converted him.[31] I +fancy that with that rare humor which was one of his shining gifts, he +dubbed himself in his secret meditations, "Expounder because not +expounding." Later I shall tell you how Webster builded better than he +knew, and that there was, after all, in the speech that which fully +justifies the worship it received from the union men. + +But there is something else pertinent to be learned here. That the north +generally found out only what Webster said in the debate for his side, and +never even heard of what was said on the other, and that the south became +at once familiar with both speeches, proves that each section had already +formed its own belonging and independent public, and that the southern +public kept attentive watch upon all affairs of fact or opinion +interesting the other, while the northern public knew hardly anything at +all of the south. A large percentage of the southern leaders had studied +in northern schools and colleges. In this and many other ways they had +been instructed as to the north. Such instruction contributed very greatly +to southern supremacy in the federal government until the election of +Lincoln. We can now see that the powers in charge, as a part of their +work, made the great northern public, which, as Lincoln observed, was to +be the savior of the union, stop its ears to all anti-union sentiments or +arguments. How else can you understand it that the ante-bellum notices of +Webster, the memoir by Everett, the different utterances of Choate, and +many, many other sketches, are so utterly dumb as to Calhoun's great +reply? And is not the same dumbness of Curtis, Von Holst, and McMaster, +writing after the war, due to the survival in the north of the old +constraint? a constraint so powerful that, while Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in +1883, did concede just a little to Calhoun, he stopped far short of the +full justice that I believe he would now render were he to traverse the +ground again. + +We must now go beyond what we have already hinted, and show you plainly +how both the union men and the State-rights men assumed untenable +premises, and how the south, maintaining a cause foredoomed, vanquished in +the forum of discussion her adversary, maintaining the side which fate had +decreed must win. In no other way can the reader be better made to +understand the incalculable potency of the forces which preserved the +American union after its orators and advocates had all been discomfited; +and in no other way can he better learn what principles are to be invoked +if he would grasp the real essence of the union. + +We emphasize the material and cardinal mistake of the union men, thus +phrased by Webster in the speech we have discussed: "Whether the +constitution be a compact between States in their sovereign capacities, is +a question which must be mainly argued from what is contained in the +instrument itself." + +This was to abandon inexpugnable ground. That ground was the great body of +pertinent facts, known to all, which begun the making of the union before +the declaration of independence, and which, from that time on to the very +hour that Webster was speaking, had been making the union stronger and +more perfect. He ought to have contended that a nation grows; that it +cannot be made, or be at all modified, even by a constitution. Any +constitution is its creature, not its creator. + +How weak he was when he invoked construction of the federal constitution +as the main umpire. That constitution had been always construed against +him. The three departments of the federal government had each uniformly +treated it as a compact between sovereign States; and they kept this up +until the brothers' war broke out. Mr. Stephens, in his great +compilation,[32] demonstrates this unanswerably. But the State-rights men +had a still greater strength than even this, if the question be conceded +to be one of construction. As the author of the Republic of Republics +shows by a mountain of proofs, the illustrious draftsmen of the +constitution and their contemporaries who finally got the constitution +adopted--all the people, high and low, who favored the cause--declared at +the time that the sovereignty of the States would remain unimpaired after +adoption.[33] + +To sum up, the generation that drafted and adopted the constitution, and +all the succeeding ones who had lived under it, agreed that the States +were sovereign. + +How could even Webster talk these facts out of existence? At every stage +of the intersectional debate the cause of the south supporting State +sovereignty became stronger. And there were great hosts at the north who +understood the record as the south did; and, while they hoped and prayed +that separation would never come, they conscientiously conceded State +sovereignty to the full. It seems to me to be the fact that, although the +federal soldiers cherished deep love for the union, a very great majority +of the more intelligent among them did not long keep at its height the +emotion excited by the attack on Fort Sumter, and soon settled back into +their former creed, holding, because of the reasons summarized above, the +States to be sovereign; and while they thought it supreme folly in the +south to set up the confederacy, they still believed that to do so was +but the exercise of an indubitable right of the States creating it. From +what I saw at the time, and the many proofs that appeared to accumulate +upon me afterwards, this explains the unprecedented panic with which the +federal army abandoned the field at the First Manassas. Consider just a +moment. The federal army, giving the confederates a complete surprise, +turns their position and drives them back in rout. The confederates make +an unexpected stand, fight for some hours, and at last, assuming the +offensive, win the field. The troops on each side practically all raw +volunteers, very much alike in race and character. But the federals had +much more than two to one engaged, as is demonstrated by the fact that the +confederates had only twenty-five regiments of infantry in action, and +they took prisoners from fifty-five. The more one who, like me, observed +much of the war, thinks it over, the more clearly he sees that the flight +from Manassas is not to be explained because of the superior courage and +stamina of the southern soldiers. I believe that the union men, observing +how brave and death-defying their brothers on the other side were in +facing disaster that seemed irretrievable and odds irresistible, at last +became convinced that these brothers, defending home and firesides, were +right, and that they themselves, invading an inviolably sovereign State, +were heinously wrong; and thus awakened conscience made cowards of all +these gallant men. And it is thoroughly established, I believe, that +everywhere in the first engagements of the war, the southern volunteers, +if they were commanded by a fighter, showed far more spirit and stomach +than their adversaries. In the amicable meetings, often occurring upon the +picket line, when we confederates would with good humor ask the union men +how it was that we won so many fights, it was a stereotyped reply of the +latter, "Why, you are fighting for your country and we only for $13 a +month." It was but natural that, by reason of what has been told in the +foregoing, the south unanimously, and a very large number at the north, +should believe any State could under its reserved powers rightfully secede +from the union whenever and for whatever cause it pleased. + +We see now what the angry brothers did not see. The absolute sovereignty +of the States, and the right of secession both _de facto_ and _de jure_ +could have been conceded, and at the same time the war for the union +justified. The unionists could well have said to the south: + + "Your independence is too great a menace to our interests to be + tolerated, and the high duty of self-defence commands that we resist + to the death. The _status quo_ is better for us all. Now that you have + set up for yourself, we must tell you, sadly but firmly, that if you + do not come back voluntarily, we must resort to coercion,--not under + the constitution, for you have thrown that off, but under the law of + nations to which you have just subjected yourself." + +The man who of all southerners has given State sovereignty its most +learned and able defence--Sage, the author of "The Republic of +Republics"--says: "To coerce a state is unconstitutional; but it is +equally true that the precedent of coercing states is established, and +that it is defensible under the law of nations."[34] + +To have received the confederate commissioners as representing an +independent nation, and made demand that the seceding States return to the +union, would have been a far stronger theory than that on which the war +was avowedly waged; for it would have taken from the south that +superiority in the argument which had given her great prestige in Europe, +and even in the north. And lastly, under the law of nations, the federal +government, after coercing the seceding States back, would have had--even +according to the theory of State rights as maintained in the +south--perfectly legitimate power to abolish slavery. The statement that +emancipation was "sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by +the constitution, upon military necessity," protests so much that one sees +that the highly conscientious man hesitated and doubted. And well may he +have doubted; for what warrant can be found in the constitution for +destroying that property which it solemnly engaged to defend and protect +as a condition precedent of its adoption?--that is, if the southern States +were still in the union and under the constitution, as was claimed by all +who justified the proclamation? But if the southern States had gone out of +the union, they had revoked their ratification and had thrown away all the +protection of slavery given by the constitution; and while the +constitution did not direct how the federal government should act in the +matter, the law of nations gave full and ample directions. Its authority +was not stinted nor hampered by any rights recognized in the constitution +as reserved to the States under it. The subsequent amendment, imposed as a +condition of reconstruction, shows that the people of the north seriously +questioned if slavery had been abolished by the proclamation and its +enforcement by the union armies. + +But this, strong as it was, would not have been the true theory. The true +theory--the real fact--is that at the outbreak of the brothers' war, and +long before, the States had become more closely connected than the +Siamese Twins,--indissolubly united as integral parts of the same +organism, like the different trunks of the Banyan tree; and while the +southern nationalization was opposing the union forces with might and +main, it was really but an excrescence, with roots far more shallow than +those of the American union--a parasite like the mistletoe, growing upon +the American body politic, fated to die of itself if not destroyed by its +fell foe. For, as we have explained, the sole motor of this southern +nationalization--slavery--could no more maintain itself permanently +against free labor than the handloom could stand against the steam-loom, +or the draft-horse can much longer compete with artificial traction power. + +Now let us rapidly set in array the stronger supports of this true theory. +We should start with the impulse to combine which adjacency always gives +to communities of the same origin; and external compression and joint +interest to those of diverse origin, as we see in the case of the Swiss. +How clearly does our great American sociologist trace the effect of this +impulse in ancient society. First a body of consanguinei grows into a +gens; after a while, neighboring gentes of the same stock-language form a +tribe; then neighboring tribes, as some of the Iroquois and Aztecs, form a +confederacy. At this point the development of the American Indians was +arrested by the coming of the whites. "A coalescence of tribes into a +nation had not occurred in any case in any part of America," says the +great authority.[35] But we can easily understand what would have occurred +had the Indians been left to themselves. They would have passed out of the +nomadic state into settlements of fixed abodes, local and geographical +political divisions evolving from the old gentes and tribes, the +contiguous ones often uniting. History furnishes many examples of +neighboring communities coalescing into nations. One of the most +remarkable of all is the environment which has constrained peoples of four +different languages to coalesce into the little Swiss nation. Turning away +from prehistoric times and also ancient history, let the student +re-enforce the case of the Swiss, just alluded to, with the modern +nation-making in Italy and Germany. These few of the many instances which +can be given show how and what sorts of adjacent communities are prone to +co-operate or combine for a common purpose, and how such combination +develops at last an irresistible proneness to national union. Drops of +liquid in proximity to one another on a plane may long maintain each their +independent forms; but bring them into actual contact, and presto! all the +globules have coalesced into a single mass. After the belonging part of +the evolutionary science of sociology has been fully developed--which time +does not seem very far off--the subject will receive adequate +illustration. Then all of us will understand that, many years before +Alamance and Lexington, the colonies, in their defence of themselves +against the Indians and the French, in their intercommunication over +innumerable matters of joint interest, in the beneficent example of the +Iroquois confederacy and the advice of our fathers by the Iroquois, as +early as 1755, to form one of the colonies similar to their own,[36] and +in many other things that can be suggested, were steadily becoming one +people, and more and more predisposed to political union. We shall also +see, much more clearly than we do yet, that the Revolutionary war, by +keeping them some years under a general government, imparted new and +powerful impetus to the nationalizing forces, which were working none the +less surely because unobserved. Our lesson will be completely learned +when we recognize that about the time the war with the mother country +commenced the globules, that is, the separate colonies, had become +actually a quasi-political whole,--a stage of evolution so near to that of +full nationality that it is hard to distinguish the two. It seems to me +that the nation had come at least into rudimentary existence when the +declaration of independence was made. Surely from that time on something +wondrously like a _de facto_ national union of the old colonies grew +rapidly, and became stronger and stronger; and this to me is the +sufficient and only explanation of the seismic popular upheaval that +displaced the weaker government under the articles of confederation with +one endowed by the federal constitution with ample powers to administer +the affairs of the nation now beginning to stir with consciousness. And +yet so blind was everybody that in 1787 the delegates and their +constituents all believed the convention to be the organ of the States, +when in truth it was the organ of the new American nation. Prompted by a +self-preserving instinct, this nationality deftly kept itself hid. Had it +been disclosed, the federal constitution could not have been adopted; and +had a suspicion of it come a few years later, there would have been +successful secession. And so each State dreamed on its sweet dream of +dominion until the call to the stars and stripes rang through the north. +Then its people began darkly and dimly to discern the nationalization +which had united the States and become a hoop of adamant to hold the union +forever stanch. Of course to the south nothing appeared but the State +sovereignty of the fathers. Her illuded sight was far clearer and more +confident than the true vision of the north, and she magnified State +sovereignty which she thought she saw, and damned the American +nationality preached by the north as anti-State-rights, when at that very +time a nationality of her own had really put all the southern States at +its feet. It mattered not for the thick perception of the north and the +optical illusion of the south, the American nation was now full grown; and +by the result of the brothers' war it made good its claim to sovereignty. + +The historian must accurately gauge the effect wrought by the wonderfully +successful career of the United States under the federal constitution in +its first years. War with France imminent, Pinckney's winged word, +"Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute," the sword buckled on +again by the father of his country--and peace; the extension of our domain +from the Mississippi to the Pacific by the Louisiana purchase; the +victories won against the men who used to say scornfully that our fathers +could not stand the bayonet, and the still more surprising victories won +with an improvised navy against the mistress of the seas, in the war of +1812; the brilliant operations of Decatur against Algiers; the military +power of the Indians decisively and permanently outclassed, until soon our +women and children on the border were practically secure against the +tomahawk and scalping knife; and perhaps above all the world-wide +spaciousness, as it were, and the inexpressibly greater dignity and +splendor of the public arena, as compared with that of any single colony +or State, which was opened at once to every ambitious spirit--these are +some, only, of the feats and achievements which gave the United States +unquestioned authority at home and incomparable prestige around the world. +And on and on the American nation rushed, from one stage of growth into +and through another, until the result was that for some years before +secession State sovereignty, for all of the high airs it gave itself and +the imposing show of respect it extorted, had become merely a survival. + +Thus did the American nation form, from a number of different neighboring, +cognate, and very closely-akin communities, under that complex of the +forces of growth and those of combination which imperceptibly and +resistlessly steers the social organism along the entire track of its +evolution. The nationalizing leaven was hidden by the powers in charge of +our national destiny in the colonial meal, and it had in time so +completely leavened the whole lump that Rhode Island, and North Carolina, +trying hard to stay out, and Texas desporting joyfully and proudly under +the lone star in her golden independence, could not break the invisible +leading strings, which pulled all three into the United States. Note how +Oregon and California, though largely settled from the south yet being +without slavery, in their extreme remoteness from the brothers' war +adhered to the union cause. And had the southern confederacy triumphed in +the war, the States in it would have staid out of the federal union only +the few years necessary for slavery to run its course. When there was no +more virgin soil for cotton, the southern nation, which was merely a +growth upon the American nation, would have collapsed of itself, as did +the State of Frankland; and that continental brotherhood which brought in +Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Texas, would have commandingly +reasserted itself. The more you contemplate the facts, the more it is seen +that this continental brotherhood was and is the most vigorous tap-root +and stock of nationality in all history. The providence which at first +gradually and surely mixed the colonies into one people, then into a +feeble and infirm political whole, rapidly hardening in consistency, and +lastly into an indissoluble union, and which was from the beginning more +and more developing us into a nation--this overruling evolution, and not +constitution or lawmaking organs, has been, is, and always will be the +ultimate and supreme authority, the opposeless lawgiver, the resistlessly +self-executing higher law in America, creating, altering, modifying or +abolishing man-made constitutions, laws, ordinances, and statutes, as +suits its own true democratic purpose, often inscrutable to +contemporaries. + +The foregoing is the substance of the argument that must now take the +place of that made by Webster and the unionists after him, which was +convincingly confuted by the south. It proves the complete and immaculate +justice of the war for the union. + +This view differs from the other, which we admitted above to be very +strong, mainly in refusing to concede that a State is sovereign and can +legitimately secede at will. But under it, it ought to be conceded that +the States in the southern confederacy were for the time actually out of +the American union by revolution. It is not possible to say they were in +rebellion; that is an offence of individuals standing by an authority +hastily improvised and manifestly sham. It was not by the action of +individuals, but it was by the action of States, veritable political +entities and quasi sovereigns, that the confederacy was organized. When +these States were coerced back, they could not invoke the protection to +their slaves given in a constitution which they had solemnly repudiated. +The United States could therefore deal with them as it had with the +Territories from which it excluded slavery. While of course adequate +protection of the freedmen against their former masters ought to have been +provided, it should at the same time have been made clear to the world +that slavery was abolished solely because events had demonstrated it to be +the only root and cause of dismemberment of the union. Such a familiar +example as the often-exercised power of a municipality to blow up a house, +without compensation therefor, to stop the progress of conflagration, and +many other seemingly arbitrary acts done by society in its +self-preservation, would have occurred to conscientious people +contemplating. And it would have been a long flight in morals above the +proclamation, merely to have justified emancipation on the ground that the +existence of slavery was a serious menace to the life of the nation. + +One's logic may be often wrong, and yet his proposition has been rightly +given him by an instinct, as we so often see in the case of good women. O +this subliminal self of ours, how it bends us hither and thither, as the +solid hemisphere does the little human figure upon it, posing with a +seeming will of his own! Hence, and not from our argument-making faculty, +come not only our own most important principles of action, but also our +very strongest persuasive influence. And it is the subconscious mental +forces moving great masses of men and women all the same way--that is, the +national instincts--which are the all-conquering powers that the apostle +of a good cause arouses and sets in array. And while it is true that the +mere logic of Webster's anti-nullification speech is puerile, the after +world will more and more couple that speech with the reply to Hayne, and +keep the two at the top--above every effort of all other orators. In the +reply to Hayne, in 1830, he had magnified the union in a passage which +ever since has deservedly led all selections for American speech books. +And now, in 1833, when dismemberment actually makes menace of its ugly +self, the great wizard of speech that takes consciences and hearts +captive,[37] proclaimed to his countrymen that there could be no such +thing as lawful secession or nullification. The earnestness and the +emphasis with which he said this were supreme merits of the speech. And +thenceforth it was enough to the hosts of the north to remember that the +American, towering like a mountain above them all, had in his high place +solemnly declared that secession is necessarily revolution. And, to one +who is familiar with the hypnotizing effect of subconscious national +suggestion it is not strange that they scouted Calhoun's demolishing +reply, and treasured Webster's false logic as supreme and perfect +exposition of the constitution. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS + + +For a long while opposition to slavery was moderate and not unreasoning. +The first actual quarrel over it between the sections was when Missouri +applied for admission to the union in 1818. That was settled by the famous +compromise of 1820. The most of the anti-slavery men of that day stood +only against the extension of slavery. While many a one of them believed +his conviction was dictated, independently and entirely, by his +conscience, it was in fact given him because of his relation to the +free-labor nationalization claiming the public lands for itself. That was +also true of the great mass of northerners opposed to slavery down to the +very beginning of the war. They wanted the Territories for themselves. The +contest between the United States and England for Oregon is a parallel +case. The American felt, if this territory falls to the United States, I +and my children and children's children can get cheap land somewhere in +it; but if it falls to England, I and they are forever shut out. In the +intersectional contest over the public lands northerners felt that they +would be practically excluded from any part of them into which slavery was +carried; for infinitely preferring, as they did, the free-labor system, to +which they had been bred, to the slavery system, of which they had no +experience, and against which they were prejudiced, they would never +voluntarily settle where it obtained. This, the prevalent view, brought +about the compromise of 1820, by which all the territory north of 36° 30' +was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the north, not because its +inhabitants were burning with zeal to repress the spread of what they +thought to be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they purposed +thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their own children. + +So much for what we have called the first quarrel between the sections +over slavery. Let us now glance at the stages following until the +root-and-branch abolitionist shows himself. + +For some twenty years after the Missouri compromise was made there was +hardly any public agitation at all as to slavery. In 1840 an abolition +ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much +smaller than had been currently predicted. It is not until January, 1836, +when, upon Calhoun's motion in the senate of the United States to reject +two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, +there ensued a prolonged and passionate discussion, that we can say that +the old free-soil practically begins to pass into an abolition movement. +Here moral attack upon slavery seriously begins. If we think but a moment +we will understand it too well to explain it as an arousal of conscience, +which ought to have been aroused many years before if slavery was indeed +the terrible sin the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. The +agitation of 1830, the year that Webster replied to Hayne, and that of +1833, when he and Calhoun crossed swords over nullification, mark a great +advance of intersectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the +Missouri compromise. We can see now as we look back what contemporaries +could not see, that is, that the two were _avant couriers_ of the southern +confederacy. But some of the contemporaries did discern the fact--not +consciously, but instinctively. With these there was, in subliminal +ratiocination, a process somewhat as follows: The southern confederacy, if +it does come, will disrupt the union, which assures, while it lasts, +immunity of our country from frequent wars upon its own soil, and from the +heavy load of great armies kept up even in the intervals of peace. This +disruption will establish in America all the evil conditions of Europe +from which our fathers fled hither. Slavery is the _vis matrix_, the sole +developing force, the life of this menaced confederacy. Let us abolish +slavery, and preserve the union. + +How accurately the common instincts--especially those protecting our +private interests--discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes +more of a marvel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally right, +the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter threatens great injury, they +excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. How else +can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ and +worshipping the same God, were at last divided, the northern churches +impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. Dwell upon this +fact until you interpret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and +the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the +other the most conscientious and best of the south unanimous that it is +morally right. Then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists, +and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire +people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that +of the other did the same things against it. When you do this, you must +admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are +members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions. + +The economic interest of the north was against slavery. It was her +interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free +workers. It was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there +be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put +thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army. +On the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so +great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to +preserve slavery, if that should be necessary. Each side feels deeply and +more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of +production and subsistence--the property to which of all it believes its +title most indefeasible. It required some years to bring affairs to this +point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the +root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course +all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of +the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to +masquerade as characters widely different from the true. When these +servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not +that of their masters, how the directors must smile. They have guaranteed +animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a +supreme momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically recognizes +in his _dux vitæ dia voluptas_. The passion of anger is the converse of +that of love. When consent cannot settle some great controversy that must +be settled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation +of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. In +the ripeness of time the Ransy Sniffleses[38] come forth. They say and do +everything possible to bring on the impending mortal combat. They never +grasp the essence of the contention, for it is their mission to arouse +feeling, passion, anger. They are resistlessly--most conscientiously and +honestly--impelled to make the other side appear detestable and +insultingly offensive in heinous wrong-doing. The most zealous and the +most influential of the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they +vaulted into the arena. Garrison was twenty-six when he started the +"Liberator" in 1831, Wendell Phillips was some six years younger than +Garrison, and he was about twenty-six when he made his début with a +powerful impromptu in Boston, in 1837. Whittier was two years younger than +Garrison, and he was early a co-worker in the "Liberator." It is +demonstrated by everything they said that they were entirely ignorant of +the south and its people, of the average condition of the slave in the +south, and especially of the negro's grade of humanity. They never studied +and investigated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to +ascertain the truth. They assumed the facts to be as it suited their +purposes, given them by the directors, of exciting hatred of their +opponents,--and it added greatly to their efficiency that they fully +believed their assumptions. Knowing really nothing of the negro except +that he was a man, it was natural for them to believe, as they did, that +the typical, average negro slave of the south was in all the essentials of +good citizenship just such a human being as the typical, average white. If +they did not go quite so far, they surely claimed for him something so +near to it that it is practically the same. We shall, as suggested above, +treat this pernicious error more fully in later chapters. + +The root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever since the +emancipation proclamation became effective that the overthrow of slavery +was brought about by them; and thousands upon thousands believing it sing +them hosannas. But it is an undeniable fact that the superior power of +free labor in its irreconcilable conflict with slavery was bound to do in +America what it had done everywhere else. And without the abolitionist at +all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were few even if there had +been no secession, and very few if secession had triumphed. For free +labor--its fell and implacable foe--was on the outside steadily and surely +encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the extension that was a +condition of its life; and within its ring fence necessarily it was +rapidly exhausting all of its resources. It was the mighty counteraction +of free labor that crushed slavery. The root-and-branch abolitionist +thrown up by this movement which had set forward irresistibly, long before +he was ever heard of, and who believed that he started it and was guiding +it, strikingly examples the proverb + + "Er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben." + +I believe that future history will give him credit only for having a +little hastened forward the inevitable. + +Another abolition misstatement ought to be corrected. Sumner fulminated +against what he called the oligarchs of slavery. And it was common at the +north to speak of southern aristocracy and southern aristocratic +institutions. Of course the slaves had no political privileges, no more +than they had in Athens, which has always been deemed the most genuine +republic ever known. There was in the old south no oligarch, or anything +like him, unless you choose to call such a man as Calhoun an oligarch, +whose influence over his State was entirely from the good opinion and +unexampled confidence of the free citizens of all classes, which he had +won. There was no aristocracy, except such a natural one as can be found +in every one of our States, as is illustrated by the Adamses in +Massachusetts, the Lees in Virginia, and the Cobbs in Georgia. In those +days property was much more equally distributed than now; and it was easy +for the energetic and saving poor young man, of the humblest origin, to +make his way up. In all my day there was universal suffrage, and it was +political death to propose any modification. I explained nearly thirty +years ago how southern conditions prevented the development of anything +like the beneficent New England town-meeting system.[39] But for all of +that the entire spirit of southern society was democratic in the extreme, +far more so than it is now with the nominating machinery everywhere in the +south except South Carolina, controlled by corporation oligarchs. When the +root-and-branch abolitionist inveighed against oligarchy and aristocracy, +and aristocratic institutions in the south, he was just as mistaken as he +was in denouncing what he asserted to be the guilt in morals of +slaveholding. + +The more I study the abolitionists whom I distinguish as root-and-branch, +the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and more +emotional I find them to be. I have just mentioned some of their +misrepresentations; and in later chapters I shall dwell upon their +cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the human scale. I have +not sufficient space for more of these things. I will give just one +example of their wildness. They put in circulation that Toombs had said he +expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker +Hill monument,--a slander which they persisted in renewing after he had +solemnly and publicly denied it.[40] In their excited imaginations they +were sure that the south was cherishing a scheme by which, under the help +of the court that made the Dred Scott decision, slavery was to be +established and protected by law everywhere in the north. The only +parallel I can think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some +poor souls in the Confederate ranks in front of Richmond in 1862, who, +when they learned that Jackson had got in the enemy's rear, expressed +lively fears that he was going to drive McClellan's army over them. + +And the fire-eaters,--how they got important facts wrong! They habitually +said that the northern masses were too untruthful and dishonest for us of +the south to stay in the partnership without disgrace and loss of +self-respect. I heard of one who was wont gravely to assert that +prostitutes and ice were all that the south was dependent upon the north +for; and these were only luxuries which it was better to do without. +Perhaps the height of falsification by the hotspurs was the assertion, +made everywhere again and again, that northerners were such cowards that, +even if they were spurred into a war in defence of the union, any one +average southerner would prove an overmatch for any five of them. + +It is now high time that each section turn resolutely away from these +fanatics, and the literature which they have made or informed, to seek +right instruction as to slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of +the masses on each side and of their leaders, and all other belonging +details, in the real facts. Especially must we understand the internecine +duel between free labor and slavery, and what was the purpose of the +directors of evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the +fire-eater upon the stage. When we grasp that purpose clearly, how +pretentious do we understand their claims and self-laudation to be, and +how clearly we see that they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that +became so vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the little +fice egging on the big dogs to do their fighting. I have still vivid +recollections of hearing in amicable interviews of hostile pickets these +characters denounced for keeping out of the war which, as was then said, +they had caused,--the fanatical abolitionists denounced by the federals, +the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the blue cockade wearers, by the +confederates. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +CALHOUN + + +After John Caldwell Calhoun, who was born March 18, 1782, the birth-year +of Webster, had become large enough to go to the field, the most of his +time until he was eighteen was spent in work on the plantation. His father +had never had but six months' schooling. There were no schools in that +region except a few "old field" ones, where the three R's only were +taught. To one of these John went for a few months. The boy learned to +read, and manifestly he had acquired some habit of reading. In his +thirteenth year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, Moses +Waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. He found a circulating library +in the house. This was his first access to books. He read old Rollin, and +he probably moused about in Robertson's History of America and Life of +Charles V, and Voltaire's Charles XII. Having laid Rollin aside, he +assailed Locke's famous Essay; but when he got to the chapter on Infinity +his health had become bad, doubtless due to his change from active to +sedentary habits and from physical to mental activity. So he was taken +back to his work at home. His father had died in the meanwhile, and his +mother, who had great business talent, taught him, as we are told, "how to +administer the affairs of a plantation."[41] It will appear in the sequel +that he was superbly trained.[42] When he attained the age of eighteen the +family had become convinced that he ought to be got ready for a +profession. John, knowing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and +having resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this. But the +family persisted. This doubtless influenced him to turn the subject +carefully over in his mind; and the decision which he made showed an +understanding of his own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience +of his future which, when his youth, small opportunity of observation, and +want of schooling are remembered, are very wonderful. He gave this family, +who were not well-to-do, to understand he would not accept a limited and +makeshift education. Naturally they asked what sort did he mean, and he +answered, "The best school, college, and legal education to be had in the +United States."[43] Then they asked, How long did he think all this would +take, and he promptly answered seven years. To the average reader it seems +that the time necessary to carry this unschooled lad through the course he +proposed had been egregiously underestimated by him; but to the family, as +they thought of the appertaining annual expenses, it must have looked very +long. They had to give in. That irrefragable influence over his people +which showed itself as soon as he came upon the public stage begins here. +Some one long afterwards said of him, that if he could but talk with every +man he would always have the whole United States on his side. It is more +than probable that in the five years after he had left Waddell's school he +had, in plantation management and other interests of the family, +convinced them that he always acted or advised wisely. Another comment is +in place here. Study of the record of his early life convinces you that +very soon after, if not before, the commencement of his legal studies, he +decided to make law only a stepping-stone by which to enter public life +and also acquire the means to plant. I cannot help inferring that this +was--somewhat vaguely it may be--his intention already formed when he +dictated terms to the family as just told. It is not at all impossible +that to him who afterwards astonished the world by the sureness of his +prophecy there had even then been revealed the career awaiting; and so he +resolved to get ready for college in two years, and pass the rest of the +seven where, besides competent instructors, he would have cultivated +society, libraries, and the best of opportunities to qualify himself for +public life. Be our conjecture true or not, in two years after he had +opened his Latin grammar he entered the junior class at Yale, and two +years later he graduated with credit. After reading law in an office he +took a year's course at the Litchfield law school in Connecticut, and then +he went into an office again for a while. Some time in June, 1807, he hung +out his shingle at Abbeville Court-house, as it was called up to the time +of reconstruction. A few days afterwards in that month occurred the attack +on the Chesapeake, and when the news came it caused a public meeting in +the town. Some good report of him must have been bruited about in the +community in advance of his coming. It is almost certain that his +education had greatly developed those powers of conversation mentioned +above, and that many listeners had greatly approved his views of the +outrage, and the patriotic indignation he uttered over it. It is not +stretching probability too far to assert that, young as he was, he was by +far the ablest man that could be found in the locality to advise upon the +burning question which had arisen so suddenly. He was selected to draft +appropriate resolutions and present them. There is no record of these or +of his speech. But as we know that the resolutions carried, and that +tradition still reports admiringly of the speech, we may be sure that his +performance in both was extraordinarily good. Although there had been a +strong popular prejudice in the county--or district, as it was then +called--against lawyer representatives, October 13, 1807, less than four +months after the meeting just described, he was elected to the legislature +at the head of the ticket. + +In that day presidential electors were appointed by the State +legislatures. Shortly after the session of this legislature to which +Calhoun had been elected opened, there was an informal meeting of the +republican members to make nominations for president and vice-president. +The first was unanimously given to Madison. When the other was up, Calhoun +declared his conviction that there was soon to be war with England. At +such a time there should be no dissension in the party. He gave strong +reasons why George Clinton should not be nominated, as had been proposed; +and he suggested John Langdon of New Hampshire as the proper man. The +thorough acquaintance with the grave situation which he manifested, the +due respect he showed Clinton while opposing his nomination, and the +ability with which he discussed the question, advanced him at once to a +place among the most distinguished members of the legislature. + +"Several important measures were originated by Mr. Calhoun while in the +legislature which have become a permanent portion of the legislation of +the State, and he soon acquired an extensive practice at the bar."[44] He +kept in the very midst of the political swim. His reputation as an honest, +true, and able adviser had become so great and influential that the +people, in their warm approval of the strong measures he advocated as +preparation for the threatened war, pushed him out as their candidate for +congress and elected him most triumphantly in October, 1810. The first +session of this, the twelfth congress, commenced November 4, 1811. Clay, +then speaker of the house, evidently expecting much of him, gave him the +second place in the committee on foreign relations. There came before the +house a measure contemplating an increase of the army in view of the war +which appeared to many to be nearer than ever. John Randolph was against +it. In March, 1799, a year before Calhoun started to school, Randolph, +then not twenty-six years old, had fearlessly met the great Patrick Henry +in stump discussion, and had, in the opinion of his auditors, got the +better of it. He was elected to congress in this year. Steadily since then +he had developed, until he was now one of the most prominent figures upon +the national stage. While his powers of discussion of a subject were +great, the power that especially characterized him was that of nonplussing +his antagonist with a snub or a sarcasm. Randolph made an earnest speech. +Calhoun replied. It is not enough to say of this speech that it evinces +full mastery of the subject. It presents every important view most +effectively, satisfactorily answering everything which had been said on +the other side. And it is especially happy in the wise use made at each +proper place of the commands of morality and patriotism. + +Mr. Pinkney has instructively and entertainingly illustrated this speech +by his excerpts.[45] To them I here add another, which I would have you +consider,--Randolph had strenuously insisted that the cause of this war, +said by the other side to be impending, should first be defined; and until +this plain duty was done there should be no preparation. To this Calhoun +said: + + "The single instance alluded to, the endeavor of Mr. Fox to compel Mr. + Pitt to define the object of the war against France, will not support + the gentleman from Virginia in his position. That was an extraordinary + war for an extraordinary purpose. It was not for conquest, or for + redress of injury, but to impose a government on France which she + refused to receive--an object so detestable that an avowal dared not + be made." + +This is a thrust which Randolph especially could appreciate. + +The more I examine this first speech of a very young member of congress +upon a question of such transcendent importance to the people of the +United States, the more sound, able, complete,--to sum up in one +word,--the more statesmanly it appears. I am confident that whoever will +weigh it carefully will agree with me. He will not be surprised to learn +that it carried the house decisively. Even in Randolph's own State it drew +great praise. But its fame went abroad everywhere, and it was revealed to +America that she had found among her public men another giant. + +In the year 1800 Calhoun was a lad of eighteen, without even a complete +common school education. Represent to yourself clearly what he had +accomplished in the interval from the year last mentioned to December 12, +1811, when, not yet thirty, he made the speech we have just considered. If +any public man of America, burdened with such disadvantages, has +surpassed, or even equalled, this meteoric stride, I do not now recall +him. I am not emphasizing especially that he got to congress in such a +short while. What I do especially emphasize is that he so early won place +as an eminent statesman. In these eleven years he lost no time at all in +idleness, or probation, or waiting. + +January 8, 1811, some three months after his election to congress, he +married his cousin, Floride Calhoun--not a first cousin, but a daughter of +a first cousin. His letters of courtship, not to her, but, in the old +style, to her mother; his only letter to her, written shortly before the +marriage; and other letters from and to him afterwards, all of which you +can read in the Correspondence,--show him to be such a lover, father, +brother, son-in-law, brother-in-law, grandfather, etc., as everybody +wants. Some South Carolinian, adequately gifted, ought to tell befittingly +the tale of Calhoun's beautiful domestic life. + +I must now mention some other facts which will further enlighten you as to +the man. + +I was fourteen when Calhoun died. For four or five years before, and +afterwards until I went to the brothers' war, I heard much of Calhoun from +relatives in Abbeville county and the Court House. I still recall most +vividly what a paternal uncle habitually said of the brightness and +unexampled impressiveness of Calhoun's eyes, and the charm and +instructiveness of his conversation. In Georgia there was not a public man +whose course in politics commended itself to all of my acquaintances. I +had become accustomed to hearing much disparagement of Toombs and of +Stephens, with whom I was most familiar. But my South Carolina relatives, +and every man or woman of that State whose talk I listened to; every boy +or girl with whom I talked myself, yea, all of the negroes,--always warmly +maintained the rightfulness of Calhoun's politics, national or State. I +thought it a good hit when a Georgia aunt of mine dubbed the Palmetto +State "The Kingdom of Calhoun," and Abbeville Court House "its capital." +This universal political worship was a great surprise to me. But there was +a still greater one to come. That was, that according to all accounts, and +without any contradiction, in spite of his living away from home the most +of his time, he yet gave his planting interests and all else appertaining +the very best management, and with such unvarying financial success it +would be unkind to compare Webster's money-wasting and amateur farming at +Marshfield. In this community, where he seemed to be known as well as he +was before he removed to Fort Hill, some sixty miles distant, in 1825, he +had become a far greater authority in business than he had even attained +in politics. His acquaintances all sought his advice, which they followed +when they got it; thus making this busiest of public servants their +agricultural oracle. + +The reader will find in Starke's memoir and the Correspondence ample +proofs of that diligent attention of Calhoun to his home affairs which +made him the exceptionally successful planter that he was. Starke happily +calls him "the great farmer-statesman of our country."[46] + +Now let us see where he made his mark as an able business man in another +place. He was Monroe's secretary of war from 1817 to 1825. When he entered +the office he found something like $50,000,000 of unsettled accounts +outstanding, and jumble in every branch of the service. He soon brought +down the accounts to a few millions. And he reduced the annual expenditure +of four to two and a half millions, "without subtracting a single comfort +from either officer or soldier," as he says with becoming pride. He +established it, that the head of every subordinate department be +responsible for its disbursements. His economy was not parsimonious. He +was especially popular at West Point, for which he did great things, and +with the officers and men of the army. + +And if one chose to look through the belonging parts of the Correspondence +and the other accessible pertinent records, he will find ample proofs that +he was ever alert to all the duties of his office, performing each one, +whether important or trivial, with the height of skill and diligence. + +Consider, as to his career in the war department, this language of one of +the most inveterate of his disparagers: + + "Many of his friends and admirers had with regret seen him abandon his + seat in the legislative hall for a place in the president's council. + They apprehended that he would, to a great extent, lose the renown + which he had gained as a member of congress, for they thought that the + didactic turn of his mind rendered him unfit to become a successful + administrator. He undeceived them in a manner which astonished even + those who had not shared these apprehensions. The department of war + was in a state of really astounding confusion when he assumed charge + of it. Into this chaos he soon brought order, and the whole service of + the department received an organization so simple and at the same time + so efficient that it has, in the main, been adhered to by all his + successors, and proved itself capable of standing even the test of the + civil war."[47] + +Now let us glance at his magnificent success in winning for the United +States the vast territory of Texas and Oregon. The latter had long been in +dispute between us and England. Ever since 1818 it had been jointly +occupied under agreement. We wanted all of it; and of course as our +settlements in the west approached nearer and nearer, our desire for it +mounted. And England wanted all of it too. Soon after Texas achieved her +independence she applied for admission into our union, but as the settlers +had carried slavery with them free-soil opposition kept her out. Texas got +in debt, and the only thing for her to do was to tie to some great power +willing to receive her. England, seeing her opportunity, was trying to +propitiate Mexico in order, with the favor of the latter, to get Texas for +herself. Of course the south wanted Texas to come in, but the free-soilers +did not. And the north wanted Oregon; and although its soil and climate +did not admit of slavery, the south was against its acquisition unless the +concession be made that it be permitted to slavery to occupy all the +suitable soil of the Territories. As early as 1843 Calhoun, with his +piercing vision, saw the situation clearly. If the dispute as to Oregon +provoked war, England could throw troops thither from China by a much +shorter route than ours, the latter going as it did from the States on the +Atlantic coast around Cape Horn. That would be bad enough for us. But +suppose England gets Texas. A hostile power, with a vast empire of land, +will spring up under the very nose of the States, where our adversary will +acquire a base of operations in the highest degree unfavorable to us. Then +England will rise in her demands as to Oregon, and perhaps win all of it +from us. In an affair of inter-dependent contingencies it is of the first +importance to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing first. Texas +was ripe, Oregon was not. Calhoun saw the first thing to do was to annex +Texas. For when England cannot secure that base of operations in Texas she +will shrink from making Oregon a cause of war, and while she is +hesitating, Oregon--which is near to us and far from her--is steadily +filling with population in which settlers from the United States more and +more preponderate; and at the same time the populous States are fast +approaching. After a while the inhabitants will all practically be on our +side, and they will have hosts of allies to the eastward in supporting +distance, which would give us an invincible advantage in case war for +Oregon does come. This is what Calhoun styled "masterly inactivity" on our +part, and which, had it been fully carried out as he advised, Oregon would +now extend much further north than it does. To sum up in a line, he saw +that activity as to Texas and inactivity as to Oregon was each masterly. + +But the hotheads of the south and the fanatical wing of the anti-slavery +men at the north rose up, obstructing his way like mountains. At the same +time there was lack of vision in even the leaders of each section who +could rise to patriotism above prejudice. Polk blundered in not continuing +Calhoun as secretary of State, in which place he had made so good a +beginning that it soon accomplished the annexation of Texas. In his +inaugural Polk asserted that our title to Oregon was good, and to be +maintained by arms if need be; and he went further away from "masterly +inactivity" in his first annual message. He evoked great popular +excitement, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" and "All of Oregon or none!" +came forth in passionate ejaculations in every corner of the land. Calhoun +had been called from retirement to take Texas and Oregon in hand, and when +Polk made a new secretary he went back into the retirement for which he +greatly longed. The record shows that the best men of all parties, north +and south, felt that as Tyler's secretary he was the man of all to manage +the two matters so vitally important to the United States, and they deeply +regretted that the place was not continued to him by Polk. And now +instead of the happy settlement they had been sure the master would +effect, the country was face to face with a war that portended direful +disaster to each section. The eyes of patriots turned to Calhoun again; +and as he cannot be secretary, he must be in the senate. And a way being +made, he was seated in due time. It needs not to go into much detail. The +situation had changed greatly. The especial thing to do now was to avoid +war. And as a resolution to terminate the joint occupation had been passed +by congress, and as the ire of Great Britain had been greatly aroused, +there must at once be a settlement of the Oregon controversy. And so the +controversy was compromised and averted, this good result being mainly due +to the efforts of Calhoun. Even Von Holst calls his speech of March 16, +1846, great. It will live forever. It is paying it gross disrespect to +treat it as mere oratory, even if one concede to it the highest eloquence. +It voices the ripest wisdom of the ablest practical statesman dealing with +a most momentous public affair, in a crisis delicate and perilous in the +extreme. The vindication of the true course of action is majestic. But to +my mind the great achievement of the speech is his sublime philanthropic +deprecation of war between England and America. When the papers told us at +the outbreak of our war with Spain that all the British subjects on the +warships of the latter had thrown up their places, it seemed to me that +nothing else could so fairly omen co-operation of England and America in +the near future to democratize and make happy the world. And I believe +that that inexpressibly sweet token of Anglo-American brotherhood would +have been postponed at least a half-century, if not much longer, had it +not been for that speech. + +This speech likewise discomfited pro-slavery and anti-slavery fanatics +alike, and won the hearty approval of the wisest and best of every part of +the country. + +Calhoun's self-education merits the closest attention. Railroaded through +school and college, as he was, his tuition was necessarily defective in +some important particulars. In the main he spelled accurately, but the +Correspondence shows that he wrote "sylable," "indisoluably," "weat" for +wet, "merical" for miracle, "sperit," "disappinted," "abeated," etc. It is +doubtless to be regretted that he did not have larger familiarity with +polite literature. Admitting these faults, still we must know he had been +uncommonly studious and thoughtful to win his degree in four years after +his start to school; but his systematic study, careful observation, and +hard thinking really commenced with his entrance of public life, and were +kept up to his very death. Note this pertinent excerpt from Webster's +memorial speech, in which I italicize a passage happily describing his +studies: + + "I have not, in public nor private life, known a more assiduous person + in the discharge of his appropriate duties. I have known no man who + wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of + it in any pursuits not connected with the immediate discharge of his + duty. He seemed to have no recreation but the pleasure of conversation + with his friends. _Out of the chambers of congress, he was either + devoting himself to the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to the + immediate subject of the duty before him_, or else he was indulging in + those social interviews in which he so much delighted." + +From his first speech in congress to the end of his life you note that he +has always mastered the pertinent facts, literature, and guiding +principles of whatever he has to do with, whether in speech or action. +This indicates continuous, most industrious, and most wise +self-instruction. I believe it was Mr. Parton who said that Jefferson was +the best educated man of his time. His full equipment from all belonging +learning and science was surpassed only by the versatility with which he +instantly solved all new questions. But Calhoun's was more of a special +training than Jefferson's. Having for some years learned by doing,--doing +after the best study and reflection, consistent with due promptness, that +he could give each thing he had to do,--his capital of knowledge and +developed faculty had become all-sufficient. Stephens, a profound student +of both Jefferson and Calhoun, makes this comparison: + + "Amongst the many great men with whom he associated, Mr. Calhoun was + by far the most philosophical statesman of them all. Indeed, with the + exception of Mr. Jefferson, it may be questioned if in this respect + the United States has ever produced his superior."[48] + +Government--that is, good democratic government--he studied all his life +with rare devotion. His two special works,[49] and the parallel parts of +his speeches, warmly commended by such a thinker and friend of democracy +as John Stuart Mill, are sufficing proof. In all the long tract from Plato +and Aristotle down to the popularization of direct legislation, which +commences with the publication of Mr. Sullivan's pamphlet a few years ago, +there is to be found nobody who has penetrated so deeply into the secrets +of those principles by which alone true democracy must be maintained. With +what clear vision does he read us lessons from the unanimous veto of the +Roman tribunes; the political history of the twelve tribes of Israel; the +balance of interests in the English constitution and our own, intended to +guarantee what he calls government of the concurrent majority. His +illustration from the confederacy of Indian Tribes is to be especially +emphasized as demonstration of his industry in collecting his materials +and of his great insight.[50] + +I must give still another example, which I am sure will yet benignly +enlighten America. + +Ever since Adam Smith fell into my hands in early manhood I have had a +strong predilection for political economy. My conviction during the +brothers' war that proper management of the currency of the confederacy +was indispensable to the success of our cause initiated me into an earnest +study of the science of money. And later intense interest in the greenback +question, and afterwards the silver question, added to the impetus. The +longer I observed the more plainly I saw a few private persons controlling +the coinage, the greenbacks, and the national bank currency of purpose to +monopolize government credit, and also fix the interest rate and the price +level, at any particular time, as suited their selfish interests. The +remedy became clear,--government must retake and fulfil all its money +functions. Especially must it keep the country supplied with a volume of +money which never becomes either redundant or contracted. How to do this +properly brought up the question, What is money? What is it that makes a +sheep, or cow, or coin, or piece of paper, money? For the true answer to +this question is the very beginning and foundation of all monetary +science. I took up Ricardo again, who, with a solitary exception mentioned +a little farther on, had, from the time I turned into him during my study +of the confederate currency, of all the economists by profession, showed +to me the best understanding of the real nature of money; and of course +John Stuart Mill, Jevons, Carl Marx, and others of less note, were +examined. The result confirmed Ricardo in his primacy; although I felt +that the true nature of money was assumed--rather vaguely--by him, and not +clearly expressed as it ought to be. I believed myself familiar with all +the important work of Calhoun. Somehow I had overlooked his contributions +to this subject. A few brief quotations from the more unimportant of these +I found in certain American books, which made me read the pertinent +speeches.[51] It was a most inexpressible surprise to me to find that he +had perfected Ricardo. Briefly stated, this is the true doctrine according +to Calhoun. It is not legal-tender laws, nor is it intrinsic value, which +makes even gold go as money. Well, what is it? Calhoun was not the first +to answer it, for others had given the true answer; but they ran away from +it as soon as they made it. He divined the full satisfactoriness of the +true answer, which he demonstrated to be true by a method as nearly +mathematical as the case admits of. And he lightens up what was dark +before by showing that that is money, and good money, whatever it may +be,--gold, silver, paper, property, what not,--which the government +receives in payment of its dues. The practice of the government,--not +laws, nor the market value of different materials of money,--this is the +great thing. If the United States should refuse to receive gold for its +dues, that would so greatly lessen the demand for gold as money that the +coin would depreciate and drop out of circulation. Nothing--not the +precious metals, not diamonds of the first water, not radium, not the +bills of the best bank, not greenbacks, not treasury notes can maintain +themselves as money if the government will not receive it. This is the +first half of the subject. Calhoun adds the other by showing that whatever +the government makes money, its volume can always be kept of the proper +quantity,--which proper quantity varies with the needs of commerce,--so as +to avoid the too much or too little. His illustration from the treasury +notes of North Carolina, which could not be a legal tender under the +federal constitution, but which circulated briskly and buoyantly and +stayed at par for many years, because they were received without discount +by the State, and also because their volume was kept within bounds, will +yet greatly help the cause of honest money. + +In the achievement just told Calhoun not only excelled the economists of +his day, but he is yet in advance of all of the present except Del +Mar,[52]--the only economist who has excelled Ricardo in divining the +essence of money. These two alone explain clearly and fully why it is that +bankers keep such tenacious grip upon the money function of +government--they thereby so shape its practice that their wares shall be +money, with all the incidents of profit therefrom, and no others shall. +Del Mar never quotes him; and I almost know he has never studied his views +upon this subject. + +America will yet have a "rational money," a term which Prof. Frank Parsons +has happily chosen as the name of his invaluable book.[53] To win it she +must fight many battles with the money power. When this war of the people +is waging by the people for the people, the doctrine of Calhoun will be +the banner of the right. After the sordid money oligarchy is overthrown +and the United States is blessed with a people's money, that benign +deliverance will add prodigiously to the fame of Calhoun. + +My space does not admit of telling you how deeply Calhoun loathed the +spoils system. That must be borne in mind, and taken into account in any +true estimate of him as a statesman. + +I deem it especially important to have you consider his standing with the +people of his State. Literally his word was law in South Carolina. Hayne +in 1832, and Huger in 1845, resigned their seats in the national senate to +give place to him. Everybody in his State always wanted him to lead, and +everybody always wanted him to lead according to his own will. This +unwonted influence, utterly without precedent, was due to the accurate +measure which the masses had taken of him. As he lived and aged among them +they knew him better and better to be irreproachable in private and public +life, the ablest of the able, the most diligent of the diligent, and the +truest of the true as a representative or official, and of that severe and +lofty virtue which scorns all popularity that is not the reward of +righteousness. And so he became example, model, worship, to all classes. +The forty years political ascendency of Pericles in the Athenian democracy +is the only befitting historical parallel which I can think of. Familiar +with the State from boyhood, I have long thought its people the most +advanced of the south. In spite of the revenge wreaked upon her in war, +and in spite of the direr devastation of the twelve years of negro rule +following the fall of the Confederate States, that little community, with +her dispensary and her system of really direct nomination,[54] to say +nothing of her wise management of all her material resources, is teaching +the nation lessons of the highest wisdom. These are the people from whom +Calhoun won a crown more resplendent than any other of our States has ever +bestowed upon a loved son. How eloquent were her last offices. Read Mr. +Pinkney's extracts from the "Carolina Tribute," narrating the reception of +his mortal remains in Charleston:[55] the novel procession of vessels, +displaying emblems of mourning, the solemn landing at noon, an imposing +train moving amid houses hung with black, "a Sabbath-like stillness" +resting on the city, "The solemn minute gun, the wail of the distant bell, +the far-off spires shrouded in the display of grief, the hearse and its +attendant mourners waiting on the spot, alone bore witness that the pulse +of life still beat within the city, that a whole people in voiceless woe +were about to receive and consign to earth all that was mortal of a great +and good citizen." + +Appropriately and impressively Mr. Pinkney closes his description of this +forever memorable demonstration by quoting Carlyle's "How touching is the +loyalty of men to their sovereign man."[56] + +Some men reserve out of the pillage of their fellows a great fund to +signalize their graves. Stronger cars must be made, bridges strengthened, +and too narrow passages avoided by long circuits in order that their huge +piles be transported to the conspicuous spot selected in a fashionable +cemetery. How the funerals which a weeping people give a Calhoun, +Liebknecht, Pingree, Altgeld, and other true ones dwindle such monuments +into smallness and contempt! + +I must add something here to what has been said in the foregoing of +Calhoun's speeches. Somebody must after a while do for him what the +compilation called "The Great Speeches and Orations" has done so well for +Webster. His very greatest effort is that against the force bill, +delivered in the United States senate February 15 and 16, 1833. As an +appeal in behalf of the rights of the minority against the oppressive +majority it is unequalled. All through it, from its most befitting +exordium to the righteous indignation of the closing sentence, there are +passages which "the world will not willingly let die." No one who has ever +given it attention can forget the paragraph defending Carolina against the +charge of passion and delusion; that demolishing as by a tornado the +assertion of a senator that the bill was a measure of peace; the far-famed +one as to metaphysical reasoning; what is said as to the nature of the +contest between Persia and Greece; the rupture in the tribes of Israel +graphically expounded; the first mention of the government of "the +concurring majority" as distinct from and far better than that of the +absolute majority; the lesson to us of the Roman tribunes. To read this +speech becomingly, purge yourself of all prejudice; by an adequate effort +of the historical imagination see all the main things of the then +situation, and put yourself fully in Calhoun's place; so that you cannot +fail to feel all of his deep earnestness. You will have succeeded when you +can rightly appreciate this outburst: + + "Will you collect money when it is acknowledged that it is not wanted? + He who earns the money, who digs it from the earth with the sweat of + his brow, has a just title to it against the universe. No one has a + right to touch it without his consent except his government, and this + only to the extent of its legitimate wants. To take more is robbery; + and you propose by this bill to enforce robbery by murder." + +When I pronounced that against the force bill, the greatest of his +speeches, I was not unmindful of his last, that of March 4, 1850, not +four weeks before his death. I can hardly class it as a speech. It was a +revelation of the woe in store for America if the abolition movement was +not checked. Its analysis and demonstration of the preponderant power of +the north, and its retrospection over the progressive stages by which the +former equilibrium of the sections had been destroyed, are as +clear-sighted as its prediction. Never in all history has an actor in a +revolution described its course behind him so understandingly, nor its +future course with such true prophecy. + +Let us give you the fewest possible selected brief passages that will do +something towards possessing you of the core of Calhoun's valedictory to +the United States and the South. + +This is first in order: "How can the union be saved? There is but one way +by which it can with any certainty; and that is by a full and final +settlement, on the principles of justice, of all the questions at issue +between the two sections. The south asks for justice, simple justice, and +less she ought not to take. She has no compromise to offer but the +constitution, and no concession or surrender to make." + +The vital concern of his section against abolition, and what it must do to +avoid it, he tells in these passages: + + "[The South] regards the relation [of master and slave] as one which + cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two races to the greatest + calamity, and the section to poverty, desolation, and wretchedness, + and accordingly she feels bound, by every consideration of interest + and safety, to defend it." + + "Is it not certain that if something is not done to arrest it [the + abolition movement], the south will be forced to choose between + abolition and secession?" + +If the south must choose secession, he justifies her by the example of +Washington, with a calm and repose that prove his deepest conviction of +its rightfulness, and with a power that cannot be confuted. He says: + + ["The Union cannot] be saved by invoking the name of the illustrious + southerner whose mortal remains repose on the western bank of the + Potomac. He was one of us--a slaveholder and a planter. We have + studied his history, and find nothing in it to justify submission to + wrong. On the contrary, his great fame rests on the solid foundation + that, while he was careful to avoid doing wrong to others, he was + prompt and decided in repelling wrong. I trust that, in this respect, + we have profited by his example. + + Nor can we find anything in his history to deter us from seceding from + the union should it fail to fulfil the objects for which it was + instituted, by being permanently and hopelessly converted into a means + of oppressing instead of protecting us. On the contrary, we find much + in his example to encourage us should we be forced to the extremity of + deciding between submission and disunion. + + There existed then as well as now a union,--that between the parent + country and her then colonies. It was a union that had much to endear + it to the people of the colonies. Under its protecting and + superintending care the colonies were planted, and grew up and + prospered, through a long course of years, until they became populous + and wealthy. Its benefits were not limited to them. Their extensive + agricultural and other productions gave birth to a flourishing + commerce which richly rewarded the parent country for the trouble and + expense of establishing and protecting them. Washington was born and + grew up to manhood under that union. He acquired his early distinction + in its service; and there is every reason to believe that he was + devotedly attached to it. But his devotion was a rational one. He was + attached to it, not as an end, but as a means to an end. When it + failed to fulfil its end, and, instead of affording protection, was + converted into the means of oppressing the colonies, he did not + hesitate to draw his sword and head the great movement by which that + union was forever severed, and the independence of these States + established. This was the great and crowning glory of his life, which + has spread his fame over the whole globe, and will transmit it to the + latest posterity." + +With what moving entreaty does he thus adjure the victorious north: + + The north "has only to wish it to accomplish it--to do justice by + conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired territory, and + to do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves + to be faithfully fulfilled, to cease the agitation of the slavery + question, and to provide for the insertion of a provision in the + constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the south, in + substance, the power she possessed of protecting herself before the + equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of the + government. There will be no difficulty in devising such a + provision--one that will protect the south and which at the same time + will improve and strengthen the government instead of impairing and + weakening it." + + "The responsibility of saving the union rests on the north, and not on + the south. The south cannot save it by any act of hers, and the north + may save it without any sacrifice whatever, unless to do justice and + to perform her duties under the constitution should be regarded by her + as a sacrifice." + +This sleepless watchman since 1835 had again and again blown the trumpet +as the sword of disunion was coming upon the land. Now, the grave yawning +before him, he sees that sword nearer and sharper, and conscious that it +is his last public duty he sends forth to all his country a blast of +warning more earnest and more solemn than ever. Warning that the bloodiest +of all wars is coming, and that between brothers. Warning--it is the whole +of this dread deliverance. Here is the first paragraph: + + "I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the + subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and + effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this opinion, I have + on all proper occasions endeavored to call the attention of both the + two great parties which divide the country to adopt some measure to + prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has + been permitted to proceed, with almost no attempt to resist it, until + it has reached a point where it can no longer be disguised or denied + that the union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the + greatest and the gravest question that can ever come under your + consideration,--How can the union be preserved?" + +And this is the last paragraph: + + "I have now, senators, done my duty in expressing my opinions fully + and candidly on this solemn occasion. In doing so, I have been + governed by the motives which have governed me in all stages of the + agitation of the slavery question since its commencement. I have + exerted myself during the whole period to arrest it with the intention + of saving the union, if it could be done, and if it could not, to save + the section where it has pleased providence to cast my lot, and which + I sincerely believe has justice and the constitution on its side. + Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability both to the + union and my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have the + consolation, let what will come, that I am free from all + responsibility." + +Had abolition been in charge of men, Calhoun, claiming, as appeared to +them, the most palpable rights under current views of justice, under the +constitution, under the law, and under patriotic duty, would have +prevailed. He never understood, no more than the abolitionists themselves +did, that providence was making an instrument of abolition to remove the +only danger to the American union, and that providence was not under human +constitutions, laws, and convictions of duty. As you meditate this +superhuman achievement of the true citizen in his last stand for his +doomed section, does it not help you to appreciate better the high saying +of the Greeks, that the struggle of a good man against fate is the most +elevating of all spectacles? + +The speeches that will find place in the selection suggested above will +not enrapture the reader with the proud diction, learning, ornateness, and +exquisite finish of Webster, but he will find them everywhere to be proofs +of the dictum of Faust: + + "Es trägt Verstand and rechter Sinn + Mit wenig Kunst sich selber vor; + Und wenn's euch Ernst ist, was zu sagen, + Ist's nöthig, Worten nachzujagen?"[57] + +He will also note that many of the wisest and most eloquent passages are +almost the extreme of choice, but chaste and severe, expression. Here read +aloud the passage as to Washington quoted above from the speech of March +4, 1850, and you will hardly dissent. + +America owes it to Calhoun to publish a cheap edition of his best +speeches, and also of his "Dissertation on Government." + +A word as to the "Dissertation" and the "Discourse on the Constitution of +the United States." The project of these two books lay close to his heart +for many years. He intended them as his last admonitions to the people of +the great republic. Doubtless the special object of his retirement was to +finish them, but he had to return to the senate. What we have of the books +was written in the little leisure which he snatched from the pressure of +public duties, domestic affairs, and ill-health. The resoluteness with +which, in the midst of these difficulties, he worked at the self-imposed +task proves a lofty and unselfish love. He did not finish them to his +satisfaction. Darwin did not do that with his epoch-making "Origin of +Species," for he found there was no need to do so. I believe that, as the +essentials of the belonging part of evolution are all to be found in the +"Origin of Species," so all the essentials of Calhoun's great doctrine of +government are fully set forth in his two books. To me the "Dissertation" +seems complete. I note with pleasure that, though slowly, it is steadily +climbing to the lofty height which is its due place in the world's +estimation. And the "Discourse"--of which he did not live to finish the +final draft--surely leads all the productions of the State sovereignty +school. The providence which opposed his wishes was kind to his country, +to the world, and to himself in calling him from his desk; for it allowed +him to get Texas and Oregon for us, to give mankind his Oregon speech, and +his last, and thus to finish his good work and make his fame full. + +The foregoing is intended to influence my readers to turn away from Von +Holst, who wrote Calhoun's life, with the smoke and dust of the brothers' +war still in his eyes, and from Trent, who merely says ditto to Mr. Burke, +to Stephens, to the great Webster, to the touching "Carolina Tribute," to +the happy and appreciative sketch of Pinkney, to the man himself and his +grand career, in order to find the facts and principles by which one of +America's very greatest ought to be judged. And I do hope that they now +begin to discern that Calhoun was nothing at all of a doctrinaire, nor +chop-logic, nor fanatic, nor professional politician, nor ignorant and +over-zealous partisan, but was the very height of practical talent and an +extraordinarily successful man of affairs, of more than Roman integrity, +conscientious and diligent beyond almost all others in the duties of his +place, and a foremost statesman of wide and profound culture. Whether I +have accomplished my design or not, let me beg you to read for yourself +with careful attention what Webster said of him in the United States +senate just after his death. Remember two things as you read: (1) The +speaker and the dead had been opposed to one another in politics for more +than twenty years, the former being the great exponent of free-labor +nationalization and the other the great exponent of slave-labor +nationalization; (2) nobody ever weighed his public utterances more +carefully than did Webster, and that he would not say anything which he +did not believe, even as a politeness. + +Let us now try to follow with proper discernment this man whom we hope we +have proved to be good and wise through his titanic defence of the cause +which fate had decreed must fail. As our explanation of how evolution, and +not the north on one side nor the south on the other, brought forward the +crisis in which slavery, the sole menace of American dismemberment, was to +perish, is so nearly complete, we can be much briefer in the rest of the +chapter. + +The true beginning here is with the proposition that everything which +Calhoun did as the southern leader was prompted by a righteous conscience +and the highest and most unselfish patriotism. He was the very first to +discern the full menace of abolition to the welfare of the people he +represented. And when years afterwards the situation became darker and +more serious, and more and more importunately put to him the question, If +abolition can be avoided only by leaving the union, what ought the south +to do? he answered to himself, with the fullest approval of his +conscience, she must go out; for manifestly it is her paramount duty to +protect her citizens against any such invasion of their rights as +abolition. But he had no illusion as to peaceable secession; and he +likewise worshipped the union, believing with deepest conviction that it +is far better for neighboring communities to be federated than +independent. And the memories of the great American history were as sweet +to him as they were to Webster. To sum up, only one thing in his opinion +could justify secession. That was control of the federal government by the +abolitionists. If that comes, the south must seek her independence, even +if it is beyond a sea of blood. + +Abolition was on its way then to overturn the supports of comfort and +domestic peace in the south, as it afterwards did. Suppose Webster had +seen the imminence of such a dreadful evil to New England, would he not +have felt that his duty to his section was now the great thing? My brother +who wore the blue, ought he not to have so felt? If the union had been +turned into a course which would not only impoverish and beggar the people +of New England, but would for long years actually deprive the masses of +those modes of business and labor by which they were subsisting themselves +and their families, can it be thought that Webster, with his exalted +admiration of the fathers, who endured all privations to win liberty from +their oppressors, would not have been heart and soul for secession? + +The only actual difference between the two great patriots was that to +Calhoun the dread alternative of looking outside the union for defence and +protection of home and fireside was commended by a cruel fate, while a +kind fate withheld it from Webster. + +I shall corroborate the foregoing by some pertinent excerpts from +Calhoun's speeches in the United States senate. And as my purpose is to +build everywhere in this book, as far as possible, upon only the most +obvious facts and to vouch therefor the most accessible authorities, I +take the excerpts from quotations made by Von Holst: + + "It is to us a vital question. It involves not only our liberty, but, + what is greater (if to freeman anything can be), existence itself. The + relation which now exists between the two races in the slaveholding + States has existed for two centuries. It has grown with our growth, + and strengthened with our strength. It has entered into and modified + all our institutions, civil and political. None other can be + substituted. We will not, cannot, permit it to be destroyed.... Come + what will, should it cost every drop of blood and every cent of + property, we must defend ourselves; and if compelled, we should stand + justified by all laws, human and divine; ... we would act under an + imperious necessity. There would be to us but one alternative,--to + triumph or perish as a people."[58] + + * * * * * + + "To destroy the existing relations would be to destroy this prosperity + [of the southern States] and to place the two races in a state of + conflict, which must end in the expulsion or extirpation of one or the + other. No other can be substituted compatible with their peace or + security. The difficulty is in the diversity of the races.... Social + and political equality between them is impossible. The causes lie too + deep in the principles of our nature to be surmounted. But, without + such equality, to change the present condition of the African race, + were it possible, would be but to change the form of slavery."[59] + + "He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive that the subversion + of a relation which must be followed with such disastrous consequences + can be effected only by convulsions that would devastate the country, + burst asunder the bonds of union, and engulf in a sea of blood the + institutions of the country. It is madness to suppose that the + slaveholding States would quietly submit to be sacrificed. Every + consideration--interest, duty, and humanity, the love of country, the + sense of wrong, hatred of oppressors and treacherous and faithless + confederates, and, finally, despair--would impel them to the most + daring and desperate resistance in defence of property, family, + country, liberty, and existence."[60] + +The student unfamiliar with the confederate side of the brothers' war can +find the whole of it clearly stated in these short passages re-enforced by +the cognate ones quoted above from the speech of March 4, 1850. The +maintenance of the then existing relations between white and black was +vital both to liberty and existence. Because of the world-wide diversity +of the two races they cannot be socially or politically equal (a subject +which we will deal with specially after a while). And it was the duty of +the south to fight to the bitter end "in defence of property, family, +country, liberty, and existence." This is the marrow of the quotations. +They convincingly show not only the grasp of the statesman, but the +prescience of the prophet, as has been plainly proved by the brothers' war +and what followed in its track. + +Opposition to the tariff, which in his judgment favored the manufacturing +at the expense of the staple States, seems to have been the first thing +that led Calhoun to take a pro-Southern stand in politics.[61] It finally +produced the famous nullification episode, which we have already somewhat +discussed. In this his platform was simply anti-tariff. But the current, +without his being aware of it, was carrying him resistlessly and rapidly +on into the anti-abolition career in which his life ended. It was the +petition presented in 1835 to congress against slavery in the District of +Columbia which, it seems, was the first thing that opened his eyes to the +menace of abolition. Note his wonderful foresight. Compare him with Cicero +just before the outbreak of the war between Pompey and Cæsar; or with +Demosthenes before Philip discloses his purpose towards Greece; or with +Carl Marx, predicting the future of co-operative enterprise. Cicero almost +foresees nothing--he mostly fears; Marx is utterly mistaken. The +divination of Demosthenes is far superior, and it is clear; yet it is +belated when it comes. But Calhoun sees with "appalling clearness," as Von +Holst says, all the storm-cloud from which tempest and tornado will ravage +the entire land, just as its first speck shows on the horizon; and nobody +else will see that. If this abolition movement is not stopped in its +incipiency, it will soon get beyond all control. This he says over and +over in his public place. What a horrible spectre of the future haunted +him for the rest of his life! The south in her self-defence forced out of +the union, and then perhaps overcome in war. After her braves have +perished, and their dear ones at home have been plunged in the depths of +want, the triumphant abolitionists will have the former slaves to lord it +over them. + +His conscience commanded him to stand by slavery as the fundamental +condition of his people's well-being; it also at the same time commanded +him to strain all his energies to save the union by making it the +protector instead of the assailant of slavery. This was the insuperable +task which the powers in the unseen put him in the treadmill to do. From +the time he commenced the discussion of the anti-slavery petitions until +his exclamation over the "poor south," on his death-bed, life was to him +but a deepening agony of solicitude and utmost effort,--solicitude for his +country and section, effort to avert the danger that became greater and +more awful to him every day. He strove after remedies under the +constitution. The more he recalled the success of the single stand of +South Carolina against the tariff, the prouder he became of being the +author of nullification. Its dearness to him was that it was peaceable as +well as efficient. The better opinion of the State-rights school is that +nullification is an absurdity, and that South Carolina's only true remedy +against the tariff was to secede if it were not repealed. But he knew +better than everybody else that secession meant internecine war between +the sections, and this influenced him to exalt peaceable nullification +above bloody secession. + +It needs not to consider each barrier, whether party combinations, +admission of new slave States, legislation, etc., that he tried to erect +against the incoming oceanic wave. But we must briefly consider the +amendment of the constitution which he proposed. He wanted the north and +the south each to have a president, as he said, "to be so elected, as that +the two should be constituted the special organs and representatives of +the respective sections in the executive department of the government; and +requiring each to approve all the acts of congress before they shall +become laws."[62] Do this, he urged, and neither section can use the +powers of government to injure the other, for whatever proposed law +menaces a section will be vetoed by its president. It profits the student +of the science of government to consider the historical examples which +Calhoun adduced here. They are indeed so apt that the hearing which has +ever been denied him should be granted him at least academically. He says: +"The two most distinguished constitutional governments of antiquity both +in respect to permanence and power had a dual executive. I refer to those +of Sparta and Rome."[63] + +It is interesting to be informed that those same wise Iroquois from whom +our fathers probably got the precedent of the old confederation, put in +practice something very like what Calhoun advises. We append both the +account and instructive comment of Morgan: + + "When the Iroquois confederacy was formed, or soon after that event, + two permanent war-chiefships were created and named.... As general + commanders they had charge of the military affairs of the confederacy, + and the command of its joint forces when united in a general + expedition.... The creation of two principal war-chiefs instead of + one, and with equal power, argues a subtle and calculating policy to + prevent the domination of a single man even in their military affairs. + They did without experience precisely as the Romans did in creating + two consuls instead of one, after they had abolished the office of + _rex_. Two consuls would balance the military power between them, and + prevent either from becoming supreme. Among the Iroquois this office + never became influential."[64] + +But Calhoun lays much more stress upon another example,--that of the +protection which the Roman plebeians got in tribunes elected from their +own order alone, which tribunes could veto any act of the lawmaking +organs, all of which were then actually in the hands of their oppressors, +that is, the order of patricians; the result being that in course of time +the plebeians achieved equality.[65] + +Of course the inevitable could not be put off. And yet ought we not to +admire the inventive genius of the statesman who of all proposed the +remedy that promised the best? And ought we not also to cherish in +affectionate memory this last and high effort of Calhoun to avert a +dreadful brothers' war at hand, the end and consequences of which nobody +could then forecast? + +The situation of Rome granting tribunes to the plebs was widely different +from ours. That was a case of giving a veto to one class only, and to a +class which belonged to the entire body politic. Calhoun proposed not a +single veto, but two; neither one to be given such a class as we have just +mentioned, but a veto to each one of two geographical divisions, in one of +which there was a developed, and in the other a nascent and almost +complete, nationality, these two nationalities already closed with each +other in a life and death grapple. His hope must have been to confine the +combatants to an arena which could be effectually policed by the civil +power, and in which all fighting except with buttoned foils be prevented. +We may be almost sure that his heart broke when that presentiment which +often comes to the dying as clear as sunlight revealed the bloody war that +was quickening its approach. + +O the unutterable pathos of his life from 1835 to 1850! During this time +he was like the mother of a boy whom consumption has marked for its own. +In advance of all others she reads the first symptom, nay, she anticipates +it. All those who believe that they know him as well as she does, laugh at +her fears with unsympathetic incredulity. But her eyes never fail to see +grim death at the door, although bravely she hopes against hope, and +fights, fights, fights. Inexorably, relentlessly the end, which others now +begin to discern, comes on, but until the last breath of her darling she +has ever some suggestion of change of place or climate, of a new remedy, +of something else to be done. It is the supreme tragedy of her trial that +while outwardly she is all self-gratifying love, inwardly she is all +self-consuming misery. We say the love of a mother is greater than all +other. But we know that she loves her country better than she does her +child. Patriotism is as yet the strongest love of all. Realize that our +exalted patriot was tending and nursing the cause of his country. Think of +the noble Lee, his career of victory over, wearing away the winter at +Petersburg, hourly expecting his line, so tensely stretched in order to +face overwhelming odds, to break; think of him after it does break, on the +retreat, when he has discovered that his supplies have gone wrong; and +think of him when he must yield the sword as ever memorable as Hannibal's. +The world has given Lee, and will long give him, rains of gracious tears. +But he was never plagued with Calhoun's sharpened eyes to future disaster, +and he was confident that he would reach the mountains almost until the +very moment of surrender. Think rather of the great sufferers for high +causes,--Bonnivard, wearing a pathway over the stone floor of his prison; +Lear, of all of Shakspeare's heroes, in the deepest gulf of misfortune; +and especially of Calvary and the crucifixion, for Jesus travailed for his +brothers and sisters. It is here you must look for the like of Calhoun. +For fifteen years that "mass of moan" which was coming to his dear ones +pierced his ears plainer and plainer and made his heart sicker and sicker, +and during this long bloody sweat he gave the rarest devotion and +self-sacrifice to his country which he feared more and more was to plunge +over the precipice. As we recall the scene of his death it makes us +rejoice to know that the cross he had borne so long has at last been cast +off and he has entered into the rest of the martyr-patriot. Then it +occurs to us that he carried with him his affections,--too lofty not to be +immortal,--and we cannot believe that the sad spirit ever smiled until +Wade Hampton, twenty-six years afterwards, re-erected white domination in +South Carolina. + +Dixie will never forget that one who of all her sons loved her best and +suffered for her the most. And it is my conviction that each noblest soul +of the north will after a while revere in Calhoun the American parallel to +the moral grandeur of Dante, of whom Michaelangelo said he would +cheerfully endure his exile and all his misfortunes for his glory. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +WEBSTER + + +Calhoun was the pre-eminent champion of the southern cause in the union, +while Toombs was that of southern nationalization seeking independence. +Webster was the pre-eminent champion of American nationalization seeking +continental union. Toombs and Webster are therefore in antithesis; and it +will be well for me to begin the chapter by anticipating some of the +characteristics of the former, who will be treated at large later on, and +briefly contrasting the two. + +By nature Toombs was so prone to action that even in his daily +recreation--talk with the nearest to him was by far the most of it--his +immense and tireless outpouring of fine phrase, wisdom, and wit was the +increasing wonder of all who knew him. Webster's proneness was to repose, +almost indolence. He often seemed lethargic. His activity could be excited +only by the pressure of necessity. This difference between the two showed +itself very markedly in their several careers. Toombs, coming to the bar +in the last year of his nonage, took the profession at once to his heart, +settled in his native county, in a lucrative field of practice, overcame +all hindrances of natural defects and insufficient training seemingly by a +mere act of will, and in four or five years his collecting a +thousand-dollar fee in an adjoining county was no very uncommon thing. +When he was twenty-eight he was a fully developed lawyer and advocate on +every side--law, equity, and criminal--of the courts of that prosperous +planting community, then overrunning with cases of importance, and his +annual income from practice was $15,000. Webster went up much more slowly. +He read long and industriously; was not called until he was twenty-three; +for the next two and a half years was content with an income of $600 or +$700; and then for nine years at Portsmouth his average income was $2,000 +yearly. Even when Webster at thirty-four removed to Boston he was hardly +as a lawyer the equal of Toombs at twenty-eight; and I believe that the +latter was always the superior lawyer. The greater reputation of Webster +is due to the greater reputation of his cases, and of the tribunal wherein +he long held the lead. + +We see a like difference between the two in congress. Webster shirks the +routine duties of his place to gain opportunity for practice in the United +States supreme court. Toombs stays away from all courts during the +session, and gives every measure before the body to which he belongs its +proper attention, study, and labor. But the performance by him of all the +many duties of representative or senator, whether little or great, with +unparalleled diligence, ability, and splendor, has been so completely +obscured by the few of Webster's great congressional exploits, that it is +not now cared for by anybody. + +The greater lawyer and the greater congressman has been accorded the +lesser renown. This is because of the relation which each one bore to the +two publics which I have tried to make you understand,--the southern +public and the northern public. Toombs's legal career was mainly in the +courts of his own State. It was not much heard of outside, in even the +southern public, until his extraordinarily meritorious discharge of +congressional duties involving a mastery of law was observed. Although +some of Webster's cases in State courts were celebrated, his greatest +ones, to be considered in a moment, were won in the United States supreme +court, in the eyes of both publics watching intently. The highest +accomplishments of Toombs in the non-sectional parts of his congressional +career were almost matters of indifference at the time to both publics, +becoming steadily more absorbed in pro- and anti-slavery politics; and +what he did in the other part of it excited the hostility of the northern +public, and brought him obloquy instead of good name. The few memorable +deeds of Webster in congress were victorious vindications of the cause +clearest of all to the northern, that is, the free-labor, public. That +public has at last not only conquered, but it has annexed the other as a +part of itself. And so Toombs's fame as a lawyer and statesman has been +left so far behind that it can hardly hope ever to have impartial and fair +comparison with that of Webster. + +Just one more parallel, and I shall proceed with my sketch. Each one of +the two, in order to accept his mission of leadership, was plainly made by +his destiny to abandon a previously cherished doctrine for a new and +contrary one. Toombs was once an ardent union man, Webster was once almost +a secessionist. In his Taylor speech, made in the United States house of +representatives July 1, 1848, speaking of the then expected acquisition of +territory, Toombs said: + + "All the rest of this continent is not worth our glorious union, much + less these contemptible provinces which now threaten us with such + evils. It were better that we should throw back the worthless boon, + and let the inhabitants work out their own destiny, than that we + should endanger our peace, our safety, and our nationality by their + incorporation in our union." + +The silly embargo measures, making war upon our own citizens instead of +our enemies, had deeply injured New England interests. On their heel came +the second war with England, into which the government of France had, as +Mr. Lodge says, "tricked us ... by most profligate lying."[66] This war +paralyzed the production and occupations of Webster's people. + +A speech made by him July 4, 1812, is "a strong, calm statement of the +grounds of opposition to the war."[67] Mr. Lodge quotes and emphasizes a +passage as proof that Webster, although a federalist, and the majority of +his party in New England were--to use the words of the same +author--"prepared to go to the very edge of the narrow legal line which +divides constitutional opposition from treasonable resistance,"[68] was +then standing by the union with might and main. This quotation, separated +from its circumstances and the immediate sequel, strongly supports the +contention. The speech being printed, circulated widely among those +federalists who were gravitating so strongly towards "treasonable +resistance." By reason of it Webster was chosen as a delegate to a +convention, held the next month. This man, whom Mr. Lodge would have us +believe to be so fixedly counter to the then uppermost revolutionary +sentiment of his party, was chosen to be their mouthpiece. He wrote their +report--the "Rockingham Memorial" in the form of a letter to President +Madison. Mr. Lodge thus contrasts the report and the speech. "In one point +the memorial differed curiously from the oration of the month before. The +latter pointed to the suffrage as the mode of redress; the former +distinctly hinted at and almost threatened secession, even while it +deplored a dissolution of the union as a possible result of the +administration's policy."[69] Then the biographer most confidently states +that in the speech Webster was declaring his own views, but in the other +document he was declaring those of members of his party. + +But the average American will be sure that those familiar with the speech +at the time did not strain its counsels as far away from their own as Mr. +Lodge does, otherwise they would not have elected him as delegate; and +further, he never would have made their report for them unless he had been +known to entertain their own sentiments.[70] + +The popular wave that he had thus mounted carried the draftsman of the +"Rockingham Memorial" into congress, where, while British armies were +actually treading our soil, he voted against the taxes proposed for +national defence. Mr. Lodge does not go the full length of sustaining this +conduct.[71] The severe comment of another biographer will be cordially +approved by average readers, northern and southern.[72] + +The facts properly considered show that from the speech of July 4, 1812, +on, Webster, although he stood aloof from the Hartford convention +movement, was in full sympathy with the federalists of New England, whom +the national government by its unrighteous oppressions had driven to +contemplate disunion as a possible measure of self-protection. + +This attitude of Webster towards the union was entirely contrary to that +which afterwards became his power and glory among his countrymen. We wish +it noted that as he changed with the people of New England from +anti-tariff to pro-tariff politics, he likewise changed with them in their +principles as to the union; and that Toombs went with the south, in an +opposite direction, that is, from embrace to rejection of the union. + +Having in the foregoing brought out the prominent characteristics of +Webster's nature and career, and having also impressed you that he, like +all other great statesmen, could lead only by following his people, I will +cursorily trace him from stage to stage through his development. He was +selected in infancy, if not before by providence, to be made not the +expounder of the constitution, but the invincible defender of the union. +When his activity begins, he is at first to consolidate the union by the +management of some great law cases, and delivery of occasional addresses +to popular assemblies; and afterwards in his high place as United States +senator he is to demonstrate to the northern public its complete guaranty +of their highest material interests, and set it in their hearts above all +things else. Thus did providence assign to him the preservation of the +greatest of all democracies, to the end that there be no break in the +future course of human improvement. + +Before his activity begins the powers train him. They gave him a long +education, and a slow growth as a statesman. He could never remember when +he had been unable to read. His feeble physique while a child shielded him +from the labor required of the other children, and permitted him to enjoy +books. Early he soaked his mind in the King James version of the bible and +other good English standards. As he grew apace his opportunities of +reading were far better than those of Calhoun, who never saw even a +circulating library until he was in his thirteenth year, and soon was +taken away from that. These opportunities he used in his leisurely way. +His mind was strong and his memory good, and he digested and kept under +command what he read. His schooling and college course were in the main +continuous. He got to Dartmouth at fifteen, where he spent four years. +Here he made the reputation of being the best speaker and writer of all +the students. In his study for the law he took ample time. And in his +first years of practice he had much leisure. Besides revelling in the +Latin classics, Shakspeare, Milton, Pope, and Cowper, and much history, he +was keenly observant of what was going on about him. We know how Jeremiah +Mason gave him lessons both in law, rhetoric, and elocution to his great +advancement. We know too that his interest in current political questions +was vigilant. He took his seat in congress May, 1813, being then a little +over thirty-one. His speech against a bill to encourage enlistments made +January 14, the next year, shows, as Mr. Lodge says, that "he was now +master of the style at which he aimed."[73] Of this peculiar style I shall +say something after a while. Mention of his greatest exploits in +consolidating the union is now in order. + +The first of these is his conduct of the Dartmouth college case in the +United States supreme court. It is entirely out of place for me to give +even the briefest notice of the details which fill Mr. Shirley's unique +book.[74] Little more than emphasis of the effect of the decision to knit +more closely the bonds of union between the States is required. This +effect will be considered more carefully when we comment on Gibbons _v._ +Ogden, which finishes the important work commenced in the other. It needs +only to remind the reader now that the protection of contracts against +impairing State legislation has contributed probably more than anything +else to the prosperous development of American internal trade and +commerce,--a most potent factor in consolidating the union,--and that this +protection originates in the Dartmouth college decision. But there is +something special to be said of Webster as to the case. He did not stress +the constitutional point--that upon which the judgment was finally +placed--either in his law-brief or argument. The victory is all due to his +consummate management of the court, especially of the chief-justice. The +latter really found the true ground of the decision. But the powers had +Webster in hand, and it suited their purposes to crown their _Liebling_ +with the credit of the decision. When he found out the reasons given for +the ruling he had won, I fancy that a good angel of his destiny whispered +in his ear he ought to have discerned that the weal of all classes of his +entire country, and not merely that of its colleges, was at stake in his +case, and he must never in the future overlook such an opportunity again. +In his Hanover fourth of July speech, made when he was only eighteen years +old, to quote from the authority we make so much use of, "the boy Webster +preached love of country, the grandeur of American nationality, fidelity +to the constitution as the bulwark of nationality, and the necessity and +the nobility of the union of the States."[75] Mr. Lodge impressively adds, +"and that was the message which the man Webster delivered to his fellow +men."[76] His Fryeburg fourth of July speech, made not long afterwards, +was in the same strain. After the powers had thus started him in the way +they wanted him to go, we have noted above how he was carried by the +federalists of New England into a movement hostile to the union. This +brief wandering from his destiny, as it were, is to be compared with his +neglect to grasp the point in the Dartmouth college case which was in the +exact line of that high destiny. This shows how even the greatest genius +must stumble and grope before it has found the right road. I think the +Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, First Part of Henry VI, and the Sonnets of +Shakspeare are like examples. + +The Plymouth oration, delivered in 1820, begins a new and very important +stage of Webster's career. As Virginia was the mother of the southern +States, so New England was in large measure the mother of the northern. +The latter was the very fountain of the free-labor nationalization. And as +she was known to be exceptionally advanced in intellectual as well as +material development, she was to all the free States both their great +example and highest authority. Hardly anybody has even yet fully taken in +all the permanent good which New England has done for herself at home and +for her children and scholars outside. Of course still less of it was +understood in 1820. But in the Plymouth oration Webster set forth so much +of it, the effect upon New England was magical. It was as if he had raised +a curtain concealing great riches and treasures of her merit and glory, +the existence of which had not been suspected. New Englanders all fell in +love with him, and accorded him the foremost place among their +counsellors. + +The anti-slavery spirit of the speech deserves special notice. I do not +mean to emphasize the oft-quoted passage denouncing the African +slave-trade; for everybody in the south--even the smuggler and the few +purchasers who encouraged him--had been against legalizing it, for reasons +mentioned above, from a time long before the southern States showed a +desire in the constitutional convention to stop the trade at once. I mean +his mention of slavery in the West Indies. I do not think that he had the +south in mind, stressing as he does the absenteeism of the masters and the +mortgages of their lands for capital borrowed in England. But much else +that he says of the evil effects of slavery could be easily applied, at +least in some measure, to the system as it then existed in the south, such +as, for instance, the backwardness to make permanent improvements or endow +colleges. His contrast of New England with the West Indies is intended to +show that a free-labor community is far superior to a slave-labor +community in the most important elements of a good and progressive +civilization. His conviction of this truth is serious and undoubting. And +those few words, "the unmitigated toil of slavery," which show that he +erroneously believed that the slave toiled as hard as the wage-earning +laborer, evince a strong moral revulsion on his part. + +We summarize as to the Plymouth oration. It made Webster really the +political leader of New England, which--the animosity excited by the +embargo and the late war having become a forgotten thing of the past--is +now both in command of and also in the van of the free-labor and +anti-slavery nationalization, destined by the powers to perpetuate the +union. + +We have told you how Webster--being at the time the very antipodes of what +he was afterwards when he talked with Bosworth as to the Rhode Island +case--missed the true and cardinal point in the Dartmouth college case, +and how the powers, after having Marshall to establish it, gave all the +glory of the great accomplishment to Webster. We come now to Gibbons _v._ +Ogden, argued in 1824, in which the latter made far more than ample amends +for his shortcoming, and taught even the great Marshall how to decide. + +New York State had given Fulton and Livingston for a term exclusive steam +navigation of all its waters, and Webster was to maintain that the grant +impugned the federal constitution and was therefore invalid. The question +was _res integra_, without analogies which often help us forlorn advocates +who cannot find a precedent and are utterly without any literature +suggesting the _ratio decidendi_. I know I cannot explain to a layman how +such cases as these bewilder and paralyze the typical Anglo-American +judge, who has walked all his life by precedent and not by sight. Further, +Webster's side antagonized prevailing sentiment and, it would be hardly +too much to say, the public conscience; either one of which generally +sways courts more powerfully than the law-brief, argument, and appeal of +complete advocates. The only thing which Webster could oppose to these +formidable odds was just a clause of a sentence of the constitution, this +clause being only of twelve words when even the belonging context is read +into it,[77] and appearing to be, we cannot say surplusage, but neither +well-considered nor of any particular force. Out of this he constructed +such a perfect and wise doctrine of the immunity of our interstate +commerce from local attack and restraint that every succeeding generation +has admired its wisdom more, and subsequent additions and extensions of +importance are all manifest conclusions from the promises which he made +good. + +Reading and reflecting for writing my "American Law Studies" familiarized +me with a few instances in which a man has left a lasting impress upon the +development of the law (some of which instances will be mentioned in a +moment). Thus I was led to meditate Webster's work in this case; and it +becomes an increasing wonder to me. Read what his biographer tells of the +unfavorable circumstances of the preparation for the argument and how he +overcame them by superhuman effort. Read also his own account as given by +Harvey, how Wirt, his associate, older and of much more experience in that +court, disparaged the ground upon which he said he should stand, and +proposed another; and how Marshall drank in every word of Webster's +argument, and afterwards virtually reproduced it in the opinion. + +But the great thing is what he did for the law. The current distribution +of the common law under its larger heads was made by Hale and Blackstone +after that of the contemporary civilians, which is founded upon that of +the Institutes of Justinian. This book is but a reproduction of that of +Gaius. So we may assert of this last mentioned author that it is his +systematization which still obtains both in the English and Roman law, +that is to say, the entire law of the enlightened world.[78] A few English +chancellors perceptibly moulded equity; Mansfield almost created English +commercial law; in our country, Hamilton, in one argument overturned the +doctrine of tacking securities, and in another remade the essentials of +libel; our great text-author Bishop, with his treatise often worked over +in new editions, is really the enacter of the American law of divorce; and +Marshall's additions to our federal law will never be forgotten. By what +he did in Gibbons _v._ Ogden, Webster has won a proud place in the small +company of great law-givers. + +And he is entitled to a liberal share of the glory which the Dartmouth +college decision has won, for without him Marshall would have had no +opportunity. + +To estimate the prodigious effect of the rulings in these two cases, try +to realize to yourself what would be the consequences to American trade +and commerce if the States were not effectually kept from infringing +contracts or granting monopolies of transportation. Try to realize the +loss, the inconvenience, the trouble, the vexation, all the evil that +would have unavoidably befallen us if these two companion decisions and +the subsequent ones following them as precedents or extending them as +analogies, had not made practically the whole of American inland business +a unit--to use Webster's word--under the protection everywhere of the same +impartial law. The longer you think it over the more confirmed will be +your opinion that from no other cause has the evolution away from the old +independence of States towards a permanent union and a single organism of +perpetually federated communities been more furthered. The unification of +production and distribution thus given resistless impulse has almost of +itself alone worked the unification of all our States. So looking back +from the standpoint of to-day we may be sure that the powers had Webster +by his accomplishment in the cases now in mind, to build for perpetual +union far better than he knew. + +It needs not to dwell upon the Bunker Hill oration, made June 17, 1825. It +is, as I believe, the most familiar as a whole of all speeches to +Americans. It did not stop with adding greatly to the influence he had won +over New England by the Plymouth oration; it revealed him to the whole +country as its supreme orator. Bear in mind its theme, remembering how +large a part the battle of Bunker Hill was in founding our union. + +The plainest manifestation that providence ever made of its favoritism to +Webster was its having Adams and Jefferson both to die on the same day of +all the year the most commemorative of each. By the eulogy of the two +patriots which Webster made the next month he attained the height of his +popular celebrity. His subject was no longer one that principally +concerned New England and the north, but it was the co-operation of both +sections in making the United States. Slowly, but surely, he has climbed +to the top of authority, whence he ever draws audience and attention from +north and south, both in the present and for ages after the brothers' war. + +These three popular speeches just noticed are unique in oratory, not in +their general character, but in the nobility of the subjects, the ripeness +of the occasion, the profound wisdom of treatment, and the extraordinary +elevation and perfection of style. + +Another stage begins in 1830 with the reply to Hayne. What Webster says +therein, recommending brotherly love between the sections, and commending +the union, he reproduced with grateful variation in many memorable +passages of later speeches. The original and reproductions are the most +precious gems of our literature, ranking in excellence even above Poe's +poetry, America's best. + +The speech of 1833 against Calhoun's nullification resolutions, that which +won for Webster the cognomen, The Expounder of the Constitution, belongs +to the next succeeding stage, wherein he rose from supreme panegyric to +invincible defence of the union. As we have already given in a former +chapter this performance its due praise, we need not say more of it. + +This chapter would not be complete if we failed to glance at the +essentials of Webster's greatness as an orator, and to point out the means +used by the powers to give him his extraordinary excellence. He did not +stale himself by discussing trivial matters. When he rose, people knew +that he had an important message, and they ought to attend. In harmony +with this was his uniform seriousness, gravity, and becoming dignity of +manner; and even in his merry-making humor, as instanced in describing +Hayne leading the South Carolina militia, he never stooped. He spoke to +the sound common sense and the regnant conscience of the masses. His +propositions, his illustrations, his argument went home without effort to +every one who thought at all and who cared for moral virtue. The entire +country has heard with great acceptance that Davy Crockett said to him, +"Mr. Webster, you are not the great orator people say you are; for I heard +your speech, and I understood every word of it." Whether this be an +invention or not, it well characterizes his easy intelligibility. Herbert +Spencer could have exampled the main proposition of his able essay on +style by Webster's best efforts, and every part and parcel of +them--statement of proposition, necessary explanation and narrative, +distinctions, illustrations, reasoning, invocation of feeling--appeal to +the sense of justice. I often feel that he is not more majestic in any +particular than the always manifest meaning of what he says. In this he +reminds of Bacon. + +He chose only the most important subjects; he befittingly addressed always +the higher nature of his hearers; and he always spoke with a transparent +clearness. But all this does not indicate more than the mere beginning of +true eloquence. The greatest teachers--those who win and keep the +admiration of the world--have, as their worshippers teach us, gifts of +expression commensurate with the desert of their communications. Remember +Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Vergil, Cicero, Dante, Bacon, Goethe, and above +all Shakspeare. As the reader hangs over them he becomes more and more +unconscious of what we call, rather vaguely, their style. Their diction, +in unhackneyed use of hackneyed words, in metaphors that flash like +electric sparks, in appropriateness of varied rhythm, and all appertaining +jewels, becomes to him but a belonging of the much more precious sense. As +it must impart that without impediment it is unconsciously made as like it +as the protecting coloring of animals is made like that of the objects +amidst which they lurk. There has been but one other which admits of +comparison in world-wide secular importance with Webster's theme--that +which inspired + + "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento." + +We have learned how the Æneid was prized above all other poetry, not only +by the Romans themselves, but, long after they had become a mere name and +memory, by the different nations of Europe. Plainly it was because Vergil, +in that "stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man," had fitly +celebrated the greatest factor delivering from barbarism, and spreading +civilization abroad, that had yet appeared in history,--the Roman empire. +The American union, immeasurably exceeding that empire in immediate good +to millions at home, and in fair promise to all the earth, was Webster's +subject. It got from him an appropriate style. The variety of ornament in +his language reaches all the way from the modest violets of the +Anglo-Saxon common to Bunyan and King James's version, up to the most +gorgeous trappings which are part and parcel of the sense in the best +passages of Paradise Lost. There is also a variety of idiom. He uses that +of the field or street, or of the gentleman or of the scholar, as best +suits. He affected short sentences, and also pure English words. He told +Davis to weed the Latin words out of his speech on Adams and Jefferson. +But when occasion calls he can revel in that latinity of our tongue which, +as De Quincey has noted, becomes intense with Shakspeare, when he is +soaring his strongest. If you are inclined to dispute this, look over the +last two sentences of the reply to Hayne. How you would lower this sublime +peroration into the dust, if you replaced the Latin with native +derivatives, or changed the long for short sentences in what is now above +all example in English or American oratory, and can be paralleled in +structure, "ocean-roll of rhythm," and exquisite words only by the most +famous paragraphs of Cicero and Livy. As our last word here, Webster +always imparts the wisest counsel as to the American union in phrase +all-golden, and his eloquence is entitled to praise beyond all other, +because it is always what his high subject demands. + +As I have to do mainly with the permanent and lasting in Webster, I can +merely allude to his physical endowments, described with such rapture by +March, Choate, and many others of his time, and well summarized by Mr. +Lodge. I must remind the reader how it accorded with the purpose of the +powers to bestow upon their favorite majesty of form, mien, and look, a +voice that suggested the music of the spheres, action that would have been +a model to Demosthenes; in short, a physique for the orator superior to +any on record. These things helped him mightily in his day. + +Apparently I finished with Webster's education some pages back of this. +But the more important part of it has not as yet been touched upon; and it +is incumbent upon me to tell it, because of the lesson we ought to learn +from it. + +The largest and most characterizing part of our education--perhaps it +would more accurately express my meaning to say our culture--each one of +us gets from his associations, from his contact with the people of all +sorts around him in his infancy, boyhood, and manhood often as far on as +middle age, if not sometimes farther. We get it by imitation, unconscious +and conscious, and by absorption from what we see, hear, and read, etc., +which absorption is often most active when we are least aware of it. Now +let us consider the community of which Webster was the product. + +In the Plymouth oration, as we have already suggested, he exhibits the +exceptional progress and acquisitions of New England. What other community +ever showed greater courage against danger or greater energy against +obstacles, and such wise building-up of a new country in a strange land? +The Pilgrim Fathers could not have liberty and their own religion at home, +and for these they went into the wilderness. There they kept the savage at +bay. With soil and climate both unfavorable they wrought out general +plenty and comfort. They prospered in industry. They equalized as far as +they could all in property rights. And these liberty-lovers gave the +regulation of local affairs to the town meeting, of which Webster says: +"Nothing can exceed the utility of these little bodies. They are so many +councils or parliaments, in which common interests are discussed, and +useful knowledge acquired and communicated." + +Jefferson, the great apostle of popular self-government, most earnestly +longed to see all America outside of New England divided into such +townships as hers. + +But to return to the Pilgrims. They established schools and churches +everywhere. Free education was maintained by taxation of all property. + +Let us sum up. Here was a country in which everybody had been well trained +in the available ways of self-support and also of saving and +accumulating,--the very first essential to make good citizens. Such +citizens were required to administer their public affairs themselves; and +thus they received the very best political education and training in a +school of genuine democracy,--which is the next essential. The children of +each generation were schooled better than those of the former, the +colleges and universities constantly did better with the students, and +libraries open to the public both multiplied and enlarged,--the third +essential. And education and business were rationally mixed, until in +Webster's time it might be said with truth that the average New Englander +worked with a will, and wisely, every day to maintain himself and family, +and also found leisure to add something of value to his store of +knowledge. Here is another essential. The moral and religious atmosphere +became purer and purer, and more and more on all sides good intention was +conspicuous in the light, and evil intention hid itself deep in the dark. +This is the last essential. + +The foregoing is made up from the Plymouth oration. Webster was too near +to discern all the intellectual and moral advancement and the opulent +future promise of his own community, the proper fruit of the conditions +just summarized.[79] Let us indicate by only such a paucity of examples as +we have room for. Able and fully furnished lawyers everywhere. Think of +Story, a most diligently attending judge and one of the best; also +finding time both to be the first law professor and most fertile and +eminent author of the age, exhausting English and American sources and +authority in his books, and crowding them with a civil law learning to be +surpassed only by that of the Roman jurists of Germany; let Ticknor, whom +we may call the founder of the post classical school of literature in our +country, suggest the students of modern languages who followed in an +illustrious line,--let him suggest also the famous historians, such as +Prescott, Bancroft, Hildreth, Motley, Parkman, really representatives of +the school just mentioned, using methods that got into the American air +first from Ticknor; let Channing suggest the pulpit,--Channing, who raised +religion from the gloom of dogma and orthodoxy into a life of angelic joy; +what can one say to describe Emerson in a breath,--the teacher to us all +of fit aspiration, right thinking, noble expression, the highest virtue +and truest religion, and who lived, as Dr. Heber Newton has lately told, +the most perfect of lives as a man; Hawthorne, showing the world sick with +its yearning for moral redemption that even a disgraced, lone, and +friendless woman can by a subsequent life of unreserved confession, +purity, and love to her neighbors turn a horrible brand of guilt into a +jewel more precious and brilliant than diamond,--how his consummate +achievement rebukes the sixty years' dilatoriness of Goethe over his +unfinished Faust; and divine poets, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, and +Holmes,--the last two conspicuous in letters, Lowell being in my judgment +the greatest American man of letters; I have said nothing of the statesmen +and orators, beginning with Fisher Ames and John Adams,--and there are +others in every high round of the intellectual life known all over the +land whose names I must omit. + +In this enumeration I have intentionally looked somewhat forward; for what +is in one particular generation you cannot find out until its effects are +plain in the next. I want to accentuate it that Webster belonged to a +society which had made some of the extraordinary figures whose names are +given, and was making the rest of them. When the view just suggested has +been taken, and if in comparing New England with any other community--even +with Athens, Florence, England, or Germany, in their best eras--periods of +time be equalized and differences of population be properly allowed for, +it will appear that the conditions moulding Webster were more energetic in +productivity than can be found elsewhere. And if, in this comparison, the +relative general condition of the masses in each community be duly taken +into the account, the result will be far more favorable to New England; +for a high level of the masses is a much better proof of a fecund culture +than merely many striking individual instances. + +Thus we bring out the point that Webster was born, grew up, and lived in a +nursery prolific in men and women of extraordinary powers and virtues. How +insignificant is the muster-roll of any other part of our country! I +compare that of the south because I am familiar with it, and one can with +better manners disparage his own section than another. The ante-bellum +southern treasures of art and literature except speeches, political and +forensic, can be counted on the fingers of one hand without taking them +all. The poetry of Poe, a few essays of Legaré, especially that on +Demosthenes, Calhoun's Dissertation on Government, and Toombs's Tremont +Temple lecture, are all that are pre-eminent; and some of the historians +of our literature insist that Poe was southern only in his prejudices, and +not in his making. To turn away from authors, how few can be found to +compare in education, polish, and literary or scientific accomplishments +with average New Englanders of their several professions or occupations. +Toombs, in the diamond-like brilliance of his extempore effusion in talks +or speeches, is as solitary in the south as Catullus, the greatest of the +spontaneous poets of his nation, was in the Rome of his day. + +Webster absorbed and absorbed, assimilated and assimilated, all the better +elements of this marvellous New England culture, which I am painfully +conscious of having most insufficiently described above, until at last he +mounted its eminences in his profession, in the politics of democracy, +æsthetic taste, and especially statesmanly eloquence. So assured was his +stand upon these eminences that all the wisest and most refined of the +section spontaneously and involuntarily did him obeisance, recognizing in +him their ideal of wisdom and counsel befittingly expressed. We can stop +to give only two examples. Edward Everett is the one American master of +grand rhetoric. He heard the reply to Hayne, and, as he says, he could not +but be reminded throughout of Demosthenes' making the unrivalled crown +oration. Choate, profoundly versed in the law, the incomparable forensic +advocate and popular speaker, daily flying higher with inspiration drawn +from Demosthenes and Cicero--he poured out his admiration in many +utterances that have already become classic. Webster was made in and by +New England, and not for herself alone. The toast, "Daniel Webster,--the +gift of New England to his country, his whole country, and nothing but his +country," to which he responded December 22, 1843, tells but the truth. No +American other than a New Englander ever had what one may term such a +greatness breeding environment as he. And passing in review all the famous +children of those famous six States, whether they spent their lives at +home as Choate, or developed elsewhere as Henry Ward Beecher, it is my +decided opinion that Daniel Webster as fruit and example of her culture is +New England's greatest glory. + +There remain now but a few prominences of Webster for me to touch upon. + +His speech of March 7, 1850, was fiercely denounced by the root-and-branch +abolitionists. Horace Mann called him a fallen Lucifer. Sumner charged him +with apostasy. Giddings said he had struck "a blow against freedom and the +constitutional rights of the free States which no southern arm could have +given." Theodore Parker could think of no comparable deed of any other New +Englander except the treachery of Benedict Arnold. Wittier condemned him +to everlasting obloquy in a lofty lyric, which from its very title of one +word throughout was reprobation more stinging than the world-known lampoon +of Catullus against Julius Cæsar. The effect of this tempest has not yet +all died out; and in many quarters of the north Webster is still regarded +as a renegade. His defenders, however, multiply and become more earnest +and strong. Let us consider this speech with the serenity and riper +judgment which should mark the historical writer of to-day. + +First and foremost let us grasp the wide difference of the situation from +that at the beginning of 1833. Then, the question was only remotely a +pro-slavery or southern one. A southern president, the most popular +American, of great firmness of purpose and extraordinary courage, had +taken a decided stand against the movement of one southern State hostile +to the general government,--a stand the more decided because he cordially +hated Calhoun, who was leading the movement. The southern leaders outside +of that State did not approve of nullification; most of them believing it +was an absurdity for a State to contend she could stay in the union and +at the same time rightfully refuse to perform a condition of that union. +It seemed that no southern State except Virginia would stand by South +Carolina in the event of a collision between her and the United States. We +can well understand that Webster could then see no danger to the cause he +loved above all others, that is, the union, in uncompromisingly demanding +that the revenue be collected, and with force if necessary. + +Nullification was palpably unjustifiable, even under the doctrine +prevalent in the south. We have explained how Calhoun's extreme desire for +peaceable remedies only, led him to champion this illogical measure. The +theory of State sovereignty demanded that, instead of the nullification +ordinance, South Carolina pass an ordinance of secession, conditioned to +commence its operation at a stated time if the objectionable duties had +not been repealed. The situation in 1833 was that all the north and nearly +all of the south were arrayed under a southern leader against only one +southern State, making a demand which was plainly untenable in either one +of the two differing schools of constitutional construction. + +But the situation, in 1850, was a south solidly united, not upon such an +obvious heresy as nullification, but aroused as one man to protect the +very underpinning of its social structure. It was standing confidently +upon the doctrine of State sovereignty, which, as the historical records +all showed, was the creed of the generation, both north and south, that +made the constitution. As we have already told, Calhoun in 1833 probably +convinced Webster that the States were sovereign. That did not mean that +the force-bill was wrong; it meant only that if South Carolina chose, she +could rightfully secede. And we may say that this great argument of +Calhoun, demolishing as it does the premises of Webster, was really +irrelevant, for it did not support his own proposition. Now in 1850, as +Webster saw it, the south was justified by the constitution, however +foolish might be her policy, and he was too conscientious to oppose what +he believed right and just. In addition to this claim by the south of +State sovereignty as abstractly right, his conscience told him that some +of her practical demands were just. It had been provided not only that all +of Texas south of 36° 30' be admitted with slavery, but further that four +other States be made out of the same territory. Although Webster was a +free-soiler from first to last, his conscience told him peremptorily that +the only honest course of congress as to the provision mentioned, which +was really a solemn contract with Texas, was to perform the contract in +good faith. This advice, of course, aroused the ire of the abolitionists, +who had united upon the position that no other slave State should ever be +admitted into the union. And he boldly said that the south was right in +her complaint that there was disinclination both among individuals and +public authorities at the north to execute the fugitive slave law. +Meditate these serious words: + + "I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men at the north, + of all conscientious men, of all men who are not carried away by some + fanatical idea or some false impression, to their constitutional + obligations. I put it to all the sober and sound minds at the north as + a question of morals and a question of conscience, What right have + they, in their legislative capacity or any other capacity, to endeavor + to get round this constitution, or to embarrass the free exercise of + the rights secured by the constitution to the persons whose slaves + escape from them? None at all; none at all. Neither in the forum of + conscience, nor before the face of the constitution, are they, in my + opinion, justified in such an attempt." + +I must believe that as time rolls on the outcry against this position of +Webster's, so unshakably founded in conscience and reason as the position +is, must not only cease, but turn to words of praise and commendation. The +northern fanatics who tried to abolish slavery by repudiating such solemn +contracts as the resolution of March 1, 1845, respecting the admission of +Texas, and the fugitive slave restoration clause of the federal +constitution, _while purposing to stay in the union_, were just as morally +wrong as were the southern fanatics who proposed to stay in the union and +enjoy its benefits and not pay the taxes necessary for its maintenance. + +One other passage of this speech has been strongly attacked. Webster +opposed applying the Wilmot proviso to California and New Mexico, where, +as he said, "the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the +formation of the earth ... settles forever with a strength beyond all +terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist." To apply the proviso +would be, as he added, to "take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance +of nature," and "to re-enact the will of God;" and its insertion in a +Territorial government bill would be "for the mere purpose of a taunt or +reproach." Mr. Lodge, reprehending most severely, confidently asserts that +though these Territories were not suited to slave agriculture, yet that +their many and rich mines could have been profitably worked by slaves.[80] +He stresses the fact that certain slave owners declared that they would, +if they could, so work these mines. This distinguished author is to be +reminded of how cheaply Seius could replace any one of his slaves that he +worked to death in Ilva's mines. Let him re-read the Captivi of +Plautus,--not to mention many other ancient records just as +instructive,--and realize that in that time it was not only one race that +furnished slaves, but that every free human being was in lifelong danger +of falling to a master. The prisoners taken in the incessant wars kept the +slave markets glutted. A few months' work of one of his slaves would bring +the master enough to pay the purchase money and leave a considerable sum +to his credit with the banker. The Spaniards worked their mines with +Indians to be had for the catching in near-by places. And Mr. Lodge +mentions mining with the labor of criminals and serfs. In all the +instances that he has in mind the worker can be had for his keep or a +little more than that. But to have mined with the slaves of the +south,--that was widely different. There was no way to get such a slave +except to rear or hire or buy him in a protected market. Does Mr. Lodge +really believe that Seius would have permitted his eight hundred slaves to +sicken in the mines of Ilva if each one had been worth at least $1,000 in +the market? Really the leading industry of the south was slave rearing. +The profit was in keeping the slaves healthy and rapidly multiplying. This +could be done at little expense in agriculture, where even the light +workers were made to support themselves. But had a planter gone into a +mining section, where he could get no land, for corn to feed his slaves +and stock, and for cotton to bring him money, he would have found no +margin of profit whatever in mining. I was reared in the gold-bearing +district of Georgia. I can remember old Mr. John Wynne, a wealthy cotton +planter living in Oglethorpe county, some six or seven miles from my +father's, who, when--to use plantation parlance--he had laid by his crop +at the middle or end of July, would work his gold mine until +cotton-picking became brisk about the middle of September. He made money +out of his gold mine, without injuring his other far more valuable mine, +that is, the natural increase of his negroes. And I heard of other such +mine workers. But you could not have tempted one of these shrewd business +men to settle with his slaves outside of a cotton-making district in order +to mine. Had either Mr. Clingman or Mr. Mason--mentioned by Mr. +Lodge--made the trial, he would have soon returned to his old neighborhood +a sadder and wiser man. + +The negro's work as a slave in the coal and iron mines of the south never +commenced until after the thirteenth amendment freed him. Since then he +has done much cruelly hard work as _servus poenae_--a slave of +punishment--in these mines, for convict lessees, having no other interest +in him than to get all the labor possible during his term. + +So it is clear that Webster, in contending that the conditions in these +Territories were prohibitive of slavery was as statesmanly and +perspicacious as he was generally in other matters. + +His detractors charged that the entire speech was a bid for the support of +the south in his eager struggle for the presidency. That he passionately +longed for the chair was manifest. But his was not the sordid ambition of +the professional place-hunter. He had a heaven-reaching aspiration to show +America what a president should be in those angry times. He must have been +conscious that he was the only man of gifts to do the great deed. What an +appropriate climax that would have been for the invincible defender of the +union, who, when replying to Hayne twenty years before, had outsoared +Pindar in eulogizing South Carolina leading the south, and Massachusetts +leading the north, in the same breath; and who, neither from prepossession +in favor of his native community or resentment because of attack upon it +by those of the other section, had ever been removed out of brotherly +love for all his countrymen alike. If you can do an all-important thing +for your fellows which you believe no one else can do, and are without +ambition for opportunity, are you not a poor grovelling creature? Webster, +knowing that secession could not be peaceable, and seeing it become more +and more probable, racked with fears for the union, and aghast at the +menace of fraternal bloodshed, like Calhoun, he cheated himself with a +futile remedy. We have told you of Calhoun's proposal to disarm the +combatants. In his amiability Webster believed with his whole soul that he +could as president make his countrymen love one another as he himself +loved them, and that he could pour upon the waters now beginning to rage +oil enough to safe the ship of union through the tempest soon to be at its +height. It was an aspiration high and holy, deserving of eternal honor +from all America. You cannot read this great speech of March 7 aright if +you do not discern that Webster was seriously alarmed. When you see that a +dear one's malady is fatal, you will not confess it to others,--not even +to yourself. His excited exclamations, "No, sir! no, sir! There will be no +secession! Gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession," cannot +deceive a reader whose wont it has been to look into his own heart. +Webster did not see the future with the superhuman prevision of Calhoun; +but he had observed the course of things in that stormy session. Is it to +be believed that he had overlooked the tremendous significance of Toombs's +speech of December 13, and of the wild plaudits it brought from the +southern members? And try to conceive what must have been the effect upon +him of that most solemn and the saddest great speech in all oratory of +Calhoun just three days before. Read the 7th of March speech by its +circumstances and it is revealed to you, as by a flashlight, that Webster +had peeped behind the curtain which he had prayed should never rise in his +lifetime. Horror-struck as he was, he would not despair of his +country,--he would not believe that the brothers' union was about to turn +into a brothers' war. Oh, let nobody dishonor his better self by seeing in +this glorious speech, which our best and most lovable have placed in their +hearts beside Washington's farewell address, the bid of a turncoat. Rather +let us learn to understand its supreme statesmanly reach; its impartiality +towards and just rebuke of the orator's own section and its merited +castigation of the other courageously given, while affection for both is +kept uppermost; its grand dignity, moral height, and pre-eminent +patriotism. Let us also learn properly to estimate the disfavor with which +he regarded ever afterwards during the rest of his life the active +anti-slavery men of the north, whom he could not understand to be other +than bringers of the unspeakable calamity he would avert. And let us give +him his due commiseration for missing the nomination, and realizing that +the hopes of saving his country which he had cherished so fondly were all, +all shattered. When we do our full duty to him we will, northerners and +southerners alike, agree that Whittier's palinode ought to have gone full +circle before it paused. + +What is Webster's highest and best fame? In answer we think at once of the +reply to Hayne, its loftiness throughout, its eagle ascensions here and +there, and most of all the organ melodies at the grand close, beside which +the famous apostrophe of Longfellow is harsh overstrain. The next moment +we feel he is higher in his profound love for his whole country than in +his unequalled eloquence. He and Lincoln were the supereminent Americans +who could never, never forget that the people of the other section were +their own full-blood brothers and sisters. They are the supreme exponents +of that American brotherhood, more deeply founded and more lasting than +either one of the nationalizations which we have explained, out of which a +continental is first, and then a world-union to come. To save our union +was also to do the better deed of saving that brotherhood. For this each +strove in his own way. I believe that the people of the world-union will +pair them in Walhalla, and set them above all other heroes, crowning +Webster as the monarch of speech which prepared millions with faith and +fortitude for the crisis, and crowning Lincoln the monarch of counsels and +acts in the crisis. It will be understood that neither was called away +before his mission was finished. The greatest work of each was example of +the love with which we should all love one another; and that was +complete. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" + + +The misrepresentations in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of the character of the +negro and his usual treatment in southern slavery have been taken as true +by the best-informed and most unprejudiced everywhere outside of the +south. The quotations which I make above from Prof. Barrett Wendell's +_bahnbrechend_ work on American literature[81] show a rare and exemplary +freedom from sectional bias. But he is a most convincing witness to the +statement with which I begin this chapter, as I shall now show by two +other excerpts from the same book, making it appear that even Professor +Wendell has accepted without question the misrepresentations mentioned. In +these excerpts I italicize the important statements, and I follow each +with a contradictory one of my own. I invite close attention to what +Professor Wendell says on one side and I on the other, for they make up +issues of fact that must be rightly settled before the historical merit of +the work which is the subject of this chapter can be accurately judged. + +This is the first excerpt: + + "Written carelessly, and full of crudities, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' even + after forty-eight years, remains a remarkable piece of fiction. The + truth is that almost unawares Mrs. Stowe had in her the stuff of which + good novelists are made. Her plot, to be sure, is conventional and + rambling; but her characters, even though little studied in detail, + have a pervasive vitality which no study can achieve; _you + unhesitatingly accept them as real. Her descriptive power, meanwhile, + was such as to make equally convincing the backgrounds in which her + action and her characters move. What is more, these backgrounds, most + of which she knew from personal experience, are probably so faithful + to actual nature that the local sentiment aroused as you read them may + generally be accepted as true._"[82] + +I say as to the characters in the novel that the negroes are monstrous +distortions, being drawn in the main with the leading peculiarities of +whites and without those of negroes; and that as to her most +representative southern whites Mrs. Stowe is utterly untrue to fact by +making them all anti-slavery. I say as to the "backgrounds," that she knew +as little of them as she did of the negroes. I expect to demonstrate that +the "personal experience" claimed for her by Professor Wendell was scanty +and inadequate in the extreme. + +I now give the second and last excerpt: "She [Mrs. Stowe] differed from +most abolitionists _in having observed on the spot all the tragic evils of +slavery_."[83] + +I do not dispute that her opportunity of learning southern slavery, small +as it was, was very far superior to that of the other prominent +abolitionists except Seward, who had taught school in the black belt of +Georgia.[84] I maintain that she knew but little of southern slavery, and +they less; that what both they and she conscientiously and most +confidently believed to be their knowledge of this slavery, the slave, and +of the slaveholder, was but a prodigious mass of delusion and prejudice. + +I shall show, I think, that, instead of observing, she merely fancied and +imagined, and that, to say the least, it is very misleading to allege +that this fancying and imagining of hers was done "on the spot." + +By the words, "all the tragic evils of slavery," Professor Wendell +evidently means that the evils of southern slavery to the slave were both +very many and very great. I shall show, I believe, that the condition of +the average negro in southern slavery was far better than it was in Africa +whence he came, and far better than it is now since he has been freed. +There are occasionally incident to every human condition--even to the +relation of parent and child--some tragic evils of its own. In the native +home of the negro in West Africa all the women and nearly all the men are +slaves of brutally cruel savages, without any protection of law whatever. +The social organism is in the very lowest stage; and there is complete +inability to evolve into a better one as the stationariness of ages +proves. In the new south, certain causes which I have described at length +in the last two chapters of this book have, ever since emancipation, been +steadily and with acceleration depressing the average negro; and the rise +of the few who have managed to acquire some property, or to get a good +industrial education, only brings out more conspicuously the misery and +wretchedness of the mass. It is correct to say that there was a vast +multitude of tragic evils to the negroes in West Africa; and it is also +correct to say that there is now the same to them in the south; but it is +not correct to say that the tragic evils of southern slavery to the slave +were frequent or general. The truth as to southern slavery ought to be +known everywhere, which is, that it raised the negro very greatly in +condition, and, now that he has been taken out of it, his progress has +been arrested, and he is relapsing. + +The great proposition of Mrs. Stowe and of the root-and-branch +abolitionists was that slavery in the south was such a flagrant and +atrocious wrong to the negro, that every human being was commanded by +conscience to do everything possible to help him if he should try to +escape from his master. Combating this proposition, without any concession +whatever, I think it well that we try at the outset to ascertain how +southern slavery affected the negro, whether cruelly or beneficially. To +do this, his condition in his native land, his condition while a slave in +America, and, lastly, his condition after his emancipation, must be +compared. I beg my reader to follow me attentively as I now review and +contrast these three conditions. First, as to his condition in Africa. +Here is what Toombs said of him to a Boston audience, January 24, 1856: + + "The monuments of the ancient Egyptians carry him back to the morning + of time--older than the pyramids; they furnish the evidence both of + his national identity and his social degradation before history began. + We first behold him a slave in foreign lands; we then find the great + body of his race slaves in their native land; and after thirty + centuries, illuminated by both ancient and modern civilization, have + passed over him, we still find him a slave of savage masters, as + incapable as himself of even attempting a single step in + civilization--we find him there still, without government or laws of + protection, without letters or arts of industry, without religion, or + even the aspirations which would raise him to the rank of an idolater; + and in his lowest type, his almost only mark of humanity is, that he + walks erect in the image of the Creator. Annihilate his race to-day, + and you will find no trace of his existence within half a score of + years; and he would not leave behind him a single discovery, + invention, or thought worthy of remembrance by the human family."[85] + +If my reader deems Toombs's picture overdrawn let him consult those parts +of the recent work of a most diligent and conscientious investigator +describing the negroes of West Africa, and note what is there told of +heathen practices still surviving,--slavery of women to their polygamic +husbands, pitiless destruction of useless members of the family, robbery, +murder, cannibalism, the utter want of chastity.[86] We quote this as to +slavery, which is especially important here: + + "Slavery, having existed from time immemorial, is bound up with the + whole social and economic organization of West African society. There + are, broadly speaking, three kinds of slaves: those captured in war, + those purchased from outside the tribe,--usually from the + interior,--and the native-born slaves. _All alike_ are mere chattels, + and _by law are absolutely subject to the master's will without + redress_. But in practice a difference is made, for obvious reasons, + between native-born slaves and captives taken from hostile tribes. + _The latter are numerous, and the severest forms of labor fall to + their lot. They are treated with constant neglect, and cruelly + punished on the slightest provocation. Their lives are at no time + secure; they serve as victims for the sacrifice; when sick they are + driven into the jungle; in times of scarcity they starve._"[87] + +The master has the power of life and death over all slaves.[88] + +The same author adds: "_The pawning of persons for debt is exceedingly +common. If the debt is never paid in full, the pawn_ and his descendants +become slaves in perpetuity."[89] + +Surely the reader who has attended to these details which I have given +from Mr. Tillinghast will admit that the southern master transferred the +African into a condition far better than any he could find at home. In the +south two agencies gave him beneficent favor to which he and his fathers +had always been strangers. The law of the land protected his life and +shielded him from cruelty; and his high market value made it the interest +of his American master not to overwork or under- feed and clothe him. And +he was introduced into the first stage of monogamic life, which he +developed steadily and rapidly until he was freed. In this he was +travelling the only true road up from barbarism. If he could have but +stayed in it until, after some generations--perhaps centuries--chaste +wives and mothers had been evolved, he would have stood firmly on the +threshold of permanent civilization and improvement. + +Whatever evil of southern slavery to the negro my readers, prompted by the +root-and-branch abolitionists, may suggest, they will find on reflection +that it would have been far greater to him and more frequent had he +remained in Africa. Separation of members of the family has been +repeatedly emphasized as a most horrible evil of slavery in the south. +Such separation was incalculably more cruel and frequent in West Africa +than it ever was among the negro slaves in America. And how have the +root-and-branch abolitionists mended matters? What do we see in the new +south, now that slavery, the great rupturer of family circles, is no more, +and a master no longer can part parent and child, or husband and wife? +Before the end of the brothers' war there had not been a single +separation of a family among my father's slaves. At much expense and +inconvenience he had bought the husband of one and the wife of another in +order to keep each one of these two pairs united. In 1866, Bob, a boy of +sixteen, who, because of his obedience and merry-making gifts, had always +been a greatly indulged pet, signalized his new-found freedom by stealing +from the house of one of our neighbors some articles of considerable +value. He fled from justice, and, never seeing his parents or his brothers +and sisters again, died among strangers. In 1868, Lewis abandoned his wife +Esther and their young child, and went to a distant town. Some ten years +afterwards, Bill, a brother of Bob, and several years younger, convicted +of an unmentionable crime, received a ten years' chain-gang sentence. Not +long before this the body of one of his two wives who was at the time out +of his favor was found in a well. Reputable whites living near were +convinced that he had murdered her. If that be true, it should count as a +separation. While he was serving out his sentence his remaining wife +married again, and this should be set down also as a separation. Bob, +Lewis, Esther, and Bill were slaves of my father. He did not own twenty in +all. This example shows how, as to the same negroes, southern slavery +operated to prevent separation of families, and how freedom has operated +to encourage and stimulate it. It is not an exceptional example. My +maternal grandfather and a maternal aunt owned each many more slaves than +my father did. Some of my father's near neighbors had slaves in +considerable number. In all of these slaves, while I knew them, there +never was a separation of a family except by death or the voluntary act of +parties to a marriage? But when they were freed in 1865 separation at once +became rife, and it has always been active. What I have just told is +fairly representative of the new south throughout the cotton States. + +There were now and then sales made of slaves which sundered man and wife, +and parent and child; but such were extremely few, and their proportion +was steadily decreasing under two potent influences. Restraint of them by +the law had commenced and was growing. But the stronger influence was +custom and public opinion. Before approaching sales at public outcry by +sheriffs or representatives of a deceased, and also before private sales, +the slaves to be sold were given opportunity to find their new masters. +There was generally a neighbor who owned husband, wife, parents, or +children, or wanted a cook, washerwoman, seamstress, boy to make a +carpenter, striker, or blacksmith of, somebody careful with stock, etc., +and the upshot would be that the man selected by the slave had got him. +The seller had natural feelings. His wife and all of his children would do +their utmost to get such new masters as the negroes preferred. I shall +always cherish in memory the affectionate regard which the mother of the +household and all the family habitually showed to their slaves. As I +write, a sweet reminiscence comes of how the children would always clamor +and mutiny against the most merited punishment of their nurse by father or +overseer. There is no doubt that the slave steadily won larger place in +the domestic affections, and that his treatment by each generation of +masters was more kind and humane. And as a part of this amelioration the +percentage of forced separation of slave families was all the while +becoming less. + +Let us devote a moment to the negro trader, as he was called, and his +slave-pens, which were the subjects of much and heated invective. The +first suggestion in order here is that there were such in West Africa, far +more frequent and far exceeding in cruelty any ever known in the south. +To take the African away from the latter and turn him over to the former +was great kindness to him. I remind my readers, in the next place, that +the factors constantly minimizing separation of slaves from other members +of the family--law, public opinion becoming more sensitive, custom +becoming more merciful, and the sway of the domestic affections +stronger--were _pari passu_ humanizing every incident of the commerce in +slaves as property. Lastly, the negro trader and the pen, by reason of the +small number of the slaves to whom they caused real suffering, were mercy +and prosperous condition itself beside the convict gangs and pens which +emancipation has put in their place, as will come out more clearly in a +short while. + +His use of the lash was a dire accusation of the master. The reader thinks +at once of the relevant words in a famous passage so often quoted from one +of President Lincoln's messages: "If this struggle is to be prolonged till +... every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn +with the sword." This was said March 4, 1865, a month and five days only +before General Lee's surrender, and when all the great battles of the +brothers' war had been fought,--a war by far the most sanguinary in the +world's history. Blood did sometimes follow the blow of the lash, but not +often. The overseer who could not correct without breaking the skin always +lost his place. When the statement of Mr. Lincoln just commented on is +compared with the actual fact, it appears to be one of the most +extravagant hyperboles ever uttered. + +Before I have my readers to look at the actual facts I want to say a +preliminary word. The parent was enjoined by Solomon not to spare the rod. +The rod was permitted to the master of the apprentice, the school-teacher, +the drill officer, and others. It was often used with great severity. As +we see from the Decameron husbands were wont to correct their wives by +beating them with sticks. Whipping on the bare back was a common execution +of the judgment of a criminal court. Our insubordinate convicts are +strapped. The usual punishment of a slave's disobedience was to whip him. +A switch was not generally used, because by reason of his thick and tough +skin and lower nervous development--to use a common expression--it would +not hurt him. It was a familiar thing to me in my childhood to hear some +negro tell of the use of a switch on him by women or feeble men, how the +blows could scarcely be felt, and yet with what outcry and clamor he +pretended that each one gave him great pain. The cowhide, but far more +frequently the whip, took the place of the switch. The former was more and +more discredited, because it could seldom be laid on hard enough without +cutting the skin. The whip had a flat lash at the end, with which, as the +strap or paddle now used on our convicts, a stinging blow could be hit +that would not draw blood. + +An ordinary correction of a negro did not cause him as much pain as your +child, with his far superior sensitiveness, receives when you give him the +rod. Large and heavy as the overseer's whip looked, the negro, with his +high degree of insensibility to physical pain inherited from his African +ancestors, who for a hundred generations or more had bestowed upon one +another all kinds of corporal torture, cared far less for it than the +abolitionist who insisted on making him merely a black white man, could +ever understand. How little of both mental and corporal suffering the lash +causes the average negro is strikingly shown by the fact that ever since +his emancipation, when he is detected in a serious offence, he is prone to +propose that he be whipped instead of being carried to court. If his +offer is accepted he strips off his clothes with alacrity, exclaims the +conventional "O, Lordy!" under every fall of the whip; and when the +contract number of lashes has been given he goes away with the look and +air of one who has just learned that he has drawn a lottery prize of +thousands; and his nearest and dearest, his wife and children, all his +sweethearts, congratulate him cordially, and the entire negro community +rate him as rarely fortunate. This is enough here of the lash; but a word +or two more will be appropriate when we give the chain-gang attention. + + "Run, nigger, run, patroller get you." + +The riotous merriment of this air can be fully appreciated only by one who +has heard Cuffee sing it at the quarters while picking his banjo. It +completely confutes the charge often made that the patrol law was a cruel +one. To the negro, the execution of that law was more of fun and frolic +than punishment. Let this air, and all the others to which the slaves used +to dance, be meditated by those, if there are such, who incline to believe +that Professor DuBois has really detected, as he seriously contends, in +the negro melodies of the old south deep sorrow over slavery. If miserable +conditions give character to musical expression, the songs, if any, that +now come forth spontaneously from the mass of southern negroes--that is, +from those of the lower class, which class will be described later +herein--ought to be sadder than the tears of Simonides. + +My reader who has his memory stored with the raw-head and bloody bones +fiction of abolitionists who had never set foot on an inch of slave +territory, probably thinks of bloodhounds, and wonders if I will be frank +enough to mention them. He has been made to believe that runaway slaves +often had the flesh torn from their bones by these dogs. I witnessed +several chases of runaways, and in every one, when the negro was overtaken +by the dogs, he was in a tree far above their reach. Think about it, and +bring it home to yourself. Put yourself in the runaway's place, you would +surely understand as well as a common house cat does how to avoid pursuing +dogs. Negro dogs, as they were called, were bred to be far more slow than +fox dogs. The tricks of the runaway would put the latter at fault so often +that they could hardly ever catch him. Further, the packs of negro dogs +were usually too small to overpower a stout negro. He was often armed with +a scythe-blade for use if overtaken where he could not find a tree. When +he could keep ahead no longer he preferred taking refuge to fighting with +the dogs. He knew he could kill or disable only the few that would rush in +recklessly, and that the others would stay too far from him to be hurt and +yet keep him at bay. He was now going to be caught, and he would think it +better not to provoke the ire of the owners by killing or injuring their +dogs. + +The negro hunted the 'possum and 'coon by night and the hare--the rabbit, +as everybody called it--on Sundays, half-holidays, and Christmas, either +with his young master or without him, and always with the dogs; which he +thus learned to control. A negro woman cooked the corn-bread and +pot-liquor, with which they were fed by her or some other slave. They were +always waiting near when the slaves ate by day in the fields or at all +hours of night in their cabins, and many a bit was thrown to them. Usually +there was the greatest friendship between the dogs on the plantation, +those intended for chasing runaways included, and the negroes. It was +great entertainment for a negro, at the command of his master, to give the +young negro dogs a race, as it was called. These races were frequent, and +they were the entire training of the dogs for their business. A hunting +dog when lost will track his master. And many a runaway was caught by dogs +which he was in the habit of feeding and hunting with. The average negro +of those days, prowling so much at night as he did, necessarily became a +most expert dog-tamer. How often I have been diverted with this sight! A +strange negro, coming on some errand, intrepidly opens the front gate and +enters the yard of a dwelling. A savage dog dashes forward. Just as the +dog couches near for his spring, the negro, by a very quick movement, +takes off his hat and extends it to the dog. The latter turns his eyes +away from the negro, looks at the old, soiled wool hat, smells it, and +then retires, nonplussed. + +As a general rule a negro was safe from the bite of dogs. Running away was +not frequent. The almost insuperable difficulty of final escape from the +dogs prevented it. And it was in practice a most mild means of prevention. +I suppose that I knew and heard of the catching of some twenty odd slaves +in the contiguous parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene +counties, which constituted the locality with which I was familiar, and in +not a single case was one injured by the bloodhounds. The dogs that are +now turned loose after our convicts are of far more savage temper than +were the negro dogs of the old south; and consequently the human game, +when come up with, is more prompt to go up a tree than was the old slave. + +There was much less lack of food and raiment among the slaves than among +the class known as the white trash. It was considered a business blunder +not to keep them supplied always with more food than they wanted. They +were in better physical condition than the average white laborer now +shows. + +And they were not worked hard. Even in the longest days of the year, when +the battle with the grass was fiercest, at night the quarters were +resonant with mirth, song, and dancing as soon as the mules had been +watered, stabled, and fed. + +The foregoing is a report, from my observation on the spot, of "all the +tragic evils of slavery" to the negro in the south. I have been at pains +to make it as true as can be. I purpose to follow it now with a like +report of all the gladsome blessings to him of his freedom. + +His true and fast friends, the abolitionists, equalized him _per saltum_ +to his master as a voter and office-holder. This single measure was sure +to make deadly enemies of white and black in the south, and to bring a war +of races in which the superior one was bound to conquer and become +absolute. This war did come, and was fought out. Profound peace has +reigned for some years, and the negroes now contentedly stay away from the +polls, and manifest no aspiration whatever for office and place. + +His same friends gave the ex-slave equality with his old master under the +criminal law. He had this in slavery only when charged with a capital +offence; and if he was charged with a graver one of the non-capital +offences, such as breaking and entering a dwelling, stealing something of +considerable value, he was brought before a statutory court of justices of +the peace, and if upon his summary trial he was convicted, his punishment +was usually a short term in jail, the sheriff to give him so many lashes +each day until he had received the full number adjudged in his sentence. I +never heard of one that was seriously injured by this kind of punishment. +It never gave him any permanent mental anguish. His conscience approved +whipping as the most fit punishment for every offence. The crimes of +negroes mentioned above in this paragraph were very infrequent. Their many +peccadillos were in practice wholly ignored by the law, and given over to +private and domestic jurisdiction. Cuffee would sometimes indulge a sudden +craving for fresh meat by appropriating a shoat or grown lamb, or he would +gratify a watering mouth by stealthy invasion of melon patches or sweet +potato patches and banks. And he was prone to other small larcenies. If +caught,--which was very far from always happening,--he was whipped; and +that was the last of it. Now he must replace the bounty of his master +which sheltered, clothed, and fed him comfortably all his life by living +from hand to mouth. His forecast utterly undeveloped, and more and more +losing the work habit, there is often but one way for him to avoid +starving or freezing, and that is to get the necessaries of life by +various acts which are crimes in the law. It is but a scanty supply that +he thus manages to get. His year is nearly always, from beginning to end, +but an alternation of short feasts upon the cheapest fare, and prolonged +fasts. Yet in the eye of the stern and severe law how many gross offences +does he commit by doing only the things which, if he did not do, he could +not keep soul and body together. And so he is brought before every court +of any criminal jurisdiction, and when convicted, as he generally is, for +he is nearly always guilty,--not in conscience, but guilty under the law +which his emancipators have put him under,--often he cannot find a friend +to pay his fine, and he must work it out in the chain-gang. The city has +its chain-gang, the county has its chain-gang, and the State works or +farms out its convicts. The percentage of whites among these convicts is +very small. Often when you encounter a gang at work you cannot find a +single white person in it. These negro convicts are many, many. As fast +as one's time expires his place is filled by another. Disease, decay of +energy from irregular food supply, growing habits of idleness, and other +things in the train, bring forth tramps more plentifully, and from these +the chain-gangs are more and more largely recruited. These slaves of +punishment work under the eyes of guards furnished with the best of +small-arms loaded to kill. The most of them work in shackles. If they do +not work as their superintendents think they ought, they are strapped. I +have seen them working in the rain, as I never saw required of slaves. At +night they are put to sleep in a crowded log-pen, all of them chained +together, the chain being made fast to each bunk. The guards are practised +marksmen, known to be men who will promptly and resolutely "do their +duty." This hell-like life constantly keeps each convict watching for +opportunity to make a dash for liberty. If the guards have anything like +fair shots when he starts, one more unmarked and soon forgotten grave is +dug and filled in the paupers' burial ground, and that is the earthly end +of this poor derelict of the human race. Suppose he gets safely away from +the guard. In a few minutes the unleashed dogs are yelping on his track. +In the old days even the negro dogs were fed and tended by slaves, and +almost every dog in the land seemed to love negroes. But these bloodhounds +in the convict camps have been bred into a deadly hatred of every negro. +Escaping Cuffee is usually caught. Then more of the paddle, heavier +shackles, chains at night stronger and more taut, and the bosses harder to +satisfy as he works under greater hindrances--these make his lot more +hell-like than it was before. + +It is a melancholy proof of the insufficient dietary and bad hygiene of +the common negroes that these convicts fatten in spite of their cruel +hardships. + +The long-term convicts, farmed out to coal and other mine owners and +various manufacturers, and private employers, I know but little of from +observation. But what I hear makes me believe that their condition is +worse than that of those just described. This is to be expected, for two +reasons. First, they are worked for profit by persons whose only interest +is to get the largest possible product out of their labor. The labor +exacted by the owner, bear in mind, would not be severe enough either to +impair the market value or check vigorous reproduction of his slaves. +Second, the places where these convicts are worked are more or less +retired, and thus the employer escapes scrutiny nearly all the year. Think +of a negro who, receiving a twenty years' sentence for burglariously +stealing a ham when he was hungry, is put to work in the coal mine! Who +ever hears of him afterwards? He is soon forgotten by his wife, who takes +another husband, and by his children either skulking here and there to +shun the officer, or toiling in a chain-gang. Here is indeed a bitter +slavery--bitterer by far than any West Africa ever knew. There the slave +does not labor underground and out of the sun so dear to him. His +manumission comes mercifully in many ways, long before the expiration of +twenty years--the sacrifice may need a victim; he may starve; he may fall +sick and be cast out in the bush. But the mine slave--the mine boss will +not whip him hard enough to give him even short rest from his work, work, +work; he shall always have enough of raiment, food, and sleep to keep him +able to work, work, work; when he gets very sick the mine doctor will +patch him up and send him back to his work, work, work; he will work, +work, work out his twenty years in this hell hole. Miss Landon in her +immortal invective against child labor exclaims: + + "Good God! to think upon a child + That has no childish days, + No careless play, no frolics wild, + No words of prayer and praise!" + +This factory child that never knew any of the proper joys of a child is +without either sweet memory or unavailing wish. But the mine slave, the +most of whose former life was passed in the open air, how he pines for the +splendor of his loved sun by day; how in his bunk he recalls his rounds by +night when the Seven Stars, the Ell and Yard and Job's Coffin were his +clock and the North Star his compass. Each part of the revolving year +whispers to him when he is at work or dreaming. Christmas suggests the jug +with the corn-cob stopper, the 'possum cooked brown, the yams exuding +their sugary juice, the banjo picker and his song, the fiddle playing a +dancing tune, and the floor shaking under the thumping footfalls; the cold +weather following suggests the 'possum and 'coon hunt; the early spring +brings what he used to call the corn-planting birds and their lively +calls; and on and on his thoughts go over mocking-bird, woodpecker, early +peaches and apples, full orchards spared by frost, the watermelon, +solitary and incomparable among all things for a negro to eat, his Sunday +fishings and rabbit hunts, his church and society meetings, this and that +dusky love who fooled him into believing that he was dearer to her than +husband or any other man, especially some yellow girl, his nonesuch, +exceeding all other women as the watermelon excels all other produce of +tree or vine,--on and on his thoughts go over what he can never have +again. I need not say a word for the white victims of child labor, for +their race is rousing for their rescue, and I know its power to achieve. +But I do feel that it is my duty to put that friendless, forgotten, +long-term negro convict in the minds of my southern readers. If he must +be a convict, do not farm him out to mine operators or where he will be +worked behind any screen. Put all our convicts, both felony and +misdemeanor, upon the public roads until they need only a little working +now and then, say I. There the convicts will not be worked for profit, nor +in secret. + +The total of the negroes suffering in southern slavery from all causes +falls in amount far below that alone which has come upon him because he +was stupidly subjected to the white man's criminal law, and not given +reformatories and other belongings of the system which we are perfecting +for juvenile offenders. The suffering in slavery was occasional only, and +soon over. The present suffering of the negroes under the criminal law is +constant, and is to be found rife in every locality. The aggregate of the +felony and misdemeanor convicts of Georgia now at hard labor is about +4,500. The convicts sentenced by city and town police courts for short +terms of days I cannot give with any approximate accuracy. I think it +probable that the number of those convicted each year in the municipal +courts is somewhat larger than that of those convicted in the State +courts. By reason of a late wholesale reduction of felonies the number of +long-term convicts does not increase,--it is at a standstill,--but the +number of the misdemeanor and municipal convicts steadily increases. More +than nine-tenths of those in each one of the three classes are negroes. +The stench, filth, and discomfort of their nights and the hardship of +their days, who can describe? How it moves my pity to see, as I often do, +the convict toiling incessantly for long hours, impeded and tortured by +his iron shackles, the paddle at hand, and a double-barrel or Winchester +frowning over him, each to be used on occasion by somebody who cares +nothing for and has no interest in him. Weary as the worker may be, a +word from the boss gives new impetus to his pick or shovel. Here is the +only place I have ever known on American soil where one can find "poor, +oppressed, bleeding Africa." How different it was with the slave offender! +It mattered not what was the charge against him, he had persons related to +him both in interest and affection who would intercede powerfully at his +call. Wherever he might be,--in the sheriff's hands, or locked up by the +overseer in the gin-house,--a messenger-service as secret and more sure +than wireless telegraphy even if not as quick, was at his command; and +some child, white or colored, or favorite servant would carry his +entreaties to the Big House. And the justices, or ole master or the +overseer, would be influenced by a word from ole miss, or the tears of +young miss, or the importunity of young master. In the end Cuffee's +punishment would be made tolerable; and after it was over he would the +next night at the cabin brag joyfully of the many friends he had and what +great things they had done for him--the children of his master present and +showing more gladness than himself. + +Which of the two was the more humane and christian punitive system for the +negro? Which of the two was the better for him? That of slavery, or that +produced by the conditions which his professed friends put in place of +slavery? + +I assert it most solemnly that I never saw a negro slave worked in +shackles and under a loaded firearm, neither by his master nor an +overseer, nor by their command, nor by an officer of the law; and, +further, that I never had information or report that such had been done. + +When their emancipators led the negroes out of their cabins into their new +life it was something like throwing our domestic animals into the forest +and desert, where they, without formed habits of self-maintenance and +without knowledge of the new environment, must live, if they can live, +only in competition with their wild brothers and sisters knowing the +environment and who are self-maintaining experts therein. That comparison +serves somewhat. But this comes nearer: Suppose children between the ages +of eight and twelve, who have never been taught to do anything for +themselves, to be taken away from their parents, and settled among a +people lately made bitterly hostile to the children, as the whites were +made to the negroes by the effort of the emancipators to give political +equality--nay, supremacy--to the latter. Those emancipated children must +subsist themselves. How little they could earn by begging or work. They +would have to steal to live. Those that did not steal, and for whom no +companion would steal, would perish. The philanthropists who founded this +infantile colony would have outdone but by a very little those who thrust +the reluctant negroes into freedom. + +I ask my reader to add here mentally the full description which in my last +two chapters I have given of the lower class of the negroes in the +south--this description showing them to be ninety-five per cent of the +whole, far below their average condition in American slavery, and steadily +becoming worse. + +I believe that in due time the people of the north will make these +admissions: + +1. Any and every evil of southern slavery to the negro was accidental, and +not a necessary incident of the system, just as the occasional evils of +marriage to the parties are not necessarily incidental to that +institution. + +2. As this slavery had improved and was still improving the negroes so +prodigiously in every particular, and as their condition during the forty +years following emancipation has been going uninterruptedly from bad to +worse, until now the extinction of the great body is frightfully probable, +as I shall show in my last two chapters, the sudden and sweeping abolition +of 1865 was an unutterable misfortune to these dependent creatures. +Emancipation ought to have been gradual. Especially ought there to have +been established something like the Roman patronate, under which the +freedman would have been sure of wise advice, beneficial overlooking, and +efficient protection from his former master. + +3. The grant at once of right to vote and hold place and office to the +southern negroes indiscriminately exceeds all blunders of democracy in +madness and stupidity. + +4. Southern slavery, so far from being wrong morally, was righteousness, +justice, and mercy to the slave. The federal constitution was simply +obeying the commands of good conscience in recognizing the slave as the +property of his owner, and protecting that property. Therefore, when the +federal government emancipated the slaves it ought to have given the +masters just compensation. + + * * * * * + +So much for what American slavery was to the negro, and what its abolition +has done for him in the south. This can be told now. But for years the +powers watching over our union kept the subject in the dark. It did not +suit their purpose that the people of the union-preserving section should +see and understand. They had decreed that northern resistance to slavery, +as the solitary root of disunion, should go beyond refusing it extension +into the Territories. They chose to add another provocation of the +secession which they had planned as the means of abolishing slavery. This +new provocation was that the north be induced to make the fugitive slave +law a dead letter. To drive the south into early secession, perhaps it +would not be enough merely to deny her new territory. But unite the north +against the law mentioned, and encourage both running away and the +underground railroad by an active public opinion, then soon all along the +southern border slavery will lose its hold, some of the slaves escaping +and the rest going south. This zone will, after a while, be settled by the +friends and employers of free labor, who from year to year will push the +southern non-slave district further in. The menace of this hostile +occupation will steadily become greater to the slaveholders, and finally +it will convince them that they cannot protect slavery in the union. + +Many northerners who declared it was wrong to interfere with slavery in +the States, at the same time sympathized with the public opposition to +restoring the fugitive to his master. It is clear that they did not regard +this opposition to be what it really was; that is, actual war upon slavery +where it existed. To oppose execution of the law was both to invite and +help runaways. And if such invitation and help was persisted in, from one +end of Mason and Dixon's line to the other, the risk of escape of slaves +and their consequent depreciation in market value would both steadily +increase. The refusal to enforce the fugitive slave law was therefore a +deadly attack upon slavery in the States; and this was so plain that the +union-loving people of Georgia declared in the famous Georgia Platform of +1850 that the union could not be preserved if that law was not faithfully +executed. + +The faithful guardians of the American union had "Uncle Tom's Cabin" +written of purpose to prevent the execution of the fugitive slave law. +They hypnotized the root-and-branch abolitionists and Mrs. Stowe into +believing that to abet in any way the restoration of a flying slave was an +unpardonable crime; and that the obligation of conscience to refrain from +committing such a crime imperatively commanded disregard of all counter +provisions of the constitution and the law of the land. One cannot at all +understand the mighty abolition movement if he stop with the professed +motives of Phillips, Whittier, Garrison, Mrs. Stowe, and the rest. They +believed in their hearts, and declared, its purpose was to wipe out the +great national disgrace of slavery, to lift the slave out of an abyss of +unspeakable outrage and injustice, and to better his condition. As we have +shown you, they were, in their very extreme of conscientiousness, as wide +from the facts and right as wide can be. They were not doing their own +wills, as they thought they were. They but did the will of the fates. The +latter ruthlessly--so it seems to us now--sacrificed both the prosperity +and comfort of the southern people for several generations, and the very +existence, it may be, of nearly all the negroes in America, besides also +making a laughing-stock of the abolitionists--all to the end to kill that +nationalization which threatened the integrity of the American union. + +I believe that I can now take my reader on with me in what I have to say +of Mrs. Stowe's book. Let him bear in mind that the object of the fates +was to have in it not a representation true to fact, but such an untrue +and probable one as would unite the people of the north in moral and +conscientious resolve against any and every attempt to restore a fugitive +slave. What the fates wanted was an author who appeared to have extensive +and accurate acquaintance with slavery, and who, while believing it most +conscientiously to be the extreme of evil to the black, was endowed with +the power to make the north see with _her_ eyes. They found their author +in Mrs. Stowe, whom they had educated and trained from infancy. + +In view of the mighty influence which "Uncle Tom's Cabin" exercised upon +public opinion, it is important to examine what were Mrs. Stowe's +qualifications to speak as an authority on southern slavery. And in this +investigation the same qualifications of all others who arraigned the +system for what they alleged were its heinous moral wrongs to the slave +are likewise involved. The statement of Professor Wendell, quoted above, +that she was the only one of the abolitionists who had observed slavery +"on the spot," can be corroborated by overwhelming proofs. If it be made +to appear, as I think will be the case, that she was from first to last +under a delusion which metamorphosed the negro into a Caucasian, and +further that she had no real opportunities of learning the facts of +slavery, then the case of the root-and-branch abolitionists must fall with +the testimony of the only eye-witness whom they have called. + +Whether she was biased or not we will let her own words decide. Here they +are: + + "I was a child in 1820 [she was then nine years old] when the Missouri + question was agitated; and one of the strongest and deepest + impressions on my mind was that made by my father's sermons and + prayers, and the anguish of his soul for the poor slave at that time. + I remember his preaching drawing tears down the hardest faces of the + old farmers in his congregation. I well remember his prayers morning + and evening in the family for 'poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa,' that + the time of her deliverance might come; prayers offered with strong + crying and tears, and which indelibly impressed my heart, and made me + what I am from my very soul, the enemy of all slavery. Every brother + that I have has been in his sphere a leading anti-slavery man. As for + myself and husband, we have for the last seventeen years lived on the + border of a slave State, and we have never shrunk from the fugitives, + and we have helped them with all we had to give. I have received the + children of liberated slaves into a family school, and taught them + with my own children, and it has been the influence that we found in + the church and by the altar that has made us do all this."[90] + +No comment is needed. The passage shows that her strongly excited feelings +unavoidably shaped all her perceptions and formed all her judgments as to +everything in slavery. + +Now as to the means she had of acquiring the facts. Although she had seen +a little of Kentucky, a border slave State, she had never lived in it, nor +anywhere else in the south. Especially is it to be emphasized that she had +had no experience of the cotton region, the real seat of slavery, and the +only place where it could be fully studied and learned. She passed some +eighteen years in lower Ohio, just across the river from Kentucky, where +she saw much of escaping slaves. Of course, being aflame with zeal as she +was for her subject, she had observed closely the native negroes of the +north. Such of these as she met were widely different from the mass in +slavery; for, born and bred in the north, they had had the beneficent +training of the free-labor system, and also opportunity to absorb +considerable of a higher culture. These negroes were exceptional, even of +the northern natives. And the fugitives were also exceptional; for they +far excelled the companions left behind them in intelligence, spirit, and +every essential of good character. An ordinary Cuffee had liberty the +least of all things in his thoughts. A negro like Hector or Garrison, the +former escaping from Calhoun and the other from Toombs, was as much above +the average as the shepherd dog is above common sheep-worriers and +egg-suckers. Mrs. Stowe, as her book shows, had no conception whatever of +the ordinary plantation negro. And while she had seen much of some +Kentuckians, these were not representative southerners. They lived upon +the border, where slave labor found but little lucrative opportunity, and +they were also affected more or less with the sentiments of their nearby +northern neighbors. Naturally only those Kentuckians of the border who +really were of her opinion would consort with this decided anti-slavery +partisan; the others would stand aloof. Mrs. Stowe never knew either real +negroes or real slaveholders. And she also knew nothing whatever of cotton +plantation management. Some authors show an amazingly full and accurate +knowledge of countries and communities which they never saw. Burke's +knowledge of every detail touching India occurs to me. Lieber had visited +Greece while Niebuhr had not. When the former had minutely described to +the other some famous landscape,--say the battlefield of +Marathon,--Niebuhr would make copious inquiries about remains of old roads +and belongings which the other had forgotten, although he had seen them. +Tom Moore had never been in Persia, but there is so much of that country +drawn to the life in Lalla Rookh that somebody applied to him the saying +that reading D'Herbelot was as good as riding on the back of a camel. Mrs. +Stowe could not collect, sift, and read facts, and see through the most +cunningly devised masks, as Henry D. Lloyd showed his marvellous power to +do in "Wealth against Commonwealth." That was not her gift. Her gift was +to tell the best of stories--to vary it prodigally and artistically +throughout with wonders, with things to make you shudder and also thrill +with pleasure, with things to make you cry and laugh. Her emotional +invention was the great factor. Here is her own account: + + "The first part of the book ever committed to writing was the death of + Uncle Tom. This scene presented itself almost as a tangible vision to + her mind while sitting at the communion-table in the little church in + Brunswick. She was perfectly overcome by it, and could scarcely + restrain the convulsion of tears and sobbings that shook her frame. + She hastened home and wrote it, and her husband being away she read it + to her two sons of ten and twelve years of age. The little fellows + broke out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through his + sobs, 'Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!'" + +The description of Uncle Tom's death is the goal and climax of the novel. +Its scene is laid far down in the south, hundreds of miles below any place +which she or the children had ever seen or studied. It would have been +more in order for her to submit the draft to observant residents of that +locality; but the fates did not intend that her convictions should be +weakened by real information. Evidently she considered that her truth to +fact was fully vindicated by the effect of the narrative upon her +children, who, like herself, were entirely without knowledge of the +subject. They wept and exclaimed over it. Why, of course, like all +children they loved horrible tales, which their weeping and lamentation +proved that they thought were true. Doubtless these same children had made +respectable demonstrations over Bluebeard or Little Red Ridinghood. And +now over Uncle Tom's death, which is more dreadful than anything in +Dante's Inferno, and as pure figment, their feelings were shaken with +storm and tempest as never before. + +The statement just quoted proceeds thus: + + "From that time the story can less be said to have been composed by + her than imposed upon her. Scenes, incidents, conversations rushed + upon her with a vividness and importunity that would not be denied. + The book insisted upon getting itself into being, and would take no + denial." + +I often fancy, as I think over it, that the last quotation describes +suggestions from the fates. + +But we must let Mrs. Stowe finish what we have had her tell in part. +Informing us that, after writing "two or three first chapters," she made +an arrangement for weekly serial publication in the _National Era_, she +says: + + "She was then in the midst of heavy domestic cares, with a young + infant, with a party of pupils in her family to whom she was imparting + daily lessons with her own children, and with untrained servants + requiring constant supervision, but the story was so much more intense + a reality to her than any other earthly thing that the weekly + instalment never failed. It was there in her mind day and night + waiting to be written, and requiring but a few moments to bring it + into veritable characters. _The weekly number was always read to the + family circle before it was sent away, and all the household kept up + an intense interest in the progress of the story._"[91] + +This household had been indoctrinated by the zeal of Dr. Lyman Beecher +into believing unreservedly all the inventions of ignorant assailants of +slavery instead of the widely different facts. + +Before I begin a detailed statement of the material errors and perversions +of fact in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" I want to emphasize it that every one of +them appeared to northern readers, unfamiliar with the negro and the +south, to be true, and most efficiently helped to form and strengthen +sentiment against enforcement of the fugitive slave law. + +Many things that she writes show that Mrs. Stowe was completely ignorant +of the ways of the cotton plantation. I have space to mention but one. Tom +was bred in Kentucky, where no cotton was grown. And Cassy, by reason of +her indulgent rearing, had had as little experience as Tom in +cotton-picking. Yet these two show such expertness that Tom can add to the +sack of a slower picker, and Cassy give Tom some of her cotton, and each +have enough to satisfy the weigher at night. The good cotton-picker is +surely a most skilled laborer. He must be trained from childhood to use +both hands so well that he becomes almost ambidexterous. The training that +the typewriter is now urged to take is a parallel. + +Mrs. Stowe shows that she had no accurate knowledge of the sentiments of +the whites of the south as to slavery. As we have already suggested, there +may have been among the Kentuckians of the border some outspoken opponents +of slavery; but it is very probable that in her womanly ardor for her +great cause she lavishly magnified their numbers. In her novel she has +nearly all of her white southerners--I may add all of the attractive +ones--to declare themselves as abolitionists at heart. Misrepresentation +of fact could not be grosser than this. I was twenty-five years old when +the brothers' war commenced. I had mingled intimately with the people, +high and low, of my part of the south. During all of this time I never +found out there was a single one of my acquaintances, man, woman, boy, or +girl, who did not believe slavery right. The charge implied by Mrs. Stowe +that we southerners were doing violence to our consciences in holding on +to our slaves is utterly without evidence; nay, it is unanimously +contradicted by all the evidence. As we and our parents read the bible, it +told us to hold on to them, but to treat them always with considerate +kindness. + +Mrs. Stowe emphasizes the frequent cruelty of the master to the slave; and +she emphasizes more strongly still that under the law he was helpless. The +slave was not helpless. He was protected by law. Note this example, given +by Toombs: + + "The most authentic statistics of England show that the wages of + agricultural and unskilled labor in that kingdom not only fail to + furnish the laborer with the comforts of our slave, but even with the + necessaries of life, and no slaveholder could escape _a conviction for + cruelty to his slaves_ who gave his slave no more of the necessaries + of life for his labor than the wages paid to their agricultural + laborers by the noblemen and gentlemen of England would buy."[92] + +The witness just called has full knowledge, and is the extreme of frank +honesty and truthfulness. + +The statute-book demonstrates that the law was steadily bettering the +condition of the slave. I have not space to state the progression which +can be found in the different Georgia enactments. But I must mention two +instances. In 1850 the procedure of trying a white person charged with a +capital offence was extended to the slave. The code which came of force +January 1, 1863, and which had been adopted some while before, prevented +any confession made by a slave to his master--it mattered not how +voluntary or free from suspicion it might be--from ever being received in +evidence against him. + +I commenced law practice in 1857. From that time until I went to the front +I observed that public opinion was becoming more decided against +mistreatment of the blacks. The masters of _ashcats_,--as ill-fed negroes +were called in derision of their lean and dingy faces by the great +multitude of sleek and shining ones,--those who punished with unreasonable +severity, those who exacted overwork,--they were few and far +between,--they were all more and more detested; and grand juries became +more and more prone to deal properly with them. I would support this by +cases, if their citation would not be unpleasant to descendants of +parties. + +Mrs. Stowe has his master to brand George Harris in the hand with the +initial letter of the former's surname. She has Legree's slaves to pick +cotton on Sunday. I never heard of any cases of branding human beings +except as a punishment for crime in execution of a judgment of conviction, +and very few of them. Tidying up the house, cooking, serving meals, caring +for the animals on the place, and such other things as are done everywhere +on Sunday, were of course required of the domestic slaves. Leaving these +out, no slave was ever put to work on Sunday except to "fight fire," or at +something commanded by a real emergency. Their employers now exact from +thousands of white persons of both sexes all over the country a great +amount of such hard and grinding Sunday work as was never exacted of the +slaves in the south. Peep into stores, offices of large corporations, and +elsewhere, while others are at Sunday-school or church, and count those +weary ones you find finishing up the work of the last week. + +But all of the mistakes of Mrs. Stowe noticed in the foregoing are mere +matters of bagatelle as compared with the character and nature which she +gives the average negro of the south. + +She represents the women as chaste as white women, and the husbands +faithful to their wives even when separated from them. I shall now tell +the truth as I know it to be--the truth that all observant people who have +had experience with negroes know. + +The moment almost that a married pair of slaves were separated for any +cause, each one secretly, or more often openly, took another partner. Even +when not separated, infidelity of both was the rule. Mrs. Stowe has the +girls and their parents to shrink with horror from the desires of the +master. To the simple-hearted African the master was always great, and +there was among them not a woman to be found who would not dedicate +herself or her daughter to greatness, finding it so inclined,--husband, +father, brothers, and sisters all in their desire for a friend at court +heartily approving. The white whose concubine gave favors behind his back +to her slave friends was the stalest joke of every neighborhood. + +The mass of the negroes are more unchaste now than they were in slavery, a +subject of which I shall say something further in another chapter. But +even where the master's steady requirement from one generation to another +of a stricter observance of family ties, and the natural imitation of the +ways of the dominant race, had lifted the slaves, in appearance at least, +far above their West African ancestors, not even mothers had become +chaste. Boys, girls, men, and women, both married and unmarried, were as +promiscuous by night as houseflies are by day. The horror of horrors in +this abyss of moral impurity to one of a superior race was their utter +unconsciousness of incest.[93] + +Mrs. Stowe has their philoprogenitiveness--as phrenologists call it--as +fully developed as the whites. One bred in the cotton districts well +remembers that it required all the vigilance of master and mistress, +overseer, and the deputies selected from the older slave women, to secure +from the mothers proper attention to their children, and especially to +keep them from punishing too cruelly. But I do not mean to say that this +parental misbehavior was as general as the unchastity mentioned. When the +mothers aged beyond forty-five or fifty, they would begin to think +somewhat less of beaux and somewhat more of their children. + +George Harris and Eliza are next of the slave characters in prominence and +importance to Uncle Tom. With their large admixture of white blood, their +comparatively good education and superb moral training, a southerner would +think that you were merely mocking him if you named these as fairly +representative negroes. As they are drawn, they are really whites--whites +of high refinement--with only a physical negro exterior, and that softened +down to the minimum. + +But Uncle Tom--I pray my northern readers to take counsel of their common +sense and consider what I shall now say of him. Rightly to estimate him, I +must begin with some contrasts. The first that occurs to me is Tyndarus, +the slave hero of the Captivi of Plautus, pronounced by the great critic +Lessing to be the most beautiful play ever brought upon the stage. +Tyndarus and Philocrates, his young master, taken prisoners, are sold to +Hegio. The two captives personate each other, and induce Hegio to send +home Philocrates, who was a wealthy noble, and keep only the born slave. +Hegio was scheming to recover his own son, now a slave in the land of the +captives, by a bargain for Philocrates, this bargain to be negotiated by +the counterfeit Tyndarus. Discovering how he had been duped, the anguished +father tells the real Tyndarus that he shall die a cruel death. This is +the reply of the slave: + + "As I shall not die because of evil deeds, that is a small matter. My + death will keep it ever in remembrance that I delivered my master from + slavery and the enemy, restored him to his country and father, and + chose that I myself should perish rather than he." + +That is exalted. But Tyndarus has not the complete goodness of Uncle Tom. +As soon as he is at last rescued from the horrible mines, to find +Philocrates true and himself a free man, he threatens woe to a slave who +had injured him, and looks approvingly upon the execution of his threat. + +Compare Uncle Tom with the good men of the bible, such as Moses, Peter, +and Paul, to mention no more. Not one of these was able always to keep his +feelings and tongue in that complete subjection that never fail Uncle Tom. + +Uncle Tom, in whom love alone prompts all thoughts and deeds, surpasses +every saint in Dante's Paradise--he surpasses even the incomparably sweet +Beatrice, who now and then chides unpleasantly. + +The climax of my comparison is reached when I suggest that Uncle Tom is +made from first to last a more perfect Christ than the Jesus of the +gospels. The latter, as Matthew Arnold and other reverent christians +remark, was sometimes unamiable. Remember his expulsion of the money +changers and traders from the temple, and the many opprobrious words he +used of and to the Pharisees. Growing recognition of the all-human Jesus +is benignly replacing a religion of superstition, intolerance, and dogma +with one of universal love and brotherhood. I cannot fully express my +appreciation of the liberal divines, from Charming to Savage, who are +preparing us so well for the millennium. But I am sure a new study of +Uncle Tom would give each one of them firmer grasp of christlikeness and +far more power to present it. Think over such instances in that holiest +and most altruistic of lives as these: He has just learned that he has +been sold; that he is to be carried down the river. His wife suggests that +as he has a pass from his master permitting him to go and return as he +pleases, he take advantage of it and run away to the free States. As +firmly as Socrates, unjustly condemned to death, refused to escape from +prison when his friends had provided full opportunity, Tom declared he +would stay, that he would keep faith with his master. He said that, +according to Eliza's report of the conversation she had overheard, his +master was forced to sell him, or sell all the other slaves, and it was +better for himself to suffer in their place. And as he goes away he has +nothing but prayers and blessings for the man who sends him into dread +exile from his wife and children. He falls to a new master, whom, and his +family, he watches over with the fidelity and love of a most kind father, +doing every duty, but above all things trying to save that master's soul. +Then his cruel fortune delivers him to the monster Legree. For the first +time in his life he is treated with disrespect, distrust, and harshness. +Yet he forgets his own misery, and finds pleasure in helping and +comforting his fellow sufferers, striving his utmost to bring them into +eternal life. He will not do wrong even at the command of his cruel +master, who has him in a dungeon, as it were, into which no ray of justice +can ever shine. And here he dies from the cruel lash--almost under it. He +falters some, it is true; but there was no sweat of blood as in +Gethsemane, nor exclamation upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou +forsaken me!" He went more triumphantly through his more fell crucifixion. + +I believe that the character of Uncle Tom is the only part of the book +which future generations will cherish; not for the lesson against slavery +it was intended to teach, but because it excels in ideal and realization +all imitation of Christ in actual life or the loftiest religious fiction. +Consider its marvellous effect upon Heine, as told by a quotation from the +latter in The Author's Introduction to the book.[94] + +The detailed comparison which I have just made puts Uncle Tom upon a +pinnacle, where he is above all the saints in lofty, self-abnegating, and +lovingly religious manhood; and the reader notes how fruitlessly I have +tried to find another like him. But Mrs. Stowe was confident that she had +not exaggerated or overdrawn him, and further that such were common among +the southern slaves. Here is what she deliberately says in her Key: + + "The character of Uncle Tom has been objected to as improbable; and + yet the writer has received more confirmations of that character, and + from a greater variety of sources, than of any other in the book. + + Many people have said to her, 'I knew an Uncle Tom in such and such a + southern State.' All the histories of this kind which have thus been + related to her would of themselves, if collected, make a small + volume."[95] + +Toombs once said to me, "It would have been a matchless eulogy of slavery +if it had produced an Uncle Tom." But, as we see from the last quotation, +she claims far more. She really claims that it was fruitful of Uncle Toms +in every southern State. + +Shall we attribute this firm belief, that there were among the southern +slaves many who were better christians than Christ himself is represented +to have been, to a mere hallucination? That word is not strong enough. To +explain the belief, we must think of visions suggested by the hypnotizing +powers, or something like the spell on Titania, when Bottom with his ass's +head inspired her with the fondest admiration and love. + +Although the foregoing is far from being exhaustive, it is enough; it +shows incontrovertibly that Mrs. Stowe builded throughout upon the +exceptional and imaginary. My father, a Presbyterian clergyman, with the +strictest notions as to the Sabbath, as he generally called Sunday, made +me read, when a boy, a book called, if I recollect aright, "Edwards's +Sabbath Manual." Be the title whatever it may, the entire book was but a +collection of instances of secular work done on Sunday, and always +followed closely by disaster, which appeared to be divine punishment of +sabbath-breaking. The author was confident he had proved his case. He +believed with his whole soul that if one should do on Sunday any week-day +work not permitted in the catechism, it was more than probable that God +would at once deal severely with him for not keeping his day holy. + +This is a somewhat overstrained example of Mrs. Stowe's method. I will +therefore give one which is as close as close can be. Suppose a diligent +worker to cull from newspaper files, law reports, and what he hears in +talk, the cases in which one party to a marriage has cruelly mistreated +the other. If he digested his collection with a view to effect, it would +prove a far more formidable attack upon the most civilizing and improving +of all human institutions than Mrs. Stowe's Key is upon slavery; and if he +had her rare artistic gift he could found upon it a wonderful +anti-marriage romance. The author of such a Key and romance would be +confuted at once by the exclamation, "If these horrors are general, people +would flee marriage as they do the plague." Let it be inquired, "If 'Uncle +Tom's Cabin' and Mrs. Stowe's Key truly represent, why did not more of the +blacks escape into the free States? and why did they not revolt in large +bodies during the war in the many communities whence all the able-bodied +whites had gone to the front far away?" and there can be but one answer, +which is, there was no general or common oppression of the African in +slavery--there were no horrors to him in the condition--but on the +contrary he was contented and happy, merry as the day is long. + +How was it that a book so full of untrue statement and gross exaggeration +as to an American theme found such wide acceptance at the north and +elsewhere out of the south? For years I could not explain. When I read it +at Princeton, I talked it over with the southern students. We pooh-poohed +the negroes, but we admired the principal white characters except Mrs. St. +Claire, whom we all regarded as a libellous caricature. The representation +of slavery was incorrect, and the portrayal of the negro as only a black +and kinky-haired white was so absurd that one of us dreamed that either +would be taken seriously by the north. It was some ten years after the +brothers' war that the true explanation commenced to dawn upon me, and it +has at last become clear. + +It is an important fact that the great body of the people of the north +knew almost next to nothing of the south, and especially of the average +negro. As one calmly looks back now he sees that in the agitation over the +admission of California, the cleavage between the two nationalizations +treated in foregoing chapters was becoming decided, and that the people +belonging to each were losing their tempers and getting ready to fight. +When even a political campaign in which the only question is, who shall be +ins and who outs, is on, each party is prone to believe the hardest things +of the other. But when such a fell resort to force as that of 1850 and the +years immediately following is impending, all history shows that those on +one side will believe any charge reflecting upon the good character of +those on the other side which is not grossly improbable. Such quarrels are +so fierce that we never weigh accusations against our adversaries--we just +embrace and circulate. Thus had the northern public become ripe for an +arraignment of the morality of slavery, which--as was with purblind +instinct felt, not discerned--was the sole active principle of the +southern nationalization. Even without the provocation just mentioned, a +northern man would liken the African in everything but his skin and hair +to a white. We always classify a new under some old and well-known object. +When the Romans first saw the elephant they thought of him as the Lucanian +ox. The automobile which propels itself around our streets is made as much +like the corresponding horse-drawn vehicle familiar to the public for ages +as can be. The northerner knew no man well but the Caucasian, and he had +long been led by a common psychological process to give his characteristic +essentials to the negro. And now when anti-slavery partisans positively +maintained that the latter was a white in all but his outside, adducing +seeming proofs, and the free-labor nationalization was with its leading +strings pulling all the northern people into line, even the calmest and +most dispassionate among them were influenced to believe that the negroes +were so much like our Anglo-Saxon selves it was an unspeakable crime to +keep them in slavery. And all tales of cruelty and horror found easy +credence. + +Thus had the northern public been made ready for "Uncle Tom's Cabin." And +although the book wholly ignored and obscured the really live and burning +issue, and it was packed from beginning to end with the most gigantic +errors of fact, it took the section by storm. + +It is a great book. When something has been as persistently demanded as +long as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been by the northern public and the +"Conquered Banner" by the southern public; when thousands upon thousands +of plain people weep over them and lay them away to weep over them again, +you may know--it matters not what the unruffled and sarcastic critic may +say--that each is a work of the very highest and the very rarest genius. +Tears of sympathy for tales of distress and misery, whoever can set their +fountain flowing is always a nature's king or queen. + +I have read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" four times: first at Princeton in 1852; +the second time amid the gloom of reconstruction, more accurately to +ascertain northern opinion of the negro and forecast therefrom, if I +could, what was in store for the south; the third time as I was meditating +the Old and New South; and just the other day the last time. The more +familiar I become with it the greater seems to me the power with which the +attention is taken and held captive. The very titles to the first twelve +chapters are, in their contents and sequence, gems of genius, and draw +resistlessly. I become more and more impatient with Ruskin's reprehending +the escape of Eliza, when, with her child hugged to her bosom, she leaps +from block to block of floating ice in the Ohio until she is safe on the +other side--a marvel like the ghost's appearance in the first scene of +Hamlet, exciting a high and breathless interest at the outset, which is +never allowed to flag afterwards. Whenever I begin to read the book, I +fall at once into that illusion which Coleridge has so well explained. I +accept all her blunders and mistakes as real facts, and although it is +hard to tolerate her negro travesties and the anti-slavery sentiments of +her southern whites, somehow they do not then offend me, and there is +chapter after chapter in which I follow the action with breathless +interest. "Gulliver's Travels" and "Pilgrim's Progress" are examples to +show how little of reality either entertaining or moving fiction needs. +From a mass of false assumptions, seasoned with the merest sprinkling of +fact; and especially from her taking for granted that the negro is really +on a par of development with the white, she has constructed the Iliad of +our time. The nursery tale out of which Shakspeare fashioned the drama of +Lear did not furnish him with smaller resources. What a wonderful action +he puts in the place of the nursery tale! how natural and probable it all +appears to us as it unfolds! how we hate, or pity, or admire, or love as +we cannot keep from following it! Likewise every reader in the north +accepted Mrs. Stowe's novel as the very height of verity, and afterwards +saw in every fugitive slave a George Harris, or Eliza, or an Uncle Tom. +And the book evoked the same effect out of America. The most curious proof +of this that I can think of is the statue of The Freed Slave, which I saw +on exhibition at the Centennial. It has nearly all the peculiar physical +characteristics of the Caucasian; and it represents not a typical man of +African descent, but a negro albino, that is, a white negro, not a black +one. There are albino negroes, but there are also albino whites. That +statue shows what was European conception of the negroes whose chains were +broken by the emancipation proclamation. Its reception in America shows +also that the same conception prevailed here. Day after day I saw crowds +of northern people contemplating that counterfeit with deep emotion, many +of the women unable to restrain their tears. + +Surely "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in its propagandic potency is unrivalled. It +did more than the anti-slavery statesmen, politicians, preachers, talkers, +and orators combined. To it more than to all other agencies is due that +the people of the north took such a stubborn stand in opposition that the +south at last saw that the fugitive slave law had been practically +nullified. Thus the fates worked to bring about secession. For secession +was to bring the brothers' war; and this war was to do what could not be +done by law or consent,--that is, to get rid of slavery as the informing +principle of southern nationalization. + +The post-bellum propagandic effect of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been very +malign. With the companion literature and theories, it formed the opinion +that devised and executed the reconstruction of the southern States. The +cardinal principle of that reconstruction was to treat the blacks just +emancipated as political equals of the whites. + +Those who did this are to be forgiven. They had been made to believe that +the negroes of the south were as well qualified for full citizenship as +the whites, and it was but meet retributive punishment of the great crime +of slavery and waging war to hold on to it, that the masters be put under +their former slaves. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had made them believe it. + +The only parallel of mass of pernicious error engendered by a book, so far +as I know, is "Burke's Reflections." Constitutional England ought to have +followed Charles Fox as one man, and given countenance to the rise in +France for liberty. But Burke's piece of magnificent rhetoric effectually +turned the nation out of her course, and had her in league with +absolutists to put back the clock of European democracy a hundred years or +more. Even yet intelligent Englishmen magnify that most unEnglish +achievement. The bad effects of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" have not been so +lasting in our country. We Americans get out of ruts much more easily than +the English. The north is now rapidly learning the real truth as to the +utter incapacity of the mass of southern negroes to vote intelligently, +and complacently acquiesces in their practical disfranchisement by the +only class which can give good government. + +We must utterly reject and discard everything that Mrs. Stowe and those +whom I distinguish as the root-and-branch abolitionists have taught, in +their unutterable ideology, as to the nature and character of the negro, +and in its place we must learn to know him as he really is--to tolerate +him, nay, to love him as such. This is the only way in which we can +prepare ourselves for giving the negroes their due from us. + +Further, we owe it to our proud American history, now that the brothers' +war is forty years past, to ascertain the real cause of that mighty +struggle, maintained most laudably and gloriously by each side. Those whom +I am here criticising made many believe that the real stake was whether +the slave should remain the property of his master or not. Note the +emphasized adjuration in the "Battle Hymn of the Republic:" + + "As he [Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free." + +A most beautiful sentiment, fitly expressed; but how it humiliates the +grand issue, which was whether federal government should live or perish! +And that greatest of American odes, Whittier's "Laus Deo," how wide of the +true mark is its sublime rejoicing! Celebrating the abolition of slavery +by constitutional amendment, the occasion demanded that he extol the +really benign achievement. That achievement was that all cause of diverse +nationalization in the States had been forever removed, and thus it was +assured that brotherhood of the nations was to grow without check. But the +rapt bard was blinded, as his utterances show, by what now almost appears +to have been a fit of delusional insanity. He says: + + "Ring! O bells! + Every stroke exulting tells + Of the burial hour of crime." + +What does he mean is the crime? Why, the delivering of certain Africans +and their descendants from lowest human degradation and misery, and +blessing them with opportunity and help to rise far upward? Had he seen, +as we do now, forty years later, instead of pouring out this wild and mad +delight, he would have dropped scalding tears over the "burial hour" of +all that promised anything of welfare to those for whom he had labored so +long and faithfully. And in the last stanza his command that + + "With a sound of broken chains" + +the nations be told + + "that He reigns, + Who alone is Lord and God!" + +The poet misunderstood the "broken chains" as greatly as he did the +"burial hour." Chains were broken, but their breaking was no blessing to +the negro. Golden chains of domestic ties, drawing him gently, kindly, +surely up to higher morality and complete manhood--these were broken; and +far other were forged for him, with which fear he has been made fast to +destruction. His only friends able to help alienated; what a clog! Given +back to African improgressiveness; what a fetter! How he is held to the +body of death by unbreakable chains of want, misery, vice, disease, and +utter helplessness! and how his shackles gall him and his convict chains +clank in every corner of the land which was once an earthly paradise to +him! + +Let us not sully with Whittier the glory of the federal arms by ascribing +to them as their chief triumph the gift of illusory freedom to a few +negroes. Rather let us inform ourselves with the spirit of Webster, and +give praise and thanks without end for the actual blessings and the richer +promise of the restored union to myriads of that race whose mission it is +to spread an inexpressibly fair socialism over all the earth. + +And let me say at the last, the people of the north should learn that all +the tragic evils which Professor Wendell and others outside of the south +have in mind belong only to the slave-ships, and by a strange +psychological metastasis--no stranger, however, than that by which the +fourth commandment, in popular conception, has been abrogated as to the +seventh day, and applied to the first day of the week--they have firmly +attached themselves to the reputation of southern slavery. For long years +we of the south, our mothers and our mothers' mothers, our fathers and our +fathers' fathers, have been charged with cruelties and outrages purely +fancied. These fabrications are the stock comparisons with which almost +every invective against the wrongs of any lower class is sharpened. The +writer or speaker whenever he is taken short says something of the +dreadful condition of the southern slave under the sway of an entirely +absolute master. Variety of the misdeeds invoked as illustration is +limited only by the promptness with which the utterer can think of what he +has read in abolition literature or its sequel. It is all mere parrot +gabble. To hear so much of it as we do is "a little wearing," as Reginald +Wilfer said. Surely if our brothers and sisters of the north but think, +they will acknowledge that these so-called horrors of slavery were all +nothing but the inventions of the angry passions provoked by the powers in +the unseen after they had decided that slavery must be sacrificed in the +interests of the union. And these dear brothers and sisters will no longer +persist in asserting that southern slavery was but robbery and oppression +of and cruelty to the slave; that the system was evil to him of itself. +They will talk no more of the pro-slavery infamy, of the unscrupulousness +and perfidy of the slave power, and all such false twaddle, that can now +serve no purpose whatever except to offend good men and women and their +children without cause. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +SLAVERY AT LAST IMPELLED INTO A DEFENSIVE AGGRESSIVE + + +Until the crisis of 1850, slavery had never changed from purely defensive +tactics. This year made it seem that the north had fully resolved that +slavery should never be allowed another inch of new territory; and also +was very near, and was rapidly coming nearer to, the point of practically +preventing the enforcement of the fugitive slave law. We have explained +how slave property could not live unless it found new virgin soil in the +Territories; and we have also explained what a deadly blow it would +receive, in the refusal to restore fugitives. This refusal would be really +indirect abolition. Read the masterly sketch by Calhoun, in his speech +March 4, 1850, of the conquering advance of the anti-slavery party, until +now--to use his language--"the equilibrium between the two sections ... +had been destroyed;" and he demonstrates that the actual exercise of the +entire national political power must soon be in the hands of the +free-labor section. The south instinctively felt that the time for her old +tactics was over, and that she must do more than merely fend off the blows +of abolition. And, as we will tell in the next chapter, she found her new +leader in Toombs. Nullification as advocated by Calhoun was the extreme +energy of the pure defensive of the south. His proposed dual executive +amendment was merely that nullification be made a right granted to the +federal government instead of remaining one reserved to the States. +Toombs had grown up in the school of William H. Crawford. George R. +Gilmer, a follower of Crawford, tells of the latter: "He was violently +opposed to the nullification movement, considering it but an ebullition +excited by Mr. Calhoun's overleaping, ambition."[96] + +Toombs scouted nullification. Under his lead his State, in 1850, adopted +the Georgia Platform quoted above. This platform was considerate and +resolute preparation for the southern offensive. + +Next the south assumes initiative. Extension of slave-territory is so +great an economical _sine qua non_ that she attacks its barriers. Using +her control of the then dominant democratic party she got the Missouri +compromise repealed. Her main purpose in this was to wrench from the +anti-slavery men the weapon of congressional restriction, then deemed by +them the most powerful of all in their armory. She also contemplated +extorting a concession of all lands in the Territories which could be +profitably cultivated by slaves from the north, alarmed into apprehending +that otherwise slavery might be carried above 36.30'. + +This repeal did more than anything else--more even than "Uncle Tom's +Cabin"--to arouse the north into mortal combat with slavery. The historian +cannot understand why the south procured it, if he ignores that energy of +southern nationalization which we have done our utmost to explain. This +nationalization had got into what we may call the last rapids, and was +bound to go over the precipice into the gulf of secession. + +The bootless struggle by the south against overwhelming odds of northern +settlers to make Kansas a slave State was the sequel to the repeal of the +Missouri compromise. When the South understood that Kansas was really +gone, she advanced her forlorn hope in her endeavor to secure slavery in +the union. The essence of the compromise measures of 1850 was that the +demand of congressional non-interference with slavery in the States and +Territories, made by the south, was declared adopted as future policy. As +the forlorn hope just mentioned she now made the demand that the owner's +property in his slaves, if he should carry them into a Territory, should +be protected by congress until its people had made the constitution under +which the Territory would be admitted into the union. Her adherence to +this demand split the democratic party; and the election of Lincoln +ensued. This election meant that slavery--the property supporting more +than nine-tenths of the southern people, and which was virtually their +entire economic system--was put under a ban. There was nothing for it but +depreciation in the near future; soon more and more depreciation; until +after prolonged stagnation and paralysis the value of all her property +would collapse as did that of the continental currency. That was the way +it looked to her. We believe that the facts show that her conviction was +right. She felt with her whole soul that the time had come to invoke State +sovereignty. So she seceded, with intent to save the property of her +people and maintain their domestic peace. Of course she purposed an +equitable apportionment of the public domain between herself and the north +under which she would get the small part that suited slave agriculture. + +The circumstances constrained the south throughout every part and parcel +of her offensive as powerfully as exhaustion of his supplies constrains +the commander of a garrison to a sortie upon what he has reason to believe +is the weakest point of the circumvallation. She was hypnotized by the +powers. They made her believe that she was always doing the right thing +to protect slavery when they were having her to do that only which assured +its destruction. She was all the while as conscientious as the mother who, +afraid of drafts, keeps the needed fresh air from her consumptive child +and thereby kills him. + +We recognize the resistless play of the cosmic forces upon the sun, moon, +and stars; upon our earth; in the yearly round of the seasons; in the +ocean tides; in storms and heated terms; in vegetation; and in things +innumerable taken note of by the senses. But this is not all of their +empire. They sway individuals, communities, peoples, nations, making the +latter even believe that they are having their own way when in fact they +are most servilely doing the will of the powers. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +TOOMBS + + +Calhoun solidified the south in resolve to leave the union if the +abolition party got control of the federal government. Just before his +death there commenced such serious contemplation of an aggressive defence +of slavery that we may call it an actual aggressive. Although by reason of +his unquestioned primacy he could have assumed the conduct of this +aggressive, he did not. Toombs was its real, though not always apparent, +leader, from its actual commencement until it resulted in secession. Thus +he played an independent part of his own, and deserves a chapter to +himself. While Calhoun was the forerunner, Toombs was both apostle and the +Moses of secession. As nearly all of my readers have never thought of any +one else than Calhoun in this capacity, the statement of Toombs's +prominence just made will probably startle them. But I know if they will +follow me through the record they will all at last agree with me. In view +of Calhoun's conspicuousness in the southern agitation from 1835 until his +death in 1850, this misapprehension of my readers is very natural. +Contemporaries following Sulla, named Pompey, not Julius Cæsar, The Great. +Similarly Toombs, as an actor in the intersectional arena, is as yet +dwarfed from comparison with the really great but not greater Calhoun. + +It is much more necessary than I saw such a method was with Calhoun to +deal first with what we may call the non-sectional parts of Toombs's +career. And I wish to assure my readers at the outset that these parts +are exceptionally important and valuable not only to every American, but +to all those anywhere who prize shining examples of private virtue and +exalted teachers of good and honest government. + +I was nearly ten years old when Toombs's congressional career commenced in +December, 1845. Living only eighteen miles from him I heard him often +mentioned. It was the delight of many people to report his phrases and +repartees. By reason of their wisdom or wit and fineness of expression, +the whole of each one lodged in the dullest memory. I never knew another +whose sayings circulated so widely and far without alteration. As they +serve to introduce you to his rare originality, I will tell here a few of +them that I heard admired and laughed at in my boyhood. + +He had not then left off tobacco, but he chewed it incessantly, and a +spray of the juice fell around him when he was speaking. Once while he was +haranguing at the hustings, a drunken man beneath the edge of the platform +on which he was standing, rudely told him in a loud voice not to let his +pot boil over. Toombs, looking down, saw that his interrupter had flaming +red hair: "Take your fire from under it, then," he answered. + +In another stump speech he was earnestly denying that he had ever used +certain words now charged against him. A stalwart, rough fellow--one of +Choate's bulldogs with confused ideas--rose, and asserted he had heard him +say them. When and where was asked. The man gave time and place, and added +tauntingly, "What do you say to that?" Toombs rejoined, "Well, I must have +told a d--d lie." + +A rival candidate, really conspicuous and celebrated for his little +ability, in a stump debate pledged the people that if they would send him +to congress he would never leave his post during a session to attend the +courts, as he unjustifiably charged Toombs with habitually doing. The +latter disposed of this by merely saying, "You should consider which will +hurt the district the more, his constant presence in, or my occasional +absence from, the house." + +In another discussion this same opponent charged him with having voted so +and so. Replying, Toombs denied it. The other interrupted him, and +sustained his charge by producing the _Globe_; and he expressively +exclaimed, "What do you think of that vote?" Toombs answered without any +hesitation--nothing ever confused him--"I think it a d--d bad vote. There +are more than a hundred votes of mine reported in that big book. He has +evidently studied them all, and this is the only bad one he can find. Send +_him_ to congress in my place, the record will be exactly inverted; it +will be as hard to find a good one in his votes as it is now to find a bad +one in mine." + +In the congressional session of 1849-50 Toombs had made his Hamilcar +speech, to be told of fully after a while. In this he avowed his +preference of disunion to exclusion of the south from the Territories so +positively and strongly that the ultra southern rights men hailed him as +their champion. But soon afterwards, with the great majority of the people +of the State, he took his stand upon the compromise of 1850 and the +Georgia Platform quoted above. This was really on his part a recession +from the extreme ground he had taken in the speech. In 1851, a coalition +of the whigs and democrats of Georgia nominated Howell Cobb, a democrat, +for governor, and Toombs, then a whig, canvassed for him with great zeal. +He had an appointment to speak, in Oglethorpe county, at Lexington, the +county seat. There were quite a number of ardent southern rights men in +the county, who held that the admission of California, really in southern +latitude, with its anti-slavery constitution, called for far more decided +action on the part of the south than was counselled in the Compromise and +Georgia Platform. Hating Toombs, whom they regarded as a renegade, they +plotted to humiliate him when he came to Lexington. As he never shrank +from discussion they easily got his consent to divide time with--as the +phrase goes--a canvasser for McDonald, their candidate for governor. +Toombs was to consume a stated time in opening the stump debate; then the +other was to be allowed a stated time; after which Toombs had a reply of +twenty minutes--these were the terms. In opening, Toombs, as was natural, +stressed the compromise measures and set forth the advantages of +preserving the union; and he fiercely inveighed against the men who could +not be satisfied with the Georgia Platform, embraced as it had been by a +great majority of all parties, denouncing them as disunionists. The other +disputant took the Hamilcar speech of Toombs, made just the year before, +as his text. Deliberately, accurately, systematically he unfolded the +doctrine of that speech, and he did the same for the speech just made, and +contrasting the two, he put them into glaring inconsistency. Southern +rights stock rose and union stock sunk rapidly as the comparison went on. +In his peroration the speaker commented upon Toombs's tergiversation with +such effective severity it elicited wild applause from the men of his +side. They had pushed themselves to the front. Toombs rose to reply. In +their riotous rejoicing over the great hit of their speaker, they forgot +the proprieties of the occasion; forgot that it was Toombs's meeting, as +was said in common parlance; and they rapped on the floor with canes, and +even clubs provided for the nonce, howled, and made all kinds of noises +to drown his voice. Unabashed he looked upon them, smiling that grandest +and blandest of smiles. As the foremost of these roysterers told me long +afterwards, his self-possession excited their curiosity. They wanted to +hear if he could say anything to get out of the trap in which they had so +cleverly caught him; and they became still. "It seems to me," he +commenced, "that men like you meditating a great revolution ought first to +learn good manners." At this condign rebuke of behavior which, according +to stump usage, was as uncivil and impolite as if it had been shown Toombs +in his own house by guests accepting his hospitality, spontaneous cheers +from the union men, who were in very large majority, appeared to raise the +roof. In his highest and readiest style--for mob opposition always lifted +him at once into that--he reminded his hearers that their whole duty was +to decide whether they would approve the compromise and the Georgia +Platform or not; and that to discuss whether what he had spoken last year +before these measures were even thought of, was right or wrong, was to +substitute for a transcendently important public question a little +personal one of no concern to them whatever. "If there is anything in my +Hamilcar speech that cannot be reconciled with the measures which I have +supported here to-day with reasons which my opponent confesses by his +silence he cannot answer, I repudiate it. If the gentleman takes up my +abandoned errors, let him defend them." + +How the union men cheered as he broke out of the trap, and caught the +setters in it! + +I heard much of this day, still famous in all the locality, when six years +afterwards I settled in Lexington, to begin law practice. Over and over +again the Union men told how their spirits fell, fell, fell as the +southern rights speaker kept on, until it looked black and dark around; +and then how the sun broke out in full splendor at the first sentence of +Toombs's reply, and the brightness mounted steadily to the end. That +sentence last quoted is a proverb in that region yet. If in a dispute with +anybody there you try to put him down by quoting his former contradictory +utterances, he tells you that if you take up his abandoned errors you must +defend them. + +The interest excited in me by what is told in the foregoing was the +beginning of my study of Toombs, which never at any time entirely ceased, +and which will doubtless continue as long as I live. He has impressed me +far more than any other man whom I ever knew. Soon after his return, in +1867, from his exile I resolved I would try to write his Life under the +title, "Robert Toombs, as a Lawyer, Statesman, and Talker;" and for ten or +fifteen years I had been systematically collecting the data. These had +accumulated under each head--especially reports of his epigrams and winged +phrases--far more considerably than was my expectation at first. I added +to them very largely by copious notes of the record of his congressional +life which I read attentively in course, commencing immediately after his +death. In a few years I had finished my task. As yet I have not found the +times favorable for publication, and the MS. may perplex my literary +executor. Of course my object in the too egotistic narrative just made is +to inform you that I have bestowed very great labor and study upon the +subject, hoping thus to draw your attention. + +Robert Toombs was born July 2, 1810, on his father's plantation in Wilkes +county, Georgia. He went to school at Washington, the county seat; then to +the State university; which having left, he finished his collegiate course +at Union. Next he spent a year at the law school of Virginia university. +He never was a bookworm. His habitual quotations during the last fifteen +years of his life--when I was much with him--betrayed a smattering of the +Roman authors commonly read at school, a much greater knowledge of the +Latin quoted by Blackstone and that of the current law maxims, and +considerable familiarity with "Paradise Lost," "Macbeth," and the Falstaff +parts of "King Henry IV.," and "Merry Wives," Don Quixote, Burns, and the +bible. But this man, whose diction and phrases were the worship of the +street and the despair of the cultured, had no deep acquaintance with any +literature. Erskine got the staple of his English from a long and fond +study of Shakspeare and Milton; but Toombs must have drawn his only from +the fountains whence Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mariah get theirs, and then +purified and refined it by a secret process that nobody else knew of,--not +even himself, as I believe. If he had only corrected after utterance as +assiduously as Erskine did, of the two his diction would be much the +finer. + +The year before he came of age he was admitted to the bar by legislative +act. In the same year he married his true mate and settled at Washington. +For four years the famous William H. Crawford was the judge of the +circuit. Toombs was born into the Crawford faction, and the judge who, as +there was no supreme court then, was law autocrat of his circuit, gave him +favor from the first. The courts were full of lucrative business. The old +dockets show that in five years Toombs was getting his full share in his +own county and the adjoining ones. The diligent attention that he gave +every detail of preparation of his cases, had, in a year or two after his +call, made him first choice of every eminent lawyer for junior. One of +these was Cone, a native of Connecticut, who had received a good education +both literary and professional, before he came south. Toombs, who had +known the great American lawyers of his time, always said after his death +in 1859 that Cone was the best of all. Lumpkin used to tell that during a +visit to England he haunted the courts, but he never found a single +counsel who spoke to a law point as luminously and convincingly as Cone. +Another one of these was Lumpkin. He is, I believe, the most eloquent man +that Georgia ever produced. He had some tincture of letters; but he was +without Choate's pre-eminent self-culture and daily drafts of inspiration +from the immortal fountains. A. H. Stephens admired Choate greatly. He +heard the latter's reply to Buchanan. Often, at Liberty Hall--as Stephens +called his residence--he would repeat with gusto the passage in which +Choate roasts Buchanan for his inculcation of hate to England. Stephens +contended that if all that education and art had done for each--Choate and +Lumpkin--could have been removed, a comparison would, as he believed, show +Lumpkin to be the stronger advocate by nature. + +These three--Cone, Lumpkin, and Toombs--were often on the same side. But +whether Toombs had them as associates or as adversaries, they were always +in these early years of his at the bar, in his eye. With the unremitted +attentiveness of what we may call his subconscious observation, and a +receptivity always active and greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated +all of Cone's law and all of Lumpkin's advocacy--that is, he had, as he +did with the speech and language heard by him every day, transmuted them +into the rare and precious staple peculiar to his own _sui generis_ self. + +In his first forensic arguments his rapid utterance was as indistinct as +if he had mush in his mouth, old men have told me. But after a year or two +of practice he developed both power and attractiveness. In due time when +Cone or Lumpkin were with him, he would be pushed forward, young as he +was, into some important place in court conduct. I myself heard Lumpkin +tell that the greatest forensic eloquence he had ever heard was a rebuke +by Toombs--then some twenty-seven years old--of the zeal with which the +public urged on the prosecution of one of their clients on trial for +murder. The junior--the evidence closed--was making the first speech for +the defence. As he went on in a strong argument, the positiveness with +which he denied all merit to the case for the State, angered the +spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demonstration of dissent +came from some of them, which the presiding judge did not check as he +ought to have done. Toombs strode at once to the edge of the bar, only a +railing some four feet high separating him from these angry men, and +chastised them as they merited. His invective culminated in denouncing +them as bloodhounds eager to slake their accursed thirst in innocent +blood. These misguided ones were brought back to proper behavior, and with +them admiration of the fearless and eloquent advocate displaced their +hostility, and carried upon an invisible wave an influence in favor of the +accused over the entire community, and even into the jury box. And the +narrator, who was one of Toombs's greatest admirers, told with fond +recollection how the popular billows were laid by the speech of his +junior, and how he himself took heart and found the way to an acquittal +which he feared he had lost. + +This affair is illustrative of Toombs in two respects. In the first place +it shows his extempore faculty and presence of mind. I have seen him so +often in sudden emergencies do exactly the thing that subsequent +reflection pronounced the best, that I believe had he been in Napoleon's +place when the Red Sea tide suddenly spread around, he would have escaped +in the same way, or in a better one. I do not believe that this can be +said of any one else of the past or present. In the second place it is one +of the many proofs extant that he could always vanquish the mob. + +He divined what offered cases are unmaintainable more quickly, and +declined them more resolutely than any one I ever knew. So free was he +from illusion that he could not contend against plain infeasibility. It +was impossible for clients, witnesses, or juniors to blind him to the +actual chances. For ten years or more, commencing with 1867, I observed +him in many _nisi prius_ trials, and I noted how unfrequently, as compared +with others, he had either got wrong as to his own side or misanticipated +the other. But now and then it would develop that the merits were +decidedly against him. He would at once, according to circumstances, +propose a compromise, frankly surrender, or, if it appeared very weak, +toss the case away as if it was something unclean. When he had thus +failed, his air of unconcern and majesty reminded of how the lion is said +to stalk back to his place of hiding when the prey has eluded his spring. + +Stephens came to the bar some four years after Toombs did, and settled in +an adjoining county. I need merely allude to their long and beautiful +friendship, full details of which are to be found in the biographies of +the former. I merely emphasize the importance of Stephens's help to +Toombs's development in his early politics. The former got to congress two +years before he did. Toombs evidently relied greatly upon the sagacity +with which the other divined how a new question would take with the +masses. On his return from a brief and bloodless service in the Creek war +as captain of a company of volunteers, Toombs commenced a State +legislative career, which Mr. Stovall has creditably told.[97] I can stop +only to say it was honorable, and contributed greatly to his political +education. + +When Toombs was at the Virginia law school, he heard some of Randolph's +stump speeches; and for a few years afterwards he often vouched passages +from them as authority. Stephens would tell this; and then with +affectionate mischief tell further that his friend, before he had finished +in the Georgia legislature, had ceased entirely to support his contentions +with anything else than his own reasons. + +Before he got to Congress, he had made reputation at the hustings. In 1840 +he crossed the Savannah, and meeting the veteran McDuffie in stump debate +is reported to have come off with the high opinion of all hearers, +including his adversary. + +Let us now take an inventory of him as he is about to enter congress. He +is the best lawyer in the State, except Cone, and fully his equal; while +as a speaker he did not have Lumpkin's marvellous suasion of common men, +yet with them he was almost the next, and he was far greater than Lumpkin +in quelling the mob, convincing the honest judge that his law was right, +and convincing also the better men of the jury and citizens present that +the principles of justice involved in the issue of facts were to be +applied as he claimed; he had acquired enough of property to be considered +rich in that day, although he had always lived liberally; his legislative +and political career had convinced the people that he was incomparably the +best and ablest man of the district for their representative. It is to be +especially emphasized that he had practical talent of the highest order. +His plantation was a model of good management. His investments were always +prudent and lucrative. Practical men of extraordinary ability were bred +by the conditions about him. In the Raytown district of Taliaferro +county--about ten miles distant--my maternal grandfather, Joshua Morgan, +lived on his plantation of more than a thousand acres, which he managed +without an overseer. His father had been killed by the tories. His +education had been so scant that he found reading the simplest English +difficult, and to sign his name was the only writing I ever knew him to +do. But his plantation management was the admiration of all his neighbors. +His land was sandy and thin, but he made it yield more than ample support +for his numerous family, his rapidly increasing force of negroes, his +blooded horses, his unusually large number of hogs, cows, sheep, and +goats; and a fair quantity of cotton besides. The slaves loved sweet +potatoes more than any other food, and they were a favorite food in the +Big House. His supplies never failed, there being some unopened "banks or +hills" when the new potatoes came. His hogs were his special attention. +His fine horses required so much corn, and so much more of it was needed +for bread, that he could not feed it lavishly to his hogs. So he developed +a succession of peach orchards, with which he commenced their fattening in +the summer. These were four in all; the first ripened in July and the last +the fourth week in October. The fruit in any particular one ripened at the +same time, and he cared not how many different varieties there were. +Whenever he tasted peaches away from home that he liked, if they were not +from grafted trees, he would carry away the seed, and there was a +particular drawer labelled with the date, into which they were put. +Whenever he had need to plant a tree whose fruit was desired at that +particular time of the year, the seed was planted where he wanted the +tree. Many of his neighbors planted the seeds in a nursery, whence after +a year or two they transplanted the young trees; but my grandfather, as he +told me, saved a year by his method. He was always replanting in place of +injured trees and those he had found to be inferior. The "fattening" +hogs--that is, those to be next killed for meat--were turned into the July +orchard just as soon as the peaches commenced to fall; and they went on +through the rest of the series. There was running water in each orchard. +After peach-time, these hogs ran upon the peas which were now ripe in the +corn fields, the corn having been gathered. And for some two weeks before +they were to be killed they were penned and given all the corn they would +eat. What pride the good planter of that time took in keeping independent +of the Tennessee hog drover, who was the main resource of his rural +neighbors who did not save their own meat, as the phrase then was! +Observing that his hogs were not safe against roving negroes when away +from the house on Sunday, on that day they were kept up. One of my +earliest recollections is that of Old Lige driving them to the spring +branch twice every Sunday. For a long while he tried in various ways to +protect his sheep against worrying dogs. At last he had them "got up" +every night in some enclosure he wished to enrich near enough to the Big +House for his own dogs to be aware of any invasion by strangers, and he +never had a sheep worried afterwards. The foregoing is enough to suggest +the whole of the system. The management of its different trains and many +separate departments upon an up-to-date railroad was not superior in +punctuality and due discharge of every duty. He lived well, entertained +hospitably, and kept out of debt. Mr. Thomas E. Watson has lately given a +graphic description of good plantation conduct,[98] which ought to be +considered by all those who now believe that every planter was necessarily +slipshod and slovenly in his vocation. It was a good training school for +the born business man. Let me give an example to show how extensive +planting bred experts in affairs. The Southern Mutual fire insurance +company--its principal office being at Athens, some forty miles distant +from Toombs's home--at the beginning of the brothers' war had for some +years almost driven all other insurers out of its territory. It is still +such a favorite therein that it is hardly exaggeration to state that its +competitors must content themselves with its leavings. The plan of this +great company is a novel form of co-operative insurance--indeed, I may +say, it is unique. It was invented, developed, and most skilfully worked +forward into a success which is one of the wonders of the insurance world. +The men who did this were never any of them reputed to be of exceptional +talents. They had merely grown up in the best rural business circles of +the old south. A similar fact explains the mastery of money, banking, and +related matters which Calhoun acquired in a locality of South Carolina, +not forty miles distant from Washington, Georgia. It also explains why +Toombs, bred in the interior and far away from large cities, had perfectly +acquired the commercial law; had complete knowledge of the principles and +practice of banking, and those of all corporate business, and also a +familiarity with the fluctuating values of current securities equalling +that of experts. + +He was also, as I know, almost a lightning calculator, and fully +indoctrinated in the science of accounts. + +Surely this man, now thirty-five, is ripe for congress. + +January 12, 1846, the United States house of representatives having under +consideration a resolution of notice to Great Britain to abrogate the +convention between her and the United States, of August 6, 1827, relative +to the region commonly called Oregon, Toombs made his congressional debut. + +It is an able speech for a new member--especially for one grappling with a +question peculiar to a part of the country so far away from his own. +Convinced that the adoption of the resolution could give no just cause of +offence, he will not yield anything to those who merely cry up the +blessings of peace. The warlike note is deep and earnest. Then comes the +most original part of the speech. Showing great familiarity with the facts +and the applicable international law, he does his utmost to prove that the +title of each country is bad; and it seems to me that he succeeds. He +urges that the time has arrived when American settlers are ready to pour +into Oregon. "Terminate this convention and our settlements will give us +good title." + +Of course I believe that Calhoun's policy, as I have explained it above, +was the true one, and that we should have continued the convention as to +joint occupancy as long as possible. Toombs was bred among the followers +of Crawford, who regarded Calhoun as his rival for the presidency, and I +doubt if he ever did neutralize this early influence enough to enable +himself to do full justice to Calhoun. And as a further palliation, his +combative temperament must be remembered, and also that he had inherited +from a gallant Revolutionary father an extreme readiness to fight England. + +July 1, 1846, he discusses a proposal to reduce import duties in a long +speech, carefully premeditated as is evident. He shows great familiarity +with Adam Smith, economical principles, fluctuations in prices of leading +commodities, and the consequences of affecting legislation. Its main +interest here is the detailed argument in its concluding passages against +the expediency of free trade, of which he afterwards became an advocate. + +January 8, 1847, a speech on the proposed increase of the army is his next +considerable effort. He denounces the Mexican war as unjust in its origin, +but he reprehends its feeble conduct. He is very strong, from the southern +standpoint, in what he says of the Wilmot proviso. Here is a passage +characteristic of Toombs later on: + + "The gentleman from New York [Grover] asked how the south could + complain of the proposed proviso accompanying the admission of new + territory, when the arrangement was so very fair and put the north and + south on a footing of perfect equality. The north could go there + without slaves, and so could the south. Well, I will try it the other + way. Suppose the territory to be open to all; then southerners could + go and carry slaves with them, and so could northerners. Would not + this be just as equal? [Much laughter.] I will not answer for the + strength of the argument, but it is as good as what we of the south + get. [Laughter.]" + +Winthrop, who followed, commences by deprecating the necessity that +exposed him to the disadvantage of contrast with a speech which had +attracted so much attention and admiration. And Stephens praised the +effort greatly.[99] + +December 21, 1847, Toombs offered a resolution in the house, that neither +the honor nor interest of the republic demand the dismemberment of Mexico, +nor the annexation of any of her territory as an indispensable condition +to the restoration of peace. + +His Taylor speech of July 1, 1848, evinces warm whig partisanship. + +In his first years at the bar he loitered a while as a speaker. And one +who studies his record in congress discerns that it is some two years +before he commences to feel easy as a member of the house. The speeches +which I have mentioned above, with the solitary exception of that of +January 8, 1847, are labored communication of cram rather than the +peculiar language of the speaker who, when I commenced to observe him a +few years later on the stump, had become a marvel both of strong thinking +and fit expression extempore. + +I detect a gleam of the coming man, when August 4, 1848, and February 20, +1849, he exhibits his inveterate hostility to maintaining and increasing +an army in time of peace. Next he begins his lifelong war upon high +salaries, and the extravagance and waste of congressional printing. Note +what he says February 29, 1848, advocating reduction of salaries of patent +examiners; and his denouncing the evil of congress's publishing +agricultural works, in two speeches, the one made March 20, 1848, the +other January 18, 1849. These are short, but strong, and their forcible +style gives sure promise that the true Toombs is at hand. He suddenly +found his real self in December, 1849, when his lead towards secession +commenced, as I shall detail later. After that date he soon becomes one of +the strongest and most influential members; and especially one whose +speech greatly attracts audience. I must support this assertion by the +record. With my limited space I must be very brief. My trouble is that the +many examples which I could use are all so good it is hard to decide what +must be left out. While I shall always give dates, so that my statements +can be checked by reference to the _Globe_, I need not confine myself +strictly to the order of time. + +His mastery of parliamentary law is a good subject to begin with. + +January 18, 1850, it was moved that the sergeant-at-arms act as doorkeeper +until one be elected. The chair decided that the question affected the +organization of the house and was therefore one of privilege. On an +appeal there was much discussion. Here is the part played by Toombs: + + "_Mr. Toombs._ I apprehend that the speaker has committed error. This + is not an office known to the law; it was created only by the rules of + the house. The office of speaker and clerk alone are known to the + law.... It is not every officer whom by their rules they may choose to + appoint, that is necessary to the organization of the house. Suppose + that by a rule they provided for the appointment of a bootblack; could + a resolution for his appointment be made a question of privilege to + arrest and override all other business? + + Mr. Bayley inquired of the gentleman from Georgia if a rule was not as + clearly obligatory upon the house as a law. + + _Mr. Toombs._ It is; but its execution is not a question of + organization." + +A reversal was the result. + +The following took place February 20, 1851, and is a good illustration of +his forcible way of putting things: + + "_Mr. Toombs._ (Interrupting Mr. Stanton) called the gentleman to + order. The committee ought not to tolerate this custom of speaking to + matters not immediately before it. + + _The Chairman._ Does the gentleman from Georgia raise the point of + order that the remarks of the gentleman from Tennessee are not in + order because they have no reference to the bill before the committee. + + _Mr. Toombs._ My point is that debate upon steamboats is not in order + upon a pension bill. + + _The Chairman._ I decide the gentleman is in order. It has been + invariable practice to permit such debate in committee of the whole on + the state of the union. + + _Mr. Toombs._ The practice may have been permitted; but it was wrong." + +On appeal by Toombs the chairman was reversed. + +Though Toombs--a whig--had stubbornly opposed the candidacy of Howell +Cobb--a democrat--he soon became to the latter, after his election as +speaker, the leading parliamentary authority. Often there would be +confused clamor and wild disorder, nearly every member proposing +something. At a loss himself, Cobb would look at Toombs and see him +intently conning his Jefferson. Soon he would rise, and being recognized +by the speaker at once, would forthwith suggest the right thing. + +The foregoing was often told by Cobb, as his friends have informed me. + +February 24, 1853, he shows up the bad consequences of overpaid offices, +the duties of which the holders can hire others to do for half of its +compensation; and March 2, the same year, he thus speaks of a cognate +evil: + + "The gentleman seems to go upon the principle that as many clerks with + high salaries should be attached to one office as to any other--the + principle of equalizing the patronage of these different offices + without regard to the species of labor required by each." + +I append here a collection of short extracts from Toombs's speeches in the +lower house, which illustrate his power to tickle the ear by striking +presentation, epigram, and novel expression: + + _Debate always Harmless._ "A little more experience will show the + gentleman that he is mistaken, and that the absence of discussion here + does not accelerate adjournment. The most harmless time which is spent + by the house, he will find, is that spent in discussion." February 17, + 1852. + + _Nominees of National Conventions._ "What are the fruits of your + national conventions?... They have brought you a Van Buren, a + Harrison, a Polk, and a General Taylor.... I mean no disparagement to + any one of these. All of them but one [Van Buren] have paid the last + debt of nature, and the one who survives, unfortunately for himself, + has survived his reputation." July 3, 1852. + + _Two Classes of Economists._ "There is a class of economists who will + favor any measure by which they can cut off wrong or extravagant + expenditures. But there is another class who are always preaching + economy--who are always ready to apply the rule of economy and get + economical in every case except that before the house." February 17, + 1852. + + _Principles of Banking._ "If we intend to regulate the business of + banking in this District, the bill does too little; if we do not, it + does too much, As it does not seek to control generally the business + of banking, but permits the issue of notes greater than five dollars, + it violates the principles of unrestrained banking, but does not go to + the extent of regulation by law. I think the public are more likely to + suffer, and to a greater extent, from bank issues above five dollars + than those under that amount." January 11, 1853. + + _The Dahlonega Mint, in his own State._ "I believe the mints at + Dahlonega, Charlotte, and New York are each unnecessary.... I do not + desire to continue abuses in Georgia any more than in New York. I am + willing to pull up all abuses by the root.... I think the existing + mint is adequate to the wants of the country." February 17, 1853. + + _Personal Explanations in Debate of Appropriations._ "I believe that + with all the abuses we have had in the discussion of appropriation + bills, we have never had personal explanations." February 21, 1850. + +Toombs is now about to leave the lower for the upper house. He has grown +in all directions in the qualifications and powers marking the good +representative. There is no other man in the house, from either section, +whose ability is superior or whose promise greater. Three days before his +career in the United States senate begins, he made the following appeal, +protesting against hasty and reckless expenditure, which seems to me a +model of matter and extemporaneous expression: + + "In this bill the fortification bill is introduced; and provision made + for private wagon ways for Oregon and California. There is in it an + appropriation of $100,000 to pay somebody for the discovery of ether. + You have a provision for a Pacific railroad; and you have job upon job + to plunder the government in the military bill;--and the + representatives of the people are called upon to vote on all these + grave questions under five minutes' speeches. You do gross injustice + to yourselves; you betray great interests of the people when you act + upon such important measures in this manner. Let the house reject the + amendments; let the senate devote its time to maturing bills, and send + them to us to be acted upon deliberately; and then whichever way + congress determines for itself, it will have a right so to do. But to + act upon them in this way, is not only to abdicate our powers, but to + abdicate our duties. Put your hands upon these amendments and strike + them out." March 1, 1853. + +Manifestly all that he had learned of the pending bill was from having +heard it read. The instant apprehension and accurate statement, and the +exhaustion of the subject in far shorter time than his small +allowance--these recall what I often heard Stephens say, "No one else has +ever made such perfect and telling impromptus as Toombs." + +His famous Hamilcar outburst did not consume all of his five minutes. + +Toombs was United States senator from March 4, 1853, until the spring of +1861. His peculiarities must be suggested. Although he was perhaps the +ablest lawyer in the senate, loved the profession with all the ardor of +first love, and had great cases with large fees offered him every day, he +resolutely subordinated law practice to his congressional duties. He did +much practice, but it was all in the vacations of congress. He did not +seek office. There is not to be found, so far as I know, a trace of any +aspiration of his during his congressional career for other than the place +of senator. If on a special committee, he worked energetically; but he +avoided the standing committees. He says: + + "It is only occasionally that I go to the committee meetings to make a + quorum to act on important business. I do not attend them one day more + than I am obliged to, for I am quite sure it is not my duty unless + charged with a certain subject. This whole machinery is a means of + transferring the legislation of the country from those to whose hands + the constitution commits it to irresponsible juntas.... I say general + standing committees, without any exception, are great nuisances, and + they ought to be abolished.... They are not proper bodies to exercise + legislative powers. They are not known in the country from which we + derive our institutions. The English have no standing committees. They + raise special committees on special objects."[100] February 18, 1859. + +"The general business of the country," as he expressed it, January 10, +1859, that was his concern. Each subject requiring the action of the +senate, whether important or trivial, received his industrious attention, +as his course and language on the floor always show; and he evidently +feels it his duty to furnish the body on all questions the utmost +instruction and aid that he can possibly give. He had no ambition to be +the author of novel measures--he was strenuous only to bestow upon every +subject of current legislation the proper consideration. His premeditated +efforts are but few. He never shows any distrust of his offhand faculty. +He takes part in nearly all the discussions, often being up several times +the same day on the same subject. He is seldom lengthy, hardly ever away +from the point needing explanation, and never, never dull. Generally he +comes with correcting fact or enlightening principle, and it is seldom +that his matter and words are not both impressive. I found it well in +writing the Life mentioned above to present the most of his senatorial +course by assorting his utterances under their proper heads, with the +briefest possible comment, rather than to narrate chronologically in the +common way of biographers. In his speeches it is only now and then that he +is steadily progressive as he was in the Iowa contested election case. His +advocacy or opposition is generally founded upon a principle, and from +this principle--usually central and self-evident--the different passages +radiate in aphorisms, self-supporting paragraphs, and detached +arguments,--this common radiation being their only connection. Accordingly +if you know what is the particular subject that is under discussion, a +part taken at random anywhere from any of his extempore speeches is nearly +always complete in itself and fully intelligible. Therefore we can have +him to give in his own words, in a comparatively small space, an +approximately full collection of the rich and varied teachings of his +senatorial career, although our chrestomathy would appear to one putting +it beside the unmutilated report of the _Globe_ as a beggarly and jejune +abstract. I know of no other public man with whom this can be as +satisfactorily done. Of course the compilation made by me, as just told, +cannot be given here. He challenged every bad and defended every good +measure. He is on record both by speech, nearly always hitting the nail on +the head, and by vote, nearly always right, upon every one. What he did in +the house deserves close attention; but his actings and doings in the +senate, to which he belonged from March 4, 1853, until shortly after his +famous speech of January 7, 1861, when he left to go with his seceding +State, are such that I challenge all students of history to produce a +single example of such earnest grappling with and able handling of so many +matters of importance in so short a time--not eight full years--by any +member of ancient or modern parliaments. + +Having now, I hope, aroused my readers to some faint conception of +Toombs's greatness as a senator in non-sectional matters, I must bring +that greatness into fuller view, if I can. I therefore add to the +foregoing catalogue the rough character sketch next following. + +We begin with his devotion to his duties. One examining the _Globe_ will +hardly find any other member who calls as often for the reading of the +reports accompanying bills to pay private claims, and such other small +matters; and he will always observe that his immediate comment shows that +he has fully taken in what has been read. He said once, "I have been +reproached half a dozen times within the last two days as being rather +fractious because I desired to understand the business on which I was +called to vote." August 3, 1854. + +The alert and intelligent vigilance which he gives every measure proposed +seems superior to that of all his colleagues. They acknowledge this by the +many inquiries they make of him for information as to pending bills. Thus +June 20, 1860, Green asks him where is the amendment? when was it adopted? +has the house disagreed to it? has it been before a committee? etc., and +every query is answered without hesitation. This but examples how the +other senators very often made a convenience of Toombs's accurate note of +what was passing. + +He shows a like readiness upon facts of history--especially English and +American--on clauses of the constitution, or statutes, or treaties, +provisions of the law of nations, principles of political economy, +institutions, commercial systems, customs of particular nations, and all +such topics as may illustrate the pending question, however suddenly it +may have risen. And so he discusses every matter, grave or trivial, with +perfect grasp of the proposition submitted, and with fullness of +knowledge and understanding. He avoids strained and over-ingenious +reasoning. Plain and safe men never disparaged his arguments by calling +them hair-splitting or metaphysical. But though he took his stand upon the +palpable meaning of undisputed facts and the most plainly applicable +doctrines of reason and justice, he displayed an unparalleled power of +formulating in intelligible and striking words the key principles of +common affairs. This gift always found instant appreciation with practical +men, and they admired it as genius. Though he has his eye ever open to +principle, he is the very opposite of the mere doctrinaire. He is +practical, and always pushing business on, except when the bills depleting +the treasury--to use his favorite name for them--are up and likely to pass +because of the coalition between the opposition and the fishy democrats +which he is always exposing with exhaustless variety of language. Only +then he prefers to do nothing. + +As to his own measures, he changes words, accepts amendments--in short +makes every concession which will gain him the substance of his desire. + +We will here say a little of him as a speaker. He thus describes himself: + + "I speak rapidly; but the idea which I intend to utter generally comes + out, sometimes perhaps with too much plainness of speech. What I say, + I mean; and the whole of what I mean generally gets out." July 30, + 1856. + +He shows in the following a contemptuous opinion of written speeches: + + "As a general rule a speech that is fit to be spoken is not fit to be + printed, and one fit to be printed is not fit to be spoken.... The + senator from New York [Seward] comes in with his already in type; + other gentlemen around me, on both sides of the house, from all + sections of the union, who think proper to write essays, bring them + here and read them to the senate.... I am not objecting to their + character, but I would rather read them in my room. Of course nobody + pays any attention to them here." April 22, 1858. + +He did not habitually correct the report of his speeches, as he says May +13, 1858; at the same time entering a general disclaimer as to all that he +does not report himself. This disclaimer must not be pressed too far. If +you are familiar with the man you need not fear being led astray by the +inaccuracies, the number of which he greatly exaggerates. His stamp is so +unmistakable that you always know what is his. Extempore discussion was +his forte. Therefore nearly all the quotations I use in the Life which I +have written I intentionally take from his shorter, impromptu, and +evidently unrevised speeches. These unlabored effusions, it matters not +how dry or small the particular theme may be, have generally the double +merit of showing the true solution and refreshing with figure, apt +illustration, or wit.[101] + +In important debate he is conspicuously the strongest man in the senate. +We will run over the leading ones: + +July 28, 1854, a bill containing appropriations for places in nearly every +one of the States came up. Through the long debate he evinces uncommon +power and readiness. He is too tart in rejoinder, and too much gives the +rein to invective. + +In the two days' debate of the mail steamer appropriation--February 27, +28, 1855,--he distinguishes himself. + +February 6, 1856, Toombs, with Hunter and Toucey, supports a resolution +proposing the origination of appropriation bills in the Senate. Sumner and +Seward take the other side. The argument of Seward is very elaborate, +notwithstanding his declaration at the outset that he is wholly +unprepared. It is demolished by Toombs in his most crushing style. Note, +too, how accurate the latter is as to the proceedings of the +constitutional convention, how familiar he is with the abuses of wild +appropriations which he is trying to correct, and how graphically he +depicts them. + +July 28, 1856, the Black Lake harbor appropriation is the subject. All +that he says is noticeable for power; especially his replies to +interruptions by Pugh, Wade, and Cass. Though the bill was passed over his +head, as you read the report you feel that his was the actual triumph. + +July 30, 1856, another debate of river and harbor improvements. It is +begun by Hunter. Benjamin takes the lead in support of the bill; Toombs +joins discussion with the latter, who by his coolness and adroitness for a +while foils his adversary; but soon Toombs gets his feet firmly on the +constitution, and still more firmly upon the injustice of extorting the +support of commerce from other interests, and he is resistless. The +disputants often put questions to one another. Toombs's promptness to +answer every adverse position is a taking exhibition. It is to be noted +that many sparkling sentences are struck out of him by the incessant +hammering of the others. At the close, he seems either to have wearied or +silenced his opponents. One cannot but feel that this is no arena for a +man who can make only written speeches. + +August 4, 1856, the subject being the improvement of the Mississippi, +Toombs urges that the valley is prosperous, and it should improve its +river. The examination he gives the question is profoundly searching. +Towards the conclusion of the debate, Cass reads the counter doctrine of +Calhoun, in the report of latter to the Memphis convention, his reason +being, as he says: "I will confess frankly my object in reading it. The +senator from Georgia has treated the question with great ability; and I +want the same vehicle that carries his remarks to the public to carry +also the opinions and views of Mr. Calhoun, whose authority is vastly +better than mine." + +Through the whole of this debate the faculty and force exhibited by Toombs +are wonderful even for him. + +Consider all that he says of the proper management of the post-office, +February 28, 1859. + +January 30, 1860, there was an animated debate, which occupied the morning +and was renewed in the evening. The vigorous blows which he deals the +coalition passing the appropriations--ever the theme of his severest +reprehension--and the review he makes of each item in the appropriation +bill, taken all in all, are high feats. + +His conduct, January 6, 1857, in the Iowa contested election manifests +such rare courage against party and section for the right that it must be +told at some length. We think it belongs with the more important matters +just noticed rather than to its chronological place. + +Harlan, a republican, had been sitting for some time as a senator from +Iowa. There was no contestant. The adverse report was grounded upon a +protest of the Iowa senate, stating that that body did not participate in +the so-called joint convention which had affected to elect Harlan. It +appeared that both houses of the Iowa legislature had met in joint +convention, had balloted without result, and the convention had adjourned +to meet at 10 A. M. the next day. On this day the senate--the majority of +its members manifestly being democrats and opposed to the sense of the +joint majority--met in their own chamber and adjourned before the hour +appointed for the assembling of the convention. But a majority of the +senate were present in the convention when it made the election--several +of them having been brought in by the sergeant-at-arms, and who protested +that they did not act in the proceedings. In the United States senate the +democrats were in a majority, but Toombs, who was always above mere party +considerations, supported the cause of Harlan, saying afterwards, "I +maintained his title, black Republican though he was, because I believed +it stood on right." February 15, 1858. The decision was against Harlan; +but I do not think that an unbiased man who regards mere technical rules +as no more than the instruments of justice, will fail to concur with +Toombs. His treatment of the subject is extremely good and entertaining. +Every material fact is given prominence; every important distinction +taken, as, for instance, that the convention, as it could do no +legislative act and did not require the concurrence of the executive, was +not really the legislature, but only the persons constituting the +legislature acting in a body of their own as electors; and further, his +position that after the convention had organized it could proceed with the +election as long as it had a quorum. Having completed a most lawyer-like +and concatenated argument, which is a wonderful exhibition of concise and +exhaustive extemporaneous reasoning, he rises to the higher plane of +statesmanship and justice, in which he shows in a vivid light what a +monstrous evil it would be to approve the factious withdrawal of the +majority of the Iowa senate from the convention. Note especially the many +questions asked him by different members, and the readiness and +satisfactoriness of his answers.[102] It is all in all one of the best +samples of Toombs's dispassionate debate to which I can refer. Very +probably the democrats would have done right by Harlan had it not been for +Bayard's argument, the special effectiveness of which was the use he made +of the case of his own election, in 1839, to the United States senate by +the Delaware legislature. As he stated it, it was this: There being a +majority of one in the Delaware house of representatives in favor of the +opposite party, a majority of that house refused to go into the joint +balloting. Bayard was elected, and it was maintained by his party, the +democrats, that a majority of the members of the two houses had authority +to proceed; but he hesitated, and at last consulted Silas Wright, of New +York. The latter gave a decided opinion that such an election was invalid. +Whereupon Bayard succumbed, and his State was without a senator for two +years. I cannot help feeling that if Wright had considered the subject and +bottomed it on true principle, as Toombs afterwards did, Bayard would have +settled down in the opposite conclusion, and he and Toombs in concert +would have forced their fellow-democrats of the United States senate into +doing justice to an opponent. + +Many have been superior to Toombs in making perfect orations, but it is +hard to find in any deliberative body a match for him as a debater. +Charles Fox was a giant; but he did not have the strength, the grip, the +never remitted activity, the infinite thrust, the parry, illustration, +wit, epigram, and invincible appeal to conscience, feeling, and reason--in +short, the complete supply and command of all resources that marked Toombs +as foremost in the pancratium of parliamentary discussion. It ought to add +inexpressible brightness to his fame that he sought for no triumphs except +those of justice and good policy. He was far more than a mere logician in +debate. His brilliant snatches, his sudden uprisings, his thawing humor, +and flashing wit--all these did their part as effectively in winning favor +and working suasion as his array of facts and his ratiocination did theirs +in convincing. He was too prone to use harsh language towards the other +side. There are many places in his speeches where I wish he had used soft +instead of bitter words. That he could observe perfect parliamentary +propriety there are proofs in the _Globe_. Especially would I refer to his +behavior in the Harlan debate, spoken of a moment ago, and his discussion +of the Indiana senatorial election, June 11, 1858. Note the last +especially (belonging volume, 2943-2947) for his moderation, courtesy, and +invitation of question while he is most ably supporting the central +proposition he had before urged in the Iowa case. + +Yet, in spite of his occasional vehemence and acrimonious language, he +seems to have the respect and regard of even his most decided political +opponents. Wade and he recognize each the great merit of the other. Once +after applauding his honesty and frankness, Toombs says of him: "He and I +can agree about everything on earth until we get to our sable population, +I do believe." March 22, 1858. + +Wade had already said this of Toombs: "I commend the bold and direct +manner in which the senator from Georgia always attacks his opponents." +February 28, 1857. + +February 8, 1858, Fessenden said, "I am very happy to get that admission +from the senator from Georgia. It is made with his customary frankness and +clearness." + +Hale also respects him. January 23, 1857, he says that Toombs ought to +have been on the bench, complimenting his desire for justice and fairness +as well as his legal ability. + +The northern democrat Simmons loves to praise him, as is evidenced by what +he says June 2, 1858, February 9, 1859, and June 23, 1860. + +Such unsought and spontaneous commendations of the great southern partisan +by northern men during the heat of sectional agitation are extraordinarily +strong proofs of his high character as well as great genius. + +Of course the southern members showed their appreciation. Especially note +what Bayard says March 21, 1860, and what Butler says January 6, 1857. I +could give many more such; but I shall only add here how, February 14, +1860, by reason of the importunate urgency of some of these, evidently +regarding him as the special southern champion, he is pushed into making +an able rejoinder to Hale, who had just concluded a reply to Toombs's +speech on the Invasion of States. + +Toombs's inflexible keeping to what he deemed the right course parallels +the absolute fearlessness with which Julius Cæsar, when a young man, clung +to the wife whom the all-powerful and bloody-minded Sulla commanded him to +put away. The Sulla of America are the people in their unconscientious +moments, and unpopularity the proscription threatened which disquiets +almost all public men with torturing apprehension. And so there is in +nearly every one some admixture of the trimmer. But Toombs never showed +fear either of the people at large or of those of his own State and +locality. He thus scourges juries assessing the value of land condemned +for the government: + + "It has come to such a pass that in getting places for the army, it + seems to be considered better to be cheated by the owners of a site + out of a few hundred thousand for $10,000 worth of property rather + than trust a jury." June 12, 1860. + +When he uttered the following he knew it was extremely unpalatable to his +section: + + "The southern States from their sparseness of population do not pay + all their postal expenses. The whole mail service of the south ought + to pay its whole expenses, and I am ready to put it on that ground.... + I say the point to retrench is in the south." February 28, 1859. + +The following distasteful lesson he read his own State: + + "I know that some of the mail routes in my own neighborhood were taken + away, and I never was consulted about them, and I never thought it was + the duty or business of the postmaster-general to consult me. I have + not been to his office during this winter in regard to a single one; + and I have been very much complained of, even in my own county and + town, on account of it.... I have a word to say about the _Isabel_. + She touches at Savannah; and I have received memorials from people, + letters from interested people, from the Savannah chamber of commerce, + and others, saying, 'By all means keep up the _Isabel_; we want it.' + It is a very popular thing; it is a good ship, and has done its duty + well. What have I to do but follow my uniform line of policy, and give + them the same rules as everybody else? Sixteen years' experience + here--and I was here in 1847, when this steamship system + commenced--have satisfied me that congressional contracts are always + unwise, and are the fruitful sources of boundless legislative + corruption. Therefore, I will never sustain one under any necessity + whatever." May 28, 1860. + +February 22, 1859, though Iverson, his companion from Georgia, was the +other way, he advocated abolishing the mint at Dahlonega in that State, +and the mint also in North Carolina. + +The last instance we cite is his declaration, April 25, 1856, that he had +always voted against a claim of the daughter of Governor Irvin of Georgia. + +And to this proud independence he was without spot of corruption. This was +never questioned but once. May 13, 1858, he was taunted for having +supported the Galphin claim. When at last he sees that the charge is +seriously urged, in a becoming glow he demands an explanation. A +disclaimer of reflection upon his character being made, he gives a +detailed account of the claim, his steady support of it, and a complete +justification of George W. Crawford in the affair. At its close, Hammond +of South Carolina, who was familiar with all the details, bestowed upon it +his unqualified voucher. The lofty spirit and just indignation informing +this statement of Toombs from beginning to end distinguish it as that of +one who has kept out of dark places and walked so purely in the light that +accusation is far more of a surprise than insult.[103] + +He never showed any symptom of the presidential fever, which, to say +nothing of its many other victims, enfeebled each one of the great +trio,--Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Fully content with his place in the +senate, he did not look elsewhere. Taking popularity at its exact worth; +candid and frank to the extreme; contented in the course dictated by his +judgment and conscience though opposed by his people or party and his own +private interest; in no bargains with men nor smirching connections with +women, doing nothing in secret which, if published, would bring a blush; +elevated above the amiable weaknesses of unwise benevolence, ever +championing with all his powers the righteous cause of the weak and +unpopular,--as exampled in his maintaining the claims of certain persons +in Louisiana to the Houmas land against the formidable opposition of the +two senators from that State, in his extraordinarily eloquent appeal for +the naval officers retired without a hearing, in his heroic endeavor to +have his party seat the republican Harlan; incorruptible and really +consistent forever and always,--when he is scrutinized as a public man his +character rises into a grandeur of unselfishness, firmness of high +purpose, honesty, and power to show and do the right almost superhuman. It +stands by itself awe-striking and imposing. + +But let us particularize the special lesson of his senatorial career. We +must begin by suggesting his peculiar bent. It is clear that he chose as +his province commerce and industry, with the related themes of political +economy, finance, the currency, taxation, the tariff, the principles of +exchange and distribution, and so on.[104] He probably had the best +business insight of all our prominent statesmen, Calhoun even not +excepted. Though Hamilton and Webster--the former especially--evince +titanic comprehension of financial theory, yet we see from their lives and +poor money-saving success that commercial and business affairs were not to +them both practice and theory as they were to Toombs. Of all his peers he +was most at home in the ways and principles which dictate proper +legislation as to trade and business. To judge by his words, uttered year +in and year out, nobody else ever saw more clearly that there ought to be +no tariff, improvement, job, or any other pets of government. The latter +should not foster such a class, yearly increasing in number, as it always +will, living idly and luxuriously upon the public income, that is, upon +the labor and property of others. This class supplants the vigorous +products of natural selection by pampered fatlings of bounty, always +raising their demands for support, and ever more and more clamorously +calling for the suppression of all self-supporting competition at home and +abroad. With the moral hardihood of Shakspeare, who shrinks not from +rudely shocking our feelings by making Henry V discard his old boon +companion Falstaff, Toombs never wearied of proclaiming the unpopular +truth that the government ought not to be the helper, guardian, patron, +protector, guarantor, surety, almoner, of any of its citizens. Ponder +these stout-hearted and golden words of his, although the evil represented +therein is now established and magnified into dimensions far beyond what +he could conceive when they were said--an evil, to suppress which let us +hope all patriots will soon unite: + + "Whenever the system shall be firmly established that the States are + to enter into a miserable scramble for the most money for their local + appropriations, and that senator is to be regarded the ablest + representative of his State who can get for it the largest slice of + the treasury, from that day public honor and property are gone, and + all the States are disgraced and degraded." February 27, 1857. + +He is always preaching against the heinous abuse of diverting government +from impartially guarding the whole community and making it profit only a +few. His text is never far-fetched. He finds it in the proposed +legislation of the day, which it is his duty to consider in his place. He +cares not that he makes no present effect. Just before Bell's bill for +improving the Cumberland river was passed, he said of it and its +companions: "These bills are passing _sub silentio_, and I suppose attempt +to resist is wholly useless. I wish it understood that I do not assent to +their passage. I am opposed to all of them." February 24, 1855. + +He sees that the appropriations for harbors and rivers, lighthouses, +private claims, pensions, etc., are almost as baneful as was the +distribution of corn to the Roman populace, and yet the people everywhere +are eager for the corrupting gifts. Against his party, against many of his +section, he fights alone and single-handed, reminding of Horatius keeping +the bridge against the Etruscan host. Though always outvoted, he behaves +with spirit and dignity. Either he, or some one of the faithful few who +act with him in the slim minority, always have the yeas and nays recorded. +His grand purpose was to appeal to the American people upon an issue +involving the article of his creed which he had held up with so much +puissance and fidelity in days of evil report. These words contain the +motto of the long contest which occupied all of his non-sectional career +in the senate: + + "I think every one of these bills should be considered. I do not wish + to have them considered in such a manner as improperly to occupy the + time of the senate. I desire to spread before the country reasonable + information. That is the only purpose we can have now; because the + combination is sufficient to carry everything that the committee + report. But there is a day of reckoning to come; and I trust that + those who support this system will be called to judgment." + + "I desire the truth to go to the honest people all over the country. + Let the taxpayers look at this matter; let the jobbers beware. 'To + your tents, O Israel!'" July 29, 1856. + +The sectional agitation, mounting higher and higher, as Toombs said often, +blinded the people to this great subject. Secession came, and his +State--to him the only sovereign--called the solitary combatant away from +the ground that ought to be kept forever in loving memory for his long, +desperate, thrice-valiant stand. And the world should also remember that +the clauses of the constitution of the Confederate States, "prohibiting +bounties, extra allowances, and internal improvements," came from +him.[105] + +The struggle that wins our deliverance from the monopolists now causing us +to go hungry, cold, and unshod is yet to be. I cannot say when; but I know +it will come soon, and that the people will conquer. As in that day +Calhoun's monetary doctrine will be brought out of its obscurity to add +new lustre to his fame, as I believe, so I believe also that the name of +Robert Toombs will become an object of affectionate reverence to all his +countrymen, and the weighty and eloquent sentences in which he sought to +shield general industry from drones and rivals favored by government, and +in which he advocated that the public burdens be reduced to the minimum, +and then apportioned justly,--these stirring words will be quoted +everywhere to receive at last their due audience and favor. And when no +branch of our government either robs or gives to its citizens, Toombs's +never-remitted, brave, unselfish, and gigantic endeavor to bring on this +millennium ought to be put by Americans in their Sunday-school books. When +we who fought the brothers' war completely forget and forgive, as we soon +will, it will then be understood how much the sectional agitation impeded +him, and that when he was caught away from the senate by the whirlwind of +secession he was only fifty years old, and of such constitutional vigor +that he had the guaranty of at least a quarter of a century more of +undiminished activity. A fond imagination will inquire: Suppose the energy +spent upon the Kansas discussion; the protection of slavery in the +Territories; in the great speech of January 24, 1860, on the Invasion of +States, and in that of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, his supreme +effort, as most of his admirers claim, could have been saved for themes of +Pan-American concern; and suppose him remaining in the senate, eschewing +all other place, with increasing years loved the more by his people for +his courageous fidelity to the right, age assuaging his vehemence and +softening his invective, ripening his judgment and bringing him charity +and wisdom to the full,--to what a height and glory he would have grown! + +If there had been no slavery, I verily believe that the south would have +been the leading and most prosperous part of the union, and that Toombs +would have been the greatest American. Stephens knew Webster, Calhoun, and +Clay. The longer he lived the more positive he became in believing that +Toombs was superior in ability to each one of the three. I have heard him +say often that he had never found anything to which he could compare the +power of Toombs, discussing a great theme extempore, except Niagara. + +Turning back from these unavailing conjectures, I must say a last word as +to that part of Toombs's career in the senate which I have been +discussing. Its exemplariness is not so much in single great achievements. +It is his uniform attention to the current duties of his place. Whether +the particular duty impending was important or trivial, whether it was +popular or not, it received from him at the proper time whatever effort +was needed for doing it rightly. His performance averages so high in merit +that I cannot find a like. No plodder ever kept more closely to the safe +and beaten path. But he did far more than plod. Almost every day for eight +years he showed how genius can manifest itself fully and fitly and find +its true activity in the common round of affairs; how it can better, +exalt, ennoble, and beautify daily routine. I believe that if you will +reflect over this, you will at last see that such are the greatest of men, +and those that the world most needs. + + * * * * * + +I now take up Toombs's sectional career. The aggressive defence of +slavery, looming in sight as Calhoun is within a few months of death, +called for a leader who did not hug the union, and whose eyes were shut to +everything but the justice and sanctity of the southern cause. Calhoun's +last speech, that of March 4, 1850, was throughout an appeal to the north. +In that same session, and some while before that speech was delivered, the +true apostle of secession begins the proclamation of his mission, and some +time after Calhoun's death and before the end of the session that +portentous proclamation was complete. Robert Toombs--then in his fortieth +year, and having as yet attained but little conspicuousness in +congress--is the man I mean. His appeal was really to the south. + +Just after the new congress assembled in December, 1849, a caucus of the +whigs, to which party Toombs then belonged, having met to nominate a +candidate for speaker of the house, he introduced a resolution to the +effect that congress ought not to put any restriction upon any State +institution in the Territories, nor abolish slavery in the District of +Columbia, and, the resolution being rejected, Toombs, Stephens, and a +small number of others retired from the caucus, and they did not act any +further with their party in the organization of the house. Toombs and his +following declared their purpose to disregard former connections and side +with whatever party accorded the south the guaranty demanded by the +resolution above mentioned. As these southern whigs, and also fourteen +northern democrats and whigs, would not support for speaker either Cobb, +the democratic nominee, or Winthrop, the whig, neither one of the two +nominees could muster the majority necessary under the rules for election. +Toombs's tactics were like those of the commons who would not vote the +supplies until the king granted their wishes in other matters. At this +time all the southern democrats and a majority of the southern whigs were +opposed to his action. He was leading what appeared to be a hopeless +advance. This is the beginning. + +The next stage is when, after nine days of balloting for speaker without +result, a resolution was introduced declaring Cobb, who had received a +plurality, speaker, when Duer of New York opposing, said he was willing +for the sake of organizing to elect a whig, democrat, or free-soiler--only +that he could not support a disunionist. This manifest reflection upon the +whigs who had held themselves aloof made Toombs break the silence he had +theretofore kept. + +He surprised everybody--perhaps himself--with an impromptu of powerful +argument and burning eloquence. Note, in order to compare it with whatever +utterance of Calhoun you please, these passages: + + "Sir, I have as much attachment to the union of these States, under + the constitution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to have. I am + ready to concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable + man ought to sacrifice. I will do no more. I have not heeded the + aspersions of those who did not understand or desired to misrepresent + my conduct or opinions. The time has come when I shall not only utter + them, but make them the basis of my political action here. I do not, + then, hesitate to avow before this house and the country, and in the + presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to + drive us from the Territories of California and New Mexico, purchased + by the blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery + in the District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon + half of the States of this confederacy, _I am for disunion_; and if my + physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of + right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its + consummation." + + "The Territories are the common property of the United States.... You + are their common agents; it is your duty while they are in the + territorial state to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment + by both sections ... the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. You have + made the strongest declarations that you will not perform this trust; + that you will appropriate to yourselves all the Territories.... Yet + with these declarations on your lips, when southern men refuse to act + with you in party caucuses in which you have a controlling + majority--when we ask the simplest guaranty for the future--we are + denounced out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we + are met with the cry of 'Union, union!'" + + "Give me securities that the power of the organization which you seek + will not be used to the injury of my constituents, then you have my + co-operation; but not till then.... Refuse them, and, as far as I am + concerned, 'let discord reign forever.'" + +I must emphasize the effect of this speech made December 13, 1849,--nearly +three months before that of Calhoun last mentioned,--and which goes great +lengths beyond anything ever said by Calhoun. The _Globe_ mentions that +the speaker was loudly applauded several times. Stephens, who was present, +says "it received rounds of applause from the floors and the galleries," +and we can well believe his assertion that it "produced a profound +sensation in the house and in the country."[106] Another eye-witness, +Hilliard of Alabama, a southern whig who was not in sympathy with his +refusal to act with his party, relates with rapturous reminiscence the +full-orbed splendor with which Toombs unexpectedly rose upon the house at +this time. He tells: "A storm of applause greeted this speech. Mr. Toombs +had left his desk and taken his stand in the main aisle and the southern +members crowded about him."[107] + +For completeness and height, and for sudden surprise, this speech exceeds +all impromptus on record. To appreciate it you must recognize it as surely +forerunning the future uprising of southerners as one man in what they +deemed the holiest of causes. When you do this you can adapt to it +Webster's words: + + "True eloquence ... does not consist in speech.... It must exist in + the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.... It comes ... like ... + the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous original, + native force.... Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is + eloquent.... This, this is eloquence; or rather it is something + greater and higher than all eloquence--it is action, noble, sublime, + godlike action." + +The remaining facts of this remarkable session, which show that Toombs and +not Calhoun was the apostle of secession, can now be told very briefly. + +December 14, 1849, debate in the house was prohibited by resolution. On +the 22d the whigs and democrats, in order to organize without agreeing to +the demands of Toombs, joined in a resolution that the person receiving +the largest vote on a certain ballot, if it should be a majority of a +quorum, should be speaker. This was a palpable violation of the rules, but +perhaps authorized by the great emergency. When the resolution was +presented, Toombs, having resolved to prevent any organization until he +had secured the guaranty he was standing for, in defiance of the +prohibition of debate, made a demonstration of his surpassing endowment, +as compared with all other orators, to outmob a hostile mob and scourge +them into respectful audience. He adroitly led Staunton, introducing the +resolution, to yield the floor. Why should he want the floor? The house +had forbidden any discussion, and especially were nine-tenths of them deaf +to him, deeming him the cause of their failure to organize. Announcing his +purpose of discussion, he was called to order. Then a point of order was +raised, which the clerk tried to put. The yeas and nays being demanded, +the clerk began to call the roll. There was turmoil and din, but Toombs +held on, denying the right of anybody to interrupt him, supporting his +attack on the resolution by the constitution, the act of 1789, and the +high authority of John Q. Adams, challenging the right of the clerk +calling the names, and indignantly inquiring of the house how they could +so permit an intruder and an interloper in nowise connected with them to +interrupt their proceedings. At the last he forced the house into quiet, +and completed the argument he had risen to make. You will not understand +this marvellous achievement if you deem it, as many do, to have been +prompted by the pride of ostentation and the rage of turbulence. Toombs +was thinking only of securing the rights of his people. He was as earnest +in this cause as ever Webster was for the union. And destiny, +providence,--not himself nor other men,--was in this juncture revealing +him to the south as her leader. + +He now begins to be conscious of his coming leadership, and to feel that +he is an authority and entitled to pronounce _ex cathedra_ upon the +question of southern equality in the disposition of the Territories. +Consequently, February 27, 1850, he made a long speech on the subject of +the admission of California--one far more elaborate and finished than his +average efforts. Especially to be noted is its ending with the famous +words of Troup, "When the argument is exhausted, we will stand by our +arms." + +One other exploit of Toombs during this session must be told. It crowned +him as the leader of the south. + +Excitement had become intense. The extreme northern partisans for bringing +in California were challenged to answer if they ever would vote to admit a +slave State, and they declined to say that they would. Thereupon came from +Toombs an outburst which is perhaps the finest example of his miraculous +extempore declamation which has survived. He did not consume the five +minutes to which he was limited. We append the conclusion, which is a +little more than a third of the whole: + + "We do not oppose California on account of the anti-slavery clause in + her constitution. It was her right to exclude slavery, and I am not + even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise--that is her + business; but I stand upon the principle that the south has the right + to an equal participation in the Territories of the United States. I + claim for her the right to enter them all with her property and + securely to enjoy it. She will divide with you, if you wish it; but + the right to enter all, or divide, I shall never surrender. In my + judgment, this right, involving as it does political equality, is + worth a thousand such unions as we have, even if they each were a + thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not for others, but + for myself. Deprive us of this right and appropriate this common + property to yourselves, it is then your government, not mine. Then I + am its enemy, and I will, if I can, bring my children and my + constituents to the altar of liberty, and, like Hamilcar, swear them + to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just rights, + and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the union, every + part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and for one I shall + strike for independence." + +Stephens, ever a most accurate and trustworthy witness, says that of all +speeches which he heard during his congressional course, which covered the +years 1843-1859, this produced the greatest sensation in the house.[108] +Its effect outside--that is, in the southern public--was widespread, deep, +and permanent. The comparison with which it closed had been, I believe, +used before; but what of that? It exactly voiced the revolutionary +sentiment which, as his deliverances on the 13th of December before +showed, was beginning to come into consciousness in his section. It gave +new impetus to the circulation of the other speeches. The young men of +Georgia, as I know, and perhaps those of other southern States, read them +over and over, reciting with passionate emphasis the most stirring +passages. Especially did they delight to declaim the peroration of the +Hamilcar speech, as that of June 15, 1850, has always been called in +Georgia. To the stump orators, the last mentioned and that of December 13 +became examples which they emulated only to find in their despairing +admiration that parallel was impossible. And even the retiring, quiet, and +elderly people who care for nothing but their daily business caught the +fire. Not long ago, one who is now old, who was entering middle age in +1850, and who has been a stanch union man all his life, told me that he +could not keep from reading these speeches over and over, and whenever he +read one of them, it made him for the time a disunionist. + +The part played by Toombs in the congressional session of 1849-50 seems to +me one of the most wonderful exploits in all parliamentary annals. Since +slavery is gone, and I can at last understand that it was all blessing to +the African and all curse to us, my joy is inexpressible. But I must ever +hold that its defence was one of the noblest efforts of the best of +people. It will soon be understood by the whole world, and especially by +our brothers of the north. They will acknowledge that neither Greek nor +Scot nor Swiss were more manly or heroic than southerners, and the +supporters of the Lost Cause will be crowned with such lustre and glory as +magnify Hannibal succumbing to Rome, or Demosthenes unvailingly stirring +up his country against Macedon. It will forever bring me ecstatic emotion +to recall the many, many places where my fellows suffered or fell at my +side without a murmur. Our victories at the opening of the brothers' war; +then the drawn battles; then the defeats; and the round of sickening +disasters at the end,--all these come thronging back, and I can never be +other than proud of the prowess and endurance of our out-numbered armies, +the energy and untamable spirit of our people, and the devotion of our +blessed women to the weal of our soldiers. I often look back over the +track of what I have called the aggressive defence of slavery. Though it +was disguised under various names, such as the threat of disunion in +certain contingencies by the Georgia Platform, just division of the public +domain between the sections called for by all parties in the south, and +finally the demand for full protection of slavery in the Territories; and +though it was now and then seemingly at rest, that movement from the day +it set in was in reality one directly towards secession, and it kept on as +steadily as the Propontic. And as I look back at the further edge of this +retrospect, marking the beginning, towering above all who took high place +later,--even above Lee and Jackson,--ever comes more plainly into view the +majestic figure of Robert Toombs, revealing his unsuspected power like a +thunderclap from the sunny sky, December 13, 1849, when he extorts wild +acclamations of applause from the majority of southern whigs and all of +the southern democrats, both unanimous against his stand for a guaranty of +congressional non-restriction; a few days later coercing an infuriated +house trying to cry him down into wondering silence; and through the whole +session upholding his cause with such might that the single champion +proves an overmatch for the two parties striking hands against him, and he +finally conquers preaudience and dictation upon the main southern theme. + +I become more and more confident that future history will find the +achievement of Toombs in the session of 1849-50 to be the exact point +where the drift towards secession, which had before that been only latent +and potential, becomes actual, and that here is the dawn of the +Confederate States. The more I gaze at it the plainer and redder that dawn +becomes. + +We need not tell the rest of Toombs's sectional career with much detail. +The all-important part of it historically is its beginning, and how he +vaulted into the lead of the aggressive defence of the south, which I hope +I have adequately told. From this time he showed in all that he did the +quality which Mommsen glorifies in Julius Cæsar,--ready insight into the +possible and impossible. Much discontent manifested itself in Georgia, and +also in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, against the compromise +measures, and especially against the admission of California with its +constitution prohibiting slavery. A convention being called in Georgia to +consider what should be done, there was thorough discussion. An +overwhelming majority of delegates opposing any resistance was elected. To +this result Toombs contributed more than any one else, and he really +shaped the platform finally promulgated by the convention. This--the +Georgia Platform of 1850, as we always called it--is a most important +document to the historian; for it was the weighed and solemn declaration +of some nine-tenths of the people of a pivotal southern State. + +The southern-rights men, as a small but noisy part of the southern people +then called themselves, had mistaken Toombs's last-mentioned speeches in +congress as declarations for immediate disunion in case California was +admitted under her free constitution; and when he supported the compromise +measures, and also the Georgia Platform, they hotly denounced him as a +turncoat. In their blind fury they could not see, as everybody else did, +that vehement and fervent language, proper to awaken one's people from +perilous apathy, may really be at the time understatement, and that, after +the people have awakened, to seek in that same language the counsel of +right action would be the extreme of immoderate folly. The more you +meditate it the more plainly you discern that his leadership was masterly. +From the first to the last his appeal was to the middle class of property +owners--then so numerous that it was practically the whole of southern +society. His object at the first, as he declared, was to make with this +class the protection of their fundamental property interest the prominent +question of national politics. And the end showed that he not only took, +but that he kept, the right road. The Georgia Platform became the bible of +every political following in the State. The next year, 1851, Toombs, still +a whig, supported Howell Cobb, a democrat, for governor against McDonald, +one of the most popular men of the State, the southern-rights candidate. +Toombs's side, which won by a large majority, was called the union party. +You will not be deceived by this if you keep in mind that Cobb was elected +on the Georgia Platform, which had pledged the people of the State to +resist, even to disunion, certain named encroachments upon slavery which +providence had already ordered to be made. + +In 1848 Yancey had aroused the people of Alabama into demanding that the +United States protect slavery in the Territories, and he advocated +secession in 1850. But in both these things he was premature. As compared +with Toombs he uncompromisingly stood for every tittle of what he believed +were the rights of the south. Toombs was a far more practical and able +opportunist. His falling back upon the Georgia Platform from a much more +advanced position, as I have just told, is an instance. I want to give +others. He always declared in private conversation after the war that the +democratic party was ripened and committed by Douglas and his co-workers +to the repeal of the Missouri compromise while he was kept away from +Washington by necessary attention to the interests of a widowed sister, +otherwise, with his commanding position at the time, he would have crushed +the scheme at its first proposal. When he returned to his public duties, +to his amazement he found that every prominent member of the party was +irrevocably for the repeal, and he could do nothing but embrace the +inevitable. Then he would say substantially, "Had it not been for that +administratorship which I could not avoid taking, we would all still be +working our slaves in peace and comfort. That Missouri settlement was not +right, but we had agreed to it; and with me a wrong settlement, when I +agree to it, is just as binding as a righteous one." + +When others are urging that the United States ought to protect slavery in +the Territories, the record does not show that he is interested at first; +although when at last the question is forced into debate he makes by far +the strongest speech of all in championship of the Davis resolutions. I +believe the current sucked him in. + +Just after Lincoln's election--an event which influenced nearly all of +even the most moderate elderly people of my acquaintance to declare at +once for a southern confederacy--he proposed that Stephens join with him +in an address to the people of Georgia, counselling that no immediate +secessionist nor non-resistance man be elected to the convention;[109] and +later he professed willingness to accept the Crittenden compromise. + +The truth is that the ablest leaders, as we call them, do not lead--they +are led. If they should become non-representative, their followers would +go elsewhere. And those of these leaders whose influence is the most +potent and permanent are the conservative and moderate. Toombs was never +really ahead in the southern movement except when for a brief while in the +session of 1849-50 he planted the standard far to the front and called his +people forward. Afterwards there were always others who appeared to be +fighting much in advance of him. + +He companioned his people as they steadily developed their readiness for +the dread action commanded by the Georgia Platform if the north should say +not another inch of extension for slavery, and no extradition of fugitive +slaves. Of course he matured in feeling for secession far beyond what +appeared to be his ripeness in 1850. With all his conservatism, he was of +that stuff out of which the most earnest and biased partisans are made. +There are many who can admit nothing against those they love, and a still +larger number who hug their country with a religious acceptance of +everything in it as the best in the world. To him and his people, the +south, under the mighty influence of the nationalization we have +explained, had long been unconsciously displacing the union in their +hearts. As one may learn from his Tremont Temple lecture, he saw and +magnified all of the good in the society to which he belonged, and was as +blind to the bad as a mother is to the faults of her children. He was +often heard to run through an enumeration of southern superiorities. The +courage and valor of the men, the virtue and loveliness of the women, the +purity of the administration of justice and of the performance of all +public duties; especially did he love to say that the honesty of his +section was so well established that its few venal congressmen were like a +woman of easy virtue in a good family, whom the reputation of the latter +keeps from solicitation; and he would fall to praising the kingliness of +cotton, the beneficence of slavery both to master and slave, the delicacy +of our yam, the excelling flavor given by crab grass to beef and butter, +the juice of the peach of Middle Georgia, sweeter than nectar, the +incomparable melon, and cap the climax by asserting persimmon beer to be +more acceptable to the palate of a connoisseur than any champagne. And in +the days just preceding the great outbreak he had become more intense in +his deep love for his State and section. The raid of John Brown into +Virginia was, I think, the event which turned the scale with him, and made +him feel that secession was near. Taking the occasion offered by Douglas's +resolution, directing the judiciary committee to report a bill for the +protection of each State against invasion by the authorities and +inhabitants of other States, January 24, 1860, he delivered in the senate +a speech which we must notice. It is common in Georgia to adopt the eulogy +of Stephens and pronounce the speech of January 7, 1861, justifying +secession, as Toombs's greatest effort. But I hesitate, unable to decide +which is superior. He states his propositions thus: + + "I charge, first, that this organization of the abolitionists has + annulled and made of no effect a fundamental principle of the federal + constitution in many States, and has endeavored and is endeavoring to + accomplish the same result in all non-slaveholding States. + + Secondly, I charge them with openly attempting to deprive the people + of the slaveholding States of their equal enjoyment of, and equal + rights in, the common Territories of the United States, as expounded + by the supreme court, and of seeking to get the control of the federal + government, with the intent to enable themselves to accomplish this + result by the overthrow of the federal judiciary. + + Thirdly, I charge that large numbers of persons belonging to this + organization are daily committing offences against the people and + property of the southern States which, by the law of nations, are good + and sufficient causes of war even among independent States; and + governors and legislatures of States, elected by them, have repeatedly + committed similar acts." + +The facts are reviewed closely and summed up with extraordinary force; the +subject is treated as carefully under the law of nations as under the +constitution; the quotation from Mill's "Moral Sentiments," and that from +Thucydides, narrating the successful effort of Pericles in persuading the +Athenians to resort to war rather than concede the right of the Megareans +to receive their revolted slaves, are appositely used; the conviction that +there is no longer safety for the south in the union speaks out in every +line; and, with the exception of a few overheated passages, the entire +speech is from the loftiest height of the statesman who bids his people +arm for self-preservation. Just preceding the peroration there are +paragraphs describing nervously and graphically the great resources of the +south and her rapid development from feeble beginnings, one of which +especially emphasizes the past and present of Virginia, adding at the last + + "One blast upon her bugle horn + Were worth a million men." + +Next before this are words which invoke the northern democracy, but they +seem out of place and foreign. He abruptly ends his appeal to the national +classes who have his respect by saying, "The union of all these elements +may yet secure to our country peace and safety. But if this cannot be +done, peace and safety are incompatible with this union. Yet there is +safety and a glorious future for the south. She knows that liberty in its +last analysis is but the blood of the brave. She is able to pay the price +and win the blessing. Is she ready?" + +The last three sentences are the southern correlative of Webster's soaring +when he magnified the union in his reply to Hayne. They were repeated over +and over by everybody with a wild acceptance utterly without parallel in +my knowledge, and after the election of Lincoln became the war cry of +Georgia. + +The position taken in the very conclusion of this truly Periclean speech +is especially to be attended to here. It is that in the event of the +success of the republican party in the next presidential election the +people of his State must redeem their pledge made nine years before in the +Georgia Platform. + +From this time on he is _facile primus_ of southern champions. Note his +long and elaborate reply to Doolittle, February 27, 1860; the discussion +with Wade, March 7, 1860,--both relating to his speech last noticed above; +and his very able argument, May 21, 1860, on the duty of protecting +slavery in the Territories. + +During the presidential campaign of 1860 the Douglas men and the Americans +in Georgia charged the supporters of Breckinridge with plotting disunion +that would bring on war. The charge was generally denied. The truth is, +hardly anybody was aware that the awful crisis was near. Those who really +expected secession believed with Howell Cobb and his brother Thomas, and +with Thomas W. Thomas, that it would be peaceable, and perhaps they were +about a tenth; the rest followed Stephens, believing that the American +people on each side of Mason and Dixon's line would, when it was demanded, +rise up in resistless co-operation and make safe both southern +institutions and the union. Generally Stephens was far superior to Toombs +in forecast and discernment of the sentiment of the masses. But while the +former was too wise to consider even for one moment the probabilities of +peaceable secession, he had a most un-American conviction that nothing +good was ever gained by war, and he so loved peace and the union that he +could not believe his people would secede. In his great sympathies Toombs +was here far more clear-sighted. While he was the only speaker in this +presidential campaign that was disrespectful to the union, often calling +it in derision "the gullorious," and he gave no promise that withdrawal +from the union would be peaceful, and so appeared to be to himself and +alone, he was really the only one riding the waves of the undercurrent +rising every day nearer the surface, and soon to sweep all of us onward +upon its raging waters. The other speakers discussed the rival platforms, +but the nearer election day approached the more potently he was preparing +the people and himself for secession, though unawares to both. And when +Lincoln was elected,--the man who had solemnly published his belief that +this government could not endure permanently part slave and part free,--an +occurrence which aroused the south throughout as the firing upon Fort +Sumter afterwards aroused the north, Toombs drank in every accession to +the emotion of his people, and towered more largely before them every day +as the soul of the revolution now palpable in its coming to all. When +secession was debated before the Georgia legislature, after enumerating +what he declared to be the wrongs of the south, he said, "I ask you to +give me the sword; for if you do not give it to me, as God lives, I will +take it myself." In his immortal eulogy of the union the next night, +Stephens quoted these words, and Toombs, who was present, answered in a +voice of thunder, "I will." The house rocked to and fro with frenzied +applause. Long afterwards Stephens told me that this outburst was the +first revealing sign to him that his people were rushing to war. He lost +his breath while gasping out the awful word, and there was terror in his +looks as if the direful ghost had risen again. Some ardent secessionists +professed themselves ready to drink all the blood that would be spilled, +but Toombs, in his warlike nature, was already revelling in the joy of +fighting for his people in this most sacred of causes. In one of his +speeches he eulogized beforehand those who were to fall in defence of the +south, giving them the requiem of sleeping forever where + + "Honor guards with solemn round + The silent bivouac of the dead." + +I did not hear this, but a friend told me that the speaker's electric +recitative made the hackneyed words forever new and fresh to him. + +I must go faster. January 7, 1861, Toombs made in the United States senate +his famous defence of secession. He presented in behalf of the south these +demands expressed in writing: + +1. Any person to be permitted to settle in any Territory, with any of his +property, including slaves, and be protected in his property till such +Territory is admitted as a State on an equality with the other States, +with or without slavery as its people may determine. + +2. Property in slaves to receive everywhere from the United States +government the same protection which under the constitution it can give +any other property, it being reserved to each State to deal with slavery +within its limits as it pleases. + +3. Extradition of persons committing crimes against slave property, as +commanded by the constitution. + +4. Extradition of fugitive slaves as commanded by the same constitution. + +5. Congress to pass efficient laws punishing all persons aiding or +abetting invasion of a State or insurrection therein, or committing any +other act against the law of nations that tends to disturb the +tranquillity of the people or government of the State. + +It is plainly evident to the unprejudiced that he had the warrant of the +constitution, the law of nations, of the practice and professions of the +great body of even northern citizens ever since the adoption of the +constitution, for every one of these demands. It is also as plainly +evident that every one was vital to each southern community, founded as it +was from basement to roof, upon property in slaves. The justice of his +demands could not be denied without repudiating the constitution, the law +of nations, and the solemn compacts of the fathers, their children and +children's children. And providence had really made each one of these +astounding repudiations, in her purpose to extirpate slavery as the only +menace to the American union, even if the people so dear to Toombs must be +all cast out of their prosperity and comfort into beggary. But when a man +is fighting for his loved ones,--especially if he is fighting for his +country,--and he has the valor of Toombs, his not-to-be-shaken conviction +is that providence is on his side, and the nearer great disaster +approaches, the stouter becomes his heart. Toombs's support of his +demands, and his defence of what he knew the south would do if they were +refused, are the most earnest words he ever spoke. Note these paragraphs: + + "You cannot intimidate my constituents by talking to them about + treason. They are ready to fight for the right with the rope around + their necks." + + "You not only want to break down our constitutional rights; you not + only want to upturn our social system; your people not only steal our + slaves and make them freemen to vote against us; but you seek to + bring an inferior race into a condition of equality, socially and + politically, with our own people. The question of slavery moves not + the people of Georgia one half as much as the fact that you insult + their rights as a community. You abolitionists are right when you say + that there are thousands and ten thousands of men in Georgia, and all + over the south, who do not own slaves. A very large portion of the + people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains there are + comparatively few of them; but no part of our people are more loyal to + their race and country than our brave mountain population; and every + flash of the electric wires brings me cheering news from our mountain + tops and our valleys that these sons of Georgia are excelled by none + of their countrymen in loyalty to the rights, the honor, and the glory + of the commonwealth. They say, and well say, this is our question; we + want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race + to degrade our own; and as one man they would meet you upon the + border, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. We will + tell you when we choose to abolish this thing; it must be done under + our direction, and according to our will; our own, our native land + shall determine this question, and not the abolitionists of the north. + That is the spirit of our freemen." + +Here is the grand conclusion: + + "This man, Brown, and his accomplices, had sympathizers. Who were + they? One who was, according to his public speeches, his defender and + laudator, is governor of Massachusetts. Other officials of that State + applauded Brown's heroism, magnified his courage, and no doubt + lamented his ill success. Throughout the whole north, public meetings, + immense gatherings, triumphal processions, the honors of the hero and + conqueror, were awarded to this incendiary and assassin. They did not + condemn the traitor; think you they abhorred the treason? + + Yet ... when a distinguished senator from a non-slaveholding State + proposed to punish such attempts at invasion and insurrection, Lincoln + and his party say before the world, 'Here is a sedition law.' To carry + out the constitution, to protect States from invasion and suppress + insurrection therein, to comply with the laws of the United States is + a 'sedition law,' and the chief of this party treats it with contempt; + yet, under the very same clause of the constitution which warranted + this bill, you derive your power to punish offences against the law of + nations. Under this warrant you have tried and punished our citizens + for meditating the invasion of foreign States; you have stopped + illegal expeditions; you have denounced our citizens engaged therein + as pirates and commended them to the bloody vengeance of a merciless + enemy. Under this principle alone you protect our weaker neighbors of + Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua. By this alone are we empowered and + bound to prevent our people from conspiring together, giving aid, + money, or arms to fit out expeditions against a foreign nation. + Foreign nations get the benefit of this protection; but we are worse + off in the union than if we were out of it. Out of it we should have + the protection of the neutrality laws. Now you can come among us; + raids may be made; you may put the incendiary torch to our dwellings, + as you did last summer for hundreds of miles on the frontier of Texas; + you may do what John Brown did, and when the miscreants escape to your + States you will not punish them, you will not deliver them up. + Therefore, we stand defenceless. We must cut loose from the accursed + 'body of this death,' even to get the benefit of the law of nations. + + You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard + constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What, + then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State a free State? We are + freemen. We have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I have + recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into + power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude thousands + of millions of our property from the common Territories, that it has + declared us under the ban of the union, and out of the protection of + the law of the United States everywhere. They have refused to protect + us by the federal power from invasion and insurrection, and the + constitution denies to us in the union the right either to raise + fleets or armies for our defence. All these charges I have proved by + the record; and I put them before the civilized world and demand the + judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages and of heaven + itself, upon the justice of these causes. I am content, whatever may + be the event, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have + appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights. You have + refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had them, + as your court adjudges them to be just as our people have said they + are; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will + restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them, and + what, then? We shall ask you, 'Let us depart in peace.' Refuse that, + and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our banners + the glorious words 'Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to the blood + of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity." + +No new nation about to be launched upon a sea of blood was ever heralded +with words that were above these in appeal to the conscience and strongest +affections of humanity. They are not outvied by those of Patrick Henry +reported by Wirt, or those of John Adams reported by Webster, which the +world will ever treasure as all gold. O that he had corrected them! He +could not use the file, as we have already said. + +Soon after making the speech he went away from the senate without taking +leave. March 14, 1861, that body passed a resolution reciting that the +seats before occupied by Brown, Davis, Mallory, Clay, Toombs, and Benjamin +had become vacant, and directing that the secretary omit their names from +the roll. + +It was clear from his incomparable and faultless leadership of the active +defence of the south, and his unique ability in affairs, that he was the +choice of the directors of southern nationalization for president of the +Confederate States; but these were overcome by stronger spirits, and Davis +was made president. I have always believed that Toombs regarded this as +the great miscarriage of his life. He could not continue his connection +with the unbusinesslike conduct of the administration, and he retired from +his secretaryship of state. Read what his superiors say of him at +Sharpsburg, and what Dick Taylor with admiration tells of the help he +afterwards got from him in a dark hour, as specimens of his gallantry and +efficiency in the service. But his was not the nature of Epaminondas, to +doff his natural supereminence and sweep the streets. Pegasus did not show +more unsuited to the plow than he did to his inferior station in this +stage of the great conflict which was his meat and drink. + +The collapse came, flight from America, return at last to his stricken +people, and disability for the rest of his life. Though he had something +of even a great career at the bar, and in State politics, his longing for +the old south and discontent with the new increased, slowly at first, then +faster and faster. As infirmity from age came on apace, and his wife whom +he had always made his good angel went to heaven, every day he became more +lonely. He had survived _his_ country. Such love as his for that loves but +once and always. The sacrifices that he had made for it became his +treasures. He hugged his disability as his most precious jewel. Our +gallant Gordon was not more proud of the scars on his face. Not long +before his mind and memory were failing, speaking of the past, he said +with the utmost firmness: "I regret nothing but the dead and the failure. + + 'Better to have struck and lost, + Than never to have struck at all.'" + +What a fall! Greater by far than Lucifer's. Lucifer was rightfully cast +out because of heinous offence. But Toombs was cashiered because he had +been the best, ablest, and most faithful servant of his people, whose +dearest rights were in jeopardy. According to our merely human view it is +the way of fiends to reward such supremacy in virtue and achievement with +hell pains. If we cannot hope confidently, may not we survivors at least +send up sincere prayers that the Lord will yet give this Job of the old +south twice as much of fair fame as he had before. + +If the defeated in the wars between England and Scotland and in the +English civil wars; and if Cromwell and the regicides who set up a +government that had to fall,--if all these have found respectful and fully +appreciative mention at last, why shall not Calhoun and Toombs look to +have the same after some years be passed? Trusting that such will come, I +close this sketch by suggesting where Toombs will, I think, be niched in +American history. + +He is often spoken of as the southern correspondence to Wendell Phillips. +There was nothing whatever in common between the two except extraordinary +fluency of zealous speech. Early in life, Phillips, almost a mere boy, +broke with Mrs. Grundy by advocating abolition before his neighbors were +ripe for it. While Toombs cared nothing for Mrs. Grundy, he always so +comported himself that he was her great authority. He was a very able +lawyer, who had made a considerable fortune by practice, and a thorough +statesman, when fate confided the southern lead to him; and while Phillips +was reckless and rash, Toombs never, never essayed the impossible with his +people. The more you balance him and Phillips against each other, the more +unlike you will find them. Prof. William Garrott Brown is quite correct in +pairing Phillips and Yancey. + +There is a northern character to whom Toombs as a southern opposite +corresponds in so many important particulars that it surprises me it has +not been proclaimed. As Webster was the special apostle of the +preservation of the union, Toombs was the same of secession. Their +missions were parallel in that each one was the foremost champion of his +nationality, Webster of the Pan-American, as we may call it; and Toombs of +the southern. All through the brothers' war their phrases were on the lips +and fired the hearts of each host, those of Webster impelling to fight for +the union, those of Toombs for the southern confederacy. Each was probably +the ablest lawyer of his day. Each was surely the ablest debater to be +found. Each was of sublime courage in defying what he thought to be unjust +commands of his constituents. And the last point which I think of is that +each was of most complete and perfect physical development, and was the +most majestic presence of his day. The busiest men in the streets of all +sorts and ranks always found time to look upon either Webster or Toombs as +he passed, and admire. I never saw Webster. But I believe that from his +pictures, from long study of his best speeches, and from what I have +greedily read and heard of him in a fond lifelong contemplation, I have an +almost perfect figure of him before my mind's eye. Toombs from my boyhood +I saw often. I will describe him as I observed him at the hustings just +before the war. His face, almost as large as a shield, but yet not out of +proportion, was in continual play from the sweetest smile of approval to +the scowl of condemnation, darkening all around like a rising +thundercloud. His flowing locks tossed to and fro over his massive brow +like a lion's mane, as was universally said. In every attitude and gesture +there was a spontaneous and lofty grace--not the grace of the +dancing-master, but the ease and repose of native nobility. His face was +not Greek, but in his total he looked the extreme of classic symmetry and +the utmost of power of mind, will, and act. Princely, royal, kingly, even +godlike, were the words spontaneously uttered with which men tried in vain +to tell what they saw in him. He and just one other were the only men of +my observation whose greatness, without their saying a word, spoke plainly +even to strangers. That other man was Lee. I noted, when we were near +Chambersburg in Pennsylvania those three or four days before the great +battle, that, while the natives would curiously inquire the names of +others of our generals as they rode by, every one instantaneously +recognized Lee as soon as he came near. This publication of her chosen in +their mere outside which destiny makes is not to be slighted nor +underprized. And so remember that Webster looked the greatest of all men +of the north, and Toombs the greatest of all men of the south. + +To my mind I give each unsurpassable praise and glory when I call Webster +the northern Toombs and Toombs the southern Webster. + + * * * * * + +I add a note by way of epilogue. I observe with pain that the obloquy +against Toombs in the north seems to increase, while that against him in +the rising generation of the south--who do not know him at all--is surely +increasing. It is, however, a growing consolation to me to note that every +charge, currently made against him north or south, is founded either upon +complete mistake of fact or the grossest misunderstanding of his character +and career. It is a duty of mine not only to him as my dead and revered +friend, but a high duty to my country, to set him in his right place in +the galaxy of America's best and greatest. I never knew a man of kinder or +more benevolent heart; nor one who had more horror of fraud, unfairness, +and trick; nor one whiter in all money transactions; nor one whose +longing and zeal for the welfare of neighbors and country were greater; +nor one who showed in his whole life more regard for the rights and also +the innocent wishes of everybody. The model men of the church, such as Dr. +Mell and Bishop George Pierce, loved him with a fond and cherishing love. +The humblest and plainest men were attracted to him, and they gave him +sincere adulation. Many of my contemporaries remember rough old Tom +Alexander, the railroad contractor. I saw him one day in a lively talk +with Toombs. As he passed my seat while leaving the car he whispered to +me: "Bob Toombs! his brain is as big as a barrel and his heart is as big +as a hogshead." From 1867 until 1881 I was often engaged in the same cases +with Toombs, either as associate or opposing counsel, and I saw a great +deal of him. It falls far short to say that he was the most entertaining +man I ever knew. He was just as wise in judgment as he was original and +striking in speech. I am sure that his superiority as a lawyer towered +higher in the consultation room just before the trial than even in his +able court conduct. And he led just as wisely and preeminently in the +politics of that day, when it was vital to the civilization of the south +to nullify the fifteenth amendment. Georgia would indeed be an ungrateful +republic should she forget his part in the constitution of 1877. That was +deliverance from the unspeakable disgrace of nine years--a constitution +made by ignorant negroes, also criminals who, to use the words of Ben +Hill, sprang at one bound from State prisons into the constitutional +convention, and some native deserters of the white race--the constitution +so made kept riveted around our necks by the bayonet. The good work would +have remained undone for many years had not Toombs advanced $20,000 to +keep the convention, which had exhausted its appropriation, in session +long enough to finish our own constitution. The railroad commission +established by that instrument is really his doing. This post-bellum +political career of his, in which he restored his stricken State to her +autonomy and self-respect, has not yet won its full appreciation. + +If Toombs could but be delineated to the life in his extempore action, +advice, and phrase he would soon attain a lofty station in world +literature. It mattered not what he was talking about,--an affair of +business or of other importance, communicating information, telling an +experience, complimenting a girl, disporting himself in the maddest +merriment, as he often did after some great accomplishment,--his language +flashed all the while with a planet-like brilliancy, and the matter was of +a piece. Those of us who hang over Martial, how we learn to admire his +perpetual freshness and variety! But when we compare him with Catullus, +his master, we note that while his epigram is always splendid, the +language is commonplace beside that of the other.[110] Toombs was even +more than Martial in exhaustless productivity and unhackneyed point, and +his words always reflected, like those of Catullus, the hues of Paradise. +Perhaps a reader exclaims, "As I do not know Martial and Catullus your +comparison is nothing to me." Well, I tell him that I have read Shakspeare +from lid to lid more times than I can say, and that I have long been close +friends with every one of his characters, all the way from Lear, Othello, +Hamlet, and Macbeth at the top, down to his immortal clowns at the bottom. +Surely with this experience it can be said of me, "The man has seen some +majesty." I have often tried, and that with the help of a few intimates +almost as deeply read in Shakspeare as myself, to find in the dainty plays +an equal to Toombs throwing away everywhere around him with infinite +prodigality gems of unpremeditated wisdom and phrase. Samuel Barnett, +Linton Stephens, Henry Andrews and my cousin, his wife, Samuel Lumpkin, +and S. H. Hardeman, all of whom knew him well, were among these. The end +of every effort would be our agreement that Shakspeare himself could +hardly have made an adequately faithful representation of Toombs. + +The mental torture of the last three or four years of his life I must +touch upon again. The most active anti-slavery partisan and most scarred +soldier of the union will compassionate if he but contemplate. I met him +only now and then. As I read his feelings--one eye quenched by cataract +and the other failing fast; his contemporaries of the bar and political +arena dead; the wife whom he loved better than he did himself sinking +under a disease gradually destroying her mind; ever harrowed with the +thought that his country was no more, and that he was a foreigner and +exile in the spot which he had always called home,--though I was full of +increasing joy over the benefit of emancipation to my people and gladness +at the promise of reunited America, my tranquillity would take flight +whenever he came into my mind. He was that spectacle of a good man in a +hopeless struggle against fate that moves enemies to pity. To me his last +state was more tragic and pathetic than that of Oedipus. + +Of course his powers were declining. I know that he would never have drank +too much if there had been no sectional agitation, secession, war, nor +reconstruction. His appetite was never that insane thirst, as I have heard +him call it, which impels one into delirium tremens. He always +disappointed his adversaries at the bar calculating that drink would +disable him at an important part of the conduct. Others as well as myself +can testify to this. Near the end he deliberately chose to drain full cups +of purpose to sweeten bitter memories. With moderation he had more +assurance of longevity than any other of his generation; and he would, I +verily believe, have been green and flourishing in his hundredth year. He +lost his rare faculty of managing money. It was a shock of surprise to me +when the fire in August, 1883, disclosed that he had let the insurance of +his interest in the Kimball house run out shortly before. It was a +pitiable sight to see him in his growing blindness and wasting frame armed +by his negro servant along the streets of Atlanta in his last visits to +the place. During all this time he was dying by inches. + +But the sun going down behind heavy clouds would now and then send forth +rays of the old glory. It was in May, 1883, during the session of the +superior court of Wilkes, where I had some of my old business to wind up, +that I was last in his house. He had made invitations to dinner without +keeping account. At the hour his sitting-room was densely packed. A few of +us were late. When we arrived many were compounding their drinks. He +hospitably suggested to us new-comers that there was still some standing +room around the sideboard. In a little while the throng was treading the +well-known way to the dining-hall, which we overflowed so suddenly that +his niece, whom Mrs. Toombs, then keeping her room, had charged with +seeing the table laid, was astounded to find she could not seat all of the +bidden guests. Just as her flurry was beginning to make us uncomfortable +our host entered. In spite of his infirmity and purblindness he took in +the situation with his wonted quickness. He said in a tone of tender +remonstrance to his niece, "O, I do not object to having more friends +than room; it is usually the other way in this world." And with despatch +and order he had the surplus given seats at side tables. My eyes +moistened. I had an unhappy presentiment that this was my last observation +of the only man I ever knew whose fine acts and words never waited when +occasion called. I was aroused by the whisper of a neighbor, "Can any one +else in the world do such a beautiful thing on the spur of the moment?" +The admiring looks that followed inspired him, and his talk seemed to have +more than its old lustre and gleam. + +In his final illness, when paralysis was slowly creeping up his frame, and +he had lost the sense of place and time, he would now and then start from +his stupor and send across the State a bolt from the bow which no other +could bend. Somebody spoke of a late meeting of "prohibition fanatics." +"Do you know what is a fanatic?" he asked unexpectedly. "No," was replied. +"He is one of strong feelings and weak points," Toombs explained. And +overhearing another say that an unusually prolonged session of the State +legislature had not yet come to an end, he exclaimed with urgency, "Send +for Cromwell!" + +He died December 15, 1885, in his seventy-sixth year. + +If I have told the truth in this chapter,--and God knows I have tried my +utmost to tell it,--ought not my brothers and sisters of each section to +lay aside their angry prejudices and bestow at last upon the only and +peerless Toombs the love and admiration which are the due reward of his +virtues, his towering example, his wonder-striking achievements, and his +incomparable genius? May that power which incessantly makes for +righteousness, and which always in the end has charity to conquer hate, +soon bring to us who really knew him our dearest wish! + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +HELP TO THE UNION CAUSE BY POWERS IN THE UNSEEN + + +If you are not balked by adherence, either to the rapidly waning +overpositiveness of materialism, or to the ferocious orthodoxy which +denies that there has been any providential interference in human affairs +since that told of in the bible; and if you are exempt from the fear of +being regarded as superstitious which keeps a great number of even the +most cultivated people forever in a fever of incredulity as to every +example of what they call the supernatural, you have long since become +convinced that evolution is intelligently guided by some power or powers +in the unseen. I seem to myself to discern plainly in many important +crises of history the palpable influence of what are to me the directors +of evolution. Washington, to found our great federation, and Lincoln to +perpetuate it--these come at once as examples. Now follow me while I try +to show you what the directors did in preparation for and in conduct of +the brothers' war, of purpose that the north should triumph and save the +union. Of course I am precluded from all attempt to be exhaustive. I shall +only glance at a few of the facts that appear to me cardinal and most +important. + +In the first place, they deferred the war until under the effect of +foreign immigration the population of the north greatly outnumbered that +of the south and had become almost unanimous against slavery; and until +the south was almost entirely dependent upon her railroads and her river +and ocean commerce. Had secession occurred because of the excitement over +the application of Missouri for admission into the union with a slave +constitution, there might have been a war, but it would have been short, +the end being that every foot of the public domain admitting of profitable +slave culture would have fallen to the south. Suppose a serious effort had +been made in 1833 to collect the revenue in South Carolina, how long would +the south have endured invasion of the little State and slaughter of its +citizens? Even President Jackson would have soon forgotten his enmity to +Calhoun and recognized that blood is thicker than water. The time was not +then ripe, as the directors saw; and so they effected an adjustment of the +controversy. It did not suit the directors to have the war commence in +1850, for there was at the time no general use of ironclads, and the +railroad system was far from completion. Consider for a moment the +advantage to the north of having gunboats and the disadvantage to the +south of not having them. Fort Donelson really fell because of gunboats. +Grant got re-enforcements in time to save him from disastrous defeat at +Shiloh because of the command of the river by gunboats. The gunboats +caused the fall of Vicksburg. And it was the holding of the James from its +mouth to Fort Darling by gunboats which gave Grant such secure grip at +Petersburg that Richmond had to fall at last, and with it the confederacy. + +Now a word as to the southern railroads. Next to the navigable rivers they +were the lines of easiest penetration to invaders. Remember how the +British in 1898 advanced in Africa only as they completed their railroad +behind them. Of course had the railroad been already made their advance +would have been along it. How could Sherman have ever crossed the +devastated tract from Dalton to Atlanta had he been without the railroad +behind him? During his retreat Johnston kept the invading army between +himself and the railroad without which it could not have been subsisted, +and staid so close that Sherman had him constantly in view; conduct which +is still lauded by some people in the south as masterly beyond compare. + +To conceive more vividly the river and railroad situation which I am +striving to explain, suppose that during the Revolutionary war the States +had been as dependent as the south afterwards became upon rivers and +railroads, and the British had and the Americans did not have iron-clad +gunboats; as matters now look, our forefathers would have been beaten back +to the foot of the throne. I believe that the railroads alone would have +rendered their subjugation certain. + +So much for the matchless judgment shown by the directors in deciding as +to the time of the war. I shall now tell what I have long thought is most +unmistakably their work in conducting that war. + +As soon as secession was an accomplished fact, they deprived the better +southern statesmanship of all guidance of the brothers' war now inevitable +and about to begin. In such a war a proper executive is of far more +importance than good legislators and even good generals. Toombs was the +man who stood forth head and shoulders above all others as the logical +president of the southern confederacy. But the wily directors hypnotized +the electors into believing that Davis, because of his military education, +service in Mexico, and four years' secretaryship of war, was the right +man. It is generally believed in the south that the considerations just +mentioned turned the scale in favor of Davis. But sometimes I think that +the true explanation is different. Stephens has told how Toombs was got +out of the way. When this narrative[111] was published, both Toombs and +Davis, with many of the partisans of each were alive, and regard for them +may have kept him silent as to a reported mischance to Toombs, which +provoking opposition--as was whispered--from some of those who had been +among his most earnest supporters, decided him to retire. A biographer +writes: "There was a story, credited in some quarters, that Mr. Toombs's +convivial conduct at a dinner party in Montgomery estranged from him some +of the more conservative delegates, who did not realize that a man like +Toombs had versatile and reserved powers, and that Toombs at the banquet +board was another sort of a man from Toombs in a deliberative body."[112] + +Something like that stated in the quotation just made did happen, as +Stephens was wont to relate at Liberty Hall--the name which he gave his +hospitable home at Crawfordville, Georgia. I was present more than once at +such times. + +Such could have been the work of the directors. + +Georgia, being the pivotal State of the new federation, was by many +conceded the presidency. Besides Toombs she had two other men, far abler +statesmen than Davis and then as conspicuous in the public eye--A. H. +Stephens and Howell Cobb. The election of either one of these would really +have been the same almost as the election of Toombs, for the three were in +complete accord, and Toombs was the natural and actual leader. So great +was their fealty to him that neither one could have been induced to stand +for the place after he had missed it. The directors saw to it that neither +one of the three should be president of the Confederate States. + +Suppose that Toombs--or that either Stephens or Cobb--had been made +president, what a different conduct there would have been of the war. +Besides being the foremost statesman of the south, Toombs was its very +ablest man of affairs, and as far superior to Davis in practical and +business talent as a trained and experienced man is to an untrained and +inexperienced woman. Not intending to disparage the other great +qualifications of Toombs, I must emphasize it that of all his +contemporaries he alone evinced a clear understanding of the principles +according to which the confederate currency could have been better managed +than were the greenbacks by the other side. A letter of his during the war +to Mr. James Gardner, of Augusta, Georgia, published at the time in the +paper of which the latter was then editor, shows insight and grasp of the +subject equal to Ricardo's. Toombs as president of the confederacy would +have had congress enact proper currency measures. When he was in place to +advise and lead, his influence exceeded by far that of any other man that +I ever knew. + +But this, important as it is, is far from being the most important. He and +Stephens were fully convinced at the very first of the overruling +importance to the confederacy of these two things: (1) to make full use of +cotton as a resource; (2) to prevent a blockade of the southern ports. I +make these extracts following from a speech of Stephens's at +Crawfordville, Georgia, November 1, 1862: + + "What I said at Sparta, Georgia, upon the subject of cotton, many of + you have often heard me say in private conversation, and most of you + in the public speech last year to which I have alluded. Cotton, I have + maintained, and do maintain, is one of the greatest elements of power, + if not the greatest at our command, if it were but properly and + efficiently used, as it might have been, and still might be. Samson's + strength was in his locks. Our strength is in our locks of cotton. I + believed from the beginning that the enemy would inflict upon us more + serious injury by the blockade than by all other means combined. It + was ... a matter of the utmost ... importance to have it raised. How + was it to be done?... I thought it ... could be done through the + agency of cotton.... I was in favor, as you know, of the government's + taking all the cotton that would be subscribed for eight per cent + bonds at a rate or price as high as ten cents a pound. Two millions of + the last year's crop might have been counted upon as certain on this + plan. This, at ten cents, with bags of the average commercial weight, + would have cost the government one hundred millions of bonds. With + this amount of cotton in hand and pledged, any number, short of fifty, + of the best ironclad steamers could have been contracted for and built + in Europe--steamers at the cost of two millions each, could have been + procured, equal in every way to the 'Monitor.' Thirty millions would + have got fifteen of these, which might have been enough for our + purpose. Five might have been ready by the first of January last to + open some one of the ports blockaded on our coast. Three of these + could have been left to keep the port open, and two could have + conveyed the cotton across the water if necessary. Thus, the debt + could have been promptly paid with cotton at a much higher price than + it cost, and a channel of trade kept open till other ironclads, and as + many as were necessary, might have been built and paid for in the same + way. At a cost of less than one month's present expenditure on our + army, our coast might have been cleared. Besides this, at least two + more millions of bales of the old crop on hand might have been counted + upon--this with the other making a debt in round numbers to the + planters of $200,000,000. But this cotton, held in Europe until its + price became fifty cents a pound, would constitute a fund of at least + $1,000,000,000 which would not only have kept our finances in sound + condition, but the clear profit of $800,000,000 would have met the + entire expenses of the war for years to come."[113] + +The reader who carefully reflects over the passage just quoted may well +think that the extravagant profit pictured savors more of Mulberry Sellers +than of a cool-headed statesman; but if the war price of cotton be +recalled he readily agrees that under the plan proposed the south could +easily have got a fleet of the best ironclads. Such a fleet would have +kept the southern ports open. The advantage of which would have been very +great. It would have held the Mississippi from the first, or have +recovered it after the capture of New Orleans. It would have cleared the +gunboats out of all the navigable rivers in the south. And we must not +forget how it might have ravaged the northern coast, perhaps capturing New +York, and forcing an early peace. + +I must make you see the greatness of cotton as a resource. There has been +from soon after the invention of the gin a steadily increasing world +demand for it, and the south has practically monopolized its production. I +can think of no other product of the soil except wine and liquor that is +as imperishable. But wine and liquor spill, leak, and evaporate, while +cotton does neither. If you but safe it against fire it will not +deteriorate by age. In 1884 I was told of a sale just made of some cotton +for which the owner had refused the famine price in 1865. It brought the +market price of the day, and experts said it sampled as well as new +cotton. It was at least 19 years old. Wine and liquor cannot be +compressed, but the same weight of raw cotton becomes less and less bulky +every year. By reason of the foregoing, cotton is always the equivalent of +cash in hand. Now add the effect of the steadily growing war scarcity, and +remember how easy it was during the first two years of the war to carry +out cotton in spite of the blockade. The European purchasing agent of the +Confederate States government says "it possessed a latent purchasing +power such as probably no other ... in history ever had."[114] He means +cotton. There were several million bales of it in the confederacy, all of +which could be had for the taking--much of it for merely the asking. And +there were a legion of carriers eager to run the blockade. I cannot +understand how Professor Brown could have ever written, "The government +had not the means either to buy the cotton or to transport it."[115] +Surely the government could have seized the cotton as easily as it did all +the men of military age, and collected the tithes in kind. + +If Toombs had been president of the southern confederacy, the very best +possible use of its cotton as a resource would have been made. At the +time, if but managed with the financial skill which he always showed, that +cotton would have been a great war chest in a secure place, always full +and appreciating. It is very probable that almost at the beginning of the +war the confederacy would have struck terror into its adversaries with +some warships far superior to any with which the United States could have +then supplied itself. In this case there never would have been any +Monitor. And the south would have had all the benefits of wise husbandry +and conduct. + +During his short premiership of the confederacy Toombs showed marked +ability. Note his extraordinary insight when instructing the +commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war nor +establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of both +conditions;" and consider how accurately he foresaw that the north would +be rallied as one man to the stars and stripes by attack upon Fort Sumter, +and how earnestly he opposed the proposed attack.[116] + +Stephens was thoroughly against the policy of many pitched battles. He +counselled from the very first that we should draw the invaders within our +territory, where, having them far from their base and taking advantage of +our shorter interior lines, we could when the right moment came, by +attacking with superior numbers, virtually destroy their entire army. The +more I think over it, the more clearly I see that this was the true way +for us to have fought. Stephens's influence would have been so great with +Toombs or Cobb as president that he would have shaped the conduct of the +war. + +There would have been no keeping of inefficient men in high command; and +no efficient one would have been kept out. Mr. Lincoln would have had an +executive rival worthy of his steel. As the former searched diligently and +with rare judgment for his commander-in-chief and at last found him in +Grant, so Toombs would in all probability have found the proper southern +general in the west. It would have been Forrest. The marvellous military +genius of this illiterate man, who at the beginning of the war could not +have put a recruit through the manual of arms, showed him far superior to +his superiors who sacrificed the southern army at Fort Donelson. The +lieutenant-colonel would not surrender, and his escape with his entire +command proved that he could have executed the offer he had made to the +commander to pilot the whole army out. From this moment Forrest moves on +and upward with the stride of a demigod. The night after Johnston has +fallen at Shiloh he alone in the southern army discovers that Grant is +receiving by the river thousands as re-enforcement, and he gives +Beauregard wise counsel which the latter is not wise enough to heed. Read +his letter of August 9, 1863, to Cooper, adjutant-general of the +Confederate States,[117] in which he proposes to do what will virtually +wrest the Mississippi from the federals, and the sane comment thereon of +his biographer.[118] Think of him just after the battle of Chickamauga; +how, had Bragg listened to him, he would have reaped the fruits of a great +victory which he was too stupid to know he had won. Meditate the capture +of Fort Pillow, in spite of its strong defences and the succoring gunboat, +by dispositions of his troops and a plan of attack which, though made and +executed on the spur of the moment, are the most superb and brilliant +tactics of all the engagements of the brothers' war. And his incomparable +conduct by which the army of Sturgis was almost annihilated at Brice's +Cross-Roads. The conception of Forrest is as yet, even in the south, very +untrue. He is thought of only as always meeting charge with countercharge, +in the very front crying "Mix!" sabring an antagonist, and having his +horse killed under him. When he is rightly studied he is found to be a +happy compound of the characterizing elements of such fighters as mad +Anthony Wayne and Paul Jones, of such swoopers and sure retirers as Marion +and Stonewall Jackson, of such as Hannibal, whose action both before, +during, and after the engagement, is the very best possible. Of all the +northern generals Grant showed by far the best grasp of the military +problem. I think Forrest's grasp was equal. Toombs would have divined the +genius of Forrest. The confederate army under him would probably have +equalled--possibly surpassed--the achievements and glory of that under +Lee. + +It was one of Toombs's epigrams that the southern confederacy died of too +much West Point. Of course one must not unjustly disparage the military +school. Yet there were plainly graduates on both sides who had in them too +much of it. This was true of Halleck and McClellan; also of Davis and +Bragg. Mr. Davis, by reason of his exaggerated West Point spirit, was not +nearly so well qualified as Mr. Lincoln for finding the few real generals +in the south. Toombs, with the help of Stephens and all the real statesmen +of the section, would have kept the best generals in command. + +Let us briefly summarize. Had Toombs been president these things would +have followed: + +1. The cotton of the south, fully realized as a resource, would have given +her an adequate gold supply, a stable currency, and an unimpaired public +credit. It would have also kept our ports open and the hostile gunboats +out of our rivers. + +2. There would have been no unwise waste of our precious soldiers. As it +was, their very gallantry in our contest with a foe so greatly +outnumbering, was made a guaranty of defeat. + +3. These magnificent soldiers would have been led always by the best +commanders. + +These were resources enough, and more than enough, to have won for the +south. I often paralleled her neglect to use them with the supineness of +the French Commune in 1871. Lassigaray tells us how there were piles of +money and money's worth in the bank deposits and reserves, which could +have all been had by mere taking.[119] But the Commune made no use of this +great treasure. It surprises one as he reads of it. Then it occurs to him +that the new French government was in the hands of men who generally had +had no experience in government whatever. It was widely different with the +southern confederacy. No other revolutionary government ever started with +so little jolt and difficulty. The grooves along which it was to run were +all ready. "Confederate States" was instantaneously substituted for +"United States" in the constitution, organic federal statutes, and the +thoughts of the people, and the administration of the new government +seemed to everybody in the south but a continuation of that of the United +States. And this new federation was inaugurated by the best-trained +statesmen in America. That these men should have overlooked the great +resources we have pointed out is a far more strange and wonderful blunder +than was that of the raw and inexperienced managers of the Commune. You +can explain it only by recognizing it as the accomplishment of fate. Fate +put in charge of the fortunes of the confederacy an executive as just as +ever was Aristides, and as much respected and confided in by his people. +That executive most conscientiously drove out of the public counsels the +only men who could have saved the southern cause. + +To the foregoing I shall add but a few other instances briefly told. + +Grant was at the opening of his career put in a place which taught him the +importance of gunboats, and held there until his skill in using them had +given him resistless prestige. Beauregard's failure to make use of the +daylight remaining after the fall of Albert S. Johnston seems to have been +prompted by the powers who had the future conqueror in charge. Had he been +sent against Lee in 1862 or 1863 he would hardly have done better than +McClellan, Burnside, or Hooker. Compare how the powers in charge of the +Roman empire prevented a too early encounter of Scipio with Hannibal. + +Ordinary conduct ought to have captured McClellan instead of driving him +to the James. The tone of McClellan's boasting over the flank movement by +which he successfully marched across the entire front of Lee's army within +cannon shot is really that of a man who feels that he has miraculously +escaped an unshunnable peril. + +The directors sent Stuart astray and hypnotized Lee into believing that +Gettysburg was to be another Chancellorsville. + +They blinded Davis to the merits of Forrest. Especially to be thought of +here is the rejected proposal of the latter to recover the Mississippi +shortly after the fall of Vicksburg. + +I need not go further. The student of the brothers' war can add to the +foregoing many other favors shown the union cause by the powers in the +unseen. + +Of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting to the last against +increasing odds with the resoluteness of hereditary freemen. In spite of +all their potency the powers were often hard pressed by Lee, Jackson, +Forrest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate soldiers. These +should have some such eternizing epitaph as this: + +"For four years they kept the fates banded against them uneasy." + +The parallelism of the fall of the confederacy to that of Troy has +incalculably deepened the interest I take in Vergil's great description. +Especially of late years do I realize more vividly how his goddess mother +removed the cloud darkening his vision, and gave Æneas to see Neptune, +Juno, and Pallas busy in the destruction of the burning city; and a lurid +illumination falls upon the statement, + + "Apparent diræ facies inimicaque Troiæ + Numina magna deum."[120] + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +JEFFERSON DAVIS + + +For some time after the brothers' war it was very generally believed that +Davis had been one of the Mississippi repudiators; that through all his +ante-bellum public career he had been an unconditional secessionist--what +we in the south mean by a fire-eater; that cherishing an accursed ambition +for the presidency of the southern confederacy he organized a secret +conspiracy which consummated secession; that as the chief executive of the +Confederate States he aided and abetted the perpetration of inhuman +cruelties upon federal prisoners of war; that he was accessory to the +murder of President Lincoln; and that when captured he was disguised as a +woman. I suppose that these accusations--all of which are utterly +untrue--are still in the mouths of many at the north. They have attained +some currency abroad. I note that the leading German encyclopedia--that of +Brockhaus--repeats those as to the conspiracy and disguise. But "The Real +Jefferson Davis," as Landon Knight has of late presented +him,[121]--without hostile bias and with something like an approach to +completeness--is at least beginning to be recognized outside of the south. +It is about as certain as anything in the future can be that all +detraction from the moral character and patriotism of Davis will after +some while wear itself out. I believe far greater favor than mere +vindication from false accusation will at last be awarded him in every +part of his own country and also abroad. Later in the chapter I shall try +to bring out fully the praise and appreciation which world history will, +as seems probable to me, shower upon his career. Here I can take time to +mention only the beginning of that great fame which we of this day have +looked upon. We saw him fall from one of the highest and proudest places +in which for four years he had been the talk and envy of the earth. We saw +him in sheer helplessness, accused of murder and treason, his feeble +health and personal comfort made a jest of, disrespect and insult heaped +upon him--we saw him endure all the most refined tortures of imprisonment. +Then we saw him set free--his innocence confessed by the acts of his +accusers. Then for over twenty years he lived with the people who under +his lead had been conquered and despoiled; and we saw them always eager to +pay him demonstrations of the warmest love; we saw them bury him with +inconsolable grief; and we see them keeping his memory green by +reinterring him in the old capital of the Confederate States, giving him +there a conspicuous monument, and making the anniversary of his birth a +legal holiday in different States. This--which we impressively mark now as +only a beginning of glory--must develop into something far larger. + +Whenever Davis comes into your mind, of course, you first think of that +with which his name is most closely connected--his elevation and his great +fall. Therefore it is quite right that we make our start from this point, +which is, that he was the head of a subverted revolutionary government. He +is one of a few who, like Richard Cromwell, Napoleon, and Kruger, were +suffered to survive deposition. Nothing in nature hates a rival more than +sovereignty--which, be it remembered, is the representative of a distinct +nationality. Note how inevitably a young queen bee is killed by her own +mother when found in the hive by the latter. Humanity has not in this +particular evolved as yet very far above bee nature; and the fate of +Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, usually befalls the sovereign head of a +defeated revolution. To the student of history it is a surprise that the +life of Davis was spared when American frenzy was at its height. Think of +some of the things which then occurred. Mrs. Surratt and Wirz were hanged; +the cruel cotton tax; the negroes were made rulers of the southern whites; +it was provided _ex post facto_ that the high moral duty of paying for the +emancipated slaves should never be done. While good men and women both of +the north and the south will always censure with extreme severity the +treatment which Davis as a prisoner received, they ought to note it as a +most significant sign of American progress that he was at last allowed to +go forth and live without molestation the rest of his life among his old +followers. + +Before we begin the sketch which we contemplate let us bring out more +vividly the novelty of his example by contrasting him with the failing +leaders of revolutions mentioned above. Richard Cromwell could be +tolerated as a private man by the restored royal government, because his +protectorate had been, so far as he himself is considered, a mere +accident. It was the mighty Oliver, his father, that overthrew and +beheaded Charles I, and then took the reins of rule. These, when he died, +came to his son, who in ability and ambition was a cipher. They who set +him aside would have been ashamed to confess the slightest fear of him. +His captors exiled Napoleon, and Kruger exiled himself. Richard Cromwell, +having been cast out of the protectorate, living forgotten in England, is +no parallel to Davis spending his last years in Mississippi honored by the +entire south with mounting demonstration to his death. Had Napoleon lived +in France and Kruger in the Transvaal, each after his overthrow, they +would be parallels. As it is, the subsequent life of Davis is without any +parallel. + +Having thus shown you what it is that Davis especially examples, let us +now give you briefly such a biography as suits the purpose of this book. + +The fairies bestowed upon him treasures of mind and heart, of form, mien, +and face, of speech and manners. He was not of the very first rank, as +Webster, Toombs, and Lee, who suggest comparison with the Pheidian Zeus, +nor was he in the next with Poseidon and Ares. When President Pierce and +the members of his cabinet were passing by Princeton, a throng of citizens +and students called them out during the stop of the train at the Basin. As +we went away it seemed to me that no speech but that of Davis was +remembered. Compliments were rained upon him. At last a student from New +York State cried, "He's an Apollo!" and all the hearers assented with +enthusiasm. This placed him right,--at the head of the Olympians in the +third circle. + +Though he became a very prominent political leader, the choice of a +profession made by him was that of a soldier. And that profession was +always his first love. His early education, though very deficient and +limited, was far superior to that with which Calhoun had to be content +until he was eighteen. But Davis had when a boy something which supplies +educational defects--a taste for study and a fondness of and access to +books. When at the age of thirty-five he made his début in politics he had +become really a well-schooled and highly cultured man. He completed his +West Point course, graduating in July, 1828. His wife says: "He did not +pass very high in his class; but he attached no significance to class +standing, and considered the favorable verdict of his classmates of much +more importance."[122] + +He served in the army until June 30, 1835, when he resigned. I will cull +from the entertaining narrative of Mrs. Davis certain occurrences of his +army life which are characteristic. + +Reaching a ferry on Rock river in Illinois, in 1831, with his scouts, he +found the boat stopped by ice, and the mail coach with certain wagons +going to the lead mines waiting on the bank. All the crowd put themselves +at his direction. He had the men to cut blocks from the ice for a bridge. +Water was poured upon each block as soon as it was laid, and this +freezing, the block was kept firmly in its place. Whenever a cutter would +fall overboard, he was sent to turn himself round and round before the +fire until he was dry and ready to resume work. The bridge was soon +finished, and the entire party crossed the river. This incident shows that +there was something in Davis's appearance that invited full trust, and +that he was unwontedly quick and ingenious in expedient. + +How he disabled a disobedient soldier of ferocious temper and great size +by an unexpected blow, and then beat him into complete submission; and how +he captivated the other soldiers by announcing that he would not notice +the affair officially, illustrates his talent for command. + +Men desperate and well armed had taken possession of the lead mines, and +they were to be removed. He tried to induce their consent by making them a +speech. Some weeks later he sought another conference. Finding a number +of them in a drinking booth, he was begged by his orderly not to go in. +"They will be certain to kill you," the orderly said; "I heard one of them +say they would." + +"Lieutenant Davis entered the cabin at once, and, as they expressed it, +'gave them the time of day' [that is, he said "Good-morning" or what the +hour demanded]. He immediately added, after saluting them, 'My friends, I +am sure you have thought over my proposition and are going to drink to my +success. So I shall treat you all.' They gave him a cheer."[123] + +How much more heroic is such Cæsar-like courage and tact in quelling the +mob than to butcher misguided men with musketry. + +I have reserved for emphasis here, as illustrating Davis's presence of +mind and readiness in emergency, two incidents which are earlier in time +than what I have just been telling. The first is this. One of the +professors disliked and was inclined to disparage Davis while he was a +cadet at West Point. Lecturing on presence of mind, this professor fixed +his eye on Davis "and said he doubted not there were many who, in an +emergency, would be confused and unstrung, not from cowardice, but from +the mediocre nature of their minds. The insult was intended, and the +recipient of it was powerless to resent it. A few days afterwards, while +the building was full of cadets, the class were being taught the process +of making fireballs, when one took fire. The room was a magazine of +explosives. Cadet Davis saw it first, and calmly asked of the doughty +instructor, 'What shall I do, sir? This fireball is ignited.' The +professor said, 'Run for your lives!' and ran for his. Cadet Davis threw +it out of the window, and saved the building and a large number of lives +thereby."[124] + +In the affair last told, Davis showed a freedom from confusion and an +alertness that is very rare. But the second thing which I have to tell is +still more remarkable. + +While stationed at Fort Crawford in 1829, he had set out in a boat with +some men to cut timber, accompanied by two _voyageurs_. + + "At one point they were hailed by a party of Indians who demanded a + trade of tobacco. As the Indians appeared to have no hostile + intentions, the little party rowed to the bank and began to parley. + However, the voyageurs ... soon saw that their peaceful tones were + only a cloak. They warned Lieutenant Davis of the danger, and he + ordered his men to push out into the stream and make the best time + they could up the river. With yells of fury the Indians leaped into + their canoes and gave chase. There was little, if any, chance for the + white men to escape such experienced rowers.... If taken ... death by + torture was inevitable. They would have been captured had not + Lieutenant Davis thought of rigging up a sail with one of their + blankets. Fortunately the wind was in their favor, but it was very + boisterous. As it was a choice between certain death by the hands of + the Indians, or possible death by drowning, they availed themselves of + the slender chance left and escaped."[125] + +These things which we have selected to tell of him prove that he had in +large measure some of the endowments which are indispensable to the +excellent soldier. They will be recalled by you when we tell his feats in +Mexico. I must say here that I do not mean to claim first-rate ability for +him; but I do believe that he was equal or almost equal to the best in +that great department of the military requiring the powers of the gifted +officer and not those of the few born generals of the world. + +It is a most amiable touch that he left the army to marry a woman the +choice of his heart, and give her a happy home. He cordially sacrificed +for her an occupation which he loved only less than herself. He had had as +brilliant a career as could be won by a lieutenant in garrison duty and +service against the Indians. It must be remembered he had been promoted to +first lieutenant for gallantry. + +It is proper to mention here one other fact of his army life. He had +resolved that if the regiment to which he belonged should be sent to help +execute the force bill in South Carolina, he would resign. Though he never +was a nullifier, his conscience could not permit him to abet in any way +the coercion of a sovereign State, as he always believed each one of the +United States to be. + +His wife lived only a few months. Her death was a fell blow. Her husband +mourned her for nearly ten years. Then he made a most happy marriage with +the lady who survives him. + +In 1836--the next year after the death of his first wife--he settled on a +plantation. Mr. Knight is especially happy in telling how, with his elder +brother Joseph, who had been a successful lawyer, but was now a rich +planter, as instructor and guide, he studied diligently for some while. To +quote: + + "During the period of their residence together, the time not required + by business the brothers devoted to reading and discussion. Political + economy and law, the science of government in general and that of the + United States in particular, were the favorite themes. Locke and + Justinian, Mill, Adam Smith, and Vattel divided honors with the + Federalist, the Resolutions of ninety-eight, and the Debates of the + Constitutional Convention. It was said they knew every word of the + last three by memory; and it is certain that year after year, almost + without interruption, they sat far into the night debating almost + every conceivable question that could arise under the constitution of + the United States." + +Jefferson Davis, as his congressional speeches and his book show, became +deeply versed in the subjects of the joint study just described. I must +note, however, that the discussion which engaged him for such a +considerable period of his ante-public life was had only with one who was +of the same State-rights creed as he himself was, and that it was all in +the closet, as it were. You can only begin the making of a great lawyer by +feigned cases and moot courts. Likewise the true political leader must +early be plunged into real contentions over questions of actual interest, +and thus almost from the very first mix practice with theory. Compare +Webster and Toombs, each at his outset combating with the ablest lawyers +of his State as adversaries, and also publicly discussing varied questions +of policy. I suspect that this prolonged closet training, with its +abundance of academic debate, had much to do in developing Davis into that +supra-logical consistency, stiffness, and unmodifiability of opinion which +is one of his special differences as a practical statesman from the two +great men last mentioned. This, and the mental habitude given by his +military education and experience, mark him as _sui generis_ among our +political leaders. His public career shows more of the doctrinaire and +precisian than can be found in any other one of these. + +In the long post-graduate course which he took in private under his +brother, he was preparing for public life without being aware of it, as it +seems to me. + +He had now but one acquisition to make--to think on his legs and tell his +thoughts at the same time. Extempore speakers are generally made. But +Davis was a born one. He did not have that experience at the bar and in +the State legislature which has been the beginning of so many famous +American orators. The democrats of his county nominated him for the +legislature in 1843, and his first experience in public speaking was in a +stump-debate immediately afterwards with the redoubtable S. S. Prentiss, +Davis then being thirty-five years old. The debate consumed most of the +day. The disputants had each fifteen minutes at a time. The result of the +campaign was in favor of Prentiss. As Davis, a democrat, was merely +leading a forlorn hope in a county overwhelmingly whig, that was to be +expected. But the pluck, readiness, and power which he exhibited in this, +his maiden effort, pitted as he was against the ablest speaker of the +State, astounded the auditors, and it seemed even to the whigs that the +raw debater while nominally losing had really triumphed. + +The next experience he had is thus narrated by Mr. Knight: "Mr. Davis took +a conspicuous part in the presidential campaign of 1844, and was chosen as +one of the Polk electors. Before this campaign he was but slightly known +beyond his own county, but at its conclusion his popularity had become so +great that there was a general demand in the ranks of his party that he +should become a candidate for congress in the following year." + +He had to receive just one more lesson as a speaker. In 1845 Calhoun was +coming to Natchez. Davis was selected to welcome him with a speech. He +made careful preparation, which his wife, whom he had lately married, took +down at his dictation. But when Calhoun had come, after a moment or two of +slowness in the exordium, Davis gave up trying to recite from memory, and +delivered with grace and effect an unpremeditated speech of taking +appropriateness.[126] + +What Mrs. Davis says of him as a speaker is so just and in such good +taste, that I quote it: + + "From that day forth no speech was ever written for delivery. Dates + and names were jotted down on two or three inches of paper, and these + sufficed. Mr. Davis's speeches never read as they were delivered; he + spoke fast, and thoughts crowded each other closely; a certain + magnetism of manner and the exceeding beauty and charm of his voice + moved the multitude, and there were apparently no inattentive or + indifferent listeners. He had one power that I have never seen + excelled; while speaking he took in the individuality of the crowd, + and seeing doubt or a lack of coincidence with him in their faces, he + answered ... with arguments addressed to the case in their minds. He + was never tiresome, because, as he said, he gave close attention to + the necessity of stopping when he was done. + + Only so much of his eloquence has survived as was indifferently + reported. The spirit of the graceful periods was lost. He was a + parenthetical speaker, which was a defect in a written oration, but it + did not, when uttered, impair the quality of his speeches, but rather + added a charm when accentuated by his voice and commended by his + gracious manner. At first his style was ornate, and poetry and fiction + were pressed from his crowded memory into service; but it was soon + changed into a plain and stronger cast of what he considered to be, + and doubtless was, the higher kind of oratory. His extempore addresses + are models of grace and ready command of language."[127] + +He took his seat in the United States house of representatives in +December, 1845, he and Toombs, who was two years younger, beginning their +congressional careers together. Davis made a very creditable speech on the +Oregon question early in February, 1846. He was a modest member, but he +did all the duties of his place with praiseworthy diligence. + +Although he was a thoroughgoing anti-tariff democrat and Webster a +pro-tariff whig leader, he could not be induced to join in the effort to +make political capital for his own party by blackening the name of +Webster. The minority report of the committee which investigated the +conduct of Webster, as secretary of state, was really made by Davis, who +was one of the committee. The stand taken by the latter, and the true +presentation which he made, at last got the whole committee to adopt his +report substantially. Webster was greatly pleased with it. + +Early in May, 1846, Taylor had won his first victories. On the 29th Davis, +supporting joint resolutions of thanks to the general and his army, made +reply to what he deemed were unwarranted reflections upon West Point. He +emphasized Taylor's operations as proving the high value of military +education. He asked Sawyer of Ohio, who had disparaged the Academy, if the +latter believed that a blacksmith or tailor could have done such good +work. Thus, without knowing it, he trod upon the toes of two members of +the house; for Sawyer had been a blacksmith, and Andrew Johnson, of +Tennessee, a tailor. Sawyer took it good-humoredly, but Johnson, the next +day, passionately defended tailors, and used language very offensive to +Davis, implying that the latter belonged to "an illegitimate, swaggering, +bastard, scrub aristocracy." To this the latter, justly indignant, +rejoined with cutting severity. There was never any love lost between the +two afterwards. When President Lincoln was murdered Johnson, succeeding +him, committed the unspeakable folly of offering by proclamation $100,000 +reward for the arrest of Davis as accessory. When Davis, having been +captured, was told of the proclamation he said to General Wilson--hoping +his words would be reported to Johnson--that there was one man in the +United States who knew the charge was false; this was the man who had +signed the proclamation; "for," said Davis, "he at least knew that I +preferred Lincoln to himself." + +Of course had Davis possessed the chief qualifications of popular +leadership he would have made a fast friend instead of a bitter enemy of +this man, whose rise from low estate to greatness proves that he had in +him elements of manhood and virtue that ought to have homage from the +highest and proudest. + +It was by his course in the Mexican war that Davis commenced life in the +eye of the nation. Without canvassing for the place--he never did canvass +for a place--he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi volunteers, +and "he eagerly and gladly accepted." The president, authorized by a new +law, offered to make him a brigadier general. Mrs. Davis says: "My husband +expressed his preference for an elective office; when pressed, he said +that he thought volunteer troops raised in a State should be officered by +men of their own selection, and that after the elective right of the +volunteers ceased, the appointing power should be the governor of the +State whose troops were to be commanded by the general. This was his first +sacrifice to State rights, and it was a great effort to him."[128] + +General Scott doubted if the percussion lock was as well suited to field +use as the flint lock, but Davis knew better. He had his men furnished +with the percussion-lock rifle, a very superior arm to the old +smooth-bore. He drilled his regiment well. And he kept its members from +pillaging. + +As the storming of Monterey opened, the head of the column recoiled in +confusion from a deadly cross-fire, "producing the utmost confusion among +the front of the assaulting brigade. The strong fort, Taneira, which had +contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag, and amid the wild +cheering of its defenders redoubled its fire of grape and canister and +musketry, under which the American lines wavered and were about to break. +Colonel Davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for orders, placed +himself at the head of his Mississippians, and gave the order to charge. +With prolonged cheers his regiment swept forward through a storm of +bullets and bursting shells. Colonel Davis, sword in hand, cleared the +ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers on, they mounted the works +with the impetuosity of a whirlwind, capturing artillery and driving the +Mexicans pell-mell back into the stone fort in the rear. In vain they +sought to barricade the gate; Davis and McClung [the lieutenant-colonel] +burst it open, and leading their men into the fort, compelled its +surrender at discretion. Taneira was the key of the situation, and its +capture insured victory. On the morning of the 23d of September, the +following day, Henderson's Texas Rangers, Campbell's Tennesseeans, and +Davis's Mississippians, the latter again leading the assault, stormed and +captured El Diabolo, and the next day General Ampudia surrendered the +city."[129] + +Davis's quickness, coolness, and dash--and especially his promptness to +take such wise initiative as is permissible to a colonel in action--shone +forth conspicuously in this affair. + +He was the very soul of the glorious stand of the Americans at Buena Vista +against odds of more than 4 to 1. At the opening of the battle a ball +drove a part of his spur into the right foot just below the instep, making +a very painful wound. He kept his seat as though nothing had happened. +Later in the day, his bleeding foot thrown over the pommel, he spurred his +horse into leaping a ravine, in which he saw a horse and cart beneath him +as he flew over. But his great exploit was the re-entering line of his +regiment and Bowles's Indianians, with which he received the charge of a +host of heavy cavalry. His rifles being without bayonets, the hollow +square, then the approved mode of defence, was not to be thought of. So +necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which +poured something like two crossing enfilades into the head of the cavalry +column. The brilliant conception was brilliantly executed. The carnage +that befel the cavalry drove it from the field. Did not the spirit of +Napoleon looking on regret that he had not given the pesky Mamelukes like +punishment? The world has noted how Sir Colin Campbell learned from Davis +the right way of opposing infantry to the onset of heavy cavalry. + +The great distinction won most deservedly by Davis, as the colonel of a +raw regiment in these important engagements, is, so far as I know, without +any parallel. It was but natural that he should always afterwards believe +himself to be a great military genius. Of course he had become famous +throughout the whole country. + +There was a vacancy in one of the United States senatorships from +Mississippi, and Davis was appointed to fill it. I need not go into much +detail at this point. He was warmly greeted at his entrance into the upper +house. He maintained himself with growing ability. While he was +independent and self-reliant enough now and then to differ with Calhoun, +in the main he followed the latter as his leader. There was a dignity and +poise in his nature that suited the senate better than the house of +representatives. And he was doubtless frank when he asserted later that he +preferred the senate to any other place. As I contemplate his record at +this part of his life he impresses me as that one of all the more +prominent southern public men who was most fixed in the opinion that the +very surest preservative of the union was for the south to be always +unflinching and utterly uncompromising in demanding exact enforcement of +every constitutional protection of slavery. He loved the union most +fondly. It was only the south that he loved more. Conscientious +doctrinaire as he was, he believed that the rights of the south were so +plain and palpable that if they were but stated they would be conceded by +the great mass of the northern people. He thought it was to encourage +disunion to surrender even a jot of our claim to equality in the +Territories and that the fugitive slave law should be fully enforced. His +anticipation was that the more we yielded to the anti-slavery men the more +we would be asked to yield, until at last we would be driven into the +ditch, when we could save the south only by secession. So he counselled +with all his might that the south should resolve to surrender nothing +whatever--to go out of the union rather than so to do. Let the north +understand this and the abolition party will disappear. That is the only +way to save the union. This explains why he refused to support the +compromise measures of 1850. He was beaten for governor of Mississippi on +that issue. He was classed with the fire-eaters. But that was utterly +untrue. Remember that in 1860 he actually contemplated being the +democratic presidential candidate, and that Massachusetts sent a +delegation to the Charleston convention instructed for him. + +A word or two as to his secretaryship of war. He was as up to date in +adopting every new thing of merit as he had been in insisting upon +percussion-lock rifles for his regiment in the Mexican war. The diligence +and prolonged labor which he conscientiously gave his official duties were +truly exemplary. I wish especially to have my reader reflect upon two +things belonging here. In selecting men to fill offices, from the highest +to the lowest, he was utterly regardless of their politics. When +remonstrated with by democratic partisans for not giving democrats the +preference in competition for appointments, he declared positively that he +should always make fitness and qualification the only conditions of such +selection. And his actions as long as he held the important office spoke +even louder than his words. Surely here is an example for these times to +profit by. The second thing really belongs to the same class as the first. +It is that when civil war actually prevailed in Kansas between the +anti-slavery men on one side and the pro-slavery men on the other, and the +commander of the federal troops in the Territory would virtually be +absolute in power, though Davis was the very extreme of pro-slavery he +gave the place to Colonel Sumner, an outspoken abolitionist, "whose honor, +ability, and judgment recommended him as the best man for the difficult +duty."[130] + +The secretaryship must be noted as deepening the regular-army grooves in +which Davis's thoughts and tastes had long been moving. + +He became United States senator again in 1857, which position he held +until the secession of his State. I need touch upon nothing but the +prominent part he took. Without knowing it he became the guide that +conducted the south in the aggressive defensive which the closing in +around her of the hostile lines imperatively dictated. All that he did of +importance but led up to or supported his famous resolutions of February +2, 1860. Their gist was that if the judiciary and executive could not and +the Territorial legislature would not protect slave property in any of the +Territories, congress was bound to pass efficiently protecting laws, to +remain of force until the Territory was admitted as a State, with a +constitution that authorized or prohibited slavery. + +Compare the speech he made for these resolutions with that made for them +by Toombs, and the wide difference of the two men comes out plainly. The +former is the height of commonplace morality and patriotism, expressed +with manly strength and eloquence, while the speaker does not see clearly +into the gulf of the brothers' war into which his measure has been made by +the fates the lever to plunge America. That of Toombs shows titanic +mastery of law and statesmanship, and almost full discernment of the +national catastrophe at the door. It is destined, I believe, to stand in +the highest class of great speeches. + +Compare the last speeches of each in the senate. Toombs's justification of +secession is with argument and appeal to conscience that the greatest men +cannot, and only cosmic forces, the fates, the directors of evolution, can +answer. Davis's does satisfy the conscience of the typical southerner, and +in the tone preserved from beginning to end is a marvel of propriety. The +pathos of his leave-taking melted the sternest hearts on the other side. +It was especially in his freedom from offensive words and the gentlemanly +self-restraint of his manner that Davis showed as decidedly superior to +the other. In the speech of Toombs last noticed there are some harsh and +heated words that I would blot into complete oblivion if I could. There is +not a single line in the other that I can find fault with. I will here +parallel them in another place that is strikingly illustrative. Some years +after the war the people of Mississippi wanted to send Davis back to the +United States senate. To this end the legislature memorialized him to +apply for the removal of his disability. He replied that repentance ought +always to precede asking for pardon, and that he had not yet repented. One +day about the same time a sympathizing southerner asked Toombs if the +yankees had pardoned him yet. He scowled his darkest, and thundered, "No. +And God damn 'em, I haven't pardoned them." Of course the average man or +woman will cordially approve the decorum of Davis's reply, and on +reflection will censure the other. + +Davis was completely representative of the real chivalry of the south; and +from the Mexican war on, this was more and more recognized in the section. +When he was made president of the confederacy the great majority of the +people approved. He is such a gentleman; so conscientious; so attentive to +his public duties; and then his military education and experience make him +far superior to Lincoln--this was said by the general. Thus were his +disqualifications for the place concealed from the people of the south. + +His chief defect was that not being a successful business man, he was not +a practical statesman. On this point we have already said enough. + +His own judgment upon himself was that he ought to command the armies of +the confederacy. To the very last he believed he had the extreme of +military ability. During the gloomy days that set in after Gettysburg he +often exclaimed, "If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we +could between us wrest a victory from those people."[131] + +But he did not have extraordinary military capacity, as appears from the +facts which I will now tell. + +He was on the field at First Manassas when that unprecedented panic seized +the federal army. It was instantaneously understood by the latest recruit +looking on from our side. The men and line officers around me ejaculated, +"We ought to press forward and go into Washington with 'em." Davis with +his training should have seen better even than these raw volunteers, and +recognized it was his part by pursuit to accelerate the flight and raise +that panic to its top. There were remaining several hours of daylight, +during which five of his men could chase a hundred and a hundred put ten +thousand to flight, and when night came the excited imagination of the +fliers would re-enforce the confederates with a vast host of destroying +monsters behind and before. The federals losing all organization, were +racing to escape over the bridge at Washington which was a little more +than twenty miles away. They were choking the roads with abandoned +vehicles and artillery. As it was, they seriously choked the bridge. Had +there been rapid advance by us, and firing in the rear, it is more than +probable we should have got the bridge unharmed. We should have added +thousands to our prisoners. But far more important than this, would have +been the arms, ammunition, wagons, horses, quartermaster and commissary +supplies of all sorts--in short, the entire baggage of the enemy--that +would have been ours for the taking. And if the federals had destroyed the +bridge before we reached it, we should have had McDowell's pontoons, or +captured material out of which to make a bridge of our own. We should have +crossed somehow, and at the place which circumstances and the insight of +genius suggested. The capital would have fallen, really without a blow; +and what an immense addition to our booty would have been here. And the +prestige! In a day or two our flag would have waved over Baltimore, the +consequence being that Maryland, with a throng of most true and valiant +fighters, would have been won for the Confederate States, and its northern +line instead of the Potomac would have become the frontier. All this would +have happened if Davis had been a Cæsar and had Cæsar-like used the one +great opportunity of the war. It must be set down to his credit that he +did far more than Johnston and Beauregard insist upon pursuit. But he does +not seem to have thought of it until night; and at last he permitted +himself to be reasoned out of it. + +There have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful supineness of our +army after this victory. We were without transportation means, and a +retreating army always outruns its pursuers, said Johnston. Mr. Knight +says Northrop had left us without commissary supplies, and of course men +without anything to eat had to wait until they could be fed. Beauregard +says we ought to have made for the upper Potomac, which was fordable. All +such reasons come from those who ignore the situation. A real general +would have said to his soldiers, in the first moment of the panic, "You +are weary; it will rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him +because of the obstructing bridge. You are hungry; there are full +haversacks and commissary wagons of your enemy just beyond Centerville +without defenders. Forward, and escort the grand army into Washington +city!" And such a general with just what infantry he could find to hand, +all the while being re-enforced by eager men catching up, pressing forward +as persistently as Blucher spurred with his cavalry after the French +flying from Waterloo, would have been in sight of Washington when the sun +rose. + +Mr. Knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of Davis as the military +chieftain of the Confederate States.[132] I would abridge what can be said +here under these heads: + +1. Each particular army ought to have operated as a part of the whole +force of the confederacy, and that whole force ought to have been wielded +as one machine. Instead of trying to effect this end, the president +decided that all exposed points must be defended. The result was that +these were taken one after another by superior armies. A military man will +understand me when I say his strategy was below mediocrity. True strategy +dictated the abandonment of many places in order to assemble by using our +shorter interior lines a resistless power on a really decisive occasion. +McClellan, in Virginia, and Grant, in Mississippi, ought each to have been +captured as Burgoyne and Cornwallis were. + +2. He selected his generals and important officers according to his likes +and dislikes, and not according to their true qualifications. + +3. He was without practical administrative talent in any high degree. Such +a man as Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, would have shown far superior to +him. + +It will doubtless be the decision of future history that he was neither +statesman nor military man of sufficient ability for the presidency. He +did not want it. Compare him as secession was dawning, with Toombs, who +was the man of all to be president. The latter scenting battle in the air, +was really eager for the inevitable fighting to begin; Davis was cast down +and dejected. He loved the union, and it was inexpressibly bitter to him +to part with it. And then he was sure that there would be a long and +bloody brothers' war. What he wanted was to fight for the south so dear to +him. The news of his election as president was perhaps the greatest +surprise of his life. Says Mrs. Davis: "When reading the telegram he +looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a +few minutes' painful silence he told me, as a man might speak of a +sentence of death."[133] + +Writing of his inauguration at Montgomery, he says to his wife: "The +audience was large and brilliant. Upon my weary heart were showered +smiles, plaudits, and flowers; but, beyond them, I saw troubles and thorns +innumerable."[134] + +And she tells this of his inauguration as president of the permanent +government: + + "Mr. Davis came in from an early visit to his office and went into his + room, where I found him an hour afterwards on his knees in earnest + prayer 'for the divine support I need so sorely' [as he said].... 'The + inauguration took place at twelve o'clock.' [The anterior proceedings + having been described, the contemporary account she quotes goes on + thus:] + + "The president-elect then delivered his inaugural address. It was + characterized by great dignity, united with much feeling and grace, + especially the closing sentence. Throwing up his eyes and hands to + heaven he said, 'With humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging + the providence which has so visibly protected the confederacy during + its brief but eventful career, to Thee, O God, I trustingly commit + myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country and its + cause.'" + +Then she adds: + + "Thus Mr. Davis entered on his martyrdom. As he stood pale and + emaciated, dedicating himself to the service of the confederacy, + evidently forgetful of everything but his sacred oath, he seemed to me + a willing victim going to his funeral pyre; and the idea so affected + me that, making some excuse, I regained my carriage and went + home."[135] + +So did this thrice-noble man sacrifice his dearest wishes and with +superhuman resolution step into the arena at the command of the fates, to +be the target of their wrath against his people. + +He was like Hamlet upon whom destiny had imposed a high task far beyond +his powers. We can believe that to the end of his presidency Davis sorely +sighed more and more often: + + "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite + That ever I was born to set it right." + +His official career from beginning to end was full of fatal mistakes. But +in every one of these he did the right--to use Lincoln's grand word--as +God gave him to see it. This will more and more through all the future +turn his failure to glory. He will be like Hector, who draws the +admiration of the world a thousand-fold more than Achilles, his +vanquisher.[136] + +At the last, when the sword of Grant had beaten down the sword of Lee, and +all of us, it seemed to me, knew that it was the highest duty of +patriotism to yield our arms, he was for fighting on. Casabianca would +not go with those who were leaving the burning ship until his dead father +bade him go. Davis would not abandon the cause of his nation without its +command; and it could give none; for it was dead and he did not know it. +He was trying his hardest to reach the west, intent upon prosecuting the +war from a new base, when he was taken. + +His capture was accepted by the southern people as the fall of the blue +cross. Every man, woman, and child old enough to think, in the late +confederacy became sick and faint. Sorrow after sorrow, and grief after +grief tore their hearts. The first was the thought, for all the blood we +have poured out during four years of such effort on the battlefield as the +world never knew before we have lost; we have been beaten, and we are +subjugated. The next thought that pierced was, the property that made our +homes the sweetest and most comfortable on earth has all been destroyed, +and for the rest of their lives our dear ones must pine in hardship and +misery. O how this pang actually killed many old men and women! It seems +to me that heart failure commenced in the south with the great harvest it +gathered in the first five years succeeding the war. But the agony of +agonies was that the negroes were put over us. Those five +years--particularly the last three of them--are the one ugly dream of my +life. To pay his debts, which would have been a small thing to him had he +kept his slaves, but which were now monsters, my father overworked +himself, while trying to make a cotton crop with freedmen. I did not learn +of his imprudence until I had been summoned to see him die. There was +something like this in every family. A night of impoverishment, misery, +contumely, and insult descended upon us, and the sun would not rise. I +kept the stoutest heart that I could. Now and then it was a comforting +day dream to imagine how well it would have been for me if I had fallen in +the front of my men on the second day of Gettysburg, when I was trying my +utmost to make them do the impossibility of charging across the narrow bog +staying us, and mixing with the men in blue lining the other side. Had +that happened to me I should never have known, in the flesh, of our +decisive defeats, nor of the trials of my people after they laid down +arms; and even if my grave could not have been found, there would have +been at a place here and there for some years honorable mention of me with +tears on Memorial Day, to gladden my spirit taking note. This would +sometimes be my thought, and thousands of others had like thoughts. + +Early in this time of sorrow and suffering the women of the south +instituted Memorial Day. Each year when it comes they do rites of +remembrance to the fallen soldiers of the confederacy. These soldiers lie +in every graveyard from the Ohio and Potomac to the Rio Grande. When the +day comes these women in their unforgetting love assemble the people, have +praises and lamentations of their dead darlings fitly spoken; and then +they deck their graves with the fairest flowers of spring. It is an annual +holiday, sacred to grief for our heroes who died in vain. It is the +fairest, tenderest, and sweetest testimonial of love ever given--love from +those who have nothing else to bestow, lavished upon those who can make no +return; and it is further the most splendid and glorious, being the +co-operative demonstration of a whole people of "true lovers."[137] + +I cannot say where and when the observance of Memorial Day began. Perhaps +Miss Davidson correctly asserts that it was in Petersburg, Virginia, in +1866.[138] It had reached its height at Charleston, South Carolina, in the +spring of 1867, when as prelude to decorating the graves in Magnolia +cemetery, Timrod's hymn, containing this oft-quoted passage, was sung: + + "Behold! your sisters bring their tears, + And these memorial blooms. + + "Small tributes! but your shades shall smile + More proudly on these wreaths to-day, + Than when some cannon-moulded pile + Shall overlook this bay. + + "Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! + There is no holier spot of ground + Than where defeated valor lies, + By mourning beauty crowned." + +The "true lovers" could no more forget their living leader in prison than +they could forget their soldiers in the grave. "Out of sight, out of mind" +could not be said of Davis during his two years' confinement. The concern +of his people mounted steadily. They made all his sufferings their own, +lamenting and praying for him as a loved father. When he was about to be +released on bond the news gave the south a wilder joy than did the +unexpected victory of First Manassas. He was brought in custody to +Richmond by a James river steamboat. Mrs. Davis thus describes how he was +received: + + "A great concourse of people had assembled. From the wharf to the + Spottswood Hotel there was a sea of heads--room had to be made by the + mounted police for the carriages. The windows were crowded, and even + on to the roofs people had climbed. Every head was bared. The ladies + were shedding tears.... When Mr. Davis reached the Spottswood Hotel, + where rooms had been provided for us, the crowd opened and the beloved + prisoner walked through; the people stood uncovered for at least a + mile up and down Main street. As he passed, one and another put out a + hand and lightly touched his coat. As I left the carriage a low voice + said: 'Hats off, Virginians,' and again every head was bared. This + noble sympathy and clinging affection repaid us for many moments of + bitter anguish. + + When Mr. Davis was released, one gentleman jumped upon the box and + drove the carriage which brought him back to the hotel, and other + gentlemen ran after him and shouted themselves hoarse. Our people + poured into the hotel in a steady stream to congratulate, and many + embraced him." + +Bear in mind the people, and where it was, and when it was, from whom this +show of respect so great, so earnest and unfeigned, spontaneously came. +They were of that part of the south which had lost more in blood, +property, and devastation than any other, and who, one might think, were +too embittered against their defeated leader to show him anything but +disapproval. They were also of a State which had not been readmitted into +the union. The axe was suspended over their necks by a party seeking +excuses for letting it fall; by a party to whom Davis was the most hated +of men. Surely these Virginians who thus risked their fortunes were the +truest of lovers. + +No reader of mine, though he search history and encyclopedias through and +through for years, can find anything like the Southern Memorial Day and +the honors given Davis in Richmond as we have just told. They unmistakably +mark an ascent of humanity. But it is not my purpose to emphasize them as +specially signalizing the south. Their great lesson is not learned if it +is not understood that they are glories of federal government. Under any +other form of government such demonstrations would be suppressed as +disloyal and treasonable. + +For more than twenty-two years after this auspicious day the ex-president +of the southern confederacy lived most of his time among his people. Their +love for him steadily grew. He proved worthy of it. He would not accept +the bounty they stood ready to shower upon him, and he was poor and +without money-making faculty. When Mississippi wanted to make him United +States senator again, he felt that he was too old and broken to serve the +State efficiently, and he declined. It occurred to all of us that he +sorely needed the salary of the place. He struggled on under the load of +poverty and ill-health. All of us knew that the latter came from that +cruel and inhuman imprisonment, and the more he suffered the closer our +hearts drew to him. The cause of his section he justified to the last, and +with all his energy. His book defending that cause was written under +difficulty almost insurmountable by man. His character as one tried in +every way and found true came out clearer and clearer. He showed more and +more of spotless virtue, becoming all the while to us a stronger +justification of the fight we had made under him for the lost cause. We +thought to ourselves with pride that the world will some day learn what a +good man he was, and that will be our complete vindication from the +slanders now current. + +Let me tell of some of the other demonstrations made over him. I witnessed +that in Atlanta, in 1886. April 30, all the State of Georgia was there, as +it seemed. Old and young, white and colored, waited impatiently for the +railroad train bringing him from Montgomery. My wife, divining the rare +sight thus to be gained, secured a station out of town where she could see +the train pass without obstruction. As long as she lived afterwards, his +car, prodigally and appropriately bedecked with the fairest May flowers of +the sunny south, was her proverb for that which pleases too greatly for +description. + +When he had come out of his bower of flowers and we knew he was resting, +we felt as if the angel of the Lord was here with tidings of great joy for +all our people. + +Who can describe the rejoicing of the next day that came forth everywhere +as Mr. Davis showed himself to his people! I have seen popular outbursts +of gladness, but nothing like this. It surpassed in profundity of feeling +and sustained energy and flow that which seemed to come straight out of +the ground when, in 1884, we knew at last that Cleveland was elected, and +the south was convulsed with an ecstasy of happy surprise. The women and +men who had tasted the war all crying; all pouring benedictions upon his +gray hairs as they came in sight; "God bless him" displayed on every +corner. I am utterly unable adequately to report this grand occasion. I +will tell only a few things that I saw or heard of. He passed by a long +line of school-children in Peachtree street. They made the sincere and +decided demonstrations of children whose pleasure is at its height. But +what was especially noticeable to me here was the behavior in the section +of colored children. Their delight seemed, if that were possible, to be +somewhat wilder and more unrestrained than that of the white children. The +occurrence has come back to me a thousand times. Is it to be explained by +Mr. Davis's character as a master, to whom, as to all really typical +masters, his slaves were but a little lower in his affections than his +children? Or was it unconscious approval of the resistance by the south +with all her might against the emancipation proclamation, the end of which +may be the wholesale destruction of the black race in America, such +approval being suggested by a cosmic influence as yet inexplicable? + +When he was going through Mrs. Hill's yard to enter her house, little +girls on each side of the walk threw bouquets before him, every one +begging, "Mr. Davis, please step on my flowers." The feeble man tried to +gratify all of them. The flowers that he did step on were eagerly caught +up by the owners, to be treasured as the dearest of relics and keepsakes. + +I was told that some old grayhead who met him during the day, gently +raised Mr. Davis's hands to his lips, saying, "Let me kiss the hands that +were manacled for me," and as he kissed his tears fell in a flood. + +What we have just described occurred in Georgia--a State in which of all +during the brothers' war the most formidable opposition to his +administration was developed. This opposition was lead or upheld by +Toombs, both the Stephenses, and Brown--the most influential of all the +Georgians at that time. That for all this the State gave him this +wonderful ovation shows how deep and strong is the southern sentiment that +glorifies the lost cause. It was Henry Grady, a Georgian revering and +treasuring the men I have just mentioned, who when Mr. Davis was in +Atlanta, in 1886, called him the uncrowned king of our hearts, the words +evoking plaudits from the entire south. And remember that Georgia voted +for Greeley in 1872, although Toombs and the Stephenses opposed him. I +think I was representative of the dominant public feeling at the time. +While my companions and I avowed the fullest confidence in Greeley's +integrity and statesmanship, we each said we were in haste to honor with +our votes the northern man who got Mr. Davis bailed and became one of his +sureties. And Georgia is among the States which has made June 3 a legal +holiday, because it is the anniversary of Mr. Davis's birth. + +Some northern paper sympathetically described the reception given Mr. +Davis in Atlanta, in 1886, as the swan song of the southern confederacy. +And to me it has always been the funeral of the old south. But there were +other obsequies and swan songs. When he died December 6, 1889, the south +sorrowed as it never sorrowed before. We are pleased to quote from the +memoir, the noblest monument a true wife has ever given a dead +husband--far nobler, more splendid and immortal than that which Artemisia +gave Mausolus. Mrs. Davis tells: + + "Floral offerings came from all quarters of our country. The orphan + asylum, the colleges, the societies, drew upon their little stores to + deck his quiet resting-place. Many thousands passed weeping by the + bier where he lay in state, in his suit of confederate gray, guarded + by the men who had fought for the cause he loved, and who revered his + honest, self-denying, devoted life. His old comrades in arms came by + thousands to mingle their tears with ours. The governors of nine + states came to bear him to his rest. The clergy of all denominations + came to pray that his rest be peaceful, and to testify their respect + for and faith in him. Fifty thousand people lined the streets as the + catafalque passed. Few, if any, dry eyes looked their last upon him + who had given them his life's service. The noble army of the West and + that of Northern Virginia escorted him for the last time, and the + Washington Artillery, now gray-haired men, were the guard of honor to + his bier. The eloquent Bishops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the + clergy of all denominations, delivered short eulogies upon him to + weeping thousands, and the strains of 'Rock of Ages,' once more bore + up a great spirit in its flight to Him who gave, sustained, and took + it again to himself." + +These aptly chosen words come short of describing the general grief. +Nobody can yet tell all of it. One but feebly expresses it by saying that +when Jefferson Davis died, broken-hearted men, women, and children +gathered in funeral assemblies everywhere in that vast area from Mason and +Dixon's line on the north to the Mexican border on the south, wept over +his bier, and hung the air and heavens with black. + +In 1893 his remains were carried to Richmond, the dead capital of the dead +Confederate States, and there reinterred. The ceremonies were impressive, +and thoroughly in keeping with those I have narrated in the foregoing. + +And in 1896 the corner-stone of a monument to him was laid in Monroe Park. +On this occasion General Stephen D. Lee delivered an oration which, as a +monument itself, will long outlast the stone one. + +Thus has the overthrown and most evilly entreated president of the +Confederate States become, by some marvel of fortune, far more than the +proudest conqueror. The honors which every one who "can above himself +erect himself" estimates as the very richest, Mr. Davis has had given him +more prodigally than any other man. These honors that make everything else +shabby in appearance and cheap, are the spontaneous offerings of sincere +love from those who know us. Smiles, tender words, prayers for blessing, +tears of joy, admiration, pity, and sympathy, flowers--how dear are any of +these from a friend, brother, sister, father, mother, sweetheart, wife, +child. For almost a generation all these tokens were given the +ex-president by everybody in the south, and each year to his death they +were given in greater profusion. And really the whole south mourned at his +burial. Our wives, mothers, and other dear ones give us up, and we give, +them up, to fight and perhaps die for the country. We are so made that we +love the great brotherhood better than we do ourselves. And so an offering +of regard from that brotherhood--to be made to feel that throughout the +whole of it one is recognized as most worthy of love--the true man would +prize this above every other. Before this time this great honor has been +given only by happy ones to their victors--to such as Washington, Lincoln, +Grant. But the south has begun a new era. In the misery and ruin of her +subjugation she magnifies her deposed chief. Much of the applause heaped +upon the victor is selfish and feigned, but the whole of that given the +conquered hero comes direct and straight from the hearts of his +countrymen. It seems, therefore, to me that this decoration of the +conquered hero is the crown of crowns of this world. It is Davis's +historical uniqueness that he has won this lone crown. + +The achievement is so counter to common-sense that it is not yet credited +nor understood. I cannot help believing that when all the fog raised by +the brothers' war has cleared away, and our historians tell what brought +and what followed that war with unclouded vision of cosmic agency, that +Jefferson Davis will be permanently placed high in the American temple of +fame. There he will be the world's contemplation, showing something like +Hester Prynne. As what was at first to her the branding placard of guilt +turned to a badge of the greatest righteousness, so has that which was +unutterable obloquy and disgrace to him become unparalleled fortune and +glory. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE CURSE OF SLAVERY TO THE WHITE, AND ITS BLESSING TO THE NEGRO + + +The master got the curse and the negro the blessing of slavery. + +We set out by mentioning how certain ants have been injured by becoming +masters. Before this they were doubtless the equals of any +non-slaveholding tribe in self-maintenance. Now they "are waited upon and +fed by their slaves, and when the slaves are taken away the masters perish +miserably."[139] It did not become so bad as this with human slaveholders; +but the consequent disadvantage was very great, as we shall now exemplify +with some detail. We shall throughout keep to the average and typical man +and woman. And for brevity's sake, we shall not look beyond the domestic +and agricultural spheres, because when the reader has learned what slavery +did in these, he can of himself easily add the little required to make +complete statement of its entire effect. + +In non-slave communities baby is tended only by mother and near relatives. +Though petted and indulged, it is steadily constrained into more obedience +to those who tend it. In due time the child is taking care of itself in +many things, and is also doing light chores. Until the parental roof has +been left he or she has every day something to do. What we may call the +open-air home-work is done by the boys, and the inside by the girls. But +in the old south baby commenced its life as a slaveholder with a nurse +that it learned to command by inarticulate cries and signs before it could +talk. And to the end, as grandfather or grandmother, self-service in many +common things, as is usual with all other people, was never learned, but +great expertness in getting these things done by slaves was learned +instead. + +I was only fifteen years old in 1851, when I entered the sophomore class +in Princeton College, never having been out of the south before. Of course +much of my time at first was consumed in observing and thinking over many +sights very novel and strange to me. I came in August. Soon afterwards I +saw them saving their Indian corn. In the south we "pulled" the fodder, +and some weeks later we "pulled" the corn, leaving the stripped stalks +standing. But the New Jersey farmers, without removing the blades or the +ears, cut the stalks down, put them up in stacks, and after a while hauled +them to the barn. This was such a wonder that I described it minutely in a +letter to my mother. The next great surprise that I had was to note the +lady of the family and her daughters doing everything in and about the +house, which I used to see at home only the negroes do. They were +marvellously more expert and neat in despatch than the negroes. Their easy +and, as it seemed, effortless way of getting through their daily +employment grew upon me steadily. What I intently observed in those times +and reflected over much subsequently, I have had a recent experience to +refresh and enforce. In the summer of 1902 two ladies from Pennsylvania +took a house in Atlanta next to mine. They had never before been in the +south. I found out these lonely strangers at once, and was soon seeing +much of them. They kept no servant. The two did all the household tasks. +The younger washed the clothes. This is something which but few city +southern ladies, except those whose ancestors were not slaveholders, have +ever consented to do. The laundry of even the poorest families in our +towns is nearly always the care of a negro washerwoman. Although their +work was every day punctually done by my two new-found friends, and their +house always the tidiest, like the New Jersey ladies of my boyhood at +Princeton, they were never flustered nor worried, but were always pleasant +and agreeable. + +Plainly they lived in far more ease and comfort than the native +housekeepers. There are two classes of the latter. In one is the woman who +is greatly plagued by the waste, dishonesty, and eye-service of her negro +cook and housemaid, and always in craven fear that she will wake up some +morning to know that they have taken French leave. In the other class is +the woman who often must, with the help only of her children, do +everything at home. What a laborious, fatiguing botch they make of it! +Their day-dream all the year round is to find that needle in a haystack, a +servant who will take no more than the established holidays and always +come in time to get breakfast. + +I sorrow for these present housekeepers of the south. They all know by +heart and often retell to their children the tales of their mothers and +grandmothers,--how, early in the morning, the affectionate and faithful +nurses stole the children out of the room, without waking papa and mamma; +how the cook and the waiters, not superintended, had the best of +breakfasts ready at the right time; how at this meal there was happy +reunion of the family beginning a new day, the children bathed and in +their clean clothes, each one pretty as a picture and sweet as a pink; and +how all the affairs of the household under the magic touch of angel +servants were fitly despatched without trouble or worry to mamma, until +the day ended by the nurses' bathing the little tots again, putting them +to bed, and mammy's getting them to sleep by telling "The Tar Baby" or +some other adventure of Brer Rabbit over and over as often as sleepily +called for, or by singing sweet lullabies. With this vision of a real +fairyland in which their ancestors lived not so very long ago, how can any +one of these mothers of the new south contentedly make herself the only +nurse, cook, and house servant of her family? For many a year yet, to do +every day the drudgery of all three will be the extreme of discomfort and +sore trial to her. We must give her loving words and sympathy without +ceasing, and trust her to the slow but sure healing of inevitable +necessity. + +This lamentable condition of our southern woman is due, as plainly +appears, to the miseducation given their ancestors by slavery. Slavery +went forty years ago; but it left the negro, and the dependence of these +women upon her as their only servant. It is indispensable that they cut +loose completely from this dependence. Their resolve should be firm and +unwavering that they will learn to minister to themselves and their dear +ones, and teach the blessed art to their children; as their northern +sisters have always done. I would have them here receptively contemplate, +as a part of the new lesson which they must learn, this true and +enchanting picture of a New England home: + + "There are no servants in the house, but the lady in the snowy cap, + with the spectacles, who sits sewing every afternoon among her + daughters, as if nothing had ever been done, or were to be done,--she + and her girls, in some long-forgotten forepart of the day _did up the + work_, and for the rest of the time, probably, at all hours when you + would see them, it is _done up_. The old kitchen floor never seems + stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the various cooking + utensils never seem deranged or disordered; though three and sometimes + four meals a day are got there, though the family washing and ironing + is there performed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are in some + silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence."[140] + +Of course it is not to be demanded that the southern woman exactly +reproduce the New England system of fifty years ago just described by Mrs. +Stowe. But she must learn to be entirely independent of servants in the +era of co-operation, electric dish-washers, and other helping machines, +about to begin. + +Let us see how it has been with the fathers and boys. The planting of the +old south required proportionally less cash outlay annually than any +common business that I now call to mind. The owner of 750 acres of +land--an ordinary plantation--worth $6,000, thirty slaves worth $18,000, +and mules and live-stock worth $1,000, had usually but five considerable +items of expense: the overseer with his family was "found"--to use the +then current vogue--and paid not more than $150 yearly wages; a few sacks +of salt to save the pork--a little to be given the live animals +occasionally; a few bars of iron for the plantation blacksmith shop--the +latter being furnished with bellows, anvil, tongs, screwplate, vise, and a +few other tools, all hardly amounting to $100 investment; sometimes coarse +cotton and woollen cloth for the clothes of the negroes, made by the +slave-women tailors (even in my day this cloth was, on many plantations, +spun and wove at home from the cotton and wool grown by the owner); and +the fifth item was a moderate bill of the family physician for attendance +upon the sick slaves. The whole would seldom amount to $350; and remember +the income yielding capital was $25,000. This planter paid no wages for +his labor; he bred his slaves, and all animals serving for work, food, or +pleasure;--in short, the establishment was self-supporting. The good +manager sold every year more than enough of meat, grain, and other produce +to pay the expense itemed a moment ago, and so the $1,200 from the sale of +his crop of thirty bales of cotton was often net income. + +The natural increase of slaves which I have explained above operated in +many cases to encourage wastefulness and idleness. But even in the +majority of these cases the estates more than held their own. + +Let us illustrate the change wrought by emancipation by having you to +contemplate a small middle Georgia farmer of to-day. If he employ but four +hands to his two plows, he will, in wages, fertilizers that have come into +general use since the war, purchase of meat, corn, and other supplies that +the slaves used to produce, necessarily lay out annually more than did the +planter making thirty bales as we mentioned above. If this small farmer +makes twenty bales--which is far above the average--worth, if the price +be, say, eight cents, $800--more than half of it will be needed to cover +his outlay. It is to be emphasized that as a general rule this farmer and +his boys have not yet been trained to work as steadily and diligently as +their circumstances demand of them. As the women slight in the house what +they regard as fit employment only of negroes, so the men do the same in +the farm. The whites of both sexes cling to the negro instead of making +good workers of themselves. + +In the old south money grew of itself. Now constant alertness is needed to +see that every dollar laid out comes back, if not with addition, at least +without loss. To keep from falling behind, the farmer must have a very +much higher degree of mercantile capacity than he could ever acquire under +the old system. And he and his boys ought to supplant much of the negro +labor he now employs by their own systematic and steady work. All these +necessary lessons are very hard to learn, because to do that we must first +unlearn widely different ones. + +This examination shows that the men of the new south are almost as +inadequate to the demands of the day as we found the women to be. + +I do not mean to say that our women and men have not improved at all in +their respective spheres in the last forty years. I believe that when due +allowance is made for the unavoidable effect upon them of the system into +which they were all born it must be conceded that the little improvement +which they have made is greater than what could have been reasonably +expected. But I see clearly that the habits of thought and the modes of +house and farm economy, bred first from our contact with the negro slave +and then with the negro freedman, are yet an oppressively heavy load upon +our section. + +I have now to do with a still greater evil as part of the curse of slavery +to the southern whites; which is, that it prevented the normal rise in the +section of a white labor class. If one but look steadily at developments, +either now in progress or surely impending, in Germany, France, England, +the English colonies, and the United States he sees that the workers most +of all are influencing the other classes to pursue the best policy in all +departments of government. The truth is that in every stage of society +there is the leading energy of some particular class. Let me make you +reflect over a few well-known examples. In their unremitted struggle with +the patricians, the plebeians of Rome gradually climbed out of their low +estate into complete political, civil, and social equality with the former +who had long been the constituency of the so-called republic. Some +centuries later a tacit combination of those belonging to each division of +the middle class dried all the fountains of civil disorder and made +domestic peace sure and permanent by establishing the Roman empire. Much +later employers of the free labor which had displaced slavery made +European towns democratic, and set them in such strong array against the +feudal barons that the latter were at last restrained from plundering the +new industry. The American revolution and the French revolution were each +mainly middle-class movements. By them the middle class cleared out of its +way, as far as it could, distinctions of birth, title, rank, and all other +special personal privileges. But, unawares, it put in the place of the old +hereditary lords and monopolists, known as such by everybody, a nobility +in disguise. The members of this nobility make no claim to our labor or +substance by reason of their having had such and such fathers or having +received such and such grants or patents to themselves as natural persons. +They pose as government agents in such functions as the transportation and +monetary, of which efficient, cheap, and impartial performance is vital to +the general welfare. Clandestinely they have had the law of the land made +or interpreted and the practice of government shaped each as they want it; +and sitting in their masks wherever these sovereign powers must be invoked +by producer or worker, it is these usurpers and not the legitimate public +authorities who must be applied to and given, not the just cost of the +service, but the supreme extortion possible. These masked rulers toll our +wages, profits, and property as insidiously and deeply as does indirect +compared with direct taxation. In fact they are government licensees, +levying upon us for their own benefit all the indirect taxation that we +can bear. Some--I may say, a large number--of middle-class property owners +and producers are heart and soul in strong and strengthening resistance +now forming against the tyrants they have unwittingly set up. But the +initiative and most effective elements of this benign uprising do not come +from the middle class. It was the workers who excited and kept at its +height the righteous indignation of the country that shamed the coal-trust +into decency. It is the workers who are the most influential of all that +strive to arm us with those plutocracy-destroying weapons, direct +nomination and direct legislation; and of all who demand that the +railroads pay just taxes; of all who would lay the axe at the root of +public corruption by having government resume its powers and do every one +of its duties without favor or prejudice to a single human being. It is +clear that the laborers are gathering all the anti-monopoly interests and +classes of society to their banner, and that from the steady and +increasing impulsion of these laborers, in unions and political campaigns, +industrial democracy will at last come in, to open the millennium by +keeping every man, woman, and child, except the wilfully idle and +criminal, permanently supplied with necessaries and comforts. + +Who are the laborers that are both to spur and lead us forward in this +great course? Why, the white laborers, whose interests and whose +qualifications to share in governments are the same as those of the rest +of us; who are really part and parcel of the body politic and whose sons +and daughters can be married by our sons and daughters without social +degradation to themselves or degeneration of the proud Caucasian stock in +their children. The negroes cannot do the great work we are contemplating. +They are strangers in blood. They are as yet far too low in development. +It is idle to think of making these aliens, whose highest interests are +irreconcilably antagonistic to ours and our children's, allies of the +white laborers--a point which will be treated at large in later chapters. + +To bring out the situation more clearly, suppose that instead of the eight +millions of negroes now in the south we had eight millions of native white +workers and no negroes at all. Would it not be far better for us of the +section? Would it not be far better for the anti-monopoly cause in the +north? Ought there not to be a real labor party in the south instead of +what we now see? The so-called labor party of the south has a large +percentage of leaders whose chief activity is to win positions in the +unions, in agitation, in the city and State government wherein they can +serve themselves by delivering the labor vote to corporate interests, or +doing the latter legislative or official favor--a sure symptom that the +movement is as yet merely incipient. In no northern State have the +railroads and allied corporations such complete command of nominative, +appointive, and legislative machinery as in Georgia; and it seems to me +that Georgia is but fairly representative of all the south except South +Carolina, which has advanced further in direct nomination than any other +one of the United States. In many places the people of the north are +successfully rising against the corporation oligarchs. In New York and +Michigan the latter have been made to pay some of the taxes which they had +always been dodging. In a recent Boston referendum the street railroad, +which for years had ridden roughshod over the public at will, was snowed +under, although it had the machine, all the five daily papers but one, and +the outside of that, fighting for it with might and main. Los Angeles, +followed by three or four other towns, has just made a beginning with the +_Recall_. Oregon has direct legislation. Illinois has pushed ahead with +both direct nomination and direct legislation. Cities here and there, in +very grateful contrast with the apathy prevalent in this section, have +awakened to the importance of rightly guarding the common property in +public-service franchises. I could cite many other examples which show +that the anti-plutocratic tide gathers force all over the north. Why is it +that there is this blessed insurgence against corporation misrule there, +and hardly a trace of it here? Simply because the north has and the south +has not the motor of insurgence--a real labor class, growing steadily in +zeal and organization, and rapidly increasing in numbers. + +That a southern State has no real labor class with potent influence upon +the public, puts it as far behind the most enlightened communities in +political and governmental condition, as it was with its slaves behind +them in productive condition. Such a State lacks a most essential organ of +the highest types of democracy.[141] + +To sum up: Slavery disqualified the white men and women of the south for +the domestic and business management proper to this era; and ever since +emancipation the presence of a large number of negroes available for labor +in house and on the farm, and preventing the coming in of any other labor, +has powerfully helped both races in their efforts naturally made to retain +the familiar ways of the old system. Thus the south has been sadly +retarded in her due economical rehabilitation. In the second place, it has +kept the political influence of labor at the minimum, and consequently +sent her backwards in true democracy, while England, the English +colonies, and the northern States, are slowly but surely going forward. + +These are the main things. Let me in briefest mention suggest some of +their results, which, at first blush, seem to be independent. + +Slavery engendered among the whites a disrespect for labor, which, +although now at last dying out, is still of hurtful influence. + +As negroes were always and everywhere in number sufficient to do every +task of labor, there was but little demand for labor-saving machines and +methods--a fact which prevented the southern whites from developing the +inventive faculty equally with their northern brothers. We all are +beginning to see that, except in much of agriculture and other activities +in which the process is that of nature and not of art, the future of +industry belongs more and more to the constantly improving machine. + +Think of such things as these in the brood of evils brought forth by +slavery;--agriculture primitive or superannuated in many particulars; our +entire structure of investment, production, and occupation bottomed upon +slaves, property in which could be, and was, totally destroyed by a stroke +of the pen; immigration both from Europe and the north repelled; slowness +in exploiting our water power and mines; inferior common schools, and lack +of town-meeting government due to the sparseness of the population and +their roving habits which were incident to the plantation system. I have +given some consideration to these in the "Old and New South," and I refer +you to that.[142] + +Of course had there never been any negro slavery in America we should have +escaped the brothers' war, its spilling of blood, its waste of wealth, and +the long sickness of the section unto death which has ensued. And to-day +in solid prosperity, institutions, government, and progressiveness in +everything good, the section would be abreast of the other. Nay, her +better climate, her agricultural products--especially her cotton, which +she would have learned to make with white labor--these and other resources +would, I fully believe, have by this time pushed her far into the lead. As +it actually is, she is far, far behind. She has been sorely scourged, not +for any moral guilt. + + "Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt." + +It was because she did that which the wisest and best had done--the Greeks +who gave the world culture and democracy, the Jews who gave it religion, +the Romans who gave it law and civil institutions. She really did far +better than they did. She did not enslave the free. She merely took some +of the only inveterate slaves upon earth out of lawless slavery, in which +they would have otherwise remained indefinitely without recognition of the +dearest human rights, and placed them in a far other slavery which was for +them an unparalleled rise in liberty and well-being; which was, as becomes +more and more probable with time, the only opportunity by which any +considerable portion of the negro race can ever evolve upward into the +capability of enlightened self-government. In doing this she unconsciously +antagonized the purposes of the iron-hearted powers guarding the American +union, and when the critical moment of that union came, they dashed her to +pieces. + +It will be many a year before the pathos of southern history can be fully +told. I must satisfy myself here by saying only that the curse of African +slavery to her has been of magnitude and weight incredible, and that one +cannot yet be sure when it will end. + +The title of the chapter demands that I now tell you of the blessing of +African slavery in the United States to the negro. Of course there are +many who have been born into the unequalified condemnation of every form +of slavery, which was resolutely preached for years all over the north by +conscientious men and women of great ability and influence. Such will +exclaim against me, and perhaps some of them will not even read the rest +of the chapter. But it is my note, which becomes surer and more confident +every year, that the great body of men and women shrink from every +over-positively urged dogma. I have already mentioned those who are trying +to curb the evils of drink. All the while an increasing majority of them +recognize that to assert that any use of liquor, wine, or beer is a moral +wrong, as do a noisy few in season and out of season, is too extreme to be +true or even politic. The ultra democrat will zealously justify the +assassination of Julius Cæsar, while the wisest friends of the people +become more firmly convinced every century that the empire which Cæsar +founded was, by reason of the circumstances, the best possible government +for the Romans of that and the succeeding times;--the surest guaranty that +the main benefits of ancient civilization should be preserved for the +human race. And as there has now and then been something of substantial +good in even absolute government, there has also been good to the slave in +his slavery. Surely it was an improvement of the captor and a bettering of +the condition of the prisoner of war, not to barbecue the latter, as was +the custom for ages, but to have him work for a master. Perhaps the +fabulist Æsop had been a slave. Terence, a great Roman dramatist, surely +had been. Horace's father had been one. It may well be true that it was +slavery that gave each one of these three immortals his opportunity. The +more familiar you become with ancient history the larger you estimate the +number of those to have been who as slaves got many of the benefits of +Greek and Roman civilization, which benefits they afterwards transmitted +to free descendants. I need not repeat what I have already told--how the +negroes in the mass were advantaged by transfer from slavery in Africa to +slavery in America. But do let me inquire, would Professor DuBois have +ever outstripped all the white children in a New England school, graduated +creditably from two American universities, studied at the university of +Berlin, acquired the degree of Master of Arts and then that of Doctor of +Philosophy, been made in sociology fellow of Harvard and assistant of the +university of Pennsylvania, become president of the American Negro +Academy, got the professorship of economics and history in Atlanta +University, and pushed forward as an author into prominent and most +respectable place; all before he was thirty-six years old--would Professor +DuBois have surpassed this brilliant career, if an "evil, Dutch trader" +had not seized his "grandfather's grandmother--two centuries ago"?[143] If +the transfer just mentioned had not been made what would now be Fred +Douglass, Booker Washington, Richard R. Wright, Professor DuBois, Bishop +Turner, and other great negroes, their good works and glory? Would Hayti +have arranged for some of its young men to be trained in farming at +Tuskegee? more especially do I ask, would negroes educated at Tuskegee be +now teaching the missionaries how to christianize the Africans of +Togoland? Who would now be arousing people north and south in behalf of +the race? and where could nine millions of blacks be found--or even half a +million--as far above the African level of to-day as ours? + +My conclusion is that the whites and the negroes of the south ought to +learn wisdom and interchange their holidays and great annual rejoicings. +The former ought to keep the anniversary of the emancipation proclamation +as the southern 4th of July, and the blacks ought to observe that day by +wearing mourning and eating bitter herbs. Further, the negroes of America +ought to celebrate the day when the Dutch ship landed the first Africans +at Jamestown as the dawn of their hopes as a people. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE BROTHERS ON EACH SIDE WERE TRUE PATRIOTS AND MORALLY RIGHT--BOTH THOSE +WHO FOUGHT FOR THE UNION, AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR THE CONFEDERACY + + +The proposition of the heading has really been demonstrated in the +foregoing chapters. I feel that the demonstration should have impressive +enforcement. It will surely be for the great good of our country if the +brothers of each section be truly convinced that those of the other were +morally right in the slavery struggle from beginning to end. + +Let us begin by noting the ambiguity of the word "right." Something may be +right in expediency, policy, or reason, and yet wrong ethically. Likewise +something may be a mistake and wrong in policy while it is right in +morals. General Sherman was a conspicuous example of the almost universal +proneness to confound right in the sense first mentioned above with it in +the other. The two are widely different--not merely in degree, but in +kind. That which is right or wrong in expediency is decided by the +understanding--by the head; that which is right or wrong ethically is +decided for every human being by his own conscience--by his heart. To try +with all my might to do a particular thing may be my highest moral duty; +to try with all your might to keep me from doing it may be yours. The +brothers who set up the southern confederacy and defended it, the brothers +who warred upon it and overturned it--they were on each side sublimely +conscientious; for every one--to use the high word of Lincoln--was doing +the right as God gave him to see it. No people ever waged a war with +deeper and more solemn conviction of duty than did our northern brothers. +Rome, rising unvanquished from every great victory of Hannibal, much as +she has been most justly lauded by foremost historians, fell behind them +in supreme effort--in undaunted perseverance in spite of disaster after +disaster until the difficulty insuperable was overcome. We of the south +should be proud of this unparalleled achievement of our brothers. Most of +all should we be proud of the complete self-abnegation and unwavering +obedience to conscience with which they waded a sea of blood, for the +welfare of future generations rather than their own. I am glad to observe +that many who most affectionately remember the lost cause have come at +last to concede without qualification that the restoration of the union by +force of arms was morally right. But I note that as yet only a few at the +north--men like Dr. Lyman Abbott, Mr. Charles F. Adams, and Professor +Wendell--have learned that the south, in all that she did in "The Great +War,"[144] was likewise morally right. To show that the confederates were +exemplary champions of a legitimate government, I need not repeat what I +have said above when I told how southern nationalization had given them a +country of their own as dear to them and as much mistress of their +consciences as the union was to the northern people. If there are those +who cannot bring themselves to allow the all-potent coercion of the +nationalization mentioned as justification, and who still think of us as +traitors and rebels, I beg them to give due consideration to the feelings +with which the southerner now looks back upon his life in the confederate +army. I call a most convincing witness to testify. I do not know a man who +ever followed what his conscience pronounced right more faithfully, who +was truer to the better traditions of the old south, and who was a more +devoted soldier in the brothers' war, nor do I know another who now draws +from every class in his community more respect for real manhood and +honesty. All who know him will believe his word against an oracle or an +angel. Here is what he said thirty-seven years after the close of the war: + + "That period of my life is the one with which I am the most nearly + satisfied. A persistent, steady effort to do my duty--an effort + persevered in in the midst of privation, hardship, and danger. If ever + I was unselfish, it was then. If ever I was capable of self-denial, it + was then. If ever I was able to trample on self-indulgence, it was + then. If ever I was strong to make sacrifices, even unto death, it was + in those days; and if I were called upon to say on the peril of my + soul, when it lived its highest life, when it was least faithless to + true manhood, when it was most loyal to the best part of man's nature, + I would answer, 'It was when I followed a battle-torn flag through its + shifting fortune of victory and defeat.' + + My comrades, how easy it is to name the word that characterizes and + strikes the keynote of that time and should explain our pride to all + the world--self sacrifice--that spirit and that conduct which raise + poor mortals nearest to divinity. Oh, God in heaven, what sacrifices + did we not make! How our very heart strings were torn as we turned + from our home, our parents, our children!... How poor we were! How + ragged! How hungry! When I recall the light-heartedness, the courage, + the cheerfulness, the fidelity to duty which lived and flourished + under such circumstances, from the bottom of my heart I thank God that + for four long years I wore, if not brilliantly, at least faithfully + and steadfastly, in camp and bivouac, in advance and retreat, on the + march and on the battlefield, the uniform of a confederate + soldier."[145] + +The passage just quoted most truly expresses the feelings with which the +southern people stood by their cause and now look back upon the support +which they gave it. In this matter their word will be taken by everybody. +Their actions before, during, and ever since the war speak louder than +their word. There can be no doubt that in founding the Confederate States +and waging the resulting war everything they did was counselled by the +most tender and enlightened conscience. Bear in mind how they clung to +Davis and how they still remember him, winning the precious eulogy + + "--he that can endure + To follow with allegiance a fallen lord + Does conquer him that did his master conquer, + And earns a place i' the story." + +Bear in mind how truly they keep Memorial Day. The love which the south +gives Davis and her dead soldiers protests to all the earth and heaven the +righteousness of her lost cause. Calmly, serenely, confidently she awaits +future judgment upon her love. It needs that all the north appreciate this +fealty as the height of heaven-climbing virtue. + +The real soldiers of each section--those who--to use a confederate +saying--were "in the bullet department," and fighting every day, learned +great regard for their foes; and when the war ended they became at once +advocates of speedy reconciliation. And the non-combatants on each side +felt far less resentment towards the actual fighters of the other than +they did towards its political leaders. It is a common error to overrate +the accomplishment of potent and ambitious men in tumultuous times. As the +world long ascribed meteorological phenomena to the mutations of the moon, +conspicuous above all things else as the apparent cause, so most people +now believe that revolutions are caused by the men who appear to be +leading. We have explained above that the only effective leaders--even of +revolutions--are those who are the most completely led by the people. To +lead, the leader must keep on the tide and let it lead him. If he makes +serious effort to balk it, he is at once stranded as a piece of drift +thrown out of the current. All of us--both those north and those south of +Mason and Dixon's line--ought to learn this truth thoroughly. The former +should correct their false judgments as to Calhoun, Toombs, Yancey, and +Davis; the latter as to Sumner, Garrison, and Phillips. It was but to be +expected that these false judgments would be cherished all through what we +may call the era of civil fury. That begins with the excitement over the +admission of California and extends to the time after the war when the +project of giving a negro constituency the balance of political power in +each southern State was abandoned. But now as the brothers can look back +upon those evil days with at least the beginning of dispassionate +calmness, the task of convincing the whole people of each section that the +more prominent figures of the other in the era mentioned were all true men +and patriots, should be pushed forward with his whole might by every one +who loves his country. It is not demanded that we claim too much for them. +To begin illustrating: Toombs's Tremont Temple lecture on slavery is such +an able and powerful defence of the south that its reputation must forever +increase. Yet as we consider it now we see that what he believed with all +his heart to be the perpetual pillar and weal of his community was in fact +its woe and ruin. We see, as to Calhoun, that if he had but given the +resources of southern slavery against the implacable oppugnancy of free +labor, roused for decisive combat, the sure and marvellous vision with +which he searched the innermost nature of money, he would have had to +acknowledge that the proud structure of southern society was wholly +builded upon sands. The rains descended and the floods beat, and we saw +the great fall. Of course we must admit that had our leaders been endowed +with unerring prescience they ought to have warned us, and striven heart +and soul for compensated emancipation. I need merely allude to State +sovereignty, treated fully above. We of the south now see that though in +advocating it we showed that the fathers were with us, and thus got the +better of the argument, yet that the north was right in historical fact, +and right also as to the true interest and welfare of America. Thus I have +indicated some important acknowledgments which we of the south must make +to our brothers of the north. Now I must state some that they must make to +us. + +The root-and-branch abolitionists and many following their lead +interpreted the statement in the declaration of independence that all men +are created equal and with inalienable liberty as both intentional and +actual condemnation of the slavery then existing in our country. They shut +their eyes to the significant fact that the same document published to the +world, as one of the causes justifying the solemn act therein proclaimed, +that the king had "excited domestic insurrections amongst us"; which means +he had instigated the slaves to rise against their masters. Many of the +signers owned slaves then and to the end of their lives afterwards. +Palpably the declaration did not mean to say that the negroes in America +were unjustly held in slavery, but did mean to say that inciting them--as +John Brown with the approval of Phillips, Garrison, and such, afterwards +sought to do--to gain their liberty by insurrection was inhuman and +atrocious. These root-and-branch abolitionists confidently alleged that +slavery in America was proscribed by the christian religion. Yet Jesus, +the founder, who definitely reprehended every particular sin, never once +denounced slavery. Paul, or some one else, whom the canon accepts as +speaking with the authority of Jesus, says: "All who are in the position +of slaves should regard their masters as deserving of the greatest +respect, so that the name of God, and our teaching may not be maligned. +Those who have christian masters should not think less of them because +they are brothers, but on the contrary they should serve them all the +better, because those who are to benefit by their good work are dear to +them as their fellow-christians. Those are the things to insist upon in +your teaching. Any one who teaches otherwise, and refuses his assent to +sound instruction--_the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ_--and to the +teaching of religion, is puffed up with conceit, not really knowing +anything, but having a morbid craving for discussions and arguments."[146] + +The passage last quoted--to which several others from the new testament, +almost as strong, can be added--demonstrates that christianity did not +disapprove of slavery. Further, as I have already suggested, the slavery +not rebuked by Jesus and his apostles was mainly that of kin in blood and +race, of those who had been in a measure free themselves or descendants of +the free. The slaves of the south were far remote in blood, and their +native condition so bad that American slavery was for them elevation and +great improvement. + +The new testament, the declaration of independence, and the federal +constitution--surely three very respectable authorities, in America at +least--stand together in solid phalanx. They clearly demonstrate that the +charge that southern slavery was heinously wrong in itself, and that the +masters were wicked man-stealers and kidnappers, made for a long while in +every corner of the north, was mere opprobrium and abuse. Both sections +ought to learn that there was nothing in negro slavery to shock the moral +sense, but that on the contrary it was in its general effect of the utmost +beneficence to the slave. Both ought to learn also that the white-hot zeal +with which the institution was fought was due mainly to these things: + +1. Free labor had long been in an uncompromising hand-to-hand struggle +with slave labor. Years before this commenced the employing class had +subconsciously divined it was far more profitable to hire the laborer only +when his work was needed, and then let him go until he was needed again. +The worker with the advance of democracy had become more and more hostile +to a system coercing his labor and denying him all political and civil +rights. The co-operation of employer and laborer had expelled slavery of +white men from Europe. The feeling towards slavery had become one of +decided opposition. + +2. In America the opposition to slavery was powerfully re-enforced, first, +by the new cause the latter gave in competing with free labor for the +unsettled public domain, and then in its operation to nationalize the +south into a separate federation. With this combined the growing +conception among the northern people of the negro as a man who had reached +the stage of development characterizing the typical white. This huge +mistake, hugged to their bosoms and championed with unflagging zeal by the +ablest and most influential root-and-branch abolitionists, had a +prodigious propagandic effect. It identified the cause of the negro slave, +whom evolution had not yet made ready for liberty, with that of the +oppressed European who had been long ready for it; and consequently that +cause was continuously advocated with the passion which the French +revolution had started against human inequality. The root-and-branch +abolitionists at last excited a pseudo-moral paroxysm among thousands at +the north and kept it increasing for a long while. + +Facts which cannot now be gainsaid plainly justify me in denying that +conscientious conviction was the real primary motive. The northern and +southern churches split, all the wisest and best of the former standing +against, all those of the latter for slavery. You must see that their +moral convictions were secondary, not primary motives; that some superior +power had given to one side to regard slavery as wrong and to the other to +regard it as right; that it really had given the two sides differing +consciences. If you but invoke the universal history of mankind this fact +now under consideration will cease to appear marvellous. You will find it +to be the rule that the struggle for existence develops in every community +an instinct which resistlessly prompts to the maintenance of its great +economic interest. This instinct is the special preserver of the family, +of the neighborhood, of the country. It is not strange that that which +gives sustenance and comfort to one's family, and what he sees all the +best of his neighbors using as he does, will seem unquestionably right to +him. It is not strange that, in such a serious conflict of interest as the +intersectional one of dividing a vast empire between such fell +competitors as free labor and slave labor, each side will differ +diametrically in conscience as to right and wrong. Also it is not strange +that they should lose temper, shower abuse upon their opponents, and fill +the land with mutual accusations of heinous moral offences. + +It is just as far wrong to regard the controversy between anti- and +pro-slavery men--which was at bottom but a quarrel between north and south +at first over the division of the Territories between the free labor +system and the slave labor system, and later over the other question +whether a slave republic should divide the continent with the United +States--as a contest over a moral question, as it would be to make either +the American or the French revolution such a contest. All three--the +intersectional struggle as to slavery and the two revolutions--were mainly +impelled by a desire of each side in every one to better or hold on to its +material resources--that is, the leading impulsion was economic. Of course +the combatants on each side claimed that they themselves were right and +their adversaries wrong in morals. The rencounter between free labor and +slave labor was very much like that now on between capitalists and labor +organizations. Note how each side denounces the conduct of the other, +alleging it to be against moral justice. The most superficial observer +discerns that the real cause of difference between them is not one of +conscience, but one of interest. We ought to understand that the +crimination of the root-and-branch abolitionist and the recrimination of +the fire-eater were each but stage thunder. The southern master must be +wholly exonerated from the charge that in working his slave he committed +moral offence against the dearest American rights; the claim for the +African, who was in a far lower circle of development, of equal civil and +political privileges with the white must be disallowed; and it be fully +conceded that the southern people, leaders and all, were but doing their +conscience-commanded duty throughout. Also we of the south must learn that +the root-and-branch abolitionist, even in his wildest moments--Sumner +refusing in the United States senate to show respect to Butler's gray +hairs, Wendell Phillips degrading Washington below Toussaint, Garrison +denouncing the slavery-protecting constitution as a covenant with death +and an agreement with hell, John Brown's raid into Virginia--was just as +conscientious as Robert Lee was when he was defending the soil of his +native State. They were each irresistibly constrained by the powers +working to save the union to think his particular action right and the +highest patriotism. + +When the quarrel is over, when the broil and the feud have been fought out +and the survivors have shaken hands, when the lawsuit has become a thing +of the past and the litigants have renewed their old relations, no wise +and good man keeps repeating the accusations of bad faith and of +unrighteous conduct which he passionately hurled against his adversary +during the variance. Rather he confesses to himself, "I wronged him when I +said those hot words;" and his repentance does not bring complete peace +until he has found his brother and taken all of them back. + +If it only could be, the nation ought to have a great reunion, a feast of +reconcilement, where, with proper solemnities, the people of each section, +with their forefathers and leaders, should be fully and finally exculpated +as to everything done for or against slavery by the people of the other +section. It is plain that both ought to forget and forgive. They ought to +do still more. They ought to compete each in utmost effort to vindicate +the favorites and loved ones of the other the more intelligently, and to +admire and praise them the more enthusiastically. This would be to bring +the millennium nearer, and give our country "a nobleness in record upon" +all others. It only needs for this consummation to cast aside the remnant +of greatly diminished prejudice, and make a brief study of a small volume +of material evidence and of the ordinary principles which guide the +conduct of the good citizen. Such study will show that southerner and +northerner throughout their fell encounter have each the very highest +claims to the respect and love of the entire nation. + +What a golden deed it was of President McKinley when, December 14, 1898, +fully using a rare opportunity, he spake in his high place to the members +of the Georgia legislature this message of reunion: + + "Sectional lines no longer mar the map of the United States. Sectional + feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other. Fraternity + is the national anthem, sung by a chorus of forty-five States and our + Territories at home and beyond the seas. The union is once more the + common altar of our love and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice. The + old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories, which your + sons and ours have this year added to its sacred folds. What cause we + have for rejoicing, saddened only because so many of our brave men + fell on the field or sickened and died from hardship and exposure, and + others returning bring wounds and disease from which they will long + suffer. The memory of the dead will be a precious legacy, and the + disabled will be the nation's care. + + Every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a + tribute to American valor. And while when those graves were made we + differed widely about the nature of this government, these differences + have been settled by the arbitrament of arms. The time has now come, + in the evolution of sentiment and feeling, under the providence of + God, when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you the + care of the graves of the confederate soldiers. The cordial feeling + now happily existing between the north and south prompts this + gracious act. If it needs further justification, it is found in the + gallant loyalty to the union and the flag so conspicuously shown in + the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of these heroic dead." + +By the favor given Fitzhugh Lee, Joe Wheeler, and other old confederates, +and his earnest and successful efforts for universal amnesty to all who +had helped our cause, Mr. McKinley had already won the hearts of the +southern people. This speech increased our love a hundred fold. We +repeated the "soft words" over and over, companioning them with + + "O they banish our anger forever + When they laurel the graves of our dead." + +On each one of our three subsequent Memorial Days during his life he was +thought of as tenderly as the precious dead. And since the death of +Jefferson Davis there has been no sorrow of the south equal to that over +his assassination. This is the age of funerals that crown with supreme +popular honor the doers of high deeds for country and race. The imposing +obsequies given the president, the demonstrations in his own section, and +those in foreign lands, have rarely been outdone. But he had a greater +glory. It was the genuine lamentation over him that day by reconciled +brothers and sisters in every southern household. You that know history +better, tell me when and where a whiter and sweeter flower was ever laid +upon a coffin. + +Let all of us on each side of the old dividing line strive without ceasing +to give the good work which the great peacemaker begun so well its fit +consummation. + +And replacing hate and anger with love, fiction with fact, and false +doctrine with true, let the people of the north and the people of the +south join heads, consciences, and hearts to ascertain what is our duty +both to negro and white, and then join hands and do that duty. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE RACE QUESTION--GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY + + +1. Dense fogs from various sources have settled over this subject. The +root-and-branch abolitionists have made many believe that emancipation of +the slaves was the great object of the north in the brothers' war. The +authors and defenders of the three amendments--especially of the +fifteenth--have made many others believe that the inferiority of the +southern negro is the effect of American slavery; that the cause having +been removed by emancipation he became at once ready and well prepared for +the exercise of political privileges; and that the practical denial to him +of this exercise is a heinous crime of the southern whites. Politicians +want southern negro ballots in national conventions and the northern negro +vote in elections. The bounty, both public and private, founding, +sustaining, and multiplying colleges, schools, and other negro educational +institutions, finds a growing host of beneficiaries--such as site-owners, +who scheme to sell for two prices, those who want to be presidents, +principals, professors, teachers, even janitors and floor-scrubbers, +schoolbook publishers, and still others--who would keep it copiously +flowing; and so they all magnify the ability of the typical negro and the +benefit to him of the institutions mentioned. Respectable and influential +magazines and newspapers, with an increasing number of negro readers, +really believe that very many more can be added by a little effort, and so +they champion what these readers favor. Persuasive speakers and writers +like Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, unconsciously influenced either by +employers who would always have a wage-depressing lever at command, or by +those who would have Cuffee do what they ought themselves to do, overrate +the importance of negro labor as a southern resource. And the last fog +makers whom I shall mention are the inveterate optimists--amiable beyond +expression--who will not admit that there is now any serious menace to +either race in the south. + +The several fogs enumerated overlay one another in an aggregate too opaque +for the uncleared eye to pierce. As examples of their obscuring effect, +consider anything said in the census as to the negro, and the articles +"Negro Education," "Negro in America," and especially "Hayti" in the +Encyclopedia Americana lately published. The authors of the fifteenth +amendment, in making voters and rulers of late negro slaves, repeated what +had been done in Hayti. It seems therefore that the Encyclopedia must tell +nothing of the island but what is good. So we read in the relevant article +that it abolished slavery in 1804, being "the first country to rid +humanity of such a sad practice;" that there education "is compulsory and +gratuitous," a sixth of the revenues being devoted to it, and the most +pleasant things concerning religion, liberal naturalization practice, +natural and artificial products, railroads, telegraph, and telephone. One +without other information would surely think the community greatly +advanced and blessed. Its true condition is thus told in Brockhaus by +somebody who does not swear by the fifteenth amendment: "It may be said in +general that the country is sparsely populated, partly because of +incessant civil wars, partly because of a high infant death rate."[147] + +These fogs must be lifted. Great harm to each race will follow if we +persist in keeping the facts concealed. + +2. Do not confound the feeling that you are different from Jew, European, +protestant, catholic, absolutist, socialist, anarchist, or any other +white, with the feeling that you are different from negroes; for to do +this is to keep you from all clear thinking upon our present subject. The +former are all of our own race, and we can and do intermarry with them to +the improvement of our population. If the per cent of negroes was no +greater in the south than in the north, fusion could not be a very grave +matter; for should it become complete, our lily-white would not be +diminished by the fraction of a shade. But to absorb the eight millions of +them now in our section would make us chocolate, if not mulatto. Their +color is the smallest racial objection. Although their schooling for two +centuries and more in American slavery has elevated them--as Mr. +Tillinghast proves--far above what they were in native slavery, still +their cranial capacity, brain convolutions, and moral, intellectual, and +social development--inherited without fault of theirs--from West African +ancestors, are still greatly inferior to ours. Remote generations of our +forefathers were much lower than the present American negroes, as Darwin +admits in the oft quoted passage, describing his first sight of the +Fuegians. We should never forget that the Caucasian was once on a level +with those Fuegians. The negroes when they came to America were little +better. And yet they have gone up so much higher, it is plain that +evolution, if only permitted to work in a proper environment, will do for +them what it has done for us. + +But the whites cannot consent to intermarriage. That would greatly benefit +the negroes. While some who have never had good opportunity of actual +observation confidently contend that there are no backward or lower +races, we southerners have noted all our lives that a very great majority +of the negroes who climb above the level and prosper in occupation, have a +large admixture of white blood. It would be an enormous rise for the mass +if fusion were assured. But for us--why, we should disinherit our children +of their share in the grand destiny of the Caucasian race if we made +average negroes their fathers or mothers. + +Southern dread of amalgamation is not to be scouted as a mere bugbear. +Think of the half-breeds that lined all the border between the States and +the Indians; of how the whites have mixed with native races in Mexico, +Central and South America; of white and negro intermingling in Cuba, +Hayti, Jamaica, in the United States, and especially in the south. Think +of whites and negroes now legally married and marrying in the neighboring +States of the Union. In 1902, eight white women were living with negro +husbands in Xenia, Ohio;[148] and there were children of all these mixed +marriages except one.[149] Consider also that prominent negroes advocate +these marriages. Douglass had a white wife. He preached that the American +negro must set before himself assimilation as his true goal. Professor +DuBois is really a disciple of Douglass, as appears from some of his +utterances. We give in a footnote what another prominent negro has +recently said in public.[150] The moment that the negro became an +influential factor in southern politics, a real agitation against the +anti-intermarriage laws would begin. There would come a small number of +negroes, controlling votes, of so much property and respectability that +their children would be regarded as eligible matches by some of the poorer +and more destitute whites. Marriages between such, solemnized on a visit +to a State permitting, would occur. And our laws last mentioned would be +more and more evaded and their repeal become gradually more probable. When +they had won political equality with the patricians, the Roman plebeians +repealed the prohibition of intermarriage which the former had stubbornly +maintained. These two orders were of the same race. Therefore +intermarriage could not be the boon to the plebeians that it would now be +to the southern negro, lifting him up as it would do. If he has +opportunity, he will struggle for it more resolutely than the plebeians +did. A small number of negroes have already been assimilated in America, +and a few more are still to be assimilated, as I shall explain later on. +This sure deliverance from the destruction which now threatens is more and +more sought after by the intelligent few. And if the vote of the negroes +was allowed to count, it would not be long until, under the example and +appeal of their leaders, all of them would be making for that haven of +refuge. Mongrelism beats upon the border all around the south; it +threatens to burst forth from an exhaustless source within. We know we +must keep it out as Holland does the ocean. Subconsciously discerning that +fusion would probably follow the entrance of the negro into government, +the whites have made of the race primary and other measures _de facto_ +disfranchising him, dikes against the filthy waters of mongrelism which +they would not have to wash over themselves. This is not because we hate +the negro. We love and cherish him. It is not to be demanded of us that we +sacrifice ourselves, our children, and our children's children for his +sake. We will gladly do all that friends--nay, that near relatives--can +with justice ask of one another, to better his condition and rescue him. +We cannot give him political power at the cost of our degeneration. + +I would enforce the foregoing contents of this section with these +profoundly true and very forcible words of a northern man, now residing in +Columbia, South Carolina: + + "A word about race hatred, race revulsion, or race antipathy. Many + people in the north believe the devil is the author of it, and some + people in the south are more devoted to it than to religion. Race + antipathy is really a race instinct, a moral anti-toxin developed by + nature in the individual whose environment involves constant and close + contact with an inferior race in large numbers. It works for the + salvation of the purity of the superior race."[151] + +Professor DuBois says that "legal marriage is infinitely better than +systematic concubinage and prostitution."[152] And some writers seem to +think it would be well to coerce miscegenators to legitimate their +relations by intermarrying. An innocent girl--a maid--undone; all good men +and women are agreed that her seducer should be made to marry her.[153] +But that is only where the marriage would be tolerated by society. Thus it +would not make man and wife of parties to an incestuous liaison. No +moralist contends that one who has received a favor from a public woman is +under obligation to become her husband. The miscegenation common is that +between white men and promiscuous black women. How idle is the attempt to +put these cases on a par with that of the ruin of a virtuous woman. And +Professor DuBois could not have rightly weighed the words in which he +represents them to be as criminal as those horrible offences which +especially provoke lynching; that is, that the negro woman who consented +most willingly to the embraces of her master was as foully wronged by him +as her mistress would be by a slave who outraged her against her +will.[154] No. Intermarriage of these mixed lovers is not demanded by any +principle of justice. But the public weal does demand that such a +tremendous evil as amalgamation be kept off by the surest and most +decisive measures. It is playing with plague and curse unspeakable for us +of the south to permit the existence of any condition which tends even in +the slightest degree to legalize intermarriage.[155] + +3. Writers still under the spell of the root-and-branch abolitionists who +were wont to exalt Toussaint, the Haytian general, above our Washington, +strain hard to conceal the real cause of the lamentable conditions now +prevailing in Hayti and San Domingo. One tells us that because of the many +mountains, there being no railroad system, separate communities are +defended by almost impregnable natural barriers, and as neighboring +peoples are hereditary enemies, there is always war somewhere. The remedy +recommended is to build railroads in the island as the English have done +in Jamaica. Another writer tells us that we must not jump to the +conclusion that all the inhabitants of San Domingo are degraded negroes; +that while the population of the interior are sunk in ignorance, +superstition, and barbarism, yet in the capital and the coast towns there +are some people of apparently lily-white strain, well educated, speaking +two or three languages, who supply the mulatto republic with generals and +political leaders. The masses of these Dominicans are very patriotic, and +would indeed do finely if they were not divided into hostile parties by +self-seeking agitators. And you may consult many others who keep back the +real explanation. There is one cardinal fact which stands forth in the +history of Hayti as prominently as slavery does in the train of American +events which brought on the brothers' war. It is this: soon after the +outbreak of the French revolution the mulattoes were accorded political +privileges, and then a little later--it was in 1794--France equalized the +negroes of her colonies just freed with the whites in political and civil +rights. This made the negroes of Hayti, who were in intelligence and +development somewhat below those of the south when the latter were +emancipated, full-fledged self-governing republicans. The whites were but +few. What of them were not massacred at once by the blacks fled for their +lives. The history of both the Haytian and the Dominican republic (the +latter achieving its independence in 1844) is the same. Their people make +a hell on earth of the most beautiful and fertile of islands. As slavery +was plainly the cause of the southern confederacy, the grant of political +power to the mulattoes and negroes not at all qualified to use it is just +as plainly the cause and sole author of chronic civil war and anarchy in +Hayti and San Domingo. + +This enfranchisement of semi-barbarians was from the 'prentice hand of a +new republic, without any experience in free institutions. The English did +far better when they emancipated the Jamaica negro by the act of 1833. +They gave him full protection of his liberty, person, and contract and +property rights. Five sixths of the 800,000 of its present population are +colored people or blacks. These--to quote the Encyclopedia +Americana--"have no share in the government whatever." It further says: +"The Jamaica negroes are fairly good laborers when well fed; the menial +work of the island is performed by them, and they are regarded as +cheerful, honest, and respectful servants." + +This happy condition of quiet and content is not due to the fact that the +railroads prevent settlement of the negroes in separate neighboring +communities to quarrel and fight with one another; but it is because the +English never allowed them to get the taste of blood as the French +permitted to their brothers in Hayti; they have not been incited by +unseasonable political power to license and riot. + +The negroes of Jamaica are evidently bettering in condition slowly. They +need only enough of Booker Washingtons to rise much faster. I beg +attention to this comparison of Jamaica and Hayti, made by a well-informed +negro, a native of the former, who lived there until some nine years ago, +and who has lately lived several years in Hayti:[156] + + "They [the negroes of Jamaica] aim at rising, but many make the + mistake of not rising, _in_ but _out_ of labor: the most intelligent + flock to the professions, civil service, &c. Few turn their steps to + what is for the real upbuilding of the country, agriculture, that for + which it is best adapted. + + "The people of Hayti and San Domingo are of a political turn of mind, + and sacrifice everything for politics, or are made to do so. That + island produces as fine coffee and cocoa as can be found anywhere, but + the most intelligent keep out and deprive these crops of scientific + cultivation." + +The negroes of Hayti and San Domingo spurred by their politics into +perpetual fighting and bloodshed; the negroes of Jamaica peaceful and ripe +for industrial training, which it seems the English have resolved to give +them--if Booker Washington had to choose one of the two islands for his +future activity, do you not know that he would decide he could do great +things in Jamaica and nothing in the other? + +The thirteenth amendment emancipated the slaves instantly and not +gradually, the fourteenth made them complete citizens of the United States +and of the particular State wherein they reside, and the fifteenth +practically conferred unlimited suffrage upon them. The Hayti, and not the +Jamaica, precedent was followed. The brothers that had conquered were +blind from civil fury: and they had been brought by the root-and-branch +abolitionists into full persuasion that the southern negroes were ready +for and entitled to these high privileges. By the amendments they +confidently tried to railroad the African slave in one instant of time up +the long steep to the topmost Caucasian who had established liberty and +self-government over a continent, and made it perpetual. We pray that they +be forgiven, for they knew not what they were doing. Had the white +population of the south been at the time as disproportionate to the black +as it was in Hayti in 1794, it would also have been massacred. But the +section was full of late confederate soldiers. When the fates had decided +against the dear cause for which they had fought for four years they +accepted peace in good faith. Now their conquerors turned loose a horde of +black plunderers to despoil the little that war had left. When I read +Professor Brown's inability to say whether the work of the Ku-Klux was +justifiable or not,[157] I thought of Christ's asking if it was right to +do good on the sabbath day. + +The lesson to be learned here is that while it is now too late to make the +thirteenth amendment what it ought to have been, and there is perhaps no +need to alter the fourteenth, yet there must be abrogation of the +fifteenth as to the great mass of southern negroes. In fact this has +really come already through the white primary. Booker Washington is a +great, a decisive authority on this question. He counsels the negroes to +eschew politics. This is wise. It is the solid interest of the negro +masses that they accept the inevitable; just as the south gave up slavery +when we could hold on to it no longer. + +4. The southern negroes have split into what I shall roughly distinguish +as an upper and a lower class. The former includes property owners and +such as are in higher occupations, trades, and professions. I do not +believe that the entire class contains three per cent, but I shall take it +to be five per cent of the whole negroes in the section. Exact accuracy +here is not important. It needs only to be remembered that the lower class +outnumbers the other many times over. They are moving in different +directions. The dominant inclination of the upper class is towards +incorporation as citizens, exercising all the rights of the white. The +dominant inclination of the lower class is towards segregation in their +own circles. A true representative of the former would always travel in a +white railroad car, while a true representative of the other is perfectly +content with the shabbiest Jim Crow, if the whites be kept out of it. +Thousands in the south never think of any negroes but those of the lower, +thousands in the north never think of any but those in the upper class. +The lower class subsists mainly upon agricultural, domestic, and day +labor. There is a rural and urban section of each one of the two. The +rural section of the upper class has little promise of permanence and +growth, but its urban section seems to have securer foothold. For a while +this urban section will probably increase and rise in condition--both +slowly. This upper class is now steadily sending some of its members from +country and town, to settle in the north. As I read the signs its destiny +is ultimate dispersion over the entire country and gradual disappearance. +The lower class settles downwards steadily. The outlook for it is gloomy +in the extreme. + +5. Somewhere about 1890--which year we may regard as approximately +beginning the manufacturing era of the South--many whites in the section +had broken with the old ways and methods and resolved to substitute their +own for negro labor as far as possible. These awakened men and women +multiply. They are pushing the lower class out of all rural labor, and +both classes out of agriculture; and they are also pushing some of the +upper class out of the trades and more important occupations in both town +and country. Evidently the powers have decreed that the labor class of the +south shall be white and homogeneous with that of the north. These powers +who delivered the white laborers of the west from the Chinese will also +deliver the white laborers of the south from the negroes. + +6. There is soon to be a New Industrial South, in which the most advanced +machinery and laborers of the very highest skill are to be chief factors. +A little later there is to be a still more important New Agricultural +South. In this, the empirical restorative methods of the Chinese, which +Liebig, in his day, showed to be ahead of the world, must be far +surpassed. Economy of the enormous mass of fertile elements now washing +into the sea; adequate exploitation of the nitrogen of the air and of all +accessible mineral elements needed; scientific dairy industry, stock +rearing, fruit culture, and all related branches; farmers of the most +efficient training, and laborers whose deft hands are the proper +instruments of the strongest brains--all these must combine to give the +south that perfect intensive culture which she will add to her blessings +of climate and soil in order to supply the fast growing demand of all the +world outside for her especial products. Further, as everything now seems +to indicate, the southern yield of the more important minerals and metals +will lead that of the entire country. Further again, the bulk of +transcontinental railroad traffic must be across the south on snow-free +routes, and the upbuilding which in time will follow from this is as yet +incalculable. And when the inter-ocean canal connects us with the Pacific +trade--what new impetus will this give to our development! What needs and +opportunities there will then be for skilled labor, for inventive talent, +for managerial ability, for every element of a most highly organized +community of unwontedly many diversified prospecting interests. The demand +will be for a vast population of the very best strain and breed, knowing +the best methods of physical, moral, and self-subsisting education of +their children, out of whom will come the best of all workers and +producers. To attempt to do the required tasks of the new south of the +near future and hold our own against the competition of the world--to try +to do these with negro laborers, negro farmers, negro producers, negro +employers, would be like substituting the ox-wagon for the present +railroad freight train. Nay, it would be more like one with a wooden leg, +and a millstone around his neck, offering to run against a trained racer. +The negro laborer, farmer, manufacturer, and contractor show more clearly +every day that they are hopelessly outclassed in the struggle with white +competitors. As a body where they now are they are becoming useless and an +incubus. They will soon be still more in the way, and a more serious +hindrance to southern development. They keep back the immigration which is +especially called for. That is the immigration of northern and European +farmers, producers, and manufacturers of all kinds to teach us their +advanced methods, and the most skilled labor in every department to +stimulate with example our native white labor to its highest +accomplishment. The northern people would come south very largely if there +were no negroes here. Their desire to come increases steadily, and so does +our desire to have them come. The whites of both sections naturally +co-operate more and more earnestly to effect their joint wishes. The +disinclination of the United States supreme court to overturn the recent +anti-negro amendments of the constitutions of southern States, and the +palpably growing favor showed these amendments at the north are very +significant signs that the south is to be made more to the liking of +northern settlers. + +Since the last sentence was written that court has ruled it to be a crime, +punishable severely, to hold one to the performance of a contract to pay +his debt by laboring for you.[158] The average negro has no resource but +credit on the faith of such a contract. So soon as it becomes generally +known that he cannot be lawfully held to its performance, the credit will +be denied. As has been suggested to me by an observant and far-seeing man, +the decision overturns the main pillar of the negro's subsistence. It will +powerfully favor northern immigration, as well as the substitution of +white for black labor--that is, if it is vigorously enforced. + +7. I believe that the two races together, in the same community as they +are now in the south, are oil and water. Meditate the course and portent +of these facts. Immediately upon emancipation the negroes set up their own +churches and schools; they manifested approval of the separate passenger +car for themselves, politely hinting in season that the whites ought to be +kept out of it; and they influenced the planter to remove their cabins out +of sight and hearing of the Big House. They showed a great +disinclination, the men to do agricultural work by the year for standing +wages, the women to hire as house servants. It was some while before the +whites really recognized this drift of the negro towards segregation, when +many of them--especially the wives and mothers--gave the rein to much +unreasonable resentment. Now, if you but know how to look, you will find +everywhere the proofs of deepening antagonism. The black driver will not +see even a white lady--not to mention a man--on the crossing, but he will +always see a negro of either sex. The face of the white inconveniently +stepping aside flushes with momentary anger. If your colored servant tells +you there is a lady at the door you may know it is a negro woman; he never +calls a "white 'oman" a lady. A negro woman is prone to make the most +prominent white lady give the street. In Atlanta, a negro man or a white +boy cannot safely go at night the former through the factory white +settlement, the latter through Summer Hill, a negro residence quarter. I +have been informed that where the mill operatives of Anderson, South +Carolina, have their cottages, there is conspicuously posted, "Nigger, +don't let the sun go down on you here." I hear that the same is true of +certain places in the Texas Panhandle; also that a negro settlement in the +Indian territory displays a similar warning to the white man.[159] Parties +of black and white children meeting on unfrequented streets of Atlanta +nearly always exchange opprobrious language, often throw stones at one +another, and sometimes fight--a proof so significant that, whenever I see +it, it always makes me serious. The most decided change from old times +that I note is that white society everywhere proscribes mixed sexual +intercourse and the procreation of mulattoes with rapidly increasing +severity. The advocate of mixed marriages is more and more regarded as a +fiend. The white woman seized by a negro man--how gladly would she change +place with the victim of the torturing savage or of the tiger that would +mangle and eat her alive! This menace is everywhere, and naturally it is +magnified by excited imagination. It increases in fact. The trial of +negroes for capital offences was given the superior court of Georgia in +1850. From then until the end of the brothers' war but two cases of rape +of white women by negroes are in the supreme court reports;[160] and I +never heard of but two other cases occurring in that time. But there have +been many since. It steadily becomes more frequent. Women more and more +dread to be left alone. And now there is hardly a man in the Black Belt +who, when he is to be a night away from wife, daughters, mother, and +sisters, without help at call, does not have uncomfortable thoughts of the +sooty desecrator. The increasing effect of these multiplying outrages and +the increasing horror which they cause is proved by a fact which ought to +receive more intelligent recognition from everybody. This fact is that +lynching of a negro for rape, and lately for other crimes of violence +against whites, whether in the south or in the north, seems to be every +time marked with a greater outburst of popular fury. The public grows more +decidedly anti-negro. They give as little heed to the appeals of the +papers in these matters as they do to the editorials always advocating the +projects of the machine and corporations. The mob sweeps aside the +military. The military will not load its rifles. If they were loaded it +would probably refuse to fire, or would fire into the air. A few exclaim +against lawlessness, while it is plain that the great mass of the whites +do not really condemn in their hearts. + +Let us try to understand the real cause of these things. The plainest +parallel that occurs to me is the riots and violence excited by attempts +to execute the fugitive slave law. The greatest of our southern statesmen +misunderstood. What they thought to be lawlessness was in fact the +struggle of nature by which the social organism of the United States +expelled all cause of dissolution. These hostile demonstrations of the day +against negroes are, as they seem to me, far other than acts of +unenlightened and ignorant race prejudice, to which some writers ascribe +them. They indicate, I think, another struggle of nature to expel a +foreign and death-breeding substance out of the American body politic; +they are each the protest of the self-preserving instincts against keeping +the negro with us to counteract our progress, to debase our politics, to +corrupt our blood, to injure us more than even successful secession could +have done. How aptly has Matthew Arnold said, "O man, how true are thine +instincts, how overhasty thine interpretation of them!" + +8. Plainly the disparity of the negro in the deadly struggle with the +white over every resource of subsistence fast becomes greater; plainly +does his stay in the south more and more injure both sections; plainly +under the effects of hard life, growing idleness and growing crime, +increasing ravages of disease, and the naturally engendered feeling of +helplessness, the average negro in the lower class gravitates downwards; +plainly this negro ought to have, in a sphere of his own, opportunity and +stimulus for self-recovery and progress. Plainly whites and negroes ought +to be separated. The latter seriously clog the evolution of the desired +southern labor class, and the southern whites completely exclude the +negroes from public life. The two are really each different communities in +juxtaposition, but not united. You may think of them as plants, one of +which has a diseased root, and the other has its top kept in the dark and +out of the sun. Both these evils result unavoidably from keeping the two +races together. So let us give the negro his own State in our union. That +will allow the root of the one plant to get well, and it will give the top +of the other permanently to the sun. + +We are rich enough and have land enough to give the negro this State, +which is his due from us. His especial need is to exercise political and +civil privileges, in his own community, all the way up from town meeting +to congress. + +If something like this is not done it is extremely probable that the great +mass of the lower class of the negroes will die out. Let not this crime be +committed by the American nation. + +9. We should be extremely liberal to the negro in education--in primary, +in industrial, and also in the higher. Especially ought we to combine the +second with the first, and give it the lead for both races. + +10. All the southern states should at once by proper constitutional and +legal provisions substitute judicial for mob lynching. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE RACE QUESTION--THE SITUATION IN DETAIL + + +The distinction between the two classes of southern negroes, glanced at in +the last chapter, is to be always kept in mind--at the beginning, in the +middle, and at the end, of our discussion. Its importance commands that we +say something of it here. Consider how enormously the two differ in +numbers. Five per cent of these negroes, that is, some four hundred +thousand, in the upper; ninety-five per cent, that is, seven million and +four hundred thousand, in the lower class. The latter, being nineteen +times as large as the other, first demands attention. + +In the country many of the men are croppers. A group of negroes--generally +parents and children--do the labor of preparation, cultivation, and +gathering, while the owner contributes the land, necessary animals, and +feed for the latter. The croppers get half the crop, and the land owner +half. The latter retains out of their half whatever he has advanced the +croppers. The advances must be limited with firmness, otherwise they will +cause loss. These croppers are the great bulk of the agricultural +laborers. So few of the men work for standing wages that they need not be +noticed. In the towns the men subsist upon day labor, the pay of which +ranges from 50 cents to $1.25. It hardly averages 80 cents. Some of the +women, both in country and town, take places as house servants and nurses +at weekly wages that vary from $1 to $2 with board. The growing +disinclination of the women to these places is much stronger in the +country than in town. In country and town the women do laundry for the +whites at an average price per family of a dollar a week; and they get +jobs of sewing, cleaning kitchen utensils, scrubbing, etc. In the country +these women do some field labor, sometimes plowing, often hoeing. If +trained in childhood they make expert cotton-pickers. But the women +agricultural workers steadily decrease in number. + +The negro has inherited from a thousand generations of forefathers, bred +in the humid and enervating tropical West African climate, a laziness +which is the extreme contrary of Caucasian energy and enterprise.[161] +Thus we are told of him in Jamaica, "In many cases a field negro will not +work for his employer more than four days a week. He may till his own plot +of ground on one of the other days or not as the spirit moves him."[162] +The first Saturday in June, 1904, I saw the thriving little town of +Abbeville, South Carolina, thronged with idle negroes from the surrounding +plantations. A merchant, who was kept busy in his store, offered to pay +several of them 75 cents to cut up a load of firewood--something more than +the market price. They do not work on Saturday unless compelled by +something unusual; and so each one replied at once, without any inquiry if +the logs were large or small, seasoned or not, and thus finding whether +the job was hard or easy, that the weather was too hot. And yet these +negroes all exhibited in their clothes and hungry looks unmistakable signs +of want. Those that superintend the gangs working for contractors in +Atlanta and the vicinity, all--except now and then one who has managed to +form a small party of picked laborers--tell me that it is very seldom that +a negro can be induced to work Saturday; if that does happen he will make +up his lost holiday by not returning to work before Tuesday. Your cook, +nurse, maid, or black servant of any kind will every now and then suddenly +inconvenience you by taking an utterly unnecessary rest. When Booker +Washington was starting his system of industrial training, as he tells us, +"Not a few of the fathers and mothers urged that because the race had +worked for 250 years or more, it ought to have a chance to rest."[163] + +The negro has likewise inherited lack of forecast and providence. If at +the end of the year he finds himself with a small purse from his part of +the crop, standing wages, or profits from a tenancy, he will often +squander much of it for a top buggy, a piano which none of his family can +play, or expensive furniture. Those in the gangs just mentioned always +want to fool away their money before it is made. If one has been advanced +$4, and his wages amount to $5, he will hardly ever abridge his holiday by +turning up to get the dollar balance when the others who have not been +advanced are paid Saturday night. He will waste his cash on watermelons +and fish that an average white will not even smell. When forced down to it +he can live contentedly upon almost nothing. A very large proportion of +both sexes are happy upon a real meal every two or three days, and a sly +change of mate every two or three weeks. Toombs, who was always looking at +Cuffee, pronounced him "rich in the fewness of his wants." Bring him out +more clearly to yourselves by comparison with an Irishman struggling up +from starvation wages of hard daily work into comfort and ease. Reflect +over the only success a cotton mill has had with black labor, which was +due to whipping the operatives for breach of duty.[164] + +In Atlanta--which of course is but like other southern cities in the +particular now to be mentioned--many of the men live upon their women. It +is a common saying that you cannot keep a colored cook if you do not allow +her to carry the keys. There is great complaint that the colored +washerwomen help their dependents out of the clothes. The criminal class +of negro men, women, and children is large and growing much faster than +that of the whites. Two very striking developments are the negro burglar +and the negro footpad. There are many breakings and entries every year in +Atlanta, many holdups of pedestrians, and nearly all of them are by +negroes. Now and then a negro snatches a lady's purse from her on the +street. The prisoners sent to the Atlanta stockade during the twelve +months beginning December 15, 1902, were + + Colored. Whites. + Men 2325 1030 + Women 1168 100 + Boys 471 18 + ---- ---- + 3964 1148 + +According to the twelfth census, the negro population of Atlanta was +35,727, and the white 54,090. So, while there are in every thousand of the +whites 21 of these criminals, there are in every thousand of the blacks +110. But the case is worse still. About an equal number of convicts +escaped the stockade by paying fines. Allowance for this will much +increase the per cent of negro criminals. I wish I could get the +approximate number whose fines are paid by their employers, white friends, +mothers, wives, and other relatives. I have observed facts which make me +confident that it is large. The number of boys that in one year were sent +to the stockade--471--is a most important fact, showing as it does that a +large per cent of negroes become criminals in childhood. Nearly all of +these boys have been abandoned by their fathers. There are just as many +abandoned girls in the city. Of course under the prevailing conditions the +proportion of criminals in each generation must increase portentously. + +The depth of the negroes' debasement is shown in the impurity of the +women. This is another inheritance from their ancestors. The "ancient +African chastity" alleged by Professor DuBois,[165] if it ever existed, +was entirely prehistoric. A white who has not been bred in close contact +with the race is quite unable to understand the degree and universality of +this impurity. I will illustrate by a case which occurred in a prosperous +town of Middle Georgia not very long before I settled in Atlanta. A +prominent negro preacher had been caught in adultery. The woman, who was +the mother of several children, and her husband, were both members of the +same church as the preacher, and of unctuous piety. The detection was so +complete and certain, and it had immediately become so notorious that +church notice was unavoidable. The problem was how to whitewash the +affair. The office of a lawyer friend of mine in the town last mentioned +was waited on by a member of the church--a say-nothing sort of negro, who +always applied for leave to attend the meetings at which the preacher was +being tried. This office boy had returned several times with the news, +when inquired of, that nothing had been done. At last, one day he answered +that they had cleared the preacher. My friend commanded that this be +explained. The darkie said, in his laconic way, "Well, he 'fessed de act, +but he 'scused de act." "How in the world did he excuse it?" was asked. +"He said his heart wasn't in it." "Were you fools enough to believe +that?" was ejaculated. The negro, with an air as superior as was +compatible with the great politeness of his race, replied, "He said it was +de debble dat had his body dar; but all de time his soul was at de throne, +praying for God's people. In course we couldn't blame him for what de +debble done." + +This defence, suggesting the make-believe loan of his body by the friar in +the Decameron to the angel Gabriel, which, of course, had never been heard +of by the accused, convinced the church, willing to be convinced. It +appeased the injured husband, willing to be appeased. It fully vindicated +the gay clergyman and the erring sister, who were in effect told to go and +sin no more with such little discretion. + +Had this case, or another like it, occurred at that time or since in any +other negro church of that region, there would have been acquittal and +justification of the accused, although perhaps the good plea and the right +psychological moment to make it might not have been so aptly found.[166] + +The habits and customs of the race mix men and women always and +everywhere; and in those opportunities each one of the young and the old, +married and unmarried of both sexes--of even children just arrived at +puberty--chases a short-lived amour with ever eager zest.[167] The blacker +the Lothario the more show of white blood he seeks in his fancies. Now +and then furious desire for real white overmasters him. Surprising some +unattended angel of a girl or matron, he chooses to see Rome and then die. +Her avengers pour kerosene on him and burn him to a crisp. His lusty +fellows think to themselves what Hermes, in the song of Demodocus, says to +Apollo of the mishap to Ares and golden Aphrodite--that is, that for the +same brief pleasure they would each gladly endure thrice the penalty. + +Professor DuBois says that the chastity of the negro women has improved so +greatly "that even in the back country districts not above nine per cent +of the population may be classed as distinctly lewd."[168] Inquire of +honest witnesses who have good opportunities of observing--the farmers, +small and large, and the storekeepers, in the country, those who do +contract work and the police in the cities--of all who have close access +to negroes at all times, and especially at night; and the concurring +report will be that right correction of Professor DuBois' statement just +given cannot stop with mere inversion of his percentages; that the fact +is, no negroes in this lower class which we are now dealing with are +chaste except those whose physical condition has made a virtue of +necessity.[169] + +It is sadly true that men of all races are too prone to unchastity. It is +chaste women that give human amelioration its main propulsion; for they +make every husband to know that the children around his fireside are his +own. If I were asked in what one particular had my life-long comparison +convinced me that the two races are farthest apart, I would unhesitatingly +answer, in the character of the women of each--the average white woman, +from her marriage on, forgetting all other men but her husband, the black +wife always with a paramour, if to be had. + +The tie which holds the family stanch is wanting. The men often cast aside +their domestic burdens, and begin their lives over in a distant region +with a new woman. The wife and mother left behind does not mope. She has +generally prearranged satisfactorily with another man. + +Disease is making great ravages in this lower class of negroes. I never +knew of a case of consumption among the slaves, and I can recall but one +serious case of pneumonia. Now these two diseases slay the negroes by +hundreds. Before the war the negro was regarded as immune from yellow +fever, and almost immune from dangerous malarial affections. He has lost +his charm against these also. There has been a dreadful increase of +insanity among them. The only ante-bellum case that I can recall was due +to an accidental injury of the head. + +It is but natural that the death rate among the negroes mounts fearfully. +Their great multiplication has far outrun their reasonable means of +subsistence. We note what a heavy burden a large family is to a man in +hard times. I must believe that the thirteenth census will show a still +greater negro death-rate. + +We shall sum up as to this lower class after we have described the +displacement of black by white labor. + +Now we must consider the upper class. We need look only at its main +divisions, to wit, the negro farmers, and the well-to-do urban negroes. + +The rose-colored statements of Professor DuBois as to the former cannot +impose upon residents of the south.[170] I shall begin with the negro farm +owners of Georgia. In what he says of them in the second Bulletin +mentioned in the last footnote he hardly ever looks away from the report +of the comptroller-general of the State. I shall deal with relevant facts +about which the comptroller-general is not required to concern +himself--and of which the census takes but little note. Where agricultural +land commands only a few dollars per acre a large part of it will get into +possession of purchasers under title-bond who expect to work it and pay +for it in annual instalments out of its produce. Of course the vendor sees +to it that he himself escapes taxation on this land, and so the +purchasers, although they may have paid him but a trifle or nothing at +all, are assessed as if they were the real owners, while the vendors are +retaining the title as security. Soon after the war many a white planter, +in order to get out of a failing business and procure capital for +something else, sold his land in whole or part. He could find no purchaser +but some exceptional negro; and the latter could buy only on credit. Much +of the lands so sold had to be retaken because the purchasers failed to +meet their payments. It was my observation when I left Greene county +twenty-three years ago that in that and the adjoining counties the number +of negro owners of agricultural land was decreasing, and it is my +information that such is now the case. This indicates an important fact +not shown in the reports of the comptroller-general, to wit, that a large +number of the negroes appearing therein as owners are really not owners, +and are losing their holdings. + +The next fact to be mentioned is that, as I learn from residents, many +farms of which a negro had acquired the fee are heavily encumbered, and +often fall to the local merchants. + +Further, as Professor DuBois states, "the land owned by negroes is usually +the less fertile, worn-out tracts."[171] + +According to the comptroller's report for 1903 the acres of white +ownership are 29,762,259, returned at a value of $121,629,094; which is +$4,139 per acre. The per cent of the total value owned by the blacks is +4.07. This result--that the negroes own a fraction over four per cent of +the improved lands of Georgia--must be corrected by proper deduction for +purchase money debts, and also for encumbrances. It must be further +corrected by another deduction. The negroes land is considerably below the +average of the rest in quality and market value. Yet while the white +returns at $4.08 an acre, the other returns at $4.13. This higher +valuation is not because of conscientious avoidance of tax-dodging. It +comes from that optimistic exaggeration characterizing the race, which is +vividly illustrated in Booker Washington's gravely stating that the love +of knowledge by the average negroes of the south has become the "marvel of +mankind,"[172] and in the extravagant assertion of Professor DuBois as to +their chastity commented on a few pages back. + +There are a few negro owners of farming lands that are prospering, but I +am credibly informed that as a class they are falling behind. + +The tenants--the renters, as they are commonly called--are the more +prosperous negro farmers. The whites hold on to their lands more firmly +than they did some years ago, and the tenantry class both of whites and +blacks is becoming larger. The whites in the Black Belt all believe that +the negroes generally belong to societies, in which they have bound +themselves not to hire to the former as house servants or for standing +wages except when they cannot otherwise subsist. So most of the cotton is +made by tenants and croppers. They grade as many bad and mediocre, and a +few good. The latter work with a will, and make fair crops. They send +their children off to expensive schools. When they die the property they +have accumulated is distributed and squandered, and a new +tenant--generally, of late years, a white--succeeds. + +It is to be observed everywhere that some reliable white man is generally +backing or superintending a negro farmer that can get credit. The negro +farmers, in almost any large county in the Black Belt that you may select, +that are an exception can usually be counted on the fingers of one hand. + +Their implements and methods are primitive;[173] and they employ hardly +any labor except that of their own families.[174] As soon as the negro +farmer's children have grown up they leave him; the negro laborers in his +neighborhood become more idle every year, and they become also more +scarce. It is not to be thought of that he employ white labor. This class +will give no help to the new agriculture, which I have glanced at in the +last chapter. + +Twenty-odd years ago when I left the planting section, the white +landowners all preferred negro tenants. But white tenants are now +preferred. They do not send their children to school as much as the +negroes do, but keep them at work while the hoeing, which is the first +main thing to the cotton farmer, and the gathering, which is the second +and last and greatest by far, are unfinished. The negroes' hoeing and +other cultivation are bad; and after the crop is laid by until Christmas, +during which time comes the all-important laborious cotton-picking, they +spend so much of their nights at church they are incapacitated from doing +good work. They lose much time by going to camp-meetings in the late +summer and early autumn, and riding on railroad excursion trains at every +opportunity. The white tenants and their families, by careful "chopping +out" and hoeing, get the proper "stand" and they pick clean; the negroes +fall behind in both respects. The bettering credit of the white steadily +hits the negro harder. The only tenants who are good for the rent are the +class a few of whom have cash of their own and the rest can get credit +with the local merchant for necessary supplies. Such tenants the +landowners seek after, and find every year more and more among the whites, +and less and less among the blacks. + +Every year a larger part of the staple crops of the south is made by +whites. The negroes have lately decreased in Kentucky. Mr. Tillinghast +brings forward, from Hoffman, weighty proofs that in the State just +mentioned, which has just become the principal seat of tobacco growing, +and also in the largest yielding counties of Virginia, that black labor +constantly grows less of the crop.[175] He uses Hoffman, too, to show that +white labor is slowly expelling black from rice production.[176] The old +south believed that rice culture was sure death to the white, Mr. +Tillinghast quotes, as to the greatest agricultural product of the south, +this from Professor Wilcox: "It would probably be a conservative +statement to say that at least four-fifths of the cotton was ... in 1860 +grown by negroes; at the present time [i.e. in 1899] probably not one-half +is thus grown."[177] + +Compare this further: "He [Hoffman] finds that 'with less than one-half as +large a colored population as Mississippi,... Texas produced in 1894 +almost three times the cotton crop of the former State.' Even more +significant is the fact that with almost twice the colored population of +1860, Mississippi, in 1894, produced less cotton than thirty-four years +ago.'"[178] + +Very significant are the facts lately published by the Agricultural +Department which show that in an area of some sixty-three per cent of the +production, the white outpicks the negro. "One hundred and fifty-two +counties, with a negro population amounting to seventy-five per cent of +the whole, averaged one hundred and eleven pounds per day, whereas one +hundred and ninety-two counties, with a white population constituting +seventy-five per cent or more of the whole, averaged one hundred and +forty-eight pounds per day,"[179] that is, the white picked one-third more +than the black. There are other statements in this bulletin of importance +here. I can give this one only: + + "In the Indian Territory and Oklahoma, where the whites represent + about eighty per cent of the population (including Indians) the + average number of pounds picked is greater than in any of the States + except Arkansas and Texas. The highest number of pounds picked in any + State is one hundred and seventy-two in Texas, the counties + represented having a white population of eighty per cent."[180] + +In Arkansas the population of the counties mentioned was fifty-nine per +cent white, the rest negro. + +It is almost certain that the foregoing estimates do great injustice to +the whites. They assume that there is no inferiority of the negro to the +white except the per diem quantity of cotton picked. Ponder the statement +as to a county of Georgia which I now give. + + "According to the ginners' report, Madison county made sixteen + thousand bales of cotton in 1902. Its negro population is about three + thousand, its white, twelve thousand. The negroes are one-fifth and + the whites four-fifths, and out of every five bales the negroes ought + to have made at least one and the whites four. But the former do not + average as well as the others. The white who runs one plow, whose wife + and children do the hoeing and picking, probably makes ten bales. The + negro who runs one plow, whose wife and children hoe and pick, hardly + makes more than five or six bales. The greater part of the cotton + credited to negro labor is made by negroes who are superintended by + white men."[181] + +Weighing all that I have just told, I am as sure as I can be of anything +in the near future, that the negro will soon be of greatly diminished +importance as laborer, cropper, renter, or farming landowner in the +staples of southern agriculture. + +There are other kinds of property than improved lands set out in the +report of the comptroller-general, such as $3,531,471 of horses, cattle, +and stock of all kinds, $810,553 of plantation and mechanical tools. Such +needs no separate consideration. These holdings do not in view of what we +have told, give the negro farmer any strong foothold. + +Nearly all that remains of the rural upper class--the negroes in trades, +professions, mercantile business, etc.--is so evidently dependent upon the +masses of the lower class, now gravitating away from the country that the +most of it can be incidentally disposed of at certain places later on in +the chapter and the rest be treated as negligible. + +The "city or town property" of the negroes of Georgia, according to the +report of the comptroller-general for 1903, amounts in value to +$44,668,620. From all that I can learn, while it is largely, it is +considerably less, encumbered than the real and personal property of the +negro farmers. + +A large admixture of Caucasian blood marks nearly every member of the +upper class both in country and town. I note that occasionally a coalblack +acquires property, on which his miser grip is tighter than that of an +accumulating Irishman; but such are very few. There is hardly a well-to-do +negro in work, occupation, profession, or property, who is not several +shades at least removed from coalblack. Mr. Tillinghast observes "that the +porters, cooks, and waiters on a Pullman train are usually mulattoes, +while the laborers in the gang on the roadbed are nearly all black."[182] +In this day when the pictures of prominent men and women are in many +illustrated magazines and papers, it is to be observed that hardly one of +a negro shows unmixed blood. Thus a recent monthly contains pictures of +Judson W. Lyons, R. H. Terrell, Kelly Miller, Archibald H. Grinke, T. +Thomas Fortune, Daniel Murray, and Booker Washington.[183] Of these the +third only, to my eye, seems all negro; and I cannot be confident that he +is wholly without appreciable white blood. His head has the shape of a +white man's. + +It is my observation that a negro entirely pure in blood hardly ever gets +out of the lower class; and that if he does he is much more unprogressive +than an average member of the upper class. Note what Bishop Holsey says of +how amalgamation with the white improves the descendants of the blacks, in +a passage quoted later herein. + +This upper class contains only persons of exceptional blood, talent, or +some other rare fortune. The higher education, and the education which is +now best of all for the negro--industrial education--is for this little +circle only. Hampton and Tuskegee do not open to all comers. Mr. +Tillinghast convincingly proves that those who have got really good +training at the two institutions just named are far above the average +negro in physical stamina, education, and other important +particulars.[184] The graduates go forth, not to benefit their brothers in +the lower class, but to win for themselves surer and higher standing in +the upper class. + +Some of the resources which this urban section of the upper class have +enjoyed for a while they are losing, as I shall tell when I hereinafter +summarize the details of white encroachment. But other resources open to +them. Such are professions like dentists, eye, ear, and throat surgeons, +doctors, barbers, and others who must content themselves with only colored +patronage; such the growing retail trade, multiplying boarding-houses, +restaurants, and saloons, finding their custom exclusively in the +increasing negro town population. The number of negroes who become +teachers, lecturers, preachers, authors, etc., steadily augments. Other +resources of this upper class can be pointed out, but it needs not here. +Although nearly always when the father who has struggled up dies, his +property, as we saw to be the case with the negro farmer, goes, and no +child succeeds to his occupation, there is perhaps generally compensation +for his loss by the accession of some other who has got up out of the +lower class by an extraordinarily lucky jump. It is clear that the class +is without the wholesome influence of uninterrupted inheritance, from +generation to generation, of faculty and character progressively +improving. Take this inheritance away from the men and women of any +enlightened nation and it would be to lower them very near to the level of +barbarism. It is also nearly certain that there will be no further +infusion of white blood into this class, by reason of the hostility to +inter-mixture which becomes stronger--yea, intenser--every year. The +probable consequence will be the dilution of much of the white blood now +in the upper class through the lower class to such an extent that it will +practically disappear. But some of it, I think, will persist, perhaps +increase in degree--preserved by the aversion of many to intermarriage +with persons less white than themselves, and occasional intermarriage with +white persons in northern States. + +Exceptional ones of this class enjoy privileges of the higher education, +afforded by schools and colleges opulently endowed by private persons, +which education is bringing forth fruit in teachers, clergymen, and +representatives of the learned class. There are already some good books, +as well as sermons, speeches, poems, essays, and short articles, by +negroes which have won favorable opinion in our literature; and there is +evidently to be steady increase. + +There is among some of this urban upper class the beginning at least of +better things under the lead of better mothers. We must not be +unreasonable in our demands that these women who carry in their veins a +very appreciable proportion of polyandrous blood shall become immaculately +chaste at once. Leave them to the influence of the improving society in +which they move; to the noble and faithful efforts of such as Mrs. Booker +Washington; their persistent imitation of white mothers; the teachings of +the really christian pastors whom the negro universities are beginning to +send abroad in numbers far too few; but especially of all to devoted +conjugal, maternal, and domestic duty. This last has made the pigeon +mother unconquerably true to her life mate. It will do the same for the +negro woman.--Let us consider the class further for a moment. + +The longer you look at it with unbefogged eyes the more plainly you see it +is really a natural aristocracy hugging its special privileges more +jealously every year, and that cleavage in interest, affection, and +destiny between it and the other class goes on so steadily that it must +after some little while yawn in the sight of the entire nation. Here in +Atlanta, as seems to be the case in all the southern cities, there are +respectable negro districts and also negro slums. The latter are the more +numerous and far more populous. The inhabitants of these several districts +are almost as wide apart as are the whites in the fashionable circle and +the million of poor folk without. + +I must postpone my final contrast of these two classes until I have +completed what remains to be said of the displacement of black by white +labor. For a few years after the war it was so slow moving that I was not +confidently aware of it. Now it has proceeded so far, and so much +accelerated its pace, that I can indicate it with something like accuracy. +In the thirteenth chapter I noted its beginning. This was when the mother +and her girls took upon themselves the daily indoor work, and the father +and sons took upon themselves the outdoor work, morning, noon, and night, +around the house and the horse-lot,--the word which in the south +corresponds to the barnyard of the northern farmer. Especially significant +is it that a large per cent of the white matrons in the country have at +last discarded the negro laundry-woman and habitually themselves use the +washtub for their families. The impulse to supplant negro labor showed its +greatest energy where the black population had been sparse. I have heard +my friend, F. C. Foster, a resident of Morgan county, often mention that +what were before the war the rich and poor sides of that county have +become interchanged; where most of the large slave-owners lived was the +rich, but now is the poor side; and the other, where there were but few +slaves, is now the rich side. + +I see many proofs in every quarter that the whites of the Black Belt have +commenced to learn good lessons from their neighbors outside, and show +every year a greater self-reliance. Many more causes than I have space to +set down conspire to increase this self-reliance. The small farmer must, +by himself or his wife and children or white help, do such things as +these: work his brood mare; care for his blooded stock, fine poultry, and +bees; handle his reaper, mower, and more expensive tools and implements; +give all necessary attention to his orchards and larger and smaller +fruits,--industries which, with that of the dairy, are now pushing +forward with mounting energy; for he has learned that the average negro +cannot be trusted in these and many other things which can be suggested. + +I must not overstate the advance of white production and labor upon black +in the country. In the regions of densest negro populations the whites +show a backwardness in taking to work that is discouraging. A very +observant man familiar with Jackson and Madison counties of Georgia, both +of which are out of the Black Belt, and who now lives where negroes +outnumber the whites, not long ago made this comparison, while answering +my inquiries: "In Jackson and Madison the whites work. A farmer who runs +but one plow does all the plowing. He hires but one negro. In my present +county the one-horse farmer always hires two negroes, one to plow and the +other to hoe, and the only work he does is to boss them." But the negroes +are going away from many parts, in fact from nearly all, of the Black +Belt. Wherever they have become scarce, the whites go to work; and, as is +now occurring in that part of Greene county called "The Fork," and in +places in adjoining counties, the lands rise greatly in market value. In +many parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene counties, where +negroes were doing practically all the agricultural labor when I came to +Atlanta, I learn that many white boys are becoming good all-around +workers. It surprised me greatly to be told that in this region in +different places the white women and children, as soon as the dew is off +in the morning, go to cotton picking, and they become so efficient that +often no extra labor need be hired to finish that greatest task of all to +the farmer. Before the war, all of us white boys picked just enough of +cotton to learn that our backs could never be made to stand picking all +day. The whites now beating the negro in what we once thought he only +could do, and white women in the old slave regions doing the family +laundry,--these begin a marvellous economic revolution. + +The cotton mills and other manufactories rapidly springing up in many +southern localities are developing a class of white operatives. Mining of +various kinds is on the increase. Stone, slate, and marble cutting, +cabinet making, and other trades attract greater numbers to follow them. +White railroad employees, printers, engravers, stenographers, typewriters, +and those in numerous other gainful occupations, grow in numbers. White +women and girls stream to work for employers every morning. In all places, +if you but look long enough, you catch sight of swelling crowds of the +race who once lived almost entirely from slave labor now doing their own +labor. + +I will close what I have to say of this part of the subject by +observations of Atlanta. When I settled here, the barbers, shoe repairers, +blacksmiths, band-musicians, sick-nurses, seamstresses, ostlers, and +carriage-drivers were, so far as I noted, black almost without exception. +Now the first five are nearly all white, and whites steadily multiply in +the rest, although they are far from being in a majority. The only +expulsion of white by negro labor that I have noted is the substitution by +the bicycle messenger service and the telegraph of negro for white +messengers, made not long ago. These messenger services thrive by +exploiting child labor. By the change mentioned they got much larger and +stronger boys--often grown-up ones--for the same price which they used to +pay white children a year or two older than mere tots. Against the recent +loss just told I have these two recent gains of the whites to tell. There +had always been only negro waiters in the restaurants. In some of them +the eaters at the lunch counters are now served by a white man standing +behind it; and what he needs, if it is not kept in store so near that he +can reach it, is brought to him, at his command, by a negro, whom you may +call his waiter. This negro also wipes off the counter. After we became +used to white barbers we generally preferred them to the black ones. And I +note that a growing majority of those who frequent the counters like the +white waiters, although I now and then hear a growler say that he would +rather have a waiter that he can reprimand and speak to as he pleases. +Some of the restaurants begin to advertise that their help is all white. +With the superior alertness and quickness of his race, a white behind the +counter accomplishes more than twice as much as the former black. To use a +common saying, the white waiters keep at active work all their twelve +hours as if they were fighting fire, while the negroes commanded by them +take things easy. Every one of the whites is constantly on the lookout for +a better place; and generally he manages somehow, after a short while, to +get it. One who now serves me studies bookkeeping two hours every night, +and will doubtless soon be giving satisfaction in his chosen occupation to +some business house. The negroes look out only for tips, are interested in +nothing but amusements, and never get any higher. Bear in mind, they are +considerably above the average negro in qualifications and station. + +The other instance is that some co-operating Greek boys have recently +captured a very considerable proportion of the shoe-shining. They provide +more convenient and comfortable seats and give a better shine than the +negro does, in a much shorter time, and for the same price. It looks now +as if they are bound to make full conquest of the business. With my +experience it is more of a surprise to me to see clothes laundered, +tables waited on, and shoes shined by the whites, than even to see cotton +picked by them. + +But to go on with Atlanta. Occupations requiring the management of +machinery or peculiar skill are nearly always filled by whites. The street +railroad conductors and motormen are all white. The only negroes connected +with the road that I, as a passenger, generally see is the curve-greaser, +and now and then a helper on the construction car. The steam railroads +will employ a negro fireman because of his ability to stand heat, but they +do not trust him to oil and wipe. In the smaller buildings negro +elevator-runners some time ago were frequent, but now it is clear that the +whites will soon have the occupation exclusively. There is, I believe, +more building, in this year of 1904, in Atlanta than ever before. The +preparation of all the material is done by white labor in the +planing-mills and machine-shops, while the more unskilled work of putting +it in place is done by the negro carpenter. + +The lathers and plasterers are all negroes, there are more negro brick and +stone masons than white, and the carpenters are nearly all negroes, there +being but few young white ones. The painters are about equally divided. +The negro's standard of living is so much lower than that of the white, +that where there is competition he proves victor by accepting a price upon +which the white man cannot live. But the latter does not throw up the +sponge. At the point where race competition begins he induces the negroes, +whenever he can, to join his union, and soon to have one of their own. +Just now (August, 1904) there are not enough of brickmasons to supply the +demand, and there is both a white and black union of that trade. But so +far there has been no success in the efforts made for a black carpenters' +union. The negroes have of late years kept such firm hold of the trade, +that it seems no young whites come into it, there being but few white +carpenters in Atlanta under forty years of age. The negroes understand +that their grip is due to their ability to work for lower pay than the +whites, and when the union is proposed they say to themselves, that means +only more places for white carpenters and less for us. But the trend to +form unions seems to strengthen. There is a mixed union of tailors, +separate unions of blacksmiths' helpers, moulders' helpers, painters, and +also of brickmasons, as just mentioned. There is a black union of +plasterers and no white one. It is to be remembered that the initiative to +unionize the negro workman comes from the other race, the purpose being to +balk the exertions of employers to depress wages by encouraging the +cheaper worker. Consider the dilemma of the negro workman invited into the +union by whites. He foresees that if he accepts, his race will after a +while be swamped in the trade by white competition. At the same time he +foresees that if he does not accept, he cannot increase his income, which +in its smallness becomes more and more inadequate to sustain himself and +family under the constant demands of the day for larger and larger +expenditure. The immediate needs of those dependent upon him will +generally decide his course. I cannot say how long the negro carpenters of +Atlanta will refuse the proposal to federate themselves in a union with +the whites; but this I can say, that all attempts of the negroes to keep +the whites out of any well-paid vocation must fail, even with the most +resolute and stubbornly maintained effort. As I view it on the spot the +white forward movement palpably strengthens and the defence weakens. Bear +in mind that the whites receive constant re-enforcement from all other +white American and European communities, and the blacks are confined to +their own resources of supply, all the while declining. + +What I have just told as happening in Atlanta intelligent and observant +negroes detect to be but a part of the general recession before white +competition. The National Negro Business League had its last meeting at +Indianapolis. In one of the resolutions adopted, mainly because of the +influence of Dr. Booker T. Washington, its president, occurs this +allegation, "During our discussions it has been clearly developed that the +race has been steadily losing many avenues of valuable employment." The +resolution ascribes this to lack of proper training, and recommends that +the lack be supplied. A negro makes this acute and true comment, which I +would have attended to here, and considered again when further on I +discuss what the industrial schools can do: + + "That the colored man has of late years been losing many avenues of + employment is quite true, but the conclusion that this is due to a + lack of training is not to be hastily accepted. Nobody believes that + our people are now less capable of work than they were when recognized + in these avenues of labor. As a matter of fact they are far better + equipped now than they were then, or Tuskegee and Hampton and the + other industrial schools that are crowded from year to year are making + a signal failure. In those days men were picked up here and there and + started in as apprentices as green as they could be. Now thousands of + them are prepared before they go out to work. The two chief reasons + our folks are not employed so universally now is, first, the fact, + that _the white south has gone to work with its own hands_, and + second, the negro refuses longer to work for nothing. _The continued + assertion by some of our leaders that a man who can labor will not be + discriminated against, is untrue. The preference is given to the white + man in almost every case, and the negro is allowed to do the work he + refuses._ It is well enough to ask our people to secure industrial + education, but it is wrong to place all our ills upon a lack of such + training or to recommend industrial education as a panacea. Though it + was quite inevitable that the league should adopt such a resolution as + an endorsement of its president's policy."[185] + +I have italicized in the quotation the statements specially pertinent +here. They are very weighty proofs supporting my proposition of fact, to +wit, that there is now waging between the whites and negroes an +internecine war for every opportunity of labor above the very lowest and +unskilled. + +I ask also that it be noted that the writer is utterly unconscious of any +negroes than those of the upper class. Not a thing that he says can be +applied to the ninety-five per cent. + +The death rate of the negro is coming close to, while that of the white +keeps far below, the birth rate. Rapid native increase and vigorous +immigration for the whites, nothing but slow and decreasing propagation +for the negroes; and larger and larger hosts of the former giving their +champions active sympathy and help--the event of this inter-race struggle +over the trades and occupations may be delayed, but it cannot be doubtful. + +The reader must not forget that the negroes now in mind belong all to what +I have called the upper class. Their number is so small and its promise of +increase so slight that I should hardly have done more than allude to +them, if the subject did not emphasize so impressively as it does the +inevitable expulsion of negro by white labor. Let me explain this fully. +Professor Wilcox, summarizing the pertinent information of the twelfth +census as to ten leading occupations competed for by the two races in the +south, states that in the year 1900 the per cent of negroes was larger in +seven and smaller in nine of them than ten years before.[186] That alone +shows white gain. But I want you to add to Professor Wilcox's statement +something of which the census gives no hint, that is, the bound forward of +the negroes on one side, and the inaction of the whites on the other, +during many years beginning with emancipation in 1865. When that has been +done, the encroachment of white labor upon black effected in the +comparatively short time since its beginning appears almost prodigious. It +is somewhat like the race-horse, who, falling far behind in the first +stages of a long heat, at last wakes up and gains so fast that nobody will +bet against him. It means that the whites are now as ruthlessly taking all +opportunities of labor away from the blacks, as their fathers took his +lands away from the American Indian. + +We can now say our last word in contrasting the two classes. Many fail to +see clearly the difference between them. Thus Ernest Hamlin Abbott[187] +and Edgar Gardner Murphy,[188] in their pleasant discussions, only here +and there, and as if casually, say something which momentarily implies +existence of the lower class, and then relapse into claiming for all of +the southern negroes, if not the actual condition of the upper class, at +least hopeful possibility of soon achieving it. These two kind-hearted men +represent a large number who firmly believe that education and the church +are now rapidly elevating the negro masses, when the fact is far +otherwise. Many from the north see nothing but the upper class. In what he +writes of the negroes whom he knew in public life, the late Senator Hoar +was utterly unconscious of the average negro whom all of us in the south +know.[189] Dr. Lyman Abbott, a most benign example of broad and almost +perfect tolerance to both sections, taking all southern hearts by his +loving sympathy with and full justice to the better sentiment of our +section in every matter of importance except the appointment of negroes to +office, he never seems to have in mind any negroes but the prominent ones +who are giving their fellows industrial or the higher education, and those +who have been blessed with either. Do but consider how pathetically he +lately lamented the case of the "white negro" lady shut out from the +circle of cultivation and kept confined in one of ignorance and lowness. +This last circle--its magnitude, its bad and desperate state--he really +knows nothing about. He can no more study its deplorable and heartrending +conditions than the mother can endure to have the expectoration of her +child threatened with tuberculosis examined under the microscope. Chicago +has been for some while "farthest to the front" in the struggle against +corporation rule. Her battles for direct nomination, direct legislation, +and municipal ownership have been chronicled more accurately and +intelligently in the _Public_ than I can find elsewhere. Therefore I read +it with diligence; and I relish more and more Mr. Post's sound and able +anti-machine and anti-plutocratic advocacy. But in everything that the +paper says or quotes on the race question I am pained to note that its +shortcoming is greater than its very high merit in preaching democratic +democracy. Mr. Ernest Hamlin Abbott does now and then call the negroes a +child race, but Mr. Post repudiates all backwardness and inferiority of +race. He seems to maintain the equality of the average negro to the +average white in all essentials of good citizenship with the zeal of +Wendell Phillips, when the providence of the American union frenzied and +deputed him to infuriate its defenders against the disunion slave-owners. +Mr. Post, as appears to me, believes with all his heart in the doctrine of +Mrs. Stowe and Whittier, to mention no others, as to the negro. Every +pertinent utterance in his paper indicates that he has no thought whatever +of the lower class. A most striking illustration of this is how he treats +the story of the negro Richard R. Wright.[190] When the latter was ten +years old he won great fame by the answer he made General Howard, who had +inquired of the negro children at the Storrs School in Atlanta, just after +the close of the war, "Tell me what message I shall take back from you to +the people of the north?" His face ablaze with enthusiasm, the boy Richard +said, "Tell 'em we're risin'." Whittier went as far astray over this as we +saw that he did in his "Laus Deo." In his poem celebrating he sang-- + + "O black boy of Atlanta! + But half was spoken: + The slave's chain and the Master's + Alike are broken. + The one curse of the races + Held both in tether: + They are rising--all are rising, + The black and white together." + +I never read the last two lines without in mind admonishing the author, +"Praise in departing." + +When Mr. Post published the story, he ought to have mentioned that while +the boy who sent forth the winged words did rise and has become president +of the Georgia Industrial College, yet that such negroes are far more rare +than millionaires, and the main host of their people in the south were +sinking at the time, and have been sinking ever since. It is not true that +"all are rising." The whites have recently begun to rise; five per cent +only of the negroes, most of whom are largely white, are rising, while the +rest of them are doomed, if the nation does not interpose. And the colored +dentist of Chicago, slighted by some of the white dentists--Mr. Post sees +in him, just as he sees in Richard R. Wright, a representative of the +negro millions. + +These conscientious and amiable gentlemen are wasting much effort +uselessly. There is no very urgent problem as to the upper class of +negroes. It has two strings to its bow. If the lower class should perish, +a large part of it--perhaps the greater part--will be assimilated. Every +day I detect a larger movement toward the north among our better-to-do +negroes. I hear of girls that get places as chambermaids and cooks, of +boys that find places as ostlers or other domestic service; and I have +heard of a few families who have gone in a body, also of some men who have +left wife and children here. They believe the north will allow their votes +to be counted, will not proscribe them in society as the south does, and +they will probably get for themselves or their descendants intermarriage +with whites. The determination of these southern negroes towards the north +will probably gain in volume and energy. It is plain that those who go do +much increase their chances of final absorption into the body of whites. +This assimilation is one of the two strings. And if the American negroes +shall one day be conceded their own State, as I hope and pray for, their +leaders must come from the upper class. That is the other of the two +strings. + +This upper class of southern negroes has demonstrated full ability to take +care of itself. It has its schools and colleges, newspapers, magazines, +and augmenting literature, its widening circle of students and readers, +and its good shepherds and able leaders. It rapidly wins favor in the +south. A few of our residents see no other negroes but those in this upper +class, a most striking instance of which is Joel Chandler Harris's +sweeping assertion "that the overwhelming majority of the negroes in all +parts of the south, _especially in the agricultural regions, are leading_ +sober and _industrious lives_."[191] When one who fully understands the +situation studies the assertion just quoted he sees from the context that +the writer was led to make it because he had at the time in his eyes only +a few of the better negroes in the Atlanta upper class. This is powerful +testimony to their prosperity and self-maintaining faculty. Similarly the +Chicago _Public_ rates the four hundred inhabitants of Boley in the Creek +nation as common or average negroes. According to a news dispatch +mentioned in that paper the town is only a year old, has "two churches, a +school-house, several large stores, and a $5,000 cotton gin, owned and +controlled exclusively by negroes." It is without a system of law and +without municipal government, and "yet no serious crime or offence of any +kind has been committed in the place." These four hundred negroes do not +permit any white man to settle in the town. Commenting in conclusion upon +the news, the _Public_ says, "If that dispatch is not a canard, +Anglo-Saxon civilization has something to learn of one race which it has +outraged and abused and despised."[192] + +Any such place as Boley, if a reality, is peopled only by negroes of the +upper class, and, further, only by those who have been sifted out from the +rest of that class by a peculiarly drastic selection. Had they not each +had remarkable good fortune, extraordinary capacity, and exceptional +experience and training, Boley would never have been heard of. I ask that +the fair-minded make two comparisons. 1. Suppose four hundred negroes--not +naturally selected, but taken in a body, just as each one comes, from the +masses of the lower class described herein--given opportunity to found a +town of their own amid what we may call Boley conditions, what would be +the result? You may be sure that what occurred in Hayti when the reins of +government were suddenly given to the negroes at large would in some sort +be repeated. 2. Compare Boley in all its bloom and happy condition as +described in the _Public_ with certain communities of select whites, which +have flourished now and then for years, without formal government; say the +Amana community. If this be rightly done, social organism of select whites +will at once appear to be incomparably superior to that of select negroes. + +I have tried my hardest to make my readers see as clearly as one bred in +the south ought to see what a world-wide difference there is between the +small upper class and the numerous lower class of negroes. If I have +succeeded they will agree with me that it is the better policy to leave +the upper class, for the present, just where it is. If this advice be +followed, that class will flourish, and some day either be assimilated, or +be giving benign salvation to the lower class in the negro State. +Especially should this upper class eschew politics. Booker Washington in +preaching this is the only real American prophet of the day. With all of +his zeal for his race, he is far better appreciated in the south than in +the north, and perhaps just as popular. What a lamentable arrest of its +benign development it would be to this upper class to turn it away from +industrial betterment of its condition to lead the mass of the negroes at +the polls in a struggle for rule and office! That would be something like +renewing the conditions that developed the Ku-Klux Klan. + +It is the great body of the southern negroes--those in the lower class, +who have no string at all, nor even a bow--that demands the profoundest +attention. I wish I could make every white man, woman, and child of +America see them just as they are. As I compare them with what they were +in 1865 I note they have advanced somewhat in mental arithmetic, because +of practice in computing small sums of money involved in their wages and +purchases; that they have learned somewhat of self-providence, and very +much endurance of want (which last is really a reversion to a trait of +their West African ancestors); and that the per cent of illiteracy among +them has been greatly lessened. On the other hand, each generation becomes +more disinclined to work, and its vagrants multiply; each generation more +prone to live by crime, more unchaste, and more quick to desert their +conjugal partners and children. Especially are they far more unhealthy and +prone to insanity, and their death rate rapidly rising. They have no +resource but unskilled labor of the lowest and cheapest grade; white +competition in agriculture and domestic service, machinery in other +fields, such as the scrape which has superseded the dump-cart, the +improved steam-shovel and method of handling construction trains, and the +steam laundry, steadily curtailing that resource; a slothful, improvident, +and wasteful disposition curtailing it still further. The resurrecting +hand of the trades union cannot reach down to them. Steadily they are more +useless to every upbuilder of the coming south except the wage-depresser. +More and more they get in the way of real progress in every direction. And +as their supplies of necessaries diminish they get in one another's way. +Nearly all of the whites who were bound to them in the domestic love of +the old south times are dead. Most naturally and unavoidably as the new +generation discerns the growing incompatibility of their stay in the +section with its true welfare, unfriendliness comes and grows. Listless, +lethargic, careless, without initiative, without opportunity and coercion +to make use of it, these multitudes of inveterate have-nothings are in a +bottomless gulf of want, immorality, crime, and disease. A true +philanthropist has familiarized the world with the "submerged tenth." Mr. +Ernest Hamlin Abbott, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, Dr. Abbott, +Mr. Post, stand beside me on the strand, and fix your eyes, minds, and +hearts upon the slowly drowning ninety-five per cent of the southern +negroes. Lay aside the excess of your devotion to the upper class. It does +not need it. The Chicago dentist, as the _Public_ itself reports, was +really more than indemnified for the insult given him because of his color +by the sympathetic resentment of white members of his profession. Why will +you keep agitating the nation in behalf of a few thousands, who are well +able to maintain themselves, and neglect millions who require, as Mr. +Tillinghast says, some heroic remedy for their salvation? + +I shall now tell you the utter inadequacy of Hampton, Tuskegee, and the +like, after which I shall consider what, in my judgment, is the only +remedy. + +The annual output, as we may call it, of all the negro educational +institutions in the south is a mere drop in the bucket when compared with +the enormous need. The latest reliable figures accessible to me are those +of Booker Washington for 1897. They are as follows: 13,581 receiving +industrial training, 2,108 collegiate education, 2,410 classical +instruction, and 1,311 "taking the professional course,"[193]--the last +three aggregating 5,829. Suppose the entire 17,999 were following +industrial courses, and that every one graduated with credit; and suppose +there be added the work of the land companies providing homes and every +other enterprise helping the negro in any way--suppose this output to be +trebled annually from this time on (which is far above possibility for +many years yet, to say nothing of probability), what would be its +accomplishment? Why, no more than a slight shower in a few townships +during the drought a few years ago would have done in preventing injury to +the Kansas corn crop. When you attend, you understand that the great +advantages of these excellent institutions are only for a few lucky +negroes,--picked ones of the upper class,--and not for the millions whose +crying need is for opportunity to earn honest daily bread and a really +benevolent coercion to use the opportunity. The problem, what to do for +this mass, cannot be solved by philippics against such things as _de +facto_ or constitutional disfranchisement of the blacks, lynching them, +showing them disrespect in military parades, giving them Jim Crow cars, +and not dividing the educational fund more liberally with them; nor would +it contribute one jot or tittle towards its solution if every lady in +America cordially received in her drawing-room the few negroes who have +most deservedly won the respect of the nation. To solve this problem, +something must be found which will train and elevate the average negro, +while the exceptional one is at the industrial school or college, or +studying for a profession; something which will check the prevalent +reversion away from monogamic family life, and stimulate that life to +develop steadily; something also which will impart to this entire mass +permanent and strengthening impulse to better its condition. The only +thing that can do this is to separate the negro as far as may be from the +whites, give him his own State in our union, and constrain him there with +vigilant kindness to subsist and govern himself in such ways as suit him. +I have long thought that our negroes had far stronger claim upon the +nation for land than the uncivilizable redskins on whom we have lavished +so much expense in vain. + +Righteousness demands that we give the former full opportunity to develop +normally in self-government. Put him in a State of his own on our +continent; provide irrepealably in the organic law that all land and +public service franchises be common property; give no political rights +therein to those of any other race than the African; compel nobody to +settle in this State, but let every black reside in whatever part of the +nation that pleases him; let this community while in a Territorial +condition, and also for a reasonable time after it has been admitted as a +State, be faithfully superintended by the nation in order that republican +government be there preserved,--do these things, and there need be no fear +that the examples of Hayti and San Domingo, which were not so +superintended, will be repeated. Nearly all of the American Indians, +because of rigid adherence to their old customs and ways, were crushed by +Caucasian rule. But the negro, wherever he comes in contact with a +superior, shows a pliancy, a self-adaptability to new circumstances, to +which no parallel has ever been suggested, so far as I know. If civilized +self-government will but kindly keep him a while at its labor school where +he is to learn by doing, I am profoundly convinced that he will develop +into the very best of citizens. And I am also just as profoundly convinced +that if something like what I recommend is not done at a comparatively +early day, after some while, as there are now in America a few prosperous +Indians and in New Zealand a few prosperous Maoris, we will have here and +there a few prosperous negroes; but the rest of them will either be +confirmed degenerates, or have gone no one will know whither. And Booker +Washington, the moral exemplar of the day, rivalling Horace's + + "Iustum et tenacem propositi virum," + +as he resists the pernicious counsels of the overwhelming majority of +negroes and keeps to the wise and right course which they passionately +condemn; who is far more able and who has accomplished infinitely more of +good than Toussaint or Douglass--he will be a great hero statesman of a +great cause lost. The historian of the future that has something like +Shakspeare's genius for contrast will make his glory and that of Calhoun +magnify each other by comparison. + +The foregoing as to a negro State, which is the result of years of +observation and reflection, had all been written for some time when I fell +in with the address of Bishop Holsey, mentioned above. It is the +proposition of the address that a part of the United States should be +assigned to the negroes. I add an abstract from the synopsis of his views +given in the address: + +1. Negroes and whites "are so distinct and dissimilar in racial traits, +instincts, and character, it is impossible for them to live together on +equal terms of social and political relation, or on terms of equal +citizenship." + +2. The general government only has power to settle the problem, and it +ought to settle it. + +3. Separation of the negroes and whites "is the most practicable, logical, +and equitable solution of the problem." + +4. "Segregation and separation should be gradual ... and non-compulsory, +so as not to injure ... labor, capital, and commerce ... where the negro +is an important factor of production and consumption." + +5. The southern negroes should petition the president and congress "for +suitable territory ... as ... equal citizens ... and not go out of their +country to be exposed to doubtful experiment and foreign complications. +Afro-Americans should remain in their own country, in the zone of +greatness, and in the latitude of progress." + +6. The government should, in effecting segregation, maintain "civil order, +peace, progress, and prosperity." + +7. The place for the negroes may be in the western public domain, such as +a part of the Indian Territory, New Mexico, or elsewhere in the west. + +8. No white person unless married to a negro, or a resident federal +official, to be allowed citizenship in the negro State or Territory, but +all citizens of the United States to be protected therein as in the other +States.[194] + +9. Only those of reputable character and some degree of education, and +perhaps those possessed of a year's support, to become citizens. Criminals +and undesirable persons to be kept out. + +It was gratification extreme to me to find a prominent negro so much in +accord with my long-cherished project. I hope there is a determination of +the mass of southern negroes thitherward, as seems to be indicated by the +activity both of Bishop Holsey and also by that of Bishop Turner. With +nearly all of the negro writers and speakers now in the public eye +upper-class sympathies are dominant. But Holsey, demanding a State in the +union, and Turner, putting his whole soul into immigration to Liberia, are +actuated by lower-class sympathies. The others just mentioned really +advocate assimilation,--and at bottom, only the assimilation of the upper +class,--but these two are of far different and higher ambition. They are +patriotic, and as true to their race as that famous heathen who rejected +christianity when told that it consigned his forefathers to perdition. He +declared he would go to hell with his people and not to heaven without +them. The others are representative of only some five per cent, these two +represent the ninety-five per cent--the real negroes. I never took to +Bishop Turner's proposal, for all of the ability with which he advocates +it, because I want the negroes where our nation can foster and protect +their State, it matters not what may be the resulting pains and expense. I +highly approve the earnestness of Bishop Holsey in objecting to +expatriation by the Afro-Americans. + +Let our negroes have their own State. That will be the fit culmination +which was foreshadowed in their deserting the galleries assigned them in +our churches and flocking to their own churches, immediately upon +emancipation, and their effecting soon afterwards the removal of their +cabins from the old site. Their masses have ever since been inclining +towards a community of their own by an internal impulsion in harmony with +the external white expulsion. The impulsion and the expulsion are each, as +it seems to me, manifestations of the same all-powerful cosmic force. + +Further, I would say a negro State makes a precedent for the world +federation. Each race that ought not to intermarry with others can +flourish under its separate autonomy. Then loving brotherhood between +white, yellow, red, and black people will bless all the earth. Whether the +proneness of opposites to fancy each other, progressively going from the +smaller to the greater differences, will ultimately compound a universal +color, no man can now tell. + +Of course some reader has exclaimed, "Your proposal is absurdly +chimerical." Is it indeed chimerical to demand of the great republic that +it do its very highest duty? Suppose an ignorant, neglected child taken +home by a rich man, taught to work, the world of industry, with all of its +prizes, kept in his sight, until he begins to cherish the hope that some +day he can have a happy fireside of his own; suppose further that just as +he reaches the age of discretion the adopting father sets him where he may +see the fair world plainer and long for it more than ever, but so +completely strips him of all means and opportunity that there is nothing +for the outcast but ignoble life and uncared-for death. How you would pity +the outcast! how you would curse the false father! I cannot believe that +the nation will prove such an unnatural parent to these its helpless and +lovable children. It may be that some thousands of them, nay, some +millions, may be left to perish in their dire constraint. But when the +people fully understand, their consciences will awaken, and they will give +the American negro a bright house-warming. + +Suppose we do not give him his State, or suppose it will be long years +before we give it to him, what do you say we are to do for him? + +We must help Booker Washington and his co-laborers to the utmost. Grant +that they can snatch only a few brands from the burning. Is it not most +praiseworthy to save even one? Further, I can never abandon the hope that +the nation will yet allot the negroes their State, even if to do it land +must be condemned on a large scale. When that fair day does dawn on +America, out of the scholars of these worthy teachers will come many a +good shepherd for the blacks in their new land. This may now be but a +glimmering of hope. All the good must join in effort to enlarge and +brighten it. + +We should not begrudge the higher education to the few in the upper class +who can get it. The negroes need teachers, preachers, writers, and others +of the learned occupations. + +We should impartially equalize the negro population to the white in common +school privileges. Both ought to have rational industrial training. The +right primary education is just beginning to show itself. It will more and +more recognize what a prominent factor the hand has been in evolution. +Think of the superiority of animals with, to those without, hands. What a +high brain the elephant has made for himself by exercising his single +hand; the polar bear kills the seal by throwing a block of ice; the 'coon +goes through his master's pockets for sweetmeats; the greater intelligence +of the house-cat as compared with the average dog is due to long use of +the forepaws as rudimentary hands. Think of how we note humanity dawning +in the monkey ever busy with his hands. Think of the importance of his +hands to beginning man. With them he could gather fruits, rub fire-sticks +together, make war-clubs, spears, fish-hooks, bow and arrows, bar up his +cave door against beasts of prey, elevate his roosting place in a tree too +high for night prowlers, and do all other vital things up the whole ascent +to civilization. The steady enlargement of man's brain has been mainly +because of his progressive use of his hands; for whenever a new thing was +to be done his brain had first to acquire faculty of telling hands how to +do it. To train the hands is the true way to develop brain power. The +negroes in American slavery had risen far above the level of West African +hand ability, and at emancipation they were prepared to go higher by leaps +and bounds. Had they from that time steadily on been drafted off into +their State, gradually, as Bishop Holsey suggests, and a tithe of the +millions which have since been lavished in giving them premature literacy +and smattering of learning been applied in teaching their children +handicraft faculty and the best methods of labor, the promise for them now +would be satisfactory to their dearest friends. Somebody wisely advises, +Never do the second thing first. Those who took charge of the negro when +he was freed tried to make him do the hundredth or thousandth thing first. +Instead of patiently schooling him in handicraft and self-support until he +was really ready to take part in his own self-government, they made the +ignorant and inexperienced slave of yesterday a complete citizen, and +plunged him up to his neck into politics and letters. What a baleful +_hysteron proteron_ was this. The looming greatness of Booker Washington +is that he teaches by his actions that the seeming advance was in fact +prodigious retrogression, and he strives with all his might to draw the +negro backwards to his right beginning. Let us further his good work by +incorporating the utmost practicable of his industrial training in our +common school system for both whites and blacks. America has learned +important military lessons from the redskin; and, as I am almost sure, she +acted on his suggestion when she confederated the separate colonies. Let +her now show similar good sense in permitting a negro to teach her the +true system of education for the new times.[195] + +Now as to lynching. It is entirely wrong to conceive of a popular outbreak +against one who has outraged a sacred woman as lawless. It is the furthest +possible from that, being prompted by the most righteous indignation. The +wretch has outlawed himself. Society can no more tolerate such an insult +to its peace than it can permit a tiger to go at large. It is under no +obligation to him whatever. It is the people dealing with him that should +concern us. We ought to keep them from brutalizing themselves and their +children. We must put down lynching with gentle firmness. The first thing +to do is to shorten the "law's delay" as much as possible. After the State +has made the enabling constitutional amendment, if such be necessary, let +an act provide that whenever an alleged crime likely to excite popular +violence has been committed the governor select a judge to try and finally +dispose of the case, three days only, say, being allowed for motion for +new trial or taking direct bill of exceptions; both the supreme court and +the court below to proceed as fast as may be through all stages until +acquittal or execution. Let the governor earnestly ask for some such +measure, and let him also, after he gets it, impressively appeal to the +people to assist in enforcing the law. With this preparation, more than +ninety per cent of the whites will approve the most decided action of the +military protecting prisoners, if that be necessary. Just at this time +(September 27, 1904) there is a very decided manifestation of +anti-lynching public opinion in the south. We should strike while the iron +is hot, and bring it about that the law itself make quick riddance of the +ravisher. It should be a spur to us that the party opposed in politics to +the great majority of southerners finds much support and help from every +lynching in this section. Why should we play into its hands? + +The last thing that I have to say is that the south ought to invite +immigrants only of white blood. We want no settlers from whose +intermarriage mongrels would spring. All Europeans should receive +welcome--the Germans perhaps the warmest. But in my judgment those that +will most advantage us are the truckmen, growers of the smaller and larger +fruits, grass, grain, and stock farmers, manufacturers, miners, builders, +contractors, business men, and skilled laborers, of the north. It looks +now as if the cotton mills of England as well as of the north would be +profited by coming to us; and it also seems probable that there will be +for many years so great a demand for our cotton that the worn-out soil of +the older parts of the lower south must be restored to more than virgin +richness by the method which Dr. Moore has patented and made a gift of to +the nation, or some other intensive culture; and that there must be +consequently great multiplication of southern mill-operatives and +agricultural workers in the near future. Recall what we have said in the +last chapter as to the future promise of the section. Every day the south +by disclosing some new opportunity cogently makes new invitation to +immigrants. It is the interest as well as the duty of the nation to remove +the great clog upon development of the south. That clog is the presence of +some millions of unassimilable negroes in the section. It is also the best +interest and the highest duty of the nation to segregate these negroes +into a territory of their own. As Bishop Holsey says, and what I believe +with my whole soul, "The union of the States will never be fully and +perfectly recemented with tenacious integrity until black Ham and white +Japheth dwell together in separate tents."[196] + + * * * * * + +I must add an epilogue to these chapters on the race question as I did to +that on Toombs. + +Brothers and sisters of the north, you should learn why there is a solid +south. There is but one cause. It is the menace to the whites from the +political power given the negroes by the fifteenth amendment. There is +nothing in your section--in its past or its present--from which I can +illustrate to you the gravity of this menace to us. In not one of your +States are there ignorant negroes in so great a number that, by combining +with the debased whites, they can make for it such a constitution and laws +and set up such authorities as they please. We, your brothers and sisters +of the south, have lived under the rule of this foulest of coalitions. We +know from actual experience how it plunders and preys upon honest workers, +producers, and property owners; how it licenses and fosters crime. In my +own State, from the first day that a governor, elected by fiat voters and +ex-whites, as we called the latter, was inaugurated, until we virtually +restored the supremacy of our race by carrying the three days' election in +December, 1870, fifty dollars would get a pardon for the greatest offence, +and robberies, burglaries, horse-stealing, and the like each went free for +a much smaller sum. Is it forgotten that the negro speaker was voted one +thousand dollars by a South Carolina legislature, ostensibly as extra +compensation for unusual services, but really of purpose to reimburse him +for a bet lost upon a horse race? Why, the foremost of our people in +virtue, wisdom, and patriotism were agreed that these sordid tyrannies +should be subverted at once and at any cost to ourselves. The emergency +justified any practice, device, or stratagem at the polls by which we +could defend our homes, families, and subsistence against assassins of the +public peace, wholesale robbers of the people, and instigators and +protectors of every crime. It justified the shotgun and six-shooter in +politics just as legitimate war justifies the musket in the hands of the +soldier. It called forth most righteously the Ku-Klux. That spontaneous +resistance finds a close parallel in the battles of Lexington and Bunker +Hill, fought before American independence was declared. But the Ku-Klux +fought for something still dearer than the dear cause for which our +forefathers bled in the two battles just mentioned. Had the latter failed +in the war they had thus begun, their children and people would +nevertheless have had such good government as England is now giving the +defeated Boers; but had the southern whites failed in their defence, their +land would have for long years been befouled like Hayti, and those who had +not been slaughtered unspeakably degraded. I think that all our countrymen +who so rightfully eulogize the heroes of Lexington and Bunker Hill should +also learn to give the greater praise to the southern heroes whose +indomitable spirit routed the madmen that, with all the power of the +federal government in their hands, tried their best to give the section +over to negro rulers. Brothers and sisters, "picture it, think of it," +until you can fully understand that hour of our trial. All my northern +acquaintances who have resided in the south for several years--they are +many--come to look at the subject just as the natives do. A candid and +honest settler from Vermont has told me how he was made to change his +mind. Conversing with a southerner, he had reprehended the different ways +in which the negro's ballot had been rendered nugatory. The other replied, +"Suppose that there was an incursion of Indians given suffrage into your +State in such a mass as to make them seventy-five per cent of all the +voters, wouldn't you whites in some way manage either to outvote or +outcount them!" The Vermonter answered in the affirmative. We had to +deliver ourselves. We used the only means at our command. + +It was not to be thought of that these negro governments be endured, even +if tempered by the Ku-Klux, for government is in its nature lasting and +permanent while the other was only temporary. They would have gradually +gathered strength. Then there would have been rapid enrichment of a few +exceptional negroes and rapid expulsion of the whites impoverished by +emancipation, from all their little that was left. And then, the leading +negroes desiring nothing else so much, there would have come many white +men and women, each one willing to climb out of the depths of want by +intermarriage with a prosperous negro. Who can predict what would have +been the future of mongrelism thus beginning? We of the south are most +conscientiously solid against what we know from actual trial to be the +worst and most corrupting of all government; and we are still more solid +against everything that tends to promote amalgamation. Can you blame us +for standing in serried phalanx by white domination and against the +misrule exampled in the early years of reconstruction, and for our own +uncontaminated white blood and against fusion with the negro? We must be +solid in the face of these dangers, and as long as they are threatened by +the presence of millions of negroes in our midst. There is no other +solidity in the south. In all matters of the locality republicans and +democrats count alike. When one offers to vote in the primary, if his name +is on the registry list, and he appears on inspection to be white, his +vote is accepted; and he generally casts that vote, not for the interest +of a political party, but for that of the public. The triumphant election +in November, 1904, of independents or democrats, in four northern States +which at the same time went for Mr. Roosevelt, indicates solidity for the +true local welfare of the people as against the behests of party. So what +the white primary has produced in the south, has commenced in the north. +And the result in Missouri, voting for Roosevelt, republican, and Folk, +democrat, shows that what we may call federal independentism has commenced +in the south. This will spread as the people learn it does not hurt them +to split their tickets while voting upon national questions, if they but +maintain their solidity while voting upon State or municipal. + +Now may I be allowed some decided words, most kindly and inoffensively +spoken, as to appointing negroes to federal offices in the south. It is no +sound argument for it that now and then some negro may have been appointed +in a northern community which manifested no opposition. Consider the case +of Mr. William H. Lewis, a negro lately made assistant district attorney +in Boston by Mr. Roosevelt. He is a Harvard graduate, was captain of the +Harvard eleven while in college, had represented Cambridge in the +Massachusetts legislature, and the community was not at all averse to his +appointment.[197] Therefore when it was made there was no disregard of the +wishes and feelings of Boston and the regions adjoining. But when a negro +is given office in the south, it is felt by all the community to be an +insult. Would President Roosevelt cram the appointment of a white down the +throats of a northern community in which all the best citizens protested +against it? Would he not confess to himself that the wishes and feelings +of these good people ought to be respected, even if he considered them +foolish and unreasonable? It seems to me that he would, and that he would +find for the place somebody else in his party acceptable to the locality. +Why should he not do the like when his southern brothers and sisters who +have such convincing reasons against the encouragement of negroes in their +politics, protest unanimously against his filling an office in their midst +with a negro? Will he snub them because a negro has more sacred right than +a white? Is that what he means by keeping open the door of hope and +opportunity? Or will he snub them because enough of punishment has not yet +been given them, and because the south is still a province or dependency +on which he is justified in quartering his partisans and pets without +regard to the feelings and wishes of all the better inhabitants? + +Brothers and sisters of the north, I cannot believe that any one of you +who impartially considers the subject, would ever approve appointing even +the most competent and deserving negro to a southern office in the teeth +of universal objection by the whites of the community. + +My last word is to implore every honest one in the country to lay aside +all prejudice and master the southern situation before judging. Whoever +does this, whoever will accurately place himself in the shoes of a good +southern citizen, will, I most firmly believe, approve the attitude of the +south, with his whole heart and soul. + + + + +APPENDIX + +THE OLD AND NEW SOUTH, a Centennial article for the International Review, +afterwards corrected and published separately. New York: A. S. Barnes & +Co. 1876. + + +The approach of the Centennial Celebration is not hailed in the south with +the demonstrative joy of the north. It would be out of taste to expect +that the former should appear to triumph greatly over the life of the +nation preserved at the cost of her recent overthrow. Her late antagonist +can rejoice in a vast and happy population, great material prosperity, and +the fresh fame of a world-renowned success. It is meet, while remembering +she has so lately saved the union by her stupendous armipotence, that the +north should exult as a people never did before. The south has been made +to feel the pangs of a sudden impoverishment and the incalculable +discomfort of complete economical unsettlement; and she has not learned +the new lessons which she must learn to become self-sustaining and +progressive. But her earnest spirits, doing painfully the slow task of +repairing lost fortunes; seeking after the system proper to succeed +planting; striving to make their homes pleasant again and to give their +children a fair hope in the land,--these intent workers, who are most of +them scarred confederate veterans, even if they will not say it loudly, +have come around to hold in steadfast faith that it is far better the Blue +Cross fell, and the American union stands forever unchallengeable +hereafter. And they have brought with them the great mass of their people. +They cannot joy so happily as the north, but they have a warm welcome for +the Great Commemoration. For they see that the evils which followed as the +scourge of defeat are soon to pass away, while the fall of slavery and +the failure of secession are to prove greater and greater blessings as +years roll on. + +And so the time has come for a southerner calmly to discuss the past, +present, and future of the south. He has no use for the methods of popular +and unscientific politics, wherein everything is blamed or applauded as +being the result of party measures. The intentions and motives of the +actors, on both sides of the late strife, will give but proximate +explanations. How the two sections became, to use the fine phrase of Von +Holst, economically contrasted; how the southern people and their +representative politicians were bred, under their circumstances, into +opposition to the union; and how the northern people and their +representative politicians were bred, under widely different +circumstances, into love of the union; how the long clashing in politics +culminated in civil war; how the south was utterly crushed and her whole +industrial system destroyed; how she slowly re-erects herself into a new +condition better than the old,--the ultimate solution of these questions +can only be found by discussing them in the light of those laws of +development which give every community a policy suited to what it discerns +to be its best interest. These laws are of far more importance than the +politician, who is but their creature. Leaving to others to fight over the +old struggles of the political arena and bandy hard words with one +another, we will try to discuss our subject in the manner we have +indicated to be appropriate. + +To understand the present and future, we must first understand the past. +To understand the New south, we must first understand the Old south, the +distinguishing feature of which was negro slavery. Mr. Stephens, then +Vice-President of the southern confederacy, in an address to a large +assembly in Savannah, in March, 1861, said of the new government: "Its +foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that +the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery--subordination to +the superior race--is his natural and normal condition." There is no doubt +slavery was the corner-stone of southern society; and when it was removed, +four years later, a thorough disintegration of the whole fabric was the +logical result. + +When our country was first settled, the southern regions were far more +attractive in soil and climate; and their other natural +resources--minerals, good harbors, navigable streams, water-power idling +everywhere, to mention no more--were equal to those of the other section. +The subsequent advancement of the north has been so rapid as to excite the +wonder of the world; while it is said by us of the south, jesting upon our +worn-out and exhausted land, that we have done worse for the country than +the Indians before us, who stayed here many centuries and yet left the +soil as good as they found it. + +The plantation system was the great barrier to southern progress. From its +first historical appearance, among the Carthaginians, from whom the Romans +seem to have derived it, this rude and wholesale method of farming has +rested on slaveholding. Its workings have been similar everywhere. In +Italy, under the Roman republic, absorbing the petty holdings, it drove +out the small farmer; it destroyed the former respect for trades and +handicrafts, and brought them into disfavor; it prevented the development +of the industrial arts; it created a non-reciprocal commerce. Centuries +later, it did the same things in our southern States. + +A sketch of the leading features and results of the plantation system, as +it existed in America, is our proper beginning. + +The driver, as the negro foreman was called, was not very common in the +south, and was generally under the superintendence of the overseer. Could +the planters have made a good overseer of the driver, of course they would +have consulted their interest, and reproduced the ancient slave-steward of +Rome. Slaveholders keep their slaves under careful surveillance, but they +do not usually overlook them in person. It is not often that a master +engages in an employment which brings him into daily and intimate contact +with the lowest orders, and which he instinctively feels to be degrading. +The planter could have neither his first choice, which would have been a +slave overseer, nor his second choice, a superintendent from his own rank +in society; and so, as the next best thing, he took as overseer a white +hireling from the non-slaveholding class. The tillage of the fields was +thus intrusted to the overseers, who were, for the most part, men of +little education and business skill, and who had no interest in their +employment except to draw its wages. Thus the foremost, if not the only, +southern industry was managed by incompetent and careless agents. + +The Roman master, in the later days of the republic, having always vast +markets open to him, shunned the expense of providing for women and +children, and bought new slaves instead of breeding them; but the closing +of the African slave-trade, and the softer hearts and manners of modern +times, led our planters, at last, to rely on propagation as their only +source of supply. The negroes were, therefore, well cared for, and, in a +genial clime, increased rapidly. This increase, however, did not keep pace +with the increasing demand for southern products, and so the market value +of the slave rose rapidly. To the Roman slaveholder, land was almost +everything, and his rustic slaves nothing; to the southerner, the slaves +were almost everything, and the land nothing. There was no careful +cultivation of the soil, no judicious rotation of crops, and no adequate +system of fertilization. Southern husbandry was, for the most part, a +reckless pillage of the bounty of nature. The planter became possessed +with a roving spirit, and was continually seeking "fresh land," as virgin +soil was termed. In the older sections, where there was most stability, +the best farming consisted in judiciously eking out the natural fertility +of the fields, and when that was exhausted, in leaving them to recuperate +by years of rest. Thus a given working force required, year by year, a +greater and greater allowance of land, and the plantations became steadily +larger, the small farmer retiring, and the white population becoming +continually less. Many of these older sections turned, from being +agricultural communities, into nurseries, rearing slaves for the younger +States where virgin soil was abundant. The fertile lands of the new +settlements, by yielding bountiful crops, gave fresh impulse to the +plantation system, and here the small holdings were absorbed more rapidly +than they had been in the older States. The southern slaves, regarded as +property, were the most desirable investment open to the generality of +people that has ever been known. They were patient, tractable, and +submissive, and never revolted in combined insurrections, as did the +slaves of antiquity. Their labor was richly remunerative; their market +value was constantly rising; they were everywhere more easily convertible +into money than the best securities; and their natural increase was so +rapid that a part of it could be squandered by a shiftless owner every +year to make both ends meet, and he still be left enough of accumulation +to enrich him steadily. And so the plantation, or rather the slave, system +swallowed up everything else. + +There were no distinct industrial classes. There were negro blacksmiths, +negro carpenters, negro shoemakers, etc., all over the land, but they were +mere appendages to the plantations, and far inferior in capacity and skill +to the artisan slaves of antiquity. + +The commerce of the south was non-reciprocal. She traded raw produce for +manufactures which she should have made herself, or which she should have +got in exchange for manufactures of her own. The over-mastering energy of +slave property, dissolving, as it were, all things into itself, kept her +from that development of trades, manufactories, and industrial arts which +is the solid and unprecedented progress, and far more durable wealth, of +the north. + +There were a few exceptions in the way of restorative agriculture, and of +diversified investments of capital in railways, manufactories, inland +navigation, and mercantile enterprises. All along the northern border +there were efforts to let go slavery, and non-slave industry was slowly +emerging in a few places; but these things were as dust in the balances. +The slave system was rooted in the best portions of the land, and nearly +all of the productive wealth of the south was in, or dependent upon, +planting. Implacable enemies of slavery were rapidly increasing in numbers +and power, but she continued blindly sacrificing everything to rear +negroes. When actual emancipation came--that nipping May frost--the south +showed, on a gigantic scale, in her poverty and one solitary and +portentously dried-up source of wealth, a parallel to Ireland, smitten +with famine by the sudden failure of her only supply of food. When the +charity of the world and the returning bounty of nature had again fed the +Green Isle, everything fell back into the old track, and she could go on +smoothly as before. But not so with the south: her wealth has fled; her +occupation, the plantation system, is gone; and she must, for a +generation, grope painfully in the dark, trying novel ways of subsisting, +enduring want and many failures, before finding again the light of plenty +and comfort. + +The duties of the planter have changed. The management of a farm is not +like that of a plantation, and one skilled in the management of slaves is +not necessarily efficient in the directing of freedmen. Many other +countries have been impoverished by wars; but is not this instantaneous +and almost complete taking away of a great people's mode of living unique +in history? The most resolute secessionist would have lost heart and put +up his sword, could he have seen, before the war commenced, how easily the +solitary prop of southern wealth and comfort could be overturned, to be +set up no more. But in none of the ablest of the anti-secession arguments +of 1860 were the consequences of defeat predicted. + +Some portions of our country have been built up into a high degree of +prosperity by a steady influx of foreign settlers. How much has been added +to the power and wealth of the northern States by the immigration from the +old lands of those who, when first they come, can do no more than subsist +themselves by their own industry, almost defies computation. How the force +of the preponderant population of the north pressed upon the south during +the war, and at last crushed her down! Slavery repelled the free immigrant +from the south, and he went elsewhere with his power to enrich and defend. + +The uniform and rapid advancement of civilization is mainly due to the +struggle of the poor to better their condition. These efforts result in +complex division of labor, accumulation of wealth, and better than these, +in the production of a great population engaged in diversified industries. +In such a population, improving year by year in business habits, consists +the strength of a nation. The slave had no hope of rising, and the system +of which he was a part repelled free workingmen, and thus the south lost +the benign emulation and energy of a lower class. The ancient slaves were +not alone rural laborers and domestic servants, as were those of the +south. The former, being of kindred blood with their masters and near +their level in natural capacity, were initiated in the various industries, +some of which flourished greatly under their management. Though the slaves +of old were very degraded, they were not as low and grovelling as those of +our day. Enfranchisement was common; and, in a few generations afterwards, +the descendants of the freedman were indistinguishable amid the body of +free citizens. The ancient states were not, therefore, prevented by +slavery from having advanced and diversified industries, nor were they +denied the impulse of a possible rising from the lower to the higher +classes. But the American slave was of the remotest race, far below his +master in development, and the horror of receiving him into the body of +free citizens grew continually stronger. The law discouraged manumission, +and frowned upon the increase of freedmen. Thus, the African slavery of +the south was the most hopeless form of servitude the civilized world has +ever seen; and, by preventing the formation of a great class of freemen, +engaged in respectable industry, it killed the very roots of social +progress. These influences of slavery, so repugnant to American ideas, +will be more vividly seen and understood in the answer to the question, +What would have been the present condition of the south had it not been +for slavery? Undoubtedly her land would have smiled with a fertility +richer than the endowment of nature; her industrial arts would, ere this +time, have branched out into multifarious activity; her own ships would +have been carrying her produce and manufactures abroad; and, as the crown +of all, she would have had a teeming population of workers, whose +education in the methods of self-support would have been the assurance of +unlimited future advancement. In brief, in all the elements of the +greatness of a community, the south might now have equalled, if not +excelled, the north. + +But there are some other effects of slavery to be noted before the outline +of the Old south can be clearly and fully drawn. + +Among the planters, costly and liberal instruction was given to a few of +those who were to adorn places of leisured ease, or to fill the necessary +professions and public positions; but, in the midst of the sparse and +shifting rural population, there could not be that devotion to the +education of all, which is one of the most conspicuous glories of the +northern States. + +In consequence of the sparseness of the planters and their roving habits, +there was not that subdivision of different portions of the counties into +small self-governing wards, which Jefferson so fondly desired. He said of +the New England townships, that they had "proved themselves the wisest +invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of +self-government, and for its preservation." He also said that he +considered the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging +on two hooks, to wit, "the public education, and the subdivision into +wards." This government of every vicinage in its home affairs by itself, +as originated in New England, and is now spread far and wide throughout +the northern States, is the most beneficent achievement of American +democracy. By this coercion of the citizen to participate in the constant +administration of public matters directly concerning his interests, +self-government becomes, as it should be, the business of everybody, and +everybody is compulsorily educated in the best of all learning for the +race. + +The finale of slavery remains to be told. As opposition to it increased +from without, the south became more and more closely united. She honestly +believed that wanton intermeddlers were attacking her dearest rights. The +steady and continually strengthening warfare against slavery, and her +continuous and earnest defence of it, began--it is impossible to determine +precisely when--to knit her into a nationality of her own. He who +understands what Mr. Bagehot calls "nation-making" will discover, in the +past history of the south, if he looks attentively, many signs of this +tendency, which steadily progressed unperceived on her part, and still +more so on the part of the north, until the south began to coalesce into a +nation as compact as her scattered and random elements would permit. The +long advocacy and support of slavery in the political arena had fevered +her whole people, and finally, under these promptings to a national life, +politics absorbed nearly all of her intellectual powers. + +There is a striking parallel between this sustained effort of the south +and the struggle of Ireland, when the latter, for the fifty years ending +with the advent of the present century, was arrayed against the British, +in their encroachments upon her independent government. During this +half-century, Ireland maintained that she was an independent integral part +of the British Empire, just as Virginia contended that she was a sovereign +in the federation of States. Ireland, like a southern State, challenged +every seeming interference, by the general government, in her local +affairs; and the claims put forth, in each instance, were inexorably +contested by an adverse government, claiming supremacy and supported by +superiority of power. Both were on the eve of revolutionary secession +without knowing it. The results in Ireland and the south were similar: +there was but one intellectual activity, namely, politics. The memory of +all Irishmen of that time not forgotten--and many of their names are +familiar words--is nothing but resistance to English aggression. Even +Curran, Ireland's great forensic advocate, made his world-wide fame in +defending Irishmen against the prosecutions of the British ministry. It +was much the same at the south in the period antecedent to the civil war. +She had neither literature nor science; but she had statesmen and +advocates, who will be remembered as long as her soldiers and generals. + +The national germ had long been growing below the surface, in darkness, +and at last it burst into view, and shot up into a body of amazing +proportions. There was not the birth of a new nation at Montgomery in +1861; only the majority of this vigorous young member of the family of +nations was there proclaimed. But, for all of the eloquence of its orators +and the virtue and bravery of its people, it was, as compared with its +adversary, in raw and untutored nonage, and the great disaster that befell +four years afterwards was then preordained. It was her unshunnable fate +that she should be denationalized on the battle-field. + +The late war was a conflict between implacable enemies. Each belligerent, +standing up for national life, was resistlessly coerced to fight to the +last. Neither can be blamed. The past may be taxed with lack of wisdom. It +may be that as Scotland and, more lately, Ireland have been peacefully +denationalized, a preventive, anticipating the dreadful event of war, +might years before have been devised by statesmanly forecast. The actual +combatants--the southerner fighting for the confederacy, and the northern +soldier bearing up the flag of the union--were equals in manhood and +virtue. The survivors, federal and confederate, at last see this, and +therefore they go in company to decorate alike the graves of the dead of +both armies. + +The cause of all these evils--the backwardness and stationariness of the +south; a wasteful husbandry, without other industries; the instability of +her wealth; her want of a great class of freemen engaged in the different +arts; her barbarically simple social structure; her neglect of common +schools; the absorption of all her intellectual energies in feverish and +revolutionary politics; and, finally, secession and the reddened ground of +a thousand battle-fields--was slavery. It is gone. The malignant cancer, +involving, as it seemed, every vital and menacing hideous and loathsome +death, was plucked out by the roots; and after a ten years' struggle of +nature, we see the body politic slowly but surely reviving to a health and +soundness never known before. + +Here we find the dividing line between the Old and the New south. The +former ended, and the latter began, with the giving of freedom to the +negroes--an event which will prove in the future to have been an +emancipation even more beneficial to master than to slave. Immunity from +all the evils of slavery which we have catalogued will distinguish the +New south from the Old.[198] + +The sudden impoverishment of the southern people, and the unlooked-for +change in their ways of living and thinking, had they occurred in the most +peaceful times, and been followed with the best of government, would have +produced a profound shock and a long paralysis. But the bitterness of +subjugation, and the mistake of needlessly offensive and goading +government, with harsh reconstructive measures, have prolonged the +lethargy. And yet the American union shows benignly in the present +condition and promised future of the section. The ten years since +emancipation are instructive. Slowly has the New south been disentangling +herself from the débris of the Old, and she has emerged far enough to +enable us to perceive that a better era has commenced. Much has been lost, +but more has been saved. All the germs of true wealth and power and the +solid well-being of a community have survived; and solace for the past and +earnest of a great future may be found in the fact that she has reached at +last, and for the first time, a position in which she can develop these +elements, free from the suffocating hindrances of former days. We may now +properly inquire, What of the past does the south retain, and in what will +consist her future progress? + +She retains her genial climate, her kindly soil, and her many natural +resources. If the peace of the American union is assured, as everything +now graciously promises, these natural advantages will, in a few +generations, far more than compensate for all her losses, and ultimately +place her in the very van of progress. + +The best inheritance of the New from the Old south is the southern people. +We have seen how slavery checked industrial development, and how many of +its other effects were hurtful. After allowing fully for all these, there +will be found a great residuum of progressive energy, of intellectual +strength, and of moral worth in the people of the southern States. They +need not fear a comparison, in these respects, with the most enlightened +communities. Great men, like Washington, Jefferson, Calhoun, Jackson, and +Lee; political and military heroes, judges, lawyers, and orators, such as +the south has given birth to, in unbroken succession,--are the +unmistakable signs of a great people. + +The rank and file of the confederate armies have given proof that the men +of the south must be classed, in all the elements of complete character, +with the best that the world has ever seen. Crime was so infrequent that a +single morning of the term of a rural court, before the war, nearly always +sufficed to dispose of every indictment; there was little want or +pauperism; virtue was everywhere the rule in private life, and there was +seldom even the suspicion of corruption in government or the +administration of justice. The history of this people since the war shows +that they are possessed of the best Anglo-Saxon mettle. They are slowly +beginning to thrive wherever they have been left to govern themselves, in +spite of the complete industrial revolution, the loss of property, and +change of occupation, of which we have written. And in many places, where +reconstruction has been harshest, and negro misrule yet prevails, the +whites have developed an unlooked-for self-maintaining capacity, and have +demonstrated that even there must be the eventual predominance of +intelligence and virtue, should "natural selection" alone work to secure +it. + +The southern people have learned much wisdom in the last ten years. Their +heavy vote in 1872 for Horace Greeley--a man to whom a foreigner would +have supposed them unappeasably hostile--if there was nothing else, would +alone suffice to show that they are rapidly laying aside all hindrances to +progress. And now that slavery is gone and she has so quickly conquered +the animosities of the war, the south may be likened to a capable and +energetic young man, who, having failed, as the result of inevitable +misfortune, in a wrongly-chosen business, has been relieved of all +embarrassments and has entered upon his proper calling. More may +reasonably be expected of such a man than of one more prosperous who has +not had the like discipline. + +As her nationalizing tendency has been destroyed by the removal of +slavery, and as her future must necessarily be shaped by union influences, +she will heartily embrace the political creed of the union. The doctrine +of the sovereignty of the States, which was advocated with very great +ability by many of the southern statesmen--notably by Calhoun, in his +speeches in congress, and in his "Discourse on the Constitution of the +United States," and with still more taking effect by Mr. Stephens in his +"Constitutional View of the War between the States,"--has now no disciples +at the south. General Logan gave expression to the prevailing creed of the +present, when he said, at a recent reunion of former confederate +companions: + + "In considering, then, the future of the south, there is one fact + suggested at the outset which has been demonstrated to us by the logic + of events. It is, that under the operation of causes, which, although + unseen at the time, appear now to have been inevitable in their + results, a vast _social organism_ has been developed, and is now so + far advanced in its growth as a _national body politic_, and no longer + a mere aggregation of States, that _unity_ is a necessity of its + further development. In reviewing the past, we can now clearly see + that this national organism has been _gradually developed_; and, while + many seek by various theories to account for the failure of the + confederacy, the result may be regarded as the necessary consequence + of those laws of development under which this social organism--the + United States--was being evolved." + +And the south is pleased to observe that there are no genuine signs of too +much centralization. On the contrary, the town system is destined to +spread fast and far; and the increase of local option laws; the splitting +of larger into smaller counties; the strengthening tendency to submit +constitutions and many legislative acts to voters; the greater disposition +often to amend the State constitutions in the interests of progress; the +vigorous growth in each State of its own body of laws; the rapid +multiplication of towns and cities, with governments peculiar to each, are +some of the many convincing proofs that local self-government is +increasing and flourishing. Of the last particular Judge Dillon says: + + "We have popularized and made use of municipal institutions to such an + extent as to constitute one of the most striking features of our + government. It owes to them, indeed, in a great degree, its + decentralized character. When the English Municipal Corporations + Reform Act of 1835, was passed, there were, in England and Wales, + excluding London, only two hundred and forty-six places exercising + municipal functions; and their aggregate population did not exceed two + millions of people. In this country, our municipal corporations are + numbered by thousands, and the inhabitants subjected to their rule, by + millions." + +Reflecting southerners see, in the present condition of the southern +States, the very strongest possible guaranty that the true balance +between national cohesion and local freedom is to be preserved. They see +that the happy equilibrium is of a character so permanent and stable as to +have survived the convulsion of civil war. The southern States are not +held as conquered provinces. On the contrary, aside from the abolition of +slavery and the fundamental legislation securing to the old slaves the +full fruition of their freedom, there has been no perceptible change in +the relations of these States to the United States. + +Surely, to the student of history, wherein _vae victis!_ is written on +every page, this fact has wonderful significance. It recommends the +American form of government to the rest of the world as the incoming of +the new stage of civilization, wherein oppression and war shall become +unknown. However long contending armies may devour populations and +paralyze industry elsewhere, we are assured that war-sick America will +fight with herself no more. This assurance repays the south a thousand +fold for all that she has lost and endured. + +The great economical interest of the south is her agriculture; and in this +industry, as well as among those who conduct it, a constant transition has +been taking place during the ten years since emancipation. There is a +melancholy change in the homes of landholders from the case and comfort of +_ante bellum_ days. The neat inclosures have fallen; the pleasant grounds +and the flower-gardens, once so trim and flourishing, are a waste; all the +old smiles and adornments are gone. Change at home is accompanied by still +greater change without. The negroes--and they constitute the great bulk of +the laboring population--tend to become a tenantry, cultivating the land, +in some instances, for a part of the produce, but oftener for a fixed sum +of money. Many of these realize from their labors little more than enough +to pay a moderate rent. Others work for wages, either in money or in some +portion of the crop made by their labor. As the negroes are scarce, and +their labor so important, they have often, directly or indirectly, a voice +in the area of land cultivated, the mode of cultivation, and the kind of +crop raised. The result, in many places, is retrogression. The face of +the country is much altered. Only a small part of the land, as compared +with that tilled before the war, is under cultivation, the remainder +becomes wild. Could the fallen confederates return they would not in many +places recognize their old homes. Nearly every man of average business +ability could control his slaves, before the war, with little trouble; but +it now requires far more than ordinary capacity to find and keep good +tenants, to employ laborers amid the present scarcity, and to retain and +make them remunerative when employed. The freedman is a different +character from his former slave self, and is to be governed by different +methods; and the true art of managing him is cabalism to many who were +prosperous planters before the war. Multitudes of these show great +despondency, for there have been thousands of failures among them. + +But when we examine into this depression, we find that it is but the +result of the transition from the former _régime_, and not a deep-seated +and fatal decay of the vitals. These are some of the symptoms of assured +recovery, noted within the last three or four years: a steady contraction +of credit, and widening prevalency of the cash system; growing conviction +that the whites must depend upon their own labor more, and less on that of +the negroes; augmenting number of land-owners who decline to secure the +merchants advancing supplies to their tenants and laborers; a greater +acreage devoted to food crops; general advocacy of diversified planting; +spreading dissatisfaction with the laws giving large exemptions to +debtors. Southern economical affairs, in their sinking, "touched bottom" +(to use the forcible expression now in vogue) about the end of 1874.[199] +There has been a probable increase since of the mass of distress, as the +heat of a summer day increases, by accumulation, for a while after noon, +though the sun is imparting less and less. Steady amelioration will soon +be general. A new system is slowly developing, and can be plainly +discerned among the rubbish of the old. The change from former days most +noticeable now is the multiplication, increased energy, and continually, +growing trade of the smaller towns. This is due to the decay of planting, +which was a wholesale system, and the coming-in of farming, which is a +small trading system using much less concentrated capital. The large +moneyed man, for evident economical reasons, buys in commercial +centres--in cities--but the small purchaser must needs buy in the nearest +market. Allowing for the great increase of farmers, and the control by the +negroes of their earnings, there are many thousands more of small buyers +in the south than there were before the war, and towns build up to sell to +them. + +There is another fact, not so noticeable as the rapidly growing local +trade, but still more important. A class of new planters, consisting +mainly of men too young to have become fixed in the methods and habits of +former days, is springing up. They are new yet; but there is, in many +parts of the south, at least one who is teaching many watching idlers by +deeds and silence. They have remodelled their domestic economy, +accommodating it to their smaller incomes and to the uncertainty of +household help. They have discarded the outside kitchen, have substituted +the cooking stove for the old voracious fireplace, and have brought the +well with a pump in it, instead of the old windlass and bucket, under the +roof of the dwelling, so that the household duties may be more easily +despatched by their wives and children. And they have also remodelled +their planting. They diversify their crops and products, raising more +grain, and introducing clover and new forage plants. Some abandon entirely +the cultivation of the old slave crops, and supply the nearest towns with +feed and provisions. These planters of the New south till less land, and +strive to improve it; they study the superiority and economy of machinery; +they provide themselves with better cotton-gins, often using steam to work +them; they have presses which require fewer hands than the old +packing-screw; better plows are used; and harrows, reapers, and mowers, +which, in many parts of the south, were seldom known before the war, are +now common. This little band keeps pace with agricultural progress, as +recorded in the journals; they seek for and find many new sources of +profit; they prepare the people for laws fostering the interest of the +planter in many particulars; they mold the opinion of their neighborhood; +and their ability, skill, and wealth slowly increase. They struggle with a +new order of things, having to think for themselves at every turn, and +often misstep and fall in the dark, but they pick themselves up, and find +the way again. The light of the new experience which they are kindling +grows brighter each year, and is beginning to draw some of their neighbors +to travel in it. + +It is not our object to give a false impression of the influence of the +class of farmers last referred to. They are but few, and their efforts are +but the beginnings of the happy coming change. Their courage, power, and +numbers are manifestly on the increase; and, as there is no other +progressive activity in agriculture, and they meet no opposition save the +passive resistance of despondency and inaction, it is almost certain that +they will lay deep and sure the foundations of the needed renovation of +the south. It is their belief that, to make agriculture generally +prosperous, and to school the people to habits of thrift and saving, are +the first steps, and that manufactories and trades and heterogeneous +industries will naturally follow. + +They desire northern settlers, to add useful features to agricultural +economy, and diversify planting. A few have come, and they are prospering. +It seems rational to expect a steady influx of these for many years, +bringing capital and methods better suited to the needs of the changed +times, raising the value of landed property out of its impeding +prostration, and strengthening the industrial force. The climate; the +abundance of cheap, cleared land; the long settlement having demonstrated +the country to be healthy; the fact that plowing and other important +outdoor work can be done on the farms all the winter round; the many +railways, the multiplying towns and growing cities; the variety of +products, and easy access to market--now that slavery and the animosity of +war are gone, and the misrule of the carpetbagger has ended nearly +everywhere--these, and many other advantages daily disclosing themselves, +excel most of the new States and the Territories in offering inducements +to immigrants; and, in due course of time, a vast number of settlers, both +American and foreign, will be added to the population. There are many +indications that the immigration of stock-raisers, wool-growers, +market-gardeners, orchardists, beekeepers, in fine, small farmers of every +kind, adapted to the soil and climate, will soon begin in earnest. When it +does, the rebuilding of the south will be rapid. + +The coming-in of northern capitalists, to invest in railways, mines, +manufactories, and other large moneyed enterprises--most especially to +develop the great resources of water-power--may be expected to begin at +once, and considerably, upon the close of the centennial year. It seems +now that this is the most powerful agency that may be expected to begin +immediate work, in introducing the much-needed higher type of industrial +organization. + +The feelings of the two races toward each other were, for a few years +after the war, bitterly hostile. The whites had, all their lives, seen the +negroes in slavery, and from their infancy they had heard their preachers +defend slavery, not in the abstract, as their phrase was, but in the +concrete. The "concrete" meant African slavery, which was justified on the +ground that the African was divinely intended in his nature for slavery, +which was to him christianization and civilization, so long as he remained +a slave; while, the moment he was set free, he would revert to his +primitive barbarism. When these God-given slaves were suddenly cut loose +from mastership, and the wealth of the capitalist, the portion of the +orphan, and the mite of the widow were swept away at once by emancipation, +either directly or as a necessary consequence, there was a great shock +given to the whites. But when, three years afterwards, a new constituency +was created, in which the slaves, just emancipated, outnumbered the +whites, in many counties, the storm of passion that burst forth can hardly +be described. The whites feared that the old relation was about to be +inverted, and that they would be made slaves to the negroes. There was +many a deed of violence, and many a poor negro paid his life for a few +offensive words. + +But a wonderful change has taken place. When the southern States were +"reconstructed," as it is termed, in 1868, a negro school-keeper or +preacher, if known to be a republican in politics--as he generally +was--was hardly safe anywhere beyond the limits of a city. The negro +schools were often broken up by mobs, and sometimes black congregations +were attacked at night in their churches and dispersed by armed whites in +disguise. Now, the colored children troop securely to school, and the +colored churches and their congregations are sternly protected by law +everywhere. Seven years ago a colored person could hardly get justice, in +even the plainest case, from a jury of the other race. Now, in all of the +courts, he has the influence of white men to aid him, and rarely is an +unjust verdict rendered against him. He makes better friends of the +whites. There is no need for him to legislate or hold office over them; he +cannot yet do these things right for himself. He rises, however, and his +importance is felt more and more. His labor is a necessity. Learning to +use it aright, he will surely win all that he deserves. The healthful +sentiment prevails everywhere, at the north as at the south, and with the +late slave also, that to force his growth is as unfortunate to him as is +misjudged parental assistance, which often keeps adult children from ever +becoming self-reliant. The colored race in the south must be educated by +the struggle for existence into self-maintenance. This training, like the +material recuperation of the south, will require time, with patience and +hopefulness. + +The negro tends resistlessly to a fixed position in his own class. He does +not wish to ride in the same railway-car with fine ladies and gentlemen, +nor could you persuade him to send his children to a mixed school to be +teased by white scholars. He will not be legislated out of his natural +circle, where he feels comfortable, into one where he will be ill at case. +He seeks for himself a separate home, school, church, and occupation, in +all of which he can, at a distance, imitate the white, to whom he is ever +looking up. The statute books may be covered with laws having a different +purpose, but they will be as powerless to check the current of separation +as prescribed rates of interest are impotent to keep down usury when +money is dear. In a domestic world, a company and circle of his own, the +negro will make a start for himself. + +But the negro is grossly misunderstood. It is too generally forgotten that +he is many centuries below the white in evolution. Slavery has elevated +him far above the savagery of Africa, and introduced him to perhaps his +only chance of civilization. + +His future in the south is a mystery. Many of his best friends do not +believe that he can hold all the great advantages that he has gained in +the last ten years. The whites have been muzzled by hostile government. +They were stunned, while the negro was stimulated, by emancipation. Their +natural effort to hold on to the _ante bellum_ system has also helped the +old slave. But, when small and diversified farming is fully developed, and +accumulating capital brings in the higher industries, there may be a +general need for more efficient and skilled labor than the average negro +can supply. While he is forever safe politically against the white, he may +not be economically safe. + +In noticing the leading features of the New south, we have merely hinted +at her rich natural endowments. We have deemed of more importance the +character of her people, the new views and principles beginning to assert +themselves, the great economical changes following and to follow the +abolition of slavery, and the potent effects soon to be wrought by copious +immigration. For upon these the future mainly depends. + +The south is in a thorough and long transition. Her fields are to be made +fertile and to smile beautifully with an infinite variety of products; her +provisional labor is to be gradually supplanted by a permanent system; +industries, trades, and manufactories are to be founded and everywhere +multiplied; she is to have local organizations which will foster more of +self-government; her common schools are to be reconstituted and rendered +truly serviceable to all; and she has also her part to do in literature, +science, and art, as well as in domestic and national politics. We must +not be oversanguine in hope of her immediate progress; but we can +certainly take courage, when we find that every one who perceptibly +influences society by precept or by example--whether he be prominent like +Gordon or Lamar, or only a humble planter leading the fore-row in his +fields--is seeking for and finding the right path. These leaders must, in +the nature of things, have a larger following every year. In due time, +their children and their children's children will make the south of a +piece with the more prosperous portions of our country. + + * * * * * + +[I intended to incorporate in the foregoing these two passages, but by +some inadvertence they were not printed in their several places: + +I said of Von Holst: + + "Though he does not equal Mommsen's vivid delineation of the effects + of Roman slavery, his work is in grateful contrast with most of the + anti- and pro-slavery literature of America, by reason of his freedom + from ethical declamation, and his presentation of the real evils of + slavery, in the light of social, and especially economical, laws." + +I also said of the negro: + + "His flexibility; his receptivity to civilization, so different from + the inveterate repugnance of the Indian; his satisfaction and almost + complete freedom from discontent, insuring him against any violent + change; the probably long necessity for his labor; are all great + things in his favor."] + + + + +INDEX + +[To decide what is the right handle to a passage not pointed to by a +chapter title, and place it in an index where an average reader will +expect it, is often very hard. An alphabetical list of proper names and +rememberable words that are in or near passages which one may wish to look +for is much more easy to make than a minute subject-index, and it supplies +much surer clews. What an _Index Nominum_ does for the Latin or Greek +scholar suggests the serviceableness of this Index.] + + + A. + + Abbott, Ernest Hamlin, 404. + + Abbott, Dr. Lyman, 347, 405. + + Abolitionists, root-and-branch, 15, 16, 84 _sq._ + + Achæan league, 62. + + Adams, Charles F., 28, 57, 58, 347. + + Adams, John, 59, 142. + + Adams, John Q., 20, 256. + + Æschines, 69. + + Æsop, 343. + + Africa, "poor, oppressed, bleeding," 180, 185. + + Alamance, 77. + + Alexander, Tom, 277. + + Altgeld, 112. + + Amana community, 409. + + Aristides, 293. + + Aristocracies, natural, 90. + + Aristotle, 37, 39, 106. + + Arnold, Matthew, 196, 376. + + Athens, 89. + + Atlanta stockade, 381. + + + B. + + Bacon, 144. + + Bagehot, 437. + + Barnett, Samuel, 279. + + "Battle Hymn of the Republic," 205. + + Bayard, 241, 244. + + Beatrice, 195. + + Beauregard, 293, 316. + + Beecher, Henry Ward, 152. + + Beecher, Dr. Lyman, 189. + + Benjamin, 239. + + Benton, 126. + + Bentonville, 60. + + Bible, the, 39. + + Binney, 64. + + Bishop, J. P., 141. + + Blaine, 39. + + Boley, 374, 408. + + Bonnivard, 128. + + Breckinridge, 266. + + Brockhaus, 296, 360. + + Brooks, Preston S., 237. + + Brown, John, 264, 270, 352. + + Brown, Joseph E., 317. + + Brown, Prof. William Garrot, 274, 289, 369. + + Buena Vista, 310. + + Bunyan, 145. + + Burgoyne, 317. + + Burke, 41, 187, 204. + + Butler, 244. + + + C. + + Cæsar, 244, 343. + + California, 40, 80. + + Calhoun Correspondence, 100, 105, 123. + + Calhoun, Floride, 99. + + Calhoun, John C., 17, 18, 19, 22, 30, 40, 65 _sq._, 85, 89, 135, 143, + 150, 152, 153, 158, 186, 208, 209, 212, 225, 226, 239, 247, 250, + 251, 253, 254, 255, 299, 311, 351. + + Casabianca, 319. + + Cass, 239. + + Catullus, 151, 278. + + Centralizing and decentralizing forces in America, 5. + + Channing, 196. + + Chase (of Maryland), 54. + + Chase, Salmon P., 21. + + Choate, 146, 219. + + Cicero, 15, 18, 38, 124, 144, 237. + + Classics, ancient, 37. + + Clay, 97, 246, 251. + + Cleopatra, 19. + + Cleveland, Grover, 325. + + Clingman, 157. + + Clinton, George, 96. + + Cobb, Howell, 214, 229, 252, 253, 261, 285. + + Cobb, T. R. R., 38, 39, 42, 48, 266. + + Coleridge, 202. + + Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, the Anglo-African composer, 25. + + Comings, S. H., 368, 419. + + Cone, 218, 222. + + Confederate States, its evolution similar to that of the United States, + 53; + African slave-trade prohibited by its constitution, 55; + its commissioners, 74. + + Cornwallis, 317. + + Cosmic force and law, 26, 211. + + Cotton, 35. + + Cowper, 136. + + Crawford, George W., 246. + + Crawford, William H., 218. + + Crittenden compromise, 262. + + Crocket, 144. + + Cromwell, Oliver, 274, 281. + + Cromwell, Richard, 297, 298. + + Cumming, Major Joseph B., 35, 321, 347, 348. + + Curran, 437. + + Curtis, 70. + + + D. + + Dahlonega mint, 231, 245. + + Dane, Nathan, 64. + + Dante, 36, 129, 144. + + Darwin, 119. + + Davidson, Miss, 322. + + Davis, Jefferson, 18, 19, 30, 262, 272, 284, 349. + + Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, 22, 238, 300, 301, 302, 305, 306, 308, 315, 318, + 323, 327. + + Decameron, 170, 383. + + Decatur, 79. + + Declaration of independence, 41, 42. + + Delaware, 45, 56. + + Del Mar, 109. + + Demodocus, 384. + + Demosthenes, 18, 69, 124, 144, 258. + + De Quincey, 145. + + Dillon, 442. + + Dispensary, South Carolina, 111. + + Dixon, 369. + + Doolittle, 266. + + Douglas, Stephen A., 21, 262, 264, 266. + + Douglass, Frederick, 25, 362, 414. + + Dred Scott decision, 91. + + DuBois, Professor, 171, 193, 344, 362, 365, 382, 384, 386, 387. + + Duer, 233. + + Dumas, father and son, 25. + + + E. + + "Edwards's Sabbath Manual," 198. + + Elizabeth, Queen, 38. + + Epaminondas, 273. + + Erichsen, Hugo, 360. + + Erskine, 218, 237. + + Everett, Edward, 70. + + + F. + + Falstaff, 248. + + Farmville, 60. + + Faust, 118. + + Fessenden, 243. + + Fire-eaters, 15. + + First Manassas, 73, 315. + + Force-bill of 1833, 65 _sq._ + + Forrest, 290-293, 294. + + Fort Darling, 283. + + Fort Donelson, 283. + + Foster, F. C., 396. + + Frankland, 80. + + Franklin, battle of, 60. + + Freed Slave, the statue, 202. + + Free-labor and slave-labor systems, their antagonism, 45 _sq._, 49. + + Freeman, 62. + + Fuegians, 361. + + + G. + + Gaius, 141. + + Galphin claim, 245 _sq._ + + Gardner, James, 286. + + Garrison, 88, 350. + + Georgia Platform, 8-11, 183, 209, 215, 259, 260, 261, 263, 266. + + Germany, 77. + + Gethsemane, 197. + + Giddings, 152. + + Goethe, 144. + + Gordon, 273, 450. + + Grady, 326. + + Grant, U. S., 20, 30, 293. + + Greeley, 326, 441. + + Green, 235. + + Grinke, Archibald H., 392. + + Grover, 227. + + Grundy, Mrs., 274. + + "Gulliver's Travels," 202. + + + H. + + Hale, 141, 244. + + Ham, descendants of, 38. + + Hamilton, Alexander, 59, 64, 141, 247. + + Hamilton, Governor, 65. + + Hamlet, 319. + + Hammond, 246. + + Hampton, 393, 411. + + Hampton, Wade, 129. + + Hannibal, 258, 294. + + Hans, the Berlin horse, 25. + + Hardeman, S. H., 279. + + Harlan, 240 _sq._ + + Harris, Joel Chandler, 408. + + Harvey, 141. + + Hastings, 60. + + Hawkins, Sir John, 38. + + Hayne, Robert Y., 30, 82, 144. + + Hayti, 360, 366 _sq._ + + Heine, 197. + + Henry, Patrick, 21, 64, 97, 272. + + Herculaneum, 43. + + Hill, Ben, 277. + + Hill, Mrs. Ben, 326. + + Hilliard, 254. + + Hoar, Senator, 404. + + Holsey, Bishop, 362, 422. + + Homer, 144. + + Horace, 343. + + Horatius, 249. + + Houmas land, 246. + + Howard, General, 406. + + Howell, 54. + + Hunter, 238. + + Huschke, 141. + + Huse, Caleb, 289. + + + I. + + Iowa contested election, 240 _sq._ + + Ireland, 51, 52, 437. + + Iroquois, 77, 126. + + _Isabel_ (steamer), 245. + + Italy, 77. + + + J. + + Jackson, President, 283. + + Jackson, Stonewall, 91, 259. + + Jamaica, negroes of, 367 _sq._, 379. + + Jamestown, 36, 37, 345. + + Jefferson, 41, 53, 54, 56, 59, 106, 142, 147, 436. + + Jesus, 40, 128, 352. + + Jevons, 107. + + Johnson, Andrew, 307. + + Johnston, Joseph E., 284, 316. + + + K. + + Kansas, 209. + + Kent, Chancellor, 65. + + Kentucky, 186. + + Kimball House fire, 280. + + King's Mountain, 61. + + Knight, Landon, 296, 303, 305, 312, 316, 317, 319. + + Ku-Klux, 369, 423. + + + L. + + "Lana Rookh," 187. + + Lamar, 450. + + Landon, Miss, 177. + + Langdon, John, 96. + + Lassigeray, 293. + + "Laus Deo," 205. + + Lear, 128, 202. + + Lee, R. E., 20, 21, 128, 259, 276, 299, 356. + + Lee, Stephen D., 328. + + Legaré, 150. + + Lewis, William H., 425. + + Lexington, 77. + + Lieber, 187. + + Liebknecht, 112. + + Lincoln, Abraham, 20, 21, 23, 30, 33, 64, 160, 169, 210, 262, 267. + + "Little Giffen," 29. + + Livy, 146. + + Lloyd, H. D., 187. + + Lodge, Henry Cabot, 70, 72, 133, 134, 136, 137, 146, 155. + + Logan, General, 441. + + Lower class of negroes, 24-26, 410 _sq._ + + Lucanian ox, 200. + + Lucifer, 273. + + Lucretius, 87. + + Lumpkin, 83, 219, 222. + + + M. + + Madison, 56-58, 64, 68, 96, 133. + + Mallory, 272. + + Mann, Horace, 152. + + Mansfield, 141. + + Maoris, 413. + + March, 146. + + Marshall, C. J., 141. + + Martial, 278. + + Marx Carl, 107, 124. + + Maryland, 54. + + Mason, Jeremiah, 136. + + Maximilian, 298. + + McClellan, 294 + + McClung, 309. + + McDonald, 261. + + McDuffie, 222. + + McKinley, President, 357. + + McMaster, 70, 134. + + Megareans, 265. + + Mell, Dr., 277. + + Memorial Day, 322. + + Mexico, 51. + + Michaelangelo, 129. + + Mill, John Stuart, 106, 107, 265. + + Miller, Kelley, 392. + + Milton, 136. + + Missouri question, 40, 84, 209. + + Mitchell, John, 240. + + Mommsen, 260, 450. + + Monitor, 289. + + Monterey, 309. + + Morgan, Joshua, 223. + + Morgan, Lewis H., 76, 126. + + Murphy, Edgar Gardner, 359, 404. + + + N. + + Napoleon, 297 _sq._, 310. + + Nationalization, American, 4, 5, 61-83. + + Nationalization, southern, 4, 6-14, 51-61, 436-438. + + National Negro Business League, 402. + + Nations, law of, 75. + + Natural increase of slave property, 48, 49. + + New England, 54, 59; + environment of Webster therein, 147-152. + + New Jersey, 56. + + New York, 54. + + Niagara, 251. + + Noah's curse, 38. + + North Carolina, 80, 109. + + + O. + + Oedipus, 279. + + Oregon, 80, 84, 101, 226. + + + P. + + Pace, J. M., 322. + + Page, Thomas Nelson, 165, 384. + + Parker, Theodore, 152. + + Parsons, Prof. Frank, 109. + + Pennsylvania, 54. + + Pennsylvania ladies, two, 331. + + Peonage decision, 373. + + Pericles, 110, 265. + + Philippine, the, 26. + + Phillips, Wendell, 21, 88, 274, 356. + + Pickett, 19. + + Pierce, Bishop, 277. + + Pierce, President, 299. + + _Pilgrim, The_, 296. + + "Pilgrim's Progress," 202. + + Pingree, 112. + + Pinkney, Gustavus M., 98, 112, 119. + + Pinkney, William, 41, 79. + + Plato, 37, 106, 144. + + Plautus, 155, 195. + + Pliny, 39. + + Poe, 143, 150. + + Polk, President, 103. + + Pompeii, 43. + + Pompey, 212. + + Pope, 136. + + Post, Louis F., 25, 403, 406. + + Prentiss, S. S., 305. + + Primary, Georgia, 111. + + Primary, South Carolina, 111. + + Princeton, 331. + + Propontic, 259. + + Prynne, Hester, 329. + + Pugh, 239. + + + Q. + + Quintilian, 37. + + + R. + + Race question, 23-26. + + Randolph, John, 69, 97, 222. + + Ransy Sniffles, 87. + + Rebellion, 81. + + Reed, of South Carolina, 54. + + Renascence, 36, 41. + + "Republic of Republics," 64, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74. + + Rhode Island, 56, 80. + + Rhodes, James Ford, 17. + + Ricardo, 108, 109, 286. + + Roman law as to slavery, 42. + + Roosevelt, President, 33, 425. + + Ruskin, 202. + + + S. + + Saint Pierre, 43. + + Savage, 196. + + Sawyer, 307. + + Schurz, Carl, 134. + + Scipio, 294. + + Scott, General, 309. + + Scribner, Anne, 406. + + Sellers, Mulberry, 288. + + Seneca, 37. + + Seward, William H., 21, 22, 236. + + Shakspeare, 30, 136, 138, 144, 278. + + Sharpsburg, 273. + + Sherman, General, 346. + + Shiloh, 283. + + Shirley, 136. + + Simmons, 243. + + Simonides, 171. + + Slavery. (See chaps. ii., iii., x., xiv.) + + Slavery, ancient contrasted with southern, 155 _sq._, 432. + + Slave-trade, African, 46. + + Smith, Adam, 107. + + Smith, James M., 391. + + Smith, W. B., 365. + + Socrates, 196. + + South Carolina, 54, 90, 111. + + Southerners and northerners contrasted, 59-61. + + Southern Mutual Fire Insurance Co., 225. + + Spaight, 54. + + Spencer, Herbert, 144. + + Starke, W. Pinkney, 93, 94, 97, 100. + + State, for the negroes, 413 _sq._ + + Staunton, 255. + + Stephens, A. H., 21, 55, 69, 71, 82, 99, 106, 219, 221, 227, 232, 249, + 251, 252, 254, 257, 264, 266, 268, 285, 286 _sq._, 290, 306, 430. + + Story, 64. + + Stovall, 222, 290. + + Stowe, Mrs., 185, 187, 189, 197, 333. + + Stuart, J. E. B., 294. + + Sulla, 244. + + Sullivan, 106. + + Summer, Charles, 89, 152, 356. + + Summer, Colonel, 312. + + Surratt, Mrs., 298. + + Switzerland, 77. + + + T. + + Taylor, Dick, 273. + + Taylor, Edward B., 364, 383. + + Territories, intersectional strife over, 3, 46-49. + + Texas, 51, 80, 101. + + "The Fork," 397. + + Thomas, Thomas W., 266. + + Thomas, William Hannibal, 383. + + Thucydides, 27. + + Thurston, 381. + + Ticknor, Dr., 29. + + Tillinghast, 163, 166, 194, 361, 379, 380, 389, 392, 393, 411. + + Timrod, 29, 322. + + Titania, 198. + + Tobacco, 35, 55. + + Togoland, 344. + + Toombs, 18, 19, 30, 32, 41, 90, 99, 130-135, 150, 164, 186, 191, 198, + 208, 209, 284, 290, 292, 313, 380. + + Toucey, 238. + + Toussaint, 366. + + Town-meeting, 90, 436. + + Trent, 119. + + Troup, 256. + + Troy, 294. + + Turner, Bishop, 416. + + Tuskegee, 344, 411. + + Tyrtæus, 29. + + + U. + + "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 40, 161 _sq._ + + Upper class of negroes, 24, 25, 370. + + Upson, Frank L., 43. + + + V. + + Van Buren, 230. + + Vanderslice, 27. + + Vergil, 145. + + Vicksburg, 283. + + Virginia, 35, 36, 45, 54, 59, 153. + + Von Holst, 70, 101, 104, 119, 122, 123, 124, 439, 450. + + + W. + + Waddell, James, 262. + + Waddell, Moses, 93, 94. + + Wade, 239, 243, 266. + + Walker, J. B. A., 368. + + Washington, Booker, 25, 380, 387, 402, 409, 411, 414, 415, 417, 419, 420. + + Washington, Mrs. Booker, 395. + + Washington, George, 19, 53, 56, 64, 115, 118, 282, 440. + + Waterloo, 60. + + Watson, Tom, 224. + + Webster, Daniel, 19, 30, 64, 65 _sq._, 82, 83, 85, 100, 105, 113, 118, + 120, 121, 247, 255, 266, 275 _sq._, 304, 307. + + Wendell, Prof. Barrett, 28-30, 161, 162, 163, 206. + + West Territory, 54. + + White labor class, 336 _sq._ + + Whittier, 29, 88, 406. + + Wilfer, Reginald, 207. + + Willcox, Professor, 390, 403. + + Wilmot proviso, 155, 227. + + Wilson, General, 308. + + Winthrop, 252. + + Wirt, 141. + + Wirz, 298. + + Wright, Richard R., 344, 406. + + Wright, Silas, 242. + + Wyeth, 291. + + Wynne, John, 156. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] "Where Black Rules White," article by Hugo Erichsen, in _The Pilgrim_ +for July, 1905. + +[2] De Officiis, 1, § 89. + +[3] Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 579-583. + +[4] Gettysburg, 164, 165. + +[5] Quoted by himself in his Charleston speech, mentioned later on. + +[6] Speech at the banquet of the New England Society of Charleston, S. C. + +[7] A Literary History of America, 345. + +[8] _Id._ 346. + +[9] _Id._ 489. + +[10] A Literary History of America, 494, 495. + +[11] Major Joseph B. Cumming, speaking to the toast, "New Ideas, New +Departures, New South," at fourteenth annual dinner of New England Society +of Charleston, S. C., December 22, 1893. + +[12] See Cobb, Slavery, xcvii, xcviii, for relevant citations. Chaps. V. +and VI. of the Historical Sketch, the former entitled "Slavery in Greece," +and the latter, "Slavery among the Romans" (pp. lix-xcviii), are very +readable, learned, and adequate treatments of their respective subjects. + +[13] Cobb, Slavery, cxii. + +[14] _Id._ + +[15] Aristotle maintained the justice of wars undertaken to procure +slaves. See Cobb, Slavery, xii, foot-note 3, for references. + +[16] "Pliny compares them to the drones among the bees, to be forced to +labor, even as the drones are compelled." _Id._ xcviii. + +[17] In his chapter entitled "Slavery among the Jews" Mr. Cobb cites most +of the important passages. _Id._ xxxviii _sq._ + +[18] Twenty Years in Congress, vol. i. I. + +[19] 1, 2, 2. + +[20] _Id._ 1, 3, 1-2. + +[21] Dig. 1, 1, 4, where, in an excerpt from Ulpian, it is said that all +human beings are _jure naturali_ (that is, by the law of nature) born +free. + +We of to-day must not regard the last three passages cited from the Corpus +Juris Civilis as particularly reprehending the property of the master in +his slave. Cicero asserts that there is no private property whatever +according to the law of nature; that according to that law all things are +common property. He details some of the ways by which private +appropriation is made, such as long holding, entry into vacant lands, +capture in war, acquisition by contract, etc. According to this, a +prisoner of war stood on the same footing as a horse captured from the +enemy. By the law of nature there could be private property in neither. +But this law of nature was really repealed by the _jus gentium_, under +which both horse and prisoner alike became private property. If another +took either the horse or slave away from the owner, he would--to use +Cicero's language--violate the law of human society. De Officiis Lib. 1. +cap. 7, §§ 20, 21. + +[22] Inst. 1, 8, 1. When Mr. Cobb says that there is "but one voice in the +Digest and Code," book cited, xcviii, meaning that they give no +countenance to slavery, the statement is misleading. + +[23] In the first chapter of his History of England Macaulay ascribes this +result to moral causes, and to religion as chief agent. He is only one of +many acute historians who overlook the play of economical forces. + +[24] Cobb, Slavery, ccxviii (foot-note). + +[25] See p. 437 _infra_, where I have compared the struggle of Ireland for +autonomy during the last half of the eighteenth century with that of the +south narrated in this book. + +[26] Charleston Address mentioned above, 15. + +[27] Hist. of Fed. Gov., 2d ed., 59. + +[28] _Id._ 2. + +[29] See the Republic of Republics, 4th ed. The references in the copious +index, under the names Dane, Henry, Story, Webster (Daniel, not Noah), +will suffice to put the student in the way to finding ample support of the +statements in the text. + +[30] See Republic of Republics, 204-212 (chap. viii. of Part III.) +entitled "Daniel Webster's Masterpiece of Criticism," for copious proofs +of the statements made in the text. Hamilton, Madison, John Jay, and +Franklin are cited, and some eight or nine quotations from Washington are +made. The chapter is also instructive in showing State-rights utterances +of Webster made before and after the speech. + +[31] See Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 388, 389-392, 397-8; +and Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 207-211. + +[32] War between the States, two volumes. + +[33] The Republic of Republics; or, American Federal Liberty. By P. C. +Centz, Barrister, 4th ed., Boston, 1881. See what I said of it in 1882, +Am. Law Studies, §§ 943, 944. Subsequent examination and comparison have +given me a still higher opinion of this book; which in its well-digested +presentation of evidence exhaustively collected, and complete +demonstration of its main proposition, to wit, that in the opinion of the +draftsmen, also of all the advocates of the constitution, and of the +people ratifying, the States were sovereign before adoption and would so +remain afterwards, is unique, and far foremost, in the literature of the +subject. Compare this strong statement of Henry Cabot Lodge, uttered in +1883: + +"When the constitution was adopted by the votes of States at Philadelphia, +and accepted by the votes of States in popular conventions, it is safe to +say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton +on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who +regarded the new system as anything but an experiment by the States and +from which each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw, a +right which was very likely to be exercised." Daniel Webster, 176. + +[34] Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 23. The entire chapter entitled +"Secession and Coercion," _id._ 22-27, will repay consideration, setting +forth as it does what according to the author the brothers on each side +ought to have done under the law of nations. + +[35] Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, 103. + +[36] Morgan, Ancient Society, 132. + +[37] "It used to be a remark often made by Chief Justice Lumpkin, who was +a man himself of wonderful genius, profound learning, and the first of his +State, that Webster was always foremost amongst those with whom he acted +on any question, and that even in books of selected pieces, whenever +selections were made from Webster, these were the best in the book." A. H. +Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 336. + +[38] Ransy Sniffles is a character in Georgia Scenes, who has long been a +proverb in the south for one who habitually provokes personal encounters +among his neighbors. + +[39] See _infra_, p. 436. + +[40] See what he said February 20, 1860, in the United States senate, to +Clark, repeating the charge, as reported in the "Globe." + +[41] W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun +Correspondence, 69. + +[42] The inscription on her tombstone states--so I have been +informed--that she died in May, 1802. In a short while afterwards he put +the mother of his future wife in her place and bestowed on her the highest +filial love. + +[43] W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun +Correspondence, 78. + +[44] Starke's Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun Correspondence, 87. + +[45] Life of John C. Calhoun. By Gutasvus M. Pinkney, of the Charleston, +S. C., Bar, Charleston, S. C., 1903. + +[46] Calhoun Correspondence, 88. + +[47] Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 41. + +[48] War between the States, vol. i. 341. + +[49] A Disquisition on Government, and A Discourse on the Constitution and +Government of the United States, Works, vol. i. + +[50] Works, vol. i. (A Disquisition on Government) 72. + +[51] They were made in the United States Senate, one, September 19, 1837, +on the bill authorizing issue of treasury notes; the other, October 3, +1837, on his amendment of the bill just mentioned. + +[52] His "Barbara Villiers" and his "History of Money in America" are very +important. But his most valuable addition to the few books which have +taught true monetary doctrine is his "Science of Money." While in this he +does not state the fundamental principle of good money as clearly as +Calhoun does, yet he assumes it most accurately and builds upon it +everywhere. + +[53] "Rational Money," published by C. F. Taylor, 1520 Chestnut Street, +Philadelphia. The author does not show the deep insight and genial +originality of Calhoun and Del Mar; but he has presented the entire +subject with a judgment so sane in accepting the true and rejecting the +false in the belonging theory, that the book is the very best of existing +compilations. + +[54] To be nominated in the South Carolina primary, a candidate for +governor or any other State place must receive a majority in the whole +State, one for congress a majority in the district, one for a county place +a majority in the county. Where no candidate receives a majority a new +primary is held only to decide between the two who got the largest vote. +The primary first mentioned is a State primary, held on the last Tuesday +of August. At this date, the crop--to use planting parlance--having been +laid by for some six weeks, the voters have had ample opportunity from +reading the papers, talks with one another, and hearing speeches to inform +themselves fully. Just across the Savannah in Georgia, the State +democratic executive committee, so called, being the faithful organ of the +railroads, has since 1898 put the primary in the early days of June, in +busiest crop-time. This precludes any real canvass. It also keeps +thousands from voting; and so the always full turnout of railroad regulars +and workers--which is but a relatively small portion of the body of +electors--wins a plurality. The committee allows a plurality to nominate, +as of course a plurality can be had more easily than a majority. To be +sure of the State senate, nominations to it are made by a convention +instead of a primary. And conventions in the congressional districts +nominate candidates for the lower house. + +Contrasting the results--in South Carolina nomination is really the voice +of the people; in Georgia the people seem to get, while the railroads +really get, the governor, and, as everybody now expects, the railroads and +liquor men always have at least twenty-three of the forty-four senators. + +I believe that the Swiss-like grip of the people of South Carolina upon +their liberties, shaming Georgia so greatly as it does, is mainly due to +the influence of Calhoun. That influence is still benignly powerful, even +where unrecognized. + +I think that if the dispensary law were so altered as to give each county +the purchase of its liquor by, say, its supervisor, nominated by this +primary, the opportunity of graft, now discrediting the administration of +the law with many, would be effectually closed. There would then be +everywhere a trustworthy official, of their own election, to keep the +people advised as to proper prices and cost. It would be to lose all +chance of re-election for the official to cheat the public by colluding +with the liquor sellers. + +[55] Life of John C. Calhoun, 225-229. + +[56] _Id._ + +[57] Heyward thus translates: "Reason and good sense express themselves +with little art. And when you are seriously intent on saying something, is +it necessary to hunt for words?" + +[58] Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 133. + +[59] _Id._ 141. + +[60] Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 148. + +[61] As illustrating his anti-tariff progress, see what he says in his +letter of July, 1828, to James Monroe, Correspondence, 266; what in that +to his relative, Noble, of January, 1829, _id._ 269, 270; in that to +Samuel L. Gouvernour, of February, 1832, _id._ 310, 311; and what as to +benefit from having concentrated opinions in south, in that to his +brother-in-law, _id._ 313, 314. + +[62] Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, +Works, vol. i. 392. + +[63] Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, +Works, vol. i. 393. + +[64] Ancient Society, 147, 148. + +[65] A Disquisition on Government, Works, vol. i. 92-96. Compare for +Calhoun's treatment Benton's report of his conversations, and the +pertinent excerpts he gives from Calhoun's speech in the United States +Senate of February 15 and 16, 1833, Thirty Years' View, vol. i. 335 _sq._ + +[66] Daniel Webster, 50. + +[67] _Id._ 45, 46. + +[68] _Id._ 46. + +[69] _Id._ 48. + +[70] In his _Encyclopedia Americana_ article Mr. Carl Schurz strains as +hard as Mr. Lodge does in his biography to conceal the real position of +Webster. I commend the homespun reasoning of this paragraph to all such. + +[71] Daniel Webster, 59. + +[72] McMaster, Daniel Webster, 88. + +[73] Daniel Webster, 52. + +[74] Dartmouth College Causes.--Mr. Lodge's narrative, Daniel Webster, +74-98--is a very helpful introduction to the book just mentioned. + +[75] Lodge, Daniel Webster, 22. + +[76] _Id._ 22. + +[77] The twelve words meant are, "The congress shall have power to +regulate commerce among the several States." + +[78] Huschke ought to have stated this fact at page 19 of his edition of +Gaius, in order to give the latter his full posthumous glory. + +[79] We support our statement in this sentence by quoting below in this +footnote two passages which stand a page or two apart in the Plymouth +oration, italicizing one word in the former, and one word and a clause in +the other, which, if Webster had taken accurate note of the intellectual +ferment then active throughout all New England, he would have made much +stronger: + +"We may flatter ourselves that the means of education at present enjoyed +in New England are not only adequate to the diffusion of the elements of +knowledge among all classes, but sufficient also for _respectable_ +attainments in literature and the sciences." + +"With nothing in our past history to discourage us, and with _something_ +in our present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, that, +as it is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonderful +advancement of the country in all its other great interests, _we may see +also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters_." + +[80] Daniel Webster, 318-321. + +[81] _Ante_, 28-30. + +[82] Literary History of America, 354. + +[83] _Id._ + +[84] Consider his virtual confession when Mrs. Davis good humoredly taxes +him with saying in his speeches hard things of slavery which he knew from +actual observation to be fictions. Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 581. + +[85] Lecture in Tremont Temple, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. +637, 638 (Appendix G). + +[86] The Negro in Africa and America, by Alexander Tillinghast, M. A., N. +Y., 1902. + +This really scientific work, very complete though very brief, is as +indispensable to whomsoever would enlighten the country upon the race +question, as is the latest and best text-book to the lawyer considering a +case under the law treated therein. + +Mr. Page's "The Negro: The Southerner's Problem," N. Y., 1904, has not the +scientific merit of the last. But it most ably advocates the side +generally taken by the south. + +Both books are free from blinding passion and prejudice. + +[87] Book cited, 88. The italics are mine. + +[88] _Id._ 88. + +[89] The Negro in Africa and America, 88, 89. Italics mine, again. + +[90] Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. xviii. + +[91] These quotations from The Author's Introduction, Riverside ed., +lviii, lix. The last sentence italicized by me. + +[92] Tremont Temple Lecture, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. +641. The italics are mine. + +[93] Professor DuBois, born in 1868, in New England, whose writings show +that his mind has been soaked to saturation in abolition misstatement and +bitterness, and that consequently he is utterly unfamiliar with either the +average negro slave of the south and the conditions and effects of slavery +in the section, attributes the present unchastity of the negroes to the +frequent separation of man and wife by the master. Here is what he says: + +"The plague-spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. +This is no sudden development, nor the fruit of emancipation. It is the +plain heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his master's consent, +took up with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in the busy life of the +great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually dispensed with. If now +the master needed Sam's work in another part of the same plantation, or if +he took a notion to sell the slave, Sam's married life with Mary was +usually unceremoniously broken, and then it was clearly to the master's +interest to have both of them take new mates. This widespread custom of +two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty years." The Souls of Black +Folk, 142. + +This statement is utterly untrue, as Professor DuBois can easily find out +from thousands of most credible witnesses. I never knew of a single such +separation. Of course, I will not say that there were none at all. But I +do say, in contradiction of his assertion, as flat as contradiction can +be, that the separations which he describes were not common. Every +impartial investigator who has formed his opinion from the actual evidence +knows that the unchastity of the negro slave of America was an inheritance +from Africa. I do not dispute the assertion often made that there were and +are still chaste negro tribes of that continent. But our negroes did not +come from them. They came from the West Africans, accurately described +above in citations from Mr. Tillinghast. + +[94] Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. lxxxix _sq._ + +[95] Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. ii. 273. + +[96] Georgians, 128. + +[97] The Life of Robert Toombs, 29-49 (New York, Cassell Pub. Co.). + +[98] Bethany, A Story of the Old South, 10 _sq._ + +[99] Johnston and Browne's Life of A. H. Stephens, 218. + +[100] Toombs thus anticipates the trenchant but kindly criticism by +Woodrow Wilson of congressional ways of governing. Congressional Gov. +58-192, and in other places. + +[101] What he says July 29, 1857, on death of Preston S. Brooks is a good +example of the forced and labored style of his set speeches. Stephens +often said that his set speeches were failures. And unless they were made, +as that on the invasion of States, that on the duty of congress to protect +slavery in the Territories, and his justification of secession, January 7, +1861, under the excitement of a great cause, working the same effect upon +him as the ardor of extemporaneous effort, his set speeches are below the +mark. And I wish he had more carefully revised the three just mentioned, +following the example of Cicero, Erskine and Webster, who habitually +corrected and improved their words after they had been spoken. He does not +seem to have given his good speeches--the extemporaneous ones--any +systematic correction. Of all speakers and orators I ever knew or heard +of, he has used the file the least. It is my belief that he did not know +how to use it. Had he but polished just some of his best unpremeditated +efforts; as for instances his first speech for the retired naval officers; +his most important utterances under various heads of internal +improvements; his humorous anti-pension harangues; and his titanic +struggle in vain with his own party to keep Harlan seated--what a find +they would be for the school speech books of the future! His lecture on +slavery, delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24, 1859,--a good +copy of which is given by Stephens (The War between the States, vol. i. +625-647)--is the best specimen extant, within my knowledge, of his +deliberate style. If I may make such a distinction, it was carefully +revised, but never corrected. The reader will find it, I believe, the very +ablest of all the many defences of slavery in the south. + +Mrs. Davis states that during the times of excitement concerning the +compromise of 1850, "He [Toombs] would sit with one hand full of the +reporter's notes of his speeches, for correction," with a French play in +the other, over which he was roaring with laughter. (Memoir of Jefferson +Davis, vol. i. 411.) As his speech of December 13, 1849, and the Hamilcar +speech of June next following, need very little correction, I incline to +believe that he did at least try to revise them. Naturally leading such a +novel movement as he then was--it will be fully explained a little later +on--he would desire to send forth his views in only carefully considered +words, and probably he corrected the proofs of the two speeches just +mentioned with something like diligence. In his pleadings, law-briefs, +sketches of proposed statutes, letters, etc., of which I saw much in his +last years, he was so palpably indifferent towards improving his first +draft that one might know it came from lifelong habit. + +[102] Third Session, 240-244. + +[103] _Globe_, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 360 (I am thus particular +in giving this reference, from a sense of justice to the memory of George +W. Crawford, which is now and then ignorantly aspersed because of the +Galphin claim). + +[104] See his argument, May 25, 1858, for putting duties on the home +valuation of imports; note also how familiar he is with trade, the motive +of smuggling, the relation of exchange; also what he says of the tariff of +1857, _Globe_, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 466, 467, 470. For his mastery of +trade and commerce, see what he says June 9, 1858, especially pp. +2832-2834. + +[105] Stephens, War between the States, vol. ii. 338. + +[106] War between the States, vol. ii. 186. + +[107] Address in the Supreme Court of Georgia, March 9, 1886. + +[108] War between the States, vol. ii. 217. + +[109] Waddell, Life of Linton Stephens, 237. + +[110] The rare perfection of Catullus's spontaneous poetic expression is +something like adequately represented in two quotations made by Baehrens, +one from Niebuhr, and the other from Macaulay, especially in the former. +Catulli Veronensis, Liber II. 42. + +[111] War Between the States, vol. ii. 329-333. + +[112] Pleasant A. Stovall, The Life of Robert Toombs, 218. + +[113] The War between the States, vol. ii. 781 (Appendix). + +[114] The supplies for the Confederate Army, How they were obtained in +Europe and How paid for.--Personal Reminiscences and Unpublished history. +By Caleb Huse, Major and Purchasing Agent, C. S. A. Boston, Press of T. R. +Marvin & Son, 1904. + +I commend this narrative to Professor Brown. Should he study it he will +have cause to retract what he has written (The Lower South in American +History, 164) in disparagement of this resource. Had Toombs, or Stephens, +or Cobb been president and represented by such an extraordinarily able +agent, the Confederate States would have got ironclads, broken the +blockade, kept out invaders, and had a money that would have held its own +much better than the greenbacks unsustained by cotton or anything like it. +From what I know of these men I am sure the right agent would have been +found. + +[115] Book cited, 164, 165. + +[116] Stovall, Life of Robert Toombs, 226. + +[117] Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 268, 269. + +[118] _Id._ 271. + +[119] See his 14th chapter. + +[120] "I see a vision of awful shapes--mighty presences of gods arrayed +against Troy." _Æneid_, II. 622-23, Transl. by JOHN CONINGTON, _Writings_, +II., Longmans, Green & Co. (1872). + +[121] In six consecutive numbers of the _Pilgrim_, beginning with that of +October, 1903. This is a monthly, edited by Willis J. Abbot, and published +by the Pilgrim Magazine Co., _Ltd._, Battle Creek, Mich. + +[122] Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 59. + +[123] Memoir, vol. i. 86. + +[124] _Id._ 52, 53. + +[125] Memoir, _Id._ vol. i. 59, 60. + +[126] Mrs. Davis tells all the details most delightfully; Memoir, vol. i. +207-212. + +[127] Memoir, vol. i. 214, 215. Compare what Stephens says of the speech +made by President Davis at the African church in Richmond in February, +1865, just after the return of our Commissioners who had sought in vain +for terms of peace which the south could consider. We give the part of the +passage pertinent here. + +"The newspaper sketches of that speech were meagre, as well as inaccurate +... and ... came far short of so presenting its substance even, as to give +those who did not hear it anything like an adequate conception of its full +force and power. It was not only bold, undaunted, and confident in tone, +but had that loftiness of sentiment and rare form of expression, as well +as magnetic influence in its delivery, by which the passions of the people +are moved to their profoundest depths, and roused to the highest pitch of +excitement. Many who had heard this Master of Oratory in his most +brilliant displays in the senate and on the hustings, said they never +before saw him so really majestic. The occasion, and the effects of the +speech, as well as all the circumstances under which it was made, caused +the minds of not a few to revert to like appeals by Rienzi and +Demosthenes." War between the States, vol. ii. 623, 824. + +[128] Memoir, vol. i. 146, 147. + +[129] Landon Knight, "The Real Jefferson Davis," already cited. + +[130] Landon Knight, "The Real Jefferson Davis." + +[131] Mrs. Davis's Memoir, vol. i. 392. + +[132] In his fourth chapter. + +[133] Memoir, vol. ii. 18. + +[134] _Id._ 32, 33. + +[135] Memoir, vol. ii. 180-183. + +[136] Mr. Landon Knight is happy in showing the fidelity, diligence, +courage, and unsurpassed conscientiousness, of Mr. Davis in his +presidency, and especially how he bore himself amid the multiplying +disasters of the last two years. + +[137] "We embraced the cause [i. e., of the Confederate States] in the +spirit of lovers. True lovers all were we--and what true lover ever loved +less because the grave had closed over the dear and radiant form?--And so +we--we, at least, who as men and women inhaled the true spirit of that +momentous time--come together on these occasions not only with the fresh +new flowers in our hands, but with the old memories in our thoughts and +the old, but ever fresh, lover spirit in our hearts, and seek to make +these occasions not unworthy of the cause we loved unselfishly and of +these its sleeping defenders." Major Joseph B. Cumming, in introducing +General Butler, orator of the day, when the Confederate soldiers' graves +were decorated at the Augusta (Ga.) cemetery in 1895. + +[138] The celebration at Covington, Georgia, April 26, 1866, was complete. +My friend Hon. J. M. Pace has just shown me a copy of the local newspaper +issued the next day, containing an account of the ceremony and the rarely +appropriate address which he made as part thereof. The fact is that the +observance of Memorial Day commenced everywhere in the south at the time +just mentioned. + +[139] Encyc. Americana, article "Ant." + +[140] Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, vol. i. 206 (Riverside ed.). + +[141] Says John Mitchell: "The Southern States, which have made rapid +progress, especially in cotton manufacturing, have, as a general rule, not +responded to the demand for a shorter working-day--the south lacking +effective labor organizations to compel such legislation." (Organized +Labor, 122.) He might have said the same as to the desired prohibition of +child labor. + +[142] _Infra_, pp. 431-438. + +[143] The Souls of Black Folk, 254. + +[144] In an address mentioned in the next footnote Major Joseph B. Cumming +rightly insists that this is the proper name for what is called "the +American Civil War" with some show of justification, and "the war of +rebellion" without any justification whatever. + +[145] Address of Major Joseph B. Cumming, entitled "The Great War," before +Camp 435 of United Confederate Veterans, Augusta, Ga., Memorial Day, 1902. + +[146] I Timothy vi. 1-4. I have quoted the Twentieth Century Testament +because of its extremely faithful version. Of course the italics are mine. + +[147] "Where Black Rules White," by Hugo Erichsen, in the _Pilgrim_ for +July, 1905, deserves the title "Hayti As It Is." The Americana article +ought to be conspicuously labelled "Hayti Whitewashed." + +[148] Bureau of Labor Bulletin, No. 48, September, 1903, pp. 1006, 1013, +1019. + +[149] _Id._ 1020. + +[150] Bishop Lucius H. Holsey, D.D., of the colored M. E. Church, is much +more in touch and sympathy with the negro masses than Professor DuBois. +Here is something recently said by him: + +"_As long as the two races live in the same territory in immediate +contact, their relations will be such as to intermingle in that degree +that half-bloods, quarter-bloods and a mongrel progeny will result._ This +is not only going on now, but is destined to annihilate the true typical +ante-bellum negro type, and put in his place a stronger, a longer lived, +and a more Anglo-Saxon-like homogeneous race. In other words, the negro to +come will not be the negro of the emancipation proclamation, but he will +be the Anglo-Saxonized Afro-American. It seems true, as has been said, 'No +race can look the Anglo-Saxon in the face and live.' Certainly no other +race can hold its own in his immediate presence. Being in immediate +contact and underrating the mental and moral virtues of others and +exercising a sovereignty over them, his opportunities are enlarged to make +other races his own in consanguinity. This he never fails to do." Address +before the National Sociological Society at the Lincoln Temple +Congregational Church, The Possibilities of the Negro in Symposium, 107 +(Atlanta, Ga.). + +In the same address, just a little above the quotation just made, this +occurs: "Legal intermarriage in the south, although not wrong in its +consummation, is a matter as yet undebatable, and belongs only to the +future." _Id._ 107. + +These words of Bishop Holsey are weighty proof that the negroes strongly +desire and expect amalgamation. + +[151] Edward B. Taylor, _The Outlook_, July 16, 1904, p. 670. + +[152] The Souls of Black Folk, 106. + +[153] See Exodus xxii. 16. + +[154] The Souls of Black Folk, 106. + +[155] May 6, 1905. Having finished my work I read two days ago, "The Color +Line. A Brief in behalf of the Unborn." By William Benjamin Smith, N. Y., +1905. It ably and vividly explains the transcendent importance of keeping +the blood of Caucasians in America uncontaminated with that of the +African, and demonstrates that to do this the color line must be rigidly +maintained between negroid as well as coal-black, on one side, and white +on the other. The utter impossibility of making the man of a particular +race like the man of another extremely remote one by even the most careful +education is shown with startling effect. The inability of the black to +hold his own against white competition, and his gradual and sure expulsion +is proved by overwhelming evidence. The book is useful as an introduction +to all the literature of the subject. The only fault that I note is its +excessive warmth and combativeness--especially in the first half. With the +dispassionate serenity of Mr. Tillinghast, it would have been perfect. + +[156] The quotations which immediately follow are from a letter of J. B. +A. Walker, dated Tuskegee, Ala., July 27, 1904, written to S. H. Comings, +who has kindly permitted me to make use of it. + +[157] Lower South in Am. Hist. 223. When Professor Brown read "The +Clansman" doubtless his hesitation ended. + +[158] Clyatt _v._ United States, March 13, 1905. + +[159] Possibly this is the village of Boley, mentioned in the next +chapter. + +[160] They are Stephen, a slave, _v._ State, 2 Ga. 225; Jesse, a slave, +_v._ State, 20 Ga. 161. + +[161] See Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, 10-14. + +[162] New Encyc. Britan., Article, "Jamaica." + +[163] Working with the Hands, 40. + +[164] Tillinghast, book cited above, 180, 181. Consider the quotation +there made from Thurston, the negro manager, in which he asserts that it +is only by this means that negro operatives can be made to do good work. + +[165] Souls of Black Folk, 9. + +[166] During the years after the war until the end of 1881, when I came to +Atlanta, I kept my eye upon the negro preachers in the country. Whenever I +could closely observe one and had opportunity of sifting members of his +congregation, I generally found him to be _vir gregis_. My acquaintances +tell me that there has been no perceptible change. Compare what Mr. Edward +B. Taylor, a northern man, now residing in Columbia, S. C., says of "the +immoral negro preacher" in _The Outlook_ of July 16, 1904. + +[167] William Hannibal Thomas, a negro of Massachusetts, says the same as +to the early corruption of children and "marital immoralities" both of the +poor, the ignorant, and the degraded among the freed people, and also of +those who assume to be educated and refined. Quoted by Mr. Page, The +Negro; The Southerner's Problem, 82-84. + +[168] Encyc. Am. Article, "Negro in America." + +[169] Noticing Mr. Page's book just mentioned, Professor DuBois treats +William Hannibal Thomas as utterly unworthy of credit. All of us in the +south familiar with negroes know that Thomas's statement quoted by Mr. +Page is unqualifiedly true. + +[170] That part of Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau Census, +Bulletin 8, called "The Negro Farmer," is by him. Consider the extravagant +claims made therein for the magnitude of negro farming in the United +States in the comment on Table xxxv. p. 92. Professor DuBois is also +author of the "Negro Landholder of Georgia," Bulletin of Department of +Labor, No. 35, July, 1901. + +[171] Bulletin 8, before cited, 75. + +[172] Article, "Negro Education," Encyclopedia Americana. + +[173] Professor DuBois, Bulletin 8, cited above, 73. + +[174] _Id._ 77. + +[175] Book cited, 183-185. + +[176] _Id._ 184. + +[177] Book cited, 184. + +[178] _Id._ 184. + +[179] Bureau of Statistics--Bulletin No. 28, p. 71. + +[180] _Id._ 72. + +[181] Extract from a letter of Hon. James M. Smith to the author. He is, I +believe, the largest planter in Georgia. His lands lie in the adjoining +edges of Oglethorpe county, which is in the Black Belt, and of Madison +county, which is outside. From his experience, and because of the great +accuracy of his observation, which I have noted for nearly forty years, I +regard him as better qualified than any one else who can be suggested, to +give a correct opinion on the subjects he deals with in the quotation. +Especially do I emphasize his exceptional advantages for comparing whites +and negroes as farmers, tenants, croppers, and laborers for standing +wages, in making cotton. + +[182] Book cited above, 121, 122. + +[183] The Voice of the Negro, September, 1904 (Atlanta, Ga.)--Consider +picture of "Board of Directors of the True Reformers' Bank, Richmond, +Va.," in number of same magazine for November, 1904. These directors are +nine in all, and there is but one who is decidedly black. Six of them look +to be more than three-quarters white. The number for March, 1905, contains +a sketch of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Ph.D., stating that the +Professor's ancestry is largely white and his color a rich brown. The +picture of his mother shows her hair to be straight and her complexion +bright. + +[184] Book cited above, 213-215. + +[185] The Voice of the Negro, October, 1904, p. 435. + +[186] Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau of the Census, Bulletin 8, +Negroes in the United States, p. 13. + +[187] I have in mind his late articles in the _Outlook_. + +[188] See his "Problems of the Present South." + +[189] Autobiography of Seventy Years, vol. ii. 60-62. + +[190] By Anne Scribner, and copied in the _Public_ of September 17, 1904, +from the Chicago _Evening Post_. + +[191] The passage with the context quoted by Dr. Booker Washington, +"Working with the Hands," 238. + +[192] Issue of October 15, 1904. + +[193] Encyclopedia Americana, Article "Negro Education." + +[194] But the most drastic provisions to keep the greedy whites from +preying upon the negroes as they did upon the Indians most be adopted, +such as permitting the negro State to tax without limit whites owning +property or doing business therein. This will prevent the result +anticipated by Booker Washington. + +[195] The best thing upon the joint education of hand and brain known to +me is "Pagan _vs._ Christian Civilization," by S. H. Comings (Charles H. +Kerr & Co., Chicago). The title does not indicate, as it ought to do, the +special purpose of the book to show that to give the scholar expertness +with his hands at the first and thus develop his self-supporting ability +is far better than to cram his memory. What the author says in maintenance +of his proposition, that our industrial schools should be operated upon a +plan that will make the scholar pay as he goes, out of his own work, for +his subsistence and expense of education during the entire course, +deserves respectful and thoughtful consideration. In its brevity, and at +the same time variety and fulness, coming as it does at the beginning of a +new era, it reminds me of Sullivan's tract which some years ago started +the American agitation for direct legislation, with store of examples and +exposition almost sufficient for its entire needs. + +The above had been written when Booker Washington's "Working with the +Hands" came along. The well-chosen title informs accurately as to the +subject of the book. Its scope covers working with the hands from its +beginning in childhood to the close of life. As illustration of his +principles Dr. Washington circumstantially tells of the beneficent +industrial and moral training given at Tuskegee, in all its many +departments, to children, youth, and adults, in everything which it is +important that a negro of either sex should know how to do. Besides its +wisdom, its attention-commanding and interest-exciting style deserves high +commendation. Any reader longing for the day of real education to dawn who +opens the book will go to the end, without skipping, in a delightful +gallop. It is my conviction that it will be of far more advantage to the +white industrial and technological schools than to those for which it is +specially intended by the author. + +[196] Book cited, 119. + +[197] See Collier's Weekly for November 26, 1904. + +[198] The English translation of the first volume of Von Holst's +"Constitutional and Political History of the United States" has just been +published. The titles of the ninth and tenth chapters, to wit, "The +Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States," and "Development of +the Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States," are very apt and +striking, and the contents of the chapters are profoundly original and +instructive. Having ample space, the author has, among other merits, well +handled the following incidents and consequences of slavery: + +1. Implacable hostility of slave and non-slave labor. + +2. Self-protecting necessity to slavery of continuous expansion, and, to +insure this expansion, necessity that the south keep political mastery of +the country. + +3. Economic importance to south of invention of cotton-gin in 1793. + +4. Exclusive possession by north of wholesale trade. + +5. Greater immigration to north. + +6. Missouri Compromise, and rise therefrom of geographical parties. + +7. Internal improvements and tariff passing inter-geographical question. + +8. Economic decay of south due to slavery, and not to tariff. + +9. Opposition of slavery to the spirit of the age. + +The following is a brief statement of the chief demerits of the two +chapters: + +1. Misstatement that there were different circles of slaveholders; +overstatement of inhumanity of masters; and unjust disparagement of +character of smaller slaveholders. + +2. Failure to note the great absorbing energy of slave property. + +3. Failure to note the lack of a population of free workers. + +But the work, considering the short time the clouds of battle have had to +clear away, recollecting, too, that the author is a foreigner, is, +excepting a little heated partisanship here and there, a most valuable +contribution to the history of our country. + +[199] I see now--in 1905--that the statement in the text was a great +mistake; and that nadir was not reached until some fifteen or twenty years +later. + + + + +THE INDIAN DISPOSSESSED + +By SETH K. HUMPHREY + +With sixteen full-page illustrations from photographs + + 300 pages. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50 net. Postpaid, $1.64. + +A plain, connected, carefully prepared narrative of the actual and proved +dealings of the United States government with the subdued Indian--the +Reservation Indian. The author's account of governmental oppression and +ill-faith, and of successive removals of the Indians from their homes to +regions unattractive to white settlers, and of the confiscation of Indian +property, are supported by extracts from official records. After chapters +describing the experience of the Umatillas (with whom the government held +to its treaty), the Flathead Indians of the Bitter Root, the Nez Perces, +the Poncas, and the Mission Indians, comes an important chapter on +"Dividing the Spoils," with a graphic and moving description of the scenes +at the opening of the Cherokee Strip, drawn from the author's personal +experiences. A chapter is devoted to an exposure of the Rosebud +Reservation bill,--the latest example of governmental confiscation,--while +the final chapter gives an original and convincing explanation of the +remarkable persistence of vicious influences in our Indian system, in the +face of the equally persistent desire of the American people to grant the +Indian fair play. Helen Jackson's "A Century of Dishonor" has received a +valuable companion work in the present book. + + LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., _Publishers_ + 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brothers' War, by John Calvin Reed + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROTHERS' WAR *** + +***** This file should be named 37890-8.txt or 37890-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/9/37890/ + +Produced by Jana Srna, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Reed—A Project Gutenberg eBook + </title> + + <style type="text/css"> + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + + body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + .botbor {border-bottom: solid black 1px;} + + .giant {font-size: 200%} + .huge {font-size: 150%} + .large {font-size: 125%} + + .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .poem {margin-left: 15%;} + .note {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + .hang {margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;} + .index {margin-left: 20%;} + + .right {text-align: right;} + .center {text-align: center;} + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .special {font-size: 200%;} + + p.dropcap:first-letter{float: left; padding-right: 3px; font-size: 250%; line-height: 83%; width:auto;} + .caps {text-transform:uppercase;} + + a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none} + + .spacer {padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em;} + + .verts {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brothers' War, by John Calvin Reed + +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 Brothers' War + +Author: John Calvin Reed + +Release Date: October 31, 2011 [EBook #37890] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROTHERS' WAR *** + + + + +Produced by Jana Srna, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p> </p><p> </p> + +<h1>THE BROTHERS’ WAR</h1> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE BROTHERS’<br />WAR</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br /> +<span class="large">JOHN C. REED</span><br /> +<small>OF GEORGIA<br /> +AUTHOR OF “AMERICAN LAW STUDIES,” “CONDUCT OF LAWSUITS”<br /> +“THE OLD AND NEW SOUTH”</small></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">BOSTON<br /> +LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY<br /> +1905</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1905</i>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">By Little, Brown, and Company</span>.</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">Published October, 1905</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">I would</span> explain the real causes and greater consequences of the bloody +brothers’ war. I pray that all of us be delivered, as far as may be, from +bias and prejudice. The return of old affection between the sections +showed gracious beginning in the centennial year. In the war with Spain +southerners rallied to the stars and stripes as enthusiastically as +northerners. Reconcilement has accelerated its pace every hour since. But +it is not yet complete. The south has these things to learn:</p> + +<p>1. A providence, protecting the American union, hallucinated Garrison, +Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Stowe, Sumner, and other radical abolitionists, as +to the negro and the effect of southern slavery upon him, its purpose +being to destroy slavery because it was the <i>sine qua non</i> of southern +nationalization, the only serious menace ever made to that union. This +nationalization was stirring strongly before the federal constitution was +adopted. The abolitionists, as is the case with all forerunners of great +occurrences, were trained and educated by the powers directing evolution, +and they were constrained to do not their own will but that of these +mighty powers.</p> + +<p>2. The cruel cotton tax; the constitution amended to prevent repentance of +uncompensated emancipation, which is the greatest confiscation on record; +the resolute effort to put the southern whites under the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> negroes; and +other such measures; were but natural outcome of the frenzied +intersectional struggle of twenty-five years and the resulting terrible +war. Had there been another event, who can be sure that the south would +not have committed misdeeds of vengeance against citizens of the north?</p> + +<p>3. We of the south ought to tolerate the freest discussion of every phase +of the race question. We should ungrudgingly recognize that the difference +of the northern masses from us in opinion is natural and honest. Let us +hear their expressions with civility, and then without warmth and show of +disrespect give the reasons for our contrary faith. This is the only way +for us to get what we need so much, that is, audience from our brothers +across the line. Consider some great southerners who have handled most +exciting sectional themes without giving offence. There is no invective in +Calhoun’s speech, of March 4, 1850, though he clearly discerned that +abolition was forcing the south into revolution. Stephens, who had been +vice-president of the Confederate States, reviewed in detail soon after +the brothers’ war the conflict of opinion which caused it, and yet in his +two large volumes he spoke not a word of rancor. When congress was doing +memorial honor to Charles Sumner, it was Lamar, a southerner of +southerners, that made the most touching panegyric of the dead. And the +other day was Dixon’s masterly effort to prove that the real, even if +unconscious, purpose of the training at Tuskegee is ultimately to promote +fusion, which the southern whites deem the greatest of evils. His language +is entirely free from passion or asperity. He wonders in admiration at the +marvellous rise of Booker Washington from lowest estate to unique +greatness. And he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> gives genuine sympathy to Professor DuBois, in whose +book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” as he says, “for the first time we see +the naked soul of a negro beating itself to death against the bars in +which Aryan society has caged him.”</p> + +<p>These examples of Calhoun, Stephens, Lamar, and Dixon should be the +emulation of every southerner speaking to the nation upon any subject that +divides north and south. This done, we will get the audience we seek. It +was this which not long ago gave Clark Howell’s strong paper opposing +negro appointments to office in the south prominent place in <i>Collier’s</i>, +and which last month obtained for Dixon’s article just mentioned the first +pages of the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i>. When we get full audience, other +such discussions as those of Howell and Dixon, and that in which Tom +Watson, in the June number of his magazine, showed Dr. Booker Washington a +thing or two, will be digested by the northern public, to the great +advantage of the whole country.</p> + +<p>The last I have to say here is as to differing opinions upon social +recognition of prominent negroes. We of the south give them great honor +and respect. Could not Mr. Roosevelt have said to us of Georgia protesting +against his entertainment of Booker Washington, “Have I done worse than +you did when you had him to make that address at the opening of your +Exposition in 1895, and applauded it to the echo?” Suppose, as is true, +that hardly a man in the south would eat at the same table with Dr. +Washington or Professor DuBois, how can that justify us in heaping +opprobrium upon a northern man who does otherwise because he has been +taught to believe it right? What has been said in denunciation of the +president and Mr. Wanamaker for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> their conduct towards Booker Washington +seems to me rather a hullabaloo of antediluvian moss-backs than the voice +of the best and wisest southerners.</p> + +<p>Amid all her gettings let the south get complete calmness upon everything +connected with the race question—complete deliverance from morbid +sensitiveness and intemperate speech in its discussion.</p> + +<p>Now here is what the north should learn:</p> + +<p>1. Slavery in America was the greatest benefit that any large part of the +negro race ever received; and sudden and unqualified emancipation was woe +inexpressible to nearly all the freedmen. The counter doctrine of the +abolitionists who taught that the negro is equal to the Caucasian worked +beneficently to save the union, but it ought now to be rejected by all who +would understand him well enough to give him the best possible +development. The fifteenth amendment was a stupendous blunder. It took for +granted that the southern negroes were as ready for the ballot as the +whites. The fact is that they were as a race in a far lower stage of +evolution. Consider the collective achievement of this race, not in savage +West Africa, but where it has been long in contact with civilization, in +Hayti, and the south. Hayti has been independent for more than a hundred +years. “Sir Spencer St. John ... formerly British Minister Resident in +Hayti, after personally knowing the country for over twenty years, claims +that it is ... in rapid decadence, and regards the political future of the +Haytians as utterly hopeless. At the termination of his service on the +island, he said: ‘I now quite agree with those who deny that the negro can +ever originate a civilization, and who assert that with the best of +educations he remains an inferior type of man.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span>“According to Sir Spencer, Hayti is sunk in misery, bloodshed, +cannibalism, and superstition of the most sensual and degrading character. +Ever since the republic has been established Haytians have been opposed to +progress, but of recent years retrogression has been particularly +rapid.”<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a></p> + +<p>In the south, where reversion to West African society has been checked by +white government, this is a full catalogue of the main institutions +evolved by the freedmen. They have provided themselves with cheaply built +churches, in which their frequent and long worship is mainly sound and +fury. In the pinch of crop cultivation or gathering they flock away from +the fields to excursion trains and “protracted meetings.” Perhaps their +most noticeable institutions are “societies,” some prohibiting hiring as +domestic servants, except where subsistence cannot otherwise be had, and +others providing the means of decent burial. Compare these feeble negro +race performances with such white institutions, made in the same territory +and at the same time, as Memorial Day, which the north has adopted; the Ku +Klux Klan; enactment of stock laws when the freedmen’s refusal to split +rails made much fencing impossible; and the white primary.</p> + +<p>Institutions—what I have just called the collective achievement of a +race—mark in their character its capacity for improvement, and also its +plane of development. When the negro, with his self-evolved institutions, +is compared with the race which has furnished itself with fit organs of +self-government all the way up from town-meeting to federal constitution, +and is now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> about to crown its grand work with direct legislation, it is +like comparing the camel dressed to counterfeit an elephant, of which dear +old Peter Parley told us in his school history, with a real elephant, or +trying to make a confederate dollar in an administrator’s return of 1864 +count as a gold one.</p> + +<p>And yet the negro, Professor Kelly Miller, replying to Tom Watson, assumes +that Franks, Britons, Germans, Russians, and Aztecs have severally been in +historical times as incapable as West Africans of rising from savagery and +crossing barbarism into civilization. He outdoes even this—he would have +it believed that Hayti is now a close second behind Japan in striding +progress.</p> + +<p>Surely the good people of the north ought to learn the difference between +the negro race and the white. There is a small class of exceptional +negroes which is assumed by a great many at the north to be most fair +samples of the average negro of the south. Dr. Washington and Professor +DuBois severally lead the opposing sections of this class. It consists of +authors, editors, preachers, speakers, some who with small capital in +banking, farming, and other business, have each by Booker Washington’s +blazon been exalted into a national celebrity, and others. Its +never-sleeping resolve, fondly cherished by the greater part, is to “break +into” white society and some day fuse with it. Its members are nearly all +at least half white, and many are more than half white. But when a Bourbon +snub to one of them is received, as it often is, with dignity and proper +behavior, Mr. Louis F. Post, and a few more, exclaim to the country, “See +how this coal-black and pure negro excels his would-be superiors!” This +man, almost white, is to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> them a coal-black, genuine, unmixed negro. Ought +not attention to facts incontrovertibly cardinal to rule here as +everywhere else? To what is due the great accomplishment of Dumas, +Douglass, and Booker Washington—to their negro blood or to their white +blood? If half negro blood can do so well, why is it that pure negro blood +does not do far better?</p> + +<p>I have seen it asserted that Professor Kelly Miller is pure negro. His +head has the shape of a white man’s. The greyhound crossed once with the +bull-dog, as Youatt tells, and each succeeding generation of offspring +recrossed with pure greyhound until not a suggestion of bull-dog was +visible, occurs to me. Thus there was bred a greyhound, possessing the +desired trait of the bull-dog. Who can say that there is not among the +professor’s American ancestors one of half white blood? If there is in +fact no such, he is, in his high attainment, almost a <i>lusus naturae</i>.</p> + +<p>The north, by due attention, will discern that the small number +constituting what I provisionally name the upper class of negroes, is +hardly involved in the race question.</p> + +<p>The negroes in the south outside of the upper class—the latter not +amounting to more than five percent of the entire black population—are +slowly falling away from the benign elevation above West Africa wrought by +slavery. That they are here, is felt every year to be more injurious. They +greatly retard the evolution of a white-labor class, which has become the +head-spring of all social amelioration in enlightened communities. There +appears to be but one salvation for them if they stay, which is fusion +with the whites. Though Herbert Foster, and a few others, confidently +assume that our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> weakening Caucasian strain would be bettered by infusion +of African blood, we see that while amalgamation would bless the negro it +would incalculably injure us. It would be stagnation and blight for +centuries, not only to the south but to the north also. Northerners are +more and more attracted to the south by climate and other advantages, and +intermarriage between the natives of each section increases all the while. +The powers, protecting America, inscrutably to contemporaries kept busy +certain agencies that saved the union. It seems to me that these same +powers are now in both sections increasing white hostility to the blacks, +of purpose to prevent their getting firm foothold and becoming desirable +in marriage to poorer whites. One will think at once of the frequent +lynchings in the south. But let him also think of how the strikers in +Chicago were moved to far greater passion by the few black than the many +white strike-breakers, the late inexplicable anti-negro riot in New York +City, and the negro church dynamited the other day in Carlisle, Indiana. +These powers, who have protected our country from the first settlement of +the English upon the Atlantic coast down to the present time, appear to +speak more plainly every day the fiat, “If Black and White are not +separated, Black shall perish utterly.” I am convinced that at the close +of the century, if this separation has not been made long before, +Professor Willcox’s apparently conservative estimate of what will then be +their numbers will prove to be gross exaggeration. In my judgment he comes +far short of allowing the anti-fusion forces their full destructiveness.</p> + +<p>Let the north purge itself from all delusion as to the negro, and help the +south do him justice and loving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span> kindness, by transplanting him into +favorable environment.</p> + +<p>2. It is high time that the Ku Klux be understood. When in 1867 it was +strenuously attempted to give rule to scalawags and negroes, the very best +of the south led the unanimous revolt. Their first taste of political +power incited the negroes to license and riot imperilling every condition +of decent life. In the twinkling of an eye the Ku Klux organized. It +mustered, not assassins, thugs, and cutthroats, as has been often alleged, +but the choicest southern manhood. Every good woman knew that the order +was now the solitary defence of her purity, and she consecrated it with +all-availing prayers. In Georgia we won the election of December, 1870, in +the teeth of gigantic odds. This decisive deliverance from the most +monstrous and horrible misrule recorded among Anglo-Saxons was the +achievement of the Ku Klux. Its high mission performed, the Klan, burning +its disguises, ritual, and other belongings, disbanded two or three months +later. Its reputation is not to be sullied by what masked men—bogus Ku +Klux, as we, the genuine, called them—did afterwards. The exalted +glorification of Dixon is not all of the Klan’s desert. It becomes dearer +in memory every year. I shall always remember with pride my service in the +famous 8th Georgia Volunteers. I was with it in the bloody pine thicket at +First Manassas, where it outfought four times its own number; at +Gettysburg, where, although thirty-two out of its thirty-six officers were +killed or wounded, there was no wavering; and in many other perilous +places, the last being Farmville, two days before Appomattox, where this +regiment and its sworn brother, the 7th Georgia, of Anderson’s brigade, +coming up on the run, grappled hand-to-hand with a superior force pushing +back Mahone, and won<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span> the field. But I am prouder of my career in the Ku +Klux Klan. The part of it under my command rescued Oglethorpe county, in +which the negroes had some thousand majority, at the presidential election +of 1868,—the very first opportunity,—and held what had been the home of +William H. Crawford, George R. Gilmer, and Joseph H. Lumpkin, until +permanent victory perched upon the banners of the white race in Georgia.</p> + +<p>3. I observe that the north begins in some sort the learning of the two +lessons above mentioned. But now comes one which seems hard indeed. +Calhoun, Toombs, Davis, and the other pro-slavery leaders, ought to be +thoroughly studied and impartially estimated. They were not agitators, nor +factionists, nor conspirators. They were the extreme of conservatism. +Their conscientious faithfulness to country has never been surpassed. +Their country was the south, whose meat and bread depended upon slavery. +The man whose sight can pierce the heavy mists of the slavery struggle +still so dense cannot find in the world record of glorious stands for +countries doomed by fate superiors in moral worth and great exploit. In +their careers are all the comfort, dignity, and beauty of life, supreme +virtue, and happiness of that old south, inexpressibly fair, sweet and +dear to us who lived in it; and in these careers are also all the varied +details of its inexpressibly pathetic ruin. What is higher humanity than +to grieve with those who grieve? Brothers and sisters of the north, you +will never find your higher selves until you fitly admire the titanic +fight which these champions made for their sacred cause, and drop genuine +tears over their heart-breaking failure.</p> + +<p>The foregoing summarizes the larger obstacles which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span> bar true sight of the +south and the north. The devastation attending Sherman’s march beyond +Atlanta, the alleged inhumanity at Andersonville, and many other things +that were bitterly complained of during the brothers’ war, and afterwards, +by one side or the other, seem to me almost forgotten and forgiven. +Brothers who wore the gray with me, brothers who wore the blue against me, +I would have all of you freed from the delusions which still keep you from +that perfect love which Webster, Lincoln, and Stephens gave south and +north alike. I am sure that you must make the corrections indicated above +before you can rightly begin the all-important subject of this book. With +this admonition I commit you to the opening chapter, which I hope you will +find to be a fit introduction.</p> + +<p class="right">JOHN C. REED.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Atlanta, Ga.</span>,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">September, 1905.</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p> +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table width="65%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td> </td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Introductory</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Beginning made with Slavery</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Unappeasable Antagonism of Free and Slave Labor</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Genesis, Course, and Goal of Southern Nationalization</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td> + <td><span class="smcap">American Nationalization, and how it made the Bond of Union stronger and stronger</span></td> + <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Root-and-Branch Abolitionists and Fire-eaters</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Calhoun</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Webster</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td>“<span class="smcap">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</span>”</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Slavery impelled into a Defensive Aggressive</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_208">208</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Toombs</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Help to the Union Cause by Powers in the Unseen</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Jefferson Davis</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Curse and Blessing of Slavery</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_330">330</a></td></tr> +<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td> + <td><span class="smcap">The Brothers on Each Side were True Patriots and Morally Right—both those <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span>who fought for the Union and those who fought for the Confederacy</span></td> + <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_346">346</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Race Question: General and Introductory</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_359">359</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Race Question: the Situation in Detail</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_378">378</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_429">429</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><span class="smcap">Index</span></td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_451">451</a></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE BROTHERS’ WAR</span></p> +<p> </p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">INTRODUCTORY</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> inhabitants of the English colonies in Canada, Australia, and New +Zealand are all of the same race, language, religion, and institutions of +government. Such homogeneousness, as has long been recognized, works +powerfully for the political coalescence of separate communities. With the +adjacent ones of the colonies just mentioned there has always been trend +to such coalescence, as is impressively illustrated by the recent +establishment of the Australian Federation. The thirteen colonies out of +which the United States developed were likewise English, and there was the +same homogeneousness in their population, which made in due time, and also +maintained for a few generations, a union of them all—a continental +union. But there had crept in a heterogeneity, overlooked for many years, +during which time it acquired such force that it at last overcame the +homogeneousness just emphasized and carried a part of the inhabitants of +the United States out of the continental union. African slavery dying out +in the north, but prospering in the south, was this heterogeneity. By a +most natural course the south grew into a nation—the Confederate +States—whose end and purpose was to protect slavery,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> which had become +its fundamental economical interest, against the north standing by the +original union, and which having gained control of the federal government +was about to use its powers to extirpate slavery. The continental or +Pan-American nation—the American union, as we most generally think of +it—could not brook dismemberment, nor tolerate a continental rival, and +consequently it warred upon and denationalized the Confederate States. The +last two sentences tell how the brothers’ war was caused, what was its +stake on each side, and the true result. This compendious summary is to +serve as a proposition, the proof of which we now purpose to outline.</p> + +<p>Our first step is to emphasize how the free-labor system which prevailed +in the north, and the slave-labor system which prevailed in the south, +were utterly incompatible. Free labor is far cheaper and more efficient +than slave labor. It had consequently superseded slavery in the entire +enlightened world. But certain exceptional peculiarities of climate, soil, +and products planted made slavery profitable in the south.</p> + +<p>To maintain the market value of the slaves two things were needed: (1) the +competition of free labor and the import of cheap slaves must be +rigorously prevented; (2) a vast reserve of virgin soil, both to replace +the plantations rapidly wearing out and to afford more land for the +multiplying slaves. The fact last mentioned made it vital to the south to +appropriate such parts of the soil of the Territories as suited her cotton +and other staples. Therefore whenever she made such an appropriation she +turned it into a slave State; for thus the competition of free labor would +be effectually excluded therefrom. The much more rapid increase of her +population made appropriation of lands in the Territories likewise vital +to the north. Hers were all free-labor interests, as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> south’s were all +slave-labor interests; and whenever the former appropriated any of the +Territories, she made a State prohibiting slavery in order to protect her +free-labor interests. The north was not excluded by nature from any part +of the public domain as the other section was. Her free labor could be +made productive everywhere in it, and she really needed the whole.</p> + +<p>Thus the brothers of the north and the brothers of the south commenced to +strive with one another over dividing their great inheritance. The former +wanted lands for themselves, their sons, and daughters in all the +Territories possible made into States protecting their free-labor system; +the latter wanted all of the Territories suiting them made into States +protecting their slave-labor system. What ought especially to be +recognized by us now is that this contention was between good, honest, +industrious, plain, free-labor people on one side, and good, honest, +industrious, plain, slave-labor people on the other, those on each side +doing their best, as is the most common thing in the world, to gain and +keep the advantage of those of the other. It was natural, it was right, it +was most laudable that every householder, whether northerner or +southerner, should do his utmost to get free land for himself and family. +This fact—which is really the central, foundation, and cardinal one of +all the facts which brought the brothers’ war—must be thoroughly +understood, otherwise the longer one contemplates this exciting theme the +further astray from fact and reasonableness he gets.</p> + +<p>The foregoing shows in brief how there came an eager contention for the +public lands between parents, capitalists, workers, employers, +manufacturers, and so forth, bred to free labor and hostile to slavery on +the one side—that is, in the northern States; and the same classes bred +to slavery and hostile to free labor on the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> side—that is, in the +southern States. The contention grew to a grapple. As this waxed hotter +the combating brothers became more and more angry, called one another +names more and more opprobrious; and at last each side, in the height of +righteous indignation, denounced their opponents as enemies of country, +morality, and religion. Here the root-and-branch abolitionist and the +fire-eater begin their several careers, and get more and more excited +audience, the former in the north and the other in the south. Both were +emissaries of the fates who had decreed that there must be a brothers’ +war, to the end that slavery, the only peril to the American union, be +cast out.</p> + +<p>Under the necessity of defending slavery against free labor there came +early an involuntary concretion of the southern States. This was very +plainly discernible when the epoch-making convention was in session. It +was the beginning of a process which has been well-named nation-making. +After a while—say just before Toombs takes the southern lead from +Calhoun—it had developed, as we can now see, from concretion into +nationalization—not nationality, yet—of the south. It was bound, if +slavery was denied expansion over the suitable soil of the Territories and +the restoration of its runaways, to cause in the ripeness of time +secession and the founding of the Confederate States. But there was +another nationalization, older, of much deeper root and wider scope—what +we have already mentioned as the continental or Pan-American. Its origin +was in an involuntary concretion of all the colonies—both the northern +and the southern—antedating the commencement of the southern concretion +mentioned a moment ago. While southern nationalization was the guardian of +the social fabric, the property, the occupations, the means of subsistence +of the southern people, the greater<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> nationalization was not only the +guardian of the same interests of the northern people, but it had a higher +office. This was in due time to give the whole continent everlasting +immunity from war and all its prospective, direct, and consequential +evils, by federating its different States under one democratic +government—this higher office was to perpetuate the American union. This +continental nationalization had probably ripened into at least the +inchoate American nation by 1776. It was this nation, as I am confident +the historical evidence rightly read shows, that made the declaration of +independence and the articles of confederation, carried the Revolutionary +war on to the grandest success ever achieved for real democracy, and then +drafted and adopted the federal constitution. The constitution was not the +creator of this nation, as lawyers and lawyer-bred statesmen hold, but the +union and the constitution are both its creatures. This nation is +constantly evolving, and as it does it modifies and unmakes the +constitution and system of government of the United States, and the same +of each State, as best suits itself. Why do we not trace our history from +the first colonial settlements down to the present, and learn that the +nation develops in both substance and form, in territory, in aims and +purposes, not under the leading hand of conventions, congress, president, +State authority, of even the fully decisive conquest of seceding States by +the armies of the rest, but by the guidance of powers in the unseen, which +we generally think of as the laws of evolution? To illustrate: For some +time after I had got home from Appomattox I was disheartened, as many +others were, at the menace of centralization. A vision of Caleb Cushing’s +man on horseback—the coming American Cæsar—seared my eyeballs for a few +years. But after the south had been actually reconstructed I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> was cheered +to note that the evolutionary forces maintaining and developing local +self-government were holding their own with those maintaining and +developing union. To-day, you see the people of different localities all +over the north—in many cities, in a few States—driven forward by a power +which they do not understand, in a struggle which will never end till they +have rescued their liberties from the party machine wielded everywhere by +the public-service corporations.</p> + +<p>To resume what we were saying just before this short excursion. Of course +when the drifting of the south toward secession became decided and strong, +Pan-American nationalization set all of its forces in opposing array. As +soon as the southern confederacy was a fact, the brothers’ war began. I +emphasize it specially here that this war was mortal rencounter between +two different nations.</p> + +<p>The successive stages by which her nationalization impelled the south to +secession are roughly these:</p> + +<p>1. The concretion mentioned above probably passes into the beginning of +nationalization when the south was aroused by the resistance of the +free-labor States to the admission of Missouri as a slave State. With a +most rude shock of surprise she was made to contemplate secession. +Although there was much angry discussion and the crisis was grave, you +ought to note that the root-and-branch abolitionist and fire-eater had not +come. That crisis over, which ended the first stage, there was apparently +profound peace between the free-labor communities and the slave-labor +communities for some while.</p> + +<p>2. The south rises against the tariff which taxes, as she believes, her +slave-grown staples for the profit of free-labor manufacturers. Here the +next stage begins. Perhaps the advent of nullification, proposed and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>advocated by Calhoun as a union weapon with which a State might defend +itself against federal aggression, signalizes this stage more than +anything else.</p> + +<p>3. The second gives place to the third stage, when the congressional +debate over anti-slavery petitions opens. It is in this stage that the +root-and-branch abolitionist and the fire-eater begin their really +effective careers. Opposition to the restoration of fugitive slaves was +spreading through the north and steadily strengthening. It ought to be +realized by one who would understand these times that this actual +encouragement of the slaves to escape was a direct attack upon slavery in +the southern States, becoming stronger and more formidable as the +root-and-branch abolitionists became more zealous and influential, and +increased in numbers, and the slaveholder was bound to recognize what it +all portended to him. It was natural that when he had these +root-and-branch abolitionists before himself in mind, he should say of +them:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The lands of the Territories suiting slave labor are much less in +area than the due of the south therein. She will soon need all these +lands, as the slaves are multiplying rapidly, and the virgin soil of +her older States is going fast. With an excess of slaves and a lack of +fit land soon to come, if we are barred from the Territories our +property must depreciate until it is utterly worthless. But these +abolitionists attempt a further injury. They instigate our slaves to +fly into the north, and then encourage the north not to give them up +when we reclaim them. They deny our property the expansion into what +is really our part of the Territories which it ought to have in order +to maintain its value; and further they try to steal as many of our +slaves from us in the States as they can.”</p> + +<p>This was the double peril, as it were, which gathered in full view against +the south.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>I cannot emphasize it enough that the hot indignation of such as Garrison +against slavery as a hideous wrong was not excited before the competition +between north and south over the public lands had become eager and +all-absorbing. It is nearly always the case that such excitement does not +appear until long after an actual menace by a rival to the personal or +selfish interest of another has shown itself. It is not until the menace +becomes serious that the latter wakes up to discover that the former is +violating some capital article of the decalogue. This was true of the +root-and-branch abolitionist. And his high-flown morality was made still +more Quixotic by his conscientiously assuming that the negro slave was in +all respects just such a human being as his white master.</p> + +<p>This third stage extends from about January, 1836, until the country was +alarmed as never before by the controversy of 1849-50 over the admission +of California, in southern latitude, with an anti-slavery constitution. At +its end the southern leadership of Calhoun standing upon nullification, a +remedy that contemplated remaining in the union, is displaced by that of +Toombs, who begins to feel strongly, if not to see clearly, that the south +cannot preserve slavery in the union.</p> + +<p>4. The fourth stage begins with the compromise of 1850. Afterwards during +the same year was an occurrence which cannot be overrated in importance by +the student of these times. That was the consideration of the pending +question in Georgia, and action upon it by a convention of delegates +elected for that special purpose. The Georgia Platform, promulgated by +that convention, is as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“To the end that the position of this State may be clearly apprehended +by her confederates of the south and of the north, and that she may be +blameless of all future consequences, <i>Be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> it resolved by the people +of Georgia in convention assembled</i>, <i>First</i>, that we hold the +American union secondary in importance only to the rights and +principles it was designed to perpetuate. That past associations, +present fruition, and future prospects, will bind us to it so long as +it continues to be the safeguard of these rights and principles.</p> + +<p><i>Second.</i> That if the thirteen original parties to the compact, +bordering the Atlantic in a narrow belt, while their separate +interests were in embryo, their peculiar tendencies scarcely +developed, their Revolutionary trials and triumphs still green in +memory, found union impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of +this day may well yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion and +policy, to preserve that union which has extended the sway of +republican government over a vast wilderness to another ocean, and +proportionally advanced their civilization and national greatness.</p> + +<p><i>Third.</i> That in this spirit the State of Georgia has considered the +action of congress, embracing a series of measures for the admission +of California into the union, the organization of territorial +governments for Utah and New Mexico, the establishment of a boundary +between the latter and the State of Texas, the suppression of the +slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the extradition of +fugitive slaves, and (connected with them) the rejection of +propositions to exclude slavery from the Mexican Territories, and to +abolish it in the District of Columbia; and, whilst she does not +wholly approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this +sectional controversy.</p> + +<p><i>Fourth.</i> That the State of Georgia, in the judgment of this +convention, will and ought to resist, even—as a last resort—to a +disruption of every tie which binds her to the union, any future act +of congress abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, without +the consent and petition of the slaveholders thereof, or any act +abolishing slavery in places within the slaveholding States, purchased +by the United States for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, +dockyards, and other like purposes; or any act suppressing the +slave-trade between slaveholding States; or any refusal to admit as a +State any Territory <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>applying, because of the existence of slavery +therein; or any act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the +Territories of Utah and New Mexico; or any act repealing or materially +modifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves.</p> + +<p><i>Fifth.</i> That it is the deliberate opinion of this convention, that +upon the faithful execution of the fugitive slave bill by the proper +authorities depends the preservation of our much loved union.”</p></div> + +<p>This platform was the work of statesmen who had added to the wisdom of the +fathers, making the declaration of independence, articles of +confederation, and the great constitution, worthy wisdom of their own from +a far more varied experience and better training in government. These +statesmen came indiscriminately from all parties. The people in the State, +from the highest in authority through every intermediate circle down to +the humblest citizen, deliberately, without excitement or passion, +endorsed this platform with practical unanimity. And all parties stood +upon it to the end. This was not an ignorant, debased, corrupt, +unrighteous people; but it was even better in everything that makes a +people great and good than the former generation which had given the +country Washington and Jefferson.</p> + +<p>Especially should the student meditate what this solemn declaration shows +was the sentiment of the people of the State at that time towards the +American union. Every one of the five planks contains its own most +convincing proof of deepest devotion. Think of the child who at last +resolves to fly from the home which had been inexpressibly sweet until the +stepmother came; of the father whose conscience commands him to save the +mother’s life by killing the assailing son; of what the true Othello felt +when he had to execute the precious Desdemona for what he believed to be +her falseness—think of these examples, if you would realize the agony<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> of +the better classes of the southern people when they at last discovered +that the union had changed from being their best friend into their most +fell enemy.</p> + +<p>The Georgia Platform was actually drafted, I believe, by A. H. Stephens, +then a whig. It was probably moulded in its substance—especially in the +fourth and fifth planks—more by Toombs, also a whig, than any other. +Howell Cobb, a democrat, approved, and was elected governor upon it the +next year, receiving the ardent support of Toombs and Stephens. Toombs was +just forty, Stephens a year or two, and Cobb some six or seven years, less +than forty. These three were the leading authors. Note how much younger +they were than Calhoun, who had a few months before died in his +sixty-ninth year. The platform indicates the new sentiment, not only of +Georgia but of the entire south. When its contents are compared with the +doctrine of nullification, it clearly shows as the production of a new era +in the history of southern nationalization; for it marks what we may +somewhat metaphorically distinguish as the close of the pro-union and +opening of the anti-union defence of slavery. The proclivity to secession +uninterruptedly increases from this point on.</p> + +<p>I would have it noted that the tactics of this fourth stage are +unaggressive. The Georgia Platform was no more than most grave and serious +warning against being driven to the wall. It did not bully nor hector. The +threat of what must be done in case certain menaced blows to slavery were +struck was so calmly, deprecatingly, and decorously made, that one wonders +it was not heeded. He ceases to wonder only when history reveals to him +that fate had become adverse to the good cause of this noble people.</p> + +<p>5. A change of tactics characterizes the fifth stage. The faster growing +population of the north, furnishing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> settlers in far greater number than +that of the south, was sweeping away all chance of new slave States. The +situation commanded that the defence of the south change to the +aggressive, just as Stoessel was constrained the other day to take the +offensive against 203 Meter Hill. In the first sortie the south got the +Missouri compromise repealed. Then she tried to make a slave State of +Kansas. She failed. When she had lost Kansas—like California in southern +latitude—she could not help recognizing that the outlook for slavery in +the union had become desperate. My northern countrymen, if you were as +free from the surviving influence of the old intersectional quarrel as we +all ought to be, you would applaud the ability and valor with which the +south had fought this losing fight for the welfare and comfort of her +people; and especially would you admire her supreme effort in behalf both +of that people, and also of the union which she loved next to the cause of +her people. Not quailing before odds incalculable, she was as brave and +self-sustained as Miltiades, coming forth with his little ten thousand to +fight the host of Mardonius hand-to-hand. The only thing for her now was +new aggression, to make a demand never seriously urged before. That was +that congress protect the master’s property in every Territory until it +became a State. If this were done, she could, perhaps, keep slavery in +some of the Territories long enough for it to strike root permanently. If +it could not be done she must choose between her own cause and the union. +Her persistence in the demand mentioned—and she was obliged to +persist—split the democratic party, which had until this time been her +main upholder in the union. The north refused her demand by electing +Lincoln. This was the end of the fifth stage. Her nationality had become +fully ripe. She seceded into the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>Confederate States, her only opportunity +of conserving the property and occupation interests of her people. Of +course she expected to get her part of the public domain, and to enforce +extradition of her fugitive slaves.</p> + +<p>The foregoing is the barest outline of the rise and conflict between the +two nationalizations. The subject has been neglected too long. There +begins to be some faint understanding of the greater nationalization, but +that understanding is far short of completeness. There is hardly a +suspicion of the other. And yet as to our own special subject it is really +the more important, for in it is the initiative of the brothers’ war. +There has been made by nobody any investigation at all of the main parts +of that train of events which I designate as southern nationalization. Not +Wilson’s “The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in the United States,” nor +any book by a partisan of either side in the struggle, gives any help +towards this investigation. The historical sources have never been studied +at all; such as the colonial records now publishing, the records and +papers of the probate court in some of the older and more important +counties of the south—especially the returns of administrators, +executors, and guardians, and files of newspapers advertising their +citations. Here can be found the prevailing prices of slaves, their rate +of multiplication, all details of their management, from the very +beginning. The trial and equity courts contain records of litigation about +slaves; of advice of chancellors to trustees seeking to make or change +investment; of wills manumitting slaves; and a thousand other relevant +matters. The course of legislation as to slaves from the first to the end +is also important. From these, from local literature such as “Georgia +Scenes,” “Simon Suggs,” biography, and various pamphlets, and other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +original sources,—far better historical evidence than any which is now +generally invoked,—can be learned the real facts as to the growth of +slavery; and especially how in its economic potency consequent upon the +invention of the gin it supplanted or made dependent upon itself all other +property, and became the solitary foundation of every kind of production +and mode of making a living; so that even by 1820 to abolish slavery would +have been almost to beggar the southern people for two or three +generations. It is to be hoped that Professor Brown, finding the +opportunity which he desires, may yet exhaust not only the sources I have +mentioned, but also important ones that I have not even thought of, and +give the true ante-bellum history of the lower south. Some such work is +necessary to explain the active principle, the <i>raison d’etre</i> of southern +nationalization.</p> + +<p>How north and south were sundered by the different nationalizations is yet +to be told in full detail without any censure of the people of either. +Practically every American was born into an occupation or way of life +connected with or founded upon either slave or free labor interests, and +so was born into one or the other of these two nationalizations, and his +conscience coerced him to stay with it. These nationalizations made two +different publics and two different countries in the United States. After +the slavery agitation had become active the masses in either public knew +but little of the other, and cared for it less; and when war broke out +between the two countries every man, woman, and child was ready to die, if +there was need, for his own. When the history of the times has been +impartially and adequately written the world will recognize that the +patriotism and moral worth of neither side excels that of the other, and +it will crown both.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>The evolution indicated above produced not only the two hostile peoples, +but also their leaders and representatives of every class. I have taken +pains in a relevant chapter to show how the fire-eaters and the +root-and-branch abolitionists were at last brought upon the stage. Every +fierce controversy in history has had their like on each side. Their +coming is late. The antagonists have become excited. The intelligence +guiding evolution deceives them as to the parts they must play. They +believe that their mission is to arouse the public conscience in order to +right some alleged moral wrong. Their real mission is to excite to angry +action. Cicero condemns the Peripatetics for asserting that proneness to +anger has been usefully given by nature.<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a> He overlooked the fact that +the outbreak of the passion is intended to spur us into doing something +important for our own protection; and that it is therefore an +indispensable weapon in our self-defensive armory. These fanatics, as we +often call them, instigated north and south to quarrel more and more +fiercely, and finally to fight. The purpose of the powers in the unseen in +causing the fight has already been stated.</p> + +<p>What especially concerns us here is that we avoid adhering to the mistakes +of these partisans which still have injurious effect upon opinion. Thus +the fire-eater could see no good whatever in the yankees, as he called +them, denying them honesty, trustworthiness, and other elementary virtues; +accusing them of robbing us by the tariff and other measures, and hating +us for the prosperity and comfort which the slavery system had blessed us +with. Other of his false charges are still lodged in the memory of some +influential southerners. But the fire-eater’s predictions were all +completely falsified by the result of the war; and he has become so much +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>discredited as an authority, there is no very great need for consuming +much time and effort in correcting his misstatements. On the other hand +the decisive success of their side has kept thousands at the north fully +believing the wildest fabrications of the root-and-branch abolitionists. +The latter believed that the African slave of the south was just such a +human being, ready for liberty and self-government in all particulars, as +civilized and enlightened whites. They believed that the condition of his +immediate ancestors in West Africa was one of high physical, mental, +moral, and social development, and that if there was in him now any +inferiority to his master it was entirely due to the sinister influence of +American slavery. They also believed that the system was fraught with such +cruelties as frequent separation of man and wife and of mother and young +children, under- feeding and clothing, and grinding overwork,—that, in +short, the average slave was daily exposed to something like the torture +of the Inquisition. All this was invention. American slavery found the +negro gabbling inarticulately and gave him English; it found him a +cannibal and fetishist and gave him the Christian religion; it found him a +slave to whom his savage master allowed no rights at all, and it gave him +an enlightened master bound by law to accord him the most precious human +rights; it found him an inveterate idler and gave him the work habit; it +found him promiscuous in the horde and gave him the benign beginning of +the monogamic family,—in short, as now appears very strongly probable, +American slavery gave him his sole opportunity to rise above the barbarism +of West Africa.</p> + +<p>These tremendous mistakes of fact, after knitting the north in solid +phalanx against dividing the Territories with the south and restoring +fugitive slaves and thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> hasting forward the war, prompted that folly of +follies the fifteenth amendment, and have ever since kept the north from +understanding the race question.</p> + +<p>I am sure that it is high time that we of each section should school +ourselves into impartially appreciating the civil leaders of the other +side. The south has made more progress towards this than the north. +Certain causes have operated to help her onward. One of these is that +practically all of us recognize it is far better for the section that the +union side won. Another is that the great mass have learned that slavery +both effeminated and paralyzed the whites and was a smothering incubus +upon our due social and material development. It is natural that although +we give our pro-slavery political leaders and the confederate soldiers +increasing love, we should more and more commend the pro-union and +anti-slavery activity of the northern statesmen. Nothing like this has led +the north to revise the reprobation which in the heat and passion of the +conflict it bestowed upon the public men of the south. If I ever read a +good word from a northern writer as to them, it is for something in their +careers disconnected with the southern cause. Even Mr. Rhodes, the ablest +and most impartial of northern historians of the times, finds in Calhoun +only a closet spinner of utterly impractical theories. Further, I could +hardly believe it when I read it—and it is hard for me to believe it +yet—that, citing some flippant words of Parton in which a slander of +contemporary politics is toothsomely repeated as his voucher, he flatly +charges the lion-hearted knight of the south with playing the coward in +the most heroic episode of his grand career. My faith is strong that this +mode of treating the good and great southern leaders will soon go out of +fashion.</p> + +<p>I am greatly in earnest to vindicate these <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>leaders—especially Calhoun, +Toombs, and Davis. Much of the public life of each one was concerned with +matters of national interest. To this I give special attention, for I want +my northern readers to know what true Americans they all were. Without +this they cannot have their full glory. And their justification is that of +their people. Such effective leaders are always representative. It is a +misnomer to call them leaders. They were really followers of their +constituents who were struggling for the subsistence of themselves and +their dear ones. During this time Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis, had they not +labored in every way to protect this great cause—the cause of their own +country—as they did, would have been as recreant as the confederate +soldier, skulking away from the line defending home and fireside. When our +country is in peril the unseen lords of its destiny do not take any one of +us, from the greatest to the humblest, into their confidence as to the +event. Every man of us must support in politics and on the field the cause +of our people. If that must go down it will make defeat glorious to go +down with it, as contentedly and bravely as did Demosthenes, Cicero, and +Davis.</p> + +<p>Whoever diligently studies the facts will be convinced that southern +nationalization, with a power superior to human resistance, carried the +southern people into secession, and that their so-called leaders were +carried with them. He will discern that the parts of the latter were +merely to serve as floats to mark the course of the current beneath. +Therefore be just to these leaders for justice’ sake. Further, you +brothers and sisters of the north ought to bethink yourselves and keep in +mind how we regard them. The reputation of these our civil champions and +their graves are as dear to us as those of our mothers. If you adopted an +orphan, you would feel it to be unpardonable to speak slightingly to him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> +of his parents. Cleopatra, her conqueror sending her word to study on what +fair demands she would have, answered:</p> + +<p class="poem">“That majesty to keep decorum, must<br /> +No less beg than a kingdom.”</p> + +<p>Let those who wore the blue and their descendants think over it long +enough to realize how unspeakably low and treacherous it would be in us to +abet any condemnation whatever of these men for their anti-union +acts—these men whom we or our fathers voted for and supported because of +these acts. If you deny justification to them, how can we keep decorum in +accepting it ourselves?</p> + +<p>I would say one more word, where perhaps I am a little over-earnest. These +southern leaders have contributed richly to the treasures of American +history. Their moral worth,—nay, moral grandeur,—their great natural +parts, their statesmanly ability, their eloquence, their heroic fidelity +to their people,—by these each has won indefeasible title to the best of +renown. Whenever the north has made real study of them, she will give them +as generous admiration as she now does to the charge of Pickett. I have +done my utmost to present Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis faithfully, using, as +I believe, all the main facts which are relevant and incontrovertible. I +am sure that every northerner who reads them, after he has laid aside all +prejudice, will admit that I did not claim too much when I was recounting +their merits a moment ago.</p> + +<p>I invite close consideration of all that I say of Webster. The purpose of +providence, bestowing birthplace, early environment, training, and career +as preparation for a paramount mission, shows more conspicuously in him +than in any other of America’s great, with the solitary exception of +Washington. How the names of detracting agitators and mere politicians +written over his in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> temple of fame are now fading off, and how the +invincible and lovable champion of the brother’s union looms larger upon +us every year!</p> + +<p>I am painfully conscious of how certain omissions, unavoidable in my +limited space, mar the symmetry of my ground-plan. The average reader will +probably think that I ought to have sketched Lincoln, Grant, and Lee. I +was convinced that the public had already become reasonably instructed as +to them.</p> + +<p>John Q. Adams is one of the most conspicuous men of his day. Standing +aloof from parties, completely self-reliant, opulently endowed with every +high power of moderation, insight, and effective presentation, his good +genius gave him the championship in congress of the free-labor cause +during the critical years that it was preparing for the decisive meeting +with the slave-labor cause. In this time it seems to me that single-handed +he achieved more for the latter than all its other champions. A pleasant +parallel between him and Lee occurs to me. Each had filled the proudest +place in the chosen avocation of his life. Adams had been the chief +magistrate of the great republic, elected by the votes of a continent. Lee +had been the foremost general of the bravest and most puissant nation that +ever lost its existence by war. Each one of the two passed from power down +into what is usually a condition of inaction and accumulating rust till +the end of life, and to each was most kindly granted the achievement of +new fame and glory. In the national house of representatives, Adams, +during the last twelve years of his life,—1836-48,—did the great deeds +which we have just lauded. In the last years of his life Lee, as the head +of an humble institution of learning, showed not only the youth in his +charge, but all of his stricken people, how to conquer direst adversity +with such grand success in an example of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> unmurmuring endurance that every +future generation of men will give it more loving appreciation.</p> + +<p>John Q. Adams, as I have tried to explain, is almost an American epoch of +himself; but I could not give him the chapter that is his due.</p> + +<p>I felt that it would have been well to pair Stephen A. Douglas of the +north with Alexander H. Stephens of the south. They are in nearly exact +antithetical contrast. The former clung to the south, the other to the +union, until the clock struck the dread hour of separation. How they loved +each other and each other’s people! They most strikingly exemplify the +adamantine grip which each one of the two nationalizations kept upon its +greatest and best.</p> + +<p>Wendell Phillips and William L. Yancey should be contrasted. Each one was +the very prince of sectional agitators, helping with great efficiency to +make the public opinion that carried forward Seward and Lincoln, the +actual leaders of the north, and Toombs, the actual leader of the south. +It is my strong conviction that Phillips and Yancey were the most gifted, +eloquent, and influential stump speakers in America since Patrick Henry.</p> + +<p>Chase steadily rises in my estimate. His solid parts, his consistent, +conscientious, and able anti-slavery career, and especially that decisive +speech in the Peace Congress,—these, and other relevancies that can be +mentioned, drew me powerfully. The firm candor with which he avowed in +that memorable speech that the north had decided against the expansion of +slavery, demonstrates the clearness of his vision. The part of it which +recurs to me most frequently is that in which he impressively recounts the +intersectional dissension over the fugitive slave law,—the south +believing slavery right, the north believing it wrong,—and proposes that +in place of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> remedy given by that law the master be paid the value of +his slave. “Instead of judgment for rendition,” he said, “let there be +judgment for compensation determined by the true value of the services, +and let the same judgment assure freedom to the fugitive. The cost to the +national treasury would be as nothing in comparison with the evils of +discord and strife. All parties would be gainers.”</p> + +<p>Calhoun devised to restrain the sections from mutual aggression by +endowing each with an absolute veto against the other. Webster fondly +believed that if he could be president he would bring back the wrangling +brothers to love one another again as much as he loved them all. Chase +also had his pet impracticable project. Each one of the three recoiled and +racked all of his invention to save his country from the huge fraternal +slaughter that his divining soul whispered to him was near.</p> + +<p>The south will cherish the memory of Chase more and more fondly as she +learns better how he firmly stood for civil law against military rule, and +that he was heart and soul for universal amnesty.</p> + +<p>It was all I could do to deny a chapter to William H. Seward. He seems to +me to have been the only northern man whose foresight of the coming +convulsion equalled that of Calhoun. He did not become a Jeremiah as the +other did, for his section was not, after it had just emerged from a gulf +of blood, to be plunged and held for years in a gulf of poverty and +disorder. He was far less serious and much more optimistic in his nature +than Calhoun. Affectionate, sympathetic, rarely agreeable in his +manners—how well Mrs. Davis depicts him in what is to me one of the +pleasantest passages of her book.<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a> He was spoils politician, able +popular leader,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> and great statesman in rare combination. While his heart +was extremely warm, his head was never turned by his feelings. Lincoln +ardently believed in his soul what Choate calls “the glittering +generalities” of the declaration of independence. But to Seward current +illusions were the same as they were to Napoleon Bonaparte—he was to lead +the masses with them just as far as possible, but not to deceive himself. +Read in your closet his two epochal speeches, the “higher law” one of +March 11, 1850, and that proclaiming the irrepressible conflict at +Rochester, October 25, 1858, then read that of Chase at the Peace +Congress, and you cannot avoid feeling that while Chase opposes slavery +mainly because he conceives it to be a gross moral wrong, the other +opposes because it is the belonging of an inferior civilization. In my +opinion no man of that time had such a clear conception as Seward of the +utter economical incompatibility of the free-labor system and the +slave-labor system, and of the doom of the latter in their conflict then +on. While he had this superior insight and wisdom it was the better way +for him to follow the tide of morbid moral sentiment and unreasoning zeal +carrying the country on to his goal. Following thus he proved a leader +unsurpassed. The longer I contemplate Seward the stronger becomes my +conviction that he is the most entertaining subject and the most +delightful in variety of parts and traits of all American statesmen for +the essayist portrait painter. To give a picture true to life demands the +very best and highest art.</p> + +<p>In my last two chapters I do all I can to clear up the race question, +which is now densely beclouded with northern misunderstanding and southern +prejudice. The negro has a nature that in some material particulars +differs so widely from that of the Caucasian that it ought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> to be duly +allowed for; and yet as people are so prone to think all others just like +themselves, this is hardly ever done. Now, forty years after emancipation, +we see that the promptings and consequences of his nature just emphasized +in combination with the social forces operating upon him have caused +changes in the situation, of the gravest import to him. His native +idleness, coming back stronger and stronger the further he gets in time +from the steady work of slavery, his lack of forecast, his vice, +inveterate pauperism, increasing disease and insanity, on one side; the +hostility excited against him by the inexpressibly unwise grant to him of +equal political rights, and the rapid invasion by white labor since the +early nineties of the province which he appropriated during the years when +the whites had not recovered from the paralyzing shock and surprise of +emancipation, on the other side, example these changes. There has evolved +a division of the southern negroes into two classes. One class, which I +most roughly distinguish as the upper, contains all those who are not +compelled by their circumstances to be unskilled laborers in country and +town. It hardly amounts to one-twentieth of the whole. The millions are +all in the other class, which I again most roughly distinguish as the +lower. Ponder what I tell you of them, their helplessness, their +accelerating degradation, their mounting death rate, their gloomy +prospects. I try hard also to have the upper class well understood. To a +southerner it is amazing how many outside people of education, +intelligence, and fair-mindedness assume that the multitude in the lower +class are the same in every material detail of character and ability as +those few who by various favors of fortune have found place in the upper +class. To stress here, in the beginning, a fact as its very great +importance demands, nearly all the negroes who get high station are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> part +white. Dumas, the father, was at least half white. The son Dumas was +probably three-quarters white. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Anglo-African +composer, is half white. Such as these are the samples by which nearly all +the continent and England, and many northerners, estimate the capacity of +the pure negroes of the south, grovelling in depths out of which one +climbs only now and then by a miracle. The men just mentioned are not real +negroes. It is the same with nearly all the so-called negroes of America, +from Douglass to Dr. Washington, who have become famous. They are but +examples of what whites can do against adversity. The coal-black equalling +these in achievement would be as rare among his fellows as Hans, the +Berlin thinker, is among horses. This palpable distinction between men who +are largely, if not nearly all, Caucasian, and men who are purely West +African in descent, is utterly overlooked by many most conscientious and +earnest ones of the north, like Mr. Louis F. Post, who is always telling +us of the south what the negro is—not, and how we should treat him, +magisterially reading us lessons in A B C democracy.</p> + +<p>There will be fewer and fewer part-white negroes in the south by reason of +the steadily increasing hostility of each race to mixed procreation. This +upper class has long shown a drift northward. Under the expulsion of many +of its members from certain occupations by white competition, lately +commenced and fast increasing, this drift now gathers strength. From what +I see every day it seems to me that the destiny of much the greater part +of this upper class is disappearance partly by absorption and partly by +euthanasy.</p> + +<p>It is the millions of the lower class that should be our deepest concern. +If they be left where their utopian emancipators and enfranchisers have +placed them, it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> almost certain that nearly the whole will go into the +jaws of destruction, now opening wide before them and sucking them in. +Such a result of the three amendments—that is, to have annihilated hosts +upon hosts of pure negroes in order to make just a few part-whites +all-white—would be a fit monument to the statesmanship of the maddest +visionaries in all history. We must come resolutely and lovingly to the +help of these wretched creatures. I tell you at large how it is our duty +to give the black man his own State in our union, and supervise him in it +even better than we are now doing for the Philippine.</p> + +<p>I believe that the foregoing, re-enforced by a glance over the +chapter-titles, will give a reader the preconception which he ought to get +from an introduction to a book which he is about to begin. In dealing with +the causes and some of the more important consequences of the brothers’ +war my method is rationale rather than narrative. My first purpose is to +indicate how everything happened according to laws that with cosmic force +reared two great economic powers, divided the whole land into a vast host +standing up for one of the two in the south, and a still larger host +standing up for the other in the north, and how these same laws were most +faithfully served by all the actors on each side. I try to set out and +explain what are the principles of evolution and the ways of human action, +and especially the commanding view-points, which must be rightly attended +to in their supreme importance before the greater one of the two critical +American eras can have its fit history. The man who writes it will be +entirely free from the monomania and orgiastic fury of both fire-eater and +root-and-branch abolitionist, from their excessively emotional +assumptions, their explosive and exclamatory argumentation; he will have +the industry,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> the undisturbed vision, and the perfect fairness of the +foremost sociologists of our time; he will show how each side was right +from first to last in upholding its own separate country,—all belonging +to it, statesmen, agitators, demagogues, fanatical fire-eaters and +abolitionists, generals and soldiers. He will show that such things which +in expedience ought not to have been done were unavoidable, and therefore +to be excused. He will show what erroneous judgments of each section +should now be challenged and kept from working injury. Especially do I +emphasize it, he will convince every average reader that north and south +were equally conscientious, honest, heroic, and lovable from beginning to +end. Such a history will be even greater than that by which Thucydides +realized his soaring ambition to give the world an everlasting possession; +and it will become the bible of America, treasured and loved alike by the +people both north and south.</p> + +<p>This bible is coming, as many signs show. I will illustrate by examples +from three northern authors, given not exactly in the order of time, but +in that of their approximation to full attainment. After a circumstantial +description of each one of the three days’ fighting at Gettysburg, fair +and impartial in the extreme, Mr. Vanderslice eulogizes both sides, +without invidious distinction, for “their fidelity and gallantry, their +fortitude and valor,” and because there was nothing done by either “to +tarnish their record as soldiers,” and most becomingly emphasizes the +“martial fame and glory” thereby won “for the American soldier.” But just +here he sounds a most unpleasantly discordant note by saying, “One was +right and the other wrong.”<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a> He forgot that brothers who fight as those +did at Gettysburg are all right, and that whenever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> one falls on either +side flights of angels sing him to his rest.</p> + +<p>In June, 1902, Mr. Charles F. Adams, making an academic address at +Chicago, startled many of his auditors with this outspoken vindication of +the south:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Legally and technically,—<i>not morally</i>,— ... and wholly +irrespective of humanitarian considerations,—to which side did the +weight of argument incline during the great debate which culminated in +our civil war?... If we accept the judgment of some of the more modern +students and investigators of history,—either wholly unprejudiced or +with a distinct union bias,—it would seem as if the weight of +argument falls into what I will term the confederate scale.”<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a></p> + +<p>Mr. Adams, having made further inquiry of his own, December 22 of the same +year, announced a still more advanced conclusion. He had said at Chicago +that the confederate scale preponderated; but now his vision having become +more certain he said the scales hung even.<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a> Note that in the passage +just quoted from him I have italicized the two words “not morally.” I do +not understand that in the Charleston speech he meant to revoke the +italicized words, and to say anything more than that each side was right +in its own view of the nature of the government. Even with this +reservation, the utterances of Mr. Adams evince a grateful improvement +upon the dogmatism which characterizes nearly every other northerner or +southerner who has treated the subject.</p> + +<p>Professor Wendell sees clearly that both sides were morally right, and he +is impartially just and equally loving to both. I feel that the quotations +from a late work of his which I now make are the chief merits of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> this +chapter. Considering the controversy between the sections, he says, with +the truest insight, “The constitution of the United States was presenting +itself more and more in the light of an agreement between two incompatible +sets of economic institutions, assuming to each the right freely to exist +within its own limits.”<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a></p> + +<p>In this next passage as to the same subject, rising above Mr. Adams to the +high frankness which the facts demand, he says, “The truth is that an +irrepressible social conflict was at hand, and that both sides were as +honorable as were both sides during the American Revolution, or during the +civil wars of England.”<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a></p> + +<p>How just to north and south each, and how fraternally compassionate +towards the south is this: “Solemn enough to the uninvaded north, the war +meant more than northern imagination has yet realized to those southern +States into whose heart its horrors were slowly, surely carried. Such a +time was too intense for much expression; it was a moment rather for +heroic action; and in south and north alike it found armies of heroes. Of +these there are few more stirring records than a simple ballad made by Dr. +Ticknor, of Georgia, concerning a confederate soldier.”<a name='fna_9' id='fna_9' href='#f_9'><small>[9]</small></a> And then he +quotes “Little Giffen” in full.</p> + +<p>Professor Wendell reaches a still greater height when he decorates the +Tyrtæus of the Confederate States and the supereminent anti-slavery +lyricist of the north with equal homage and admiration. He says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The civil war brought forth no lines more fervent [than the +concluding thirty-six of Timrod’s ‘The Cotton Boll,’ which are set +out], and few whose fervor rises to such lyric height. In the days of +conflict, north regarded south, and south north, as the incarnation of +evil. Time, however, has begun its healing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>work; at last our country +begins to understand itself better than ever before; and as our new +patriotism strengthens, we cannot prize too highly such verses as +Whittier’s, honestly phrasing noble northern sentiment, or as +Timrod’s, who with equal honesty phrased the noble sentiment of the +south. A literature which in the same years could produce work so +utterly antagonistic in superficial sentiment, and yet so harmonious +in their common sincerity and loftiness of feeling, is a literature +from which riches may come.”<a name='fna_10' id='fna_10' href='#f_10'><small>[10]</small></a></p> + +<p>These words are more golden than I can tell. They parallel the elevation +of Webster, showing the same love for South Carolina and Massachusetts, in +the pertinent parts of the reply to Hayne, which since my boyhood I have +cherished as a nonpareil. It is cheering to a faithful southerner to +receive such sure proof that the day must soon come when all obloquy will +be lifted from the fame of Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis. What a grand +triumph of contrast, almost surpassing the best achievement of Shakspeare, +it will be when some honest Griffith, having shown Webster, Lincoln, and +Grant in all the worth which merited their unspeakably happy lot, each +radiant with the victor’s glory, places opposite the great civic heroes of +the southern nation, their due renown at last fitly blazoned. That renown +will be that they devoted the very greatest human powers and virtues all +their lives, with never remitted effort and spotless fidelity, to save a +doomed country,—the imperishable renown of grand failure in a cause which +adverse fate cannot keep from being ever dear to all humanity.</p> + +<p>My last word as to what I have just quoted from the three northern authors +is that all of us—and especially the fast widening public of +readers—ought to be forever in earnest to applaud such sentiments and +chide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> every manifestation of excessive sectional bias or prejudice from +either northerner or southerner. This has been my incessantly kept faith +for years. As proof I refer to my article, “The Old and New South,” nearly +all of it written in the early part of 1875—thirty years ago—and which I +published the next year. I give an exact copy of it in the Appendix. As +you go through it remember these things of the author: The election of +Lincoln made me believe, as it did thousands of other southerners, that +secession was the only patriotic course. I therefore voted for secession +delegates to the State convention. I served in the confederate army all +the war, taking part in the First Manassas and many other battles; and +when I had been surrendered and paroled at Appomattox I walked back to my +home in Georgia. Ten years after this I had found full solace and comfort +for the direful event to the south of the brothers’ war; and I had learned +that the brothers on each side had complete justification in conscience +for their contrary parts as statesmen, public leaders, voters, and at the +end as soldiers. I want my readers of each section to see that I have long +practised what I am now preaching.</p> + +<p>I beg attention to the article on another score. It shows that the +opinions expressed in this book have not been formed in haste. Nearly all +of the more important will be found therein, in embryo, at least; and the +present book will show, I hope, that they have prosperously grown. There +are passages in the article, such as those touching the relations of the +races, the future of the negro, the maintenance by the decentralizing +forces of the union of their balance with the counter ones, and also +others, which I might now justly claim to have proved prophetic; and I do +not believe that a serious misprediction can be found in the entire +article. This is, I hope, such corroboration by after occurrences as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>indicates that even my early studies of the transcendently important +theme were not unfruitful.</p> + +<p>Further, the article serves in some sort to mark a definite stage in +evolution. To give but one illustration: Although my close attention to +planting interests at the time and for the seven or eight preceding years +had kept me closely watching the negro, I had not then discovered even the +beginning of that division of the race into two classes which is now so +plain to me.</p> + +<p>Possibly some readers may shy away from my book, deeming that its subject +is hackneyed and worn out. They will exclaim, What can this author say +that has not been said in the vast library of books already written upon +the civil war? This will be asked, I am sure, only by the unobservant and +unreflecting. If one but turn away from the assumptions, dogmas, and +philippics, with which north and south cannonaded each other’s morality +with increasing fury from 1831 to 1861, to the <i>rerum causæ</i>, the play of +resistless social forces, and the other actualities and great things +indicated above, their huge stores of varied novelty, interest, romance, +and wisdom will greatly embarass him—as has been my painful +experience—both in making the best selection and in his felt inability to +give what he does at last select its fit presentation.</p> + +<p>As illustration I will say that every thoroughly impartial northern reader +who meditates what I narrate as to Toombs will, I believe, be astonished +to learn that one so prodigally gifted with supreme virtue and supreme +genius, and who was of unexampled success in doing all the common and all +the extraordinary duties of high place, has become worse than forgotten in +almost his own day; and such a reader will suspect, as I do myself, that +there is much more of value in his career that I have overlooked.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>Perhaps this chapter is too long already. But I pray my reader to allow me +to say a little more. We are upon the threshold of a new American era. +Evidently because of our western coast we are to dominate the Pacific +ocean commerce and to develop it into proportions so enormous as to be now +almost inconceivable. That coast will soon outstrip the Atlantic in +population and great cities. Our people, safe against wars on the +continent, maintaining armies only of workers, taught better methods every +year by practice and science, will soon be far in advance of their present +enviable prosperity and comfort. Cheering as is the promise of their +material progress, that of their progress in virtue and good government is +still more cheering. Everywhere in the north—which was not impoverished, +deprived of familiar modes of production, and paralyzed with a race +question by the event of the brothers’ war—the State electorates are +rebelling successfully against the party machine, cashiering the boss, and +subverting the corporation oligarchy. That in the last election the voters +most intelligently split their tickets assures the early expulsion of +spoilsmen, grafters, and public-service franchise-grabbers from the +control of our politics, legislation, and administration of government, +and the real and permanent elevation of the people to being their own +absolute governors. In several States—one of these a southern—the vote +was for the most democratic and anti-plutocratic president since Lincoln, +while at the same time the anti-plutocratic State candidates, either of +the other party or independent, were elected. Our population will soon +outstrip all the world in average riches, comfort, virtue, and education. +The special note to be made of this new American era now beginning is that +we are to lead the nations into a war-abolishing United States of the +world, which in the end will make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> and keep them our equals in solid +welfare and happiness. With this prospect in view, the brighter and more +enrapturing as I cannot keep from contrasting it with the black and +hopeless future which settled around me at Appomattox, I would do all that +I can to bring about that better understanding between north and south +which befits the good time near at hand.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">A BEGINNING MADE WITH SLAVERY</span></p> + + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">As</span> a distinguished southerner, familiar with the subject, says, slavery in +the United States was “a stupendous anachronism.”<a name='fna_11' id='fna_11' href='#f_11'><small>[11]</small></a> It is almost +incredible to the average northerner of to-day that the enlightened people +of the south sank backwards in social development a thousand years or +more, and hugged to their bosoms for several generations such a monstrous +evil and peril.</p> + +<p>The co-operation of two facts fully explains the wonder just noted. Now +let us try to understand this.</p> + +<p>The first fact is the part played by tobacco and cotton before the +anti-slavery sentiment became influential. At a time when there was +practically no industry but agriculture these two staples became the most +lucrative of all common American crops. Tobacco found its true soil in +Virginia, and cotton farther south. It developed in time that both could +be made far more profitably with African slaves than by free white labor, +the only other labor to be had. Of course you are to remember that slave +cultivation of tobacco did not become general in Virginia until near the +end of the seventeenth century, and that it was the invention of the gin +soon after the adoption of the federal constitution in 1789 that started +cotton production on a large scale. What you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> are especially to grasp here +is the economic conditions which naturally spread slavery from its +beginning at Jamestown, first over Virginia, and then throughout the +entire south, either settled in large measure from Virginia, or looking +thither for example. The Virginian who could not replace his exhausted +fields with virgin soil at home went with his slaves either west or south, +and hacked down enough of the primeval forest to give his working force +its quantum of arable land. We need not stop here to tell of rice and +cane, nor of other crops and industries which for a while engaged slave +labor in northern regions of the south where the soil did not suit +tobacco. The foregoing suggests adequately for this place how slavery +became general in the south.</p> + +<p>The second fact is that the prevalent opinion of that time was far +different from that of to-day, for certain reasons, to which I would now +have you attend.</p> + +<p>Long before the discovery of America personal slavery had fallen under the +ban of the christian church and become in Europe a thing of the past. The +Divine Comedy catalogues in detail the religious, political, moral, and +social events of its age. It is utterly silent throughout as to slavery. +Dante died in 1321, soon after he had finished the Divine Comedy. That was +nearly three hundred years before the appearance of African slavery in +Virginia.</p> + +<p>Now for something of very great importance to us here, which occurred soon +afterwards, and before the introduction of African slavery into America. +It is that by the Renascence the literature of slaveholding Greece and +Rome suddenly acquired and long held commanding influence upon almost +every educator of the public in the enlightened world. It was in the last +quarter of the fourteenth century—some fifty years after Dante<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> had +died—that the classics revived in Italy. Spreading thence over Europe, +they are found dominating the great Elizabethan divines, philosophers, +poets, and other opinion-forming writers at the end of the fifteenth +century. And during all of the time from the landing of the twenty +Africans at Jamestown by the Dutch man-of-war in 1619 until slavery had +become the solitary prop of southern industry and property, the Greek and +Latin ancient writers were in our mother country almost the sole subjects +of school or university education, and the main reading of all those that +read at all. And every page of this literature, studied with enthusiastic +worship and resorted to day in and day out for instruction and +inspiration, disclosed that in Greece and Rome the average family was +dependent for its maintenance upon slaves; and that so far from slavery +being a relic of barbarism, as the American root-and-branch abolitionists +afterwards fulminated in a platform, it was the very foundation of the +state in those two great nations whose philosophy, learning, science, +jurisprudence, poetry, art, and eloquence are still the models in every +enlightened land. Naturally the educated classes, now that it had been +several hundred years since slavery was a burning question, had forgotten +or had never heard of the old disinclination of the church, and could not +see any evil in that which their most admired and dearest ones had all +practised. The classics did not stop with giving slavery the negative +support just mentioned. Although such authors as Quintilian and Seneca, +and the later jurists—all of the discredited silver, and not of the +glorified Ciceronian and Augustan ages—do express, theatrically and +academically, anti-slavery opinions, yet what they say was merely dust in +the balance when weighed against the commendations of the institution to +be found in the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> who had now +become the great idols of intellectual society.<a name='fna_12' id='fna_12' href='#f_12'><small>[12]</small></a></p> + +<p>The church would not stay out in the cold and dark, whither it had been +suddenly and rudely cast by the Renascence. It woke up to discover that as +the African was a heathen barbarian it was God’s mercy to kidnap him for a +christian master, and thus give him his only opportunity of saving his +soul. And although it is not right to enslave other races, the descendants +of Ham are an exception, who by reason of Noah’s curse are to be the +servants of servants to the end of time—that is what Holy Church taught +by precept and example.</p> + +<p>“Sir John Hawkins has the unenviable distinction of being the first +English captain of a slave-ship, about the year 1552.”<a name='fna_13' id='fna_13' href='#f_13'><small>[13]</small></a> His venture +proved a great success. Good Queen Bess reproached him for his +mistreatment of human beings. He answered that it was far better for the +African thus to become a slave in a christian community, than to live the +rest of his life in his native home of idolatry; and this was so +convincing that “in the subsequent expeditions of this most heartless +man-stealer, she was a partner and protector.”<a name='fna_14' id='fna_14' href='#f_14'><small>[14]</small></a> Until the end of the +seventeenth century the masses regarded the negro as being rather wild +beast than man, showing no more scruples in catching and making a drudge +of him than later generations did in lassoing wild horses and working them +under curb-bit, spur, and whip. And the more understanding ones, who +recognized that the negro <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>belonged to humanity, re-enforced Aristotle<a name='fna_15' id='fna_15' href='#f_15'><small>[15]</small></a> +and Pliny<a name='fna_16' id='fna_16' href='#f_16'><small>[16]</small></a> with much that they found both in the Old and New +Testaments.<a name='fna_17' id='fna_17' href='#f_17'><small>[17]</small></a> The many who preached liberty or the true religion posed +as humanitarians, pharisaically comparing themselves with the best +characters of Greece and Rome. The citizens of those great republics, they +said, in spite of their advanced democracy, tore men and women of their +own race and blood away from home and country and forced them with the +scourge to toil in chains, while we do that only with savages and +heathens, who cannot be civilized or christianized in any other way. We +eschew slavery in the abstract. We tolerate it only in the concrete, which +is the slavery of those destined for it by God and nature. Slave-catcher, +slaveholder, and the public seriously and conscientiously held this creed.</p> + +<p>You must now add to the list of influences planting and stimulating +slavery in America the protection it got in the constitution under which +the federal government started in 1789. As Mr. Blaine says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The compromises on the slavery question, inserted in the +constitution, were among the essential conditions upon which the +federal government was organized. If the African slave-trade had not +been permitted to continue for twenty years, if it had not been +conceded that three-fifths of the slaves should be counted in the +apportionment of representatives in congress, if it had not been +agreed that fugitives from service should be returned to their owners, +the thirteen States would not have been able in 1787 ‘to form a more +perfect union.’”<a name='fna_18' id='fna_18' href='#f_18'><small>[18]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>Think over it until you can fully take in the prodigious favor to slavery +which this countenance of it by the American bible of bibles naturally +created in the north and south.</p> + +<p>The forces rapidly sketched in the foregoing were so powerful in their +co-operation to bring in slavery that its establishment and a long era of +vigorous growth were inevitable. Note the years during which they met no +sensible or only a fitful opposition. The first anti-slavery agitation +that shook the entire country was that over the Missouri question, which +having lasted a little more than two years ended in 1821, thirty-two years +after the adoption of the constitution. This agitation was only against +the extension of slavery. It was not until 1835 that the presentation to +Congress of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of +Columbia disclosed to the far-seeing Calhoun alone that serious and mighty +aggression upon slavery in the States was commencing. Here we may date the +beginning of the abolition movement. But that movement did not become +respectable with the great mass of northern people until the application +of California in 1850 for admission into the union as a free State widened +the chasm between the sections so that it commenced to show to the dullest +eye, and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which came out in 1852, stirred the north to +its depths. The growth of slavery was then and had been for a quarter of a +century complete. The soil, climate, and best agricultural interests of +the south, at a time when she was to be wholly agricultural or +economically nothing at all, the practice and precepts of the sages of +Greece and Rome, of the patriarchs of Israel, of Jesus and his disciples +and apostles, of the great and good of modern times,—all these had, with +oracular consensus, led her understanding and conscience into adopting, +nurturing, and on into extending slavery over her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>territory. Thus when +abolition first emerged into open day, slavery had become the very +economical life of the south. It had so permeated and informed the +combined property, social, and political structure, that abolition would +subvert the community fabric and beggar the population of the southern +States now living in content and comfort.</p> + +<p>I trust that the foregoing shows you that it is not so strange after all +that slavery ran the career just described.</p> + +<p>But some one says, how could the southerners as Americans, the especial +champions of liberty, stultify themselves by slaveholding? how could they +forget the world-arousing words of the declaration of independence that +all men are created equal, and endowed with unalienable rights to life, +liberty, and pursuit of happiness?</p> + +<p>This has already been answered. The slaveholding republics of Greece and +Rome had advanced in democracy so far beyond anything to be found in +Europe at the revival of learning, that from that time on for many years +the political doctrine in the recovered classics was the very greatest of +all the intellectual influences that made for mere democracy. The +celebrated passage in which Burke eulogizes the stubborn maintenance of +their freedom by free slaveholders has been the text of speakers from +Pinkney, addressing the United States senate on the Missouri question, to +Toombs, lecturing in Tremont Temple, Boston, and it has never been +confuted. History shows no instance where such men ever reproached +themselves for slaveholding, and while it was profitable put it aside +because it is undemocratic.</p> + +<p>As to the words which you quote from the declaration of independence, +Jefferson, the draftsman, doubtless, meant them to include the African; +but the majority of the congress making it, and the American people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> +actually ratifying it, almost unanimously held that the African was not +enough of man to come within the words.</p> + +<p>A Roman law parallel aptly illustrates. In the Institutes it is said that +slavery is contrary to the law of nature, for under this every one is born +free;<a name='fna_19' id='fna_19' href='#f_19'><small>[19]</small></a> and again, that slavery was established by the <i>jus gentium</i> +under which a man is made subject to the dominion of another <i>contra +naturam</i>, that is, against nature, against <i>jus naturale</i>, or the law of +nature.<a name='fna_20' id='fna_20' href='#f_20'><small>[20]</small></a> And in the Pandects this is weakly echoed.<a name='fna_21' id='fna_21' href='#f_21'><small>[21]</small></a> But the actual +enactment of the <i>corpus juris civilis</i> fortifies slavery as it had been +established all over the world by the <i>jus gentium</i> with these plain +words: “The master has power of life and death over his slave; and +whatever property the slave acquires, he acquires for the master.”<a name='fna_22' id='fna_22' href='#f_22'><small>[22]</small></a></p> + +<p>Our forefathers making the declaration of independence, and the Romans of +Justinian’s time, sentimentalized in the same words over the natural right +to equality<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> and liberty of all human beings, and also resolutely held on +to their slaves. The solemn assertion that all men are created equal and +of inalienable liberty made by American slaveholders was but a repetition +of what Roman slaveholders had already said; and it is curious that the +fact has not attracted due attention.</p> + +<p>I fancy that my objector now shoots his last bolt. He exclaims that +southerners were incredibly dull and obtuse not to discern that +resistlessly puissant economical, political, moral, and intellectual +forces, not of America only but of the entire world, were leaguing +together against slavery, and therefore they ought to have fled in time +from the coming wrath and evil day.</p> + +<p>A satisfactory reply need not postulate any other than ordinary +intelligence and alertness for the south. Note how people dwell near +overflowing rivers, or a sea of tidal waves, or live volcanoes, or in +earthquake districts, or near a tribe of scalping redskins, where they, +their wives and children, keep merry as the day is long until calamity +comes. The warning of the abolitionists was too late. Suppose we had given +the inhabitants of Herculaneum or Pompeii or St. Pierre timely counsel to +abandon their homes and settle beyond the reach of eruption. How many +would have done it? I knew hundreds of people, and among all of them there +was but one who showed by his actions that he foresaw the early fall of +slavery. That was Mr. Frank L. Upson of Lexington, Georgia, a highly +accomplished and well-informed man. In 1856, I think it was, he sold all +of his slaves, declaring as his reason that he believed if he kept them he +would see them freed without compensation. He was so serious that he +declared this even to his purchasers. They merely laughed, and everybody +else laughed too, to think how green he was to give them the good bargain +that he did. But after the war<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> he enjoyed comfort from the money those +slaves had brought him, when all his neighbors had been plunged into hard +times by emancipation. There may have been others that did like him. There +could not have been many such, for I have never been able to hear of a +single one.</p> + +<p>We did like the rest of mankind do or would have done. We stuck to our +homes and business until the tidal wave washed them away. Yet there are +wise ones who are positive that had we not been far more dull and +unforeseeing than the average we would have understood many years before +the final convulsion that the forces arrayed against slavery were +irresistible, and surrendered it in time to get compensated emancipation. +Look at the monopolists now preying upon the public in every corner of the +land. They are confident that their holdings are impregnable against +democracy coming invincibly against them. Look at the great mass of our +population, shutting the fresh air out of their houses in order to be +comfortably warm, and thereby rearing parents—especially mothers—who +unawares are incessantly developing tuberculosis to destroy themselves and +their children. Some years hence when resumption by government of its +functions now granted to private persons has dispossessed all the +monopolists, and when every dwelling-house is kept perfectly ventilated +and free from infected air, there will be other wise ones to believe that +hindsight is just the same as foresight, and to inveigh against the +monopolists and parents just mentioned for their unwonted stupidity and +improvidence.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">UNAPPEASABLE ANTAGONISM OF FREE LABOR AND SLAVE LABOR, AND THEIR MORTAL COMBAT OVER THE PUBLIC LANDS</span></p> + + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Now</span> a brief explanation of the antagonism between free and slave labor. +The expense of his slaves to the farmer is the same whether they are +resting or at work. Sundays, days and even seasons of unfavorable weather, +in long do-nothing intervals succeeding the making and also the gathering +of the crop, they cost him just as much as when he can work them from sun +to sun. But this is not all of his load. The year round he must subsist +the numerous non-workers in the families of his laborers, whether young, +superannuated, or afflicted. Suppose another farmer to be on adjoining +land who can employ laborers just as he wants them, and discharge them as +soon as he has no further use for them. Do you not perceive that this +free-labor farmer can produce far more cheaply than the slave farmer? And +do you not also perceive that if there is a supply of free labor to be had +in a slave country, and it can be got by every farmer <i>ad libitum</i>, slaves +must lose their value as property and be driven to the wall? Free labor +was kept out of the south by the repugnance of the white laborer to the +negro. Note also that when the number of slaves had become considerable +their owners would naturally combine to protect the market value of their +property by preventing the coming in of cheaper labor. This was the real +reason why Virginia and Delaware opposed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> extension of the African +slave-trade from 1800 to 1808, and the Confederate States’ constitution +refused to reopen it. Slavery made some headway in the north. But not +finding there the stimulus of such products as tobacco and cotton, it +could not become so widespread and deep-seated as to sweep out free labor. +The latter under favorable conditions commenced the competition in which +it could not fail to win; and in due time slavery died out in the north. +We especially desire to emphasize the attitude towards extension of +slavery that free labor was bound to take. That it had already ejected +slavery from every other enlightened community will occur to the reader at +once as weighty proof that the two cannot live together.<a name='fna_23' id='fna_23' href='#f_23'><small>[23]</small></a> Think of the +free worker’s suffrage, and you cannot believe that he could long be +induced to vote for the protection and further spread of a system taking +the bread out of his own mouth, and degrading him by engendering profound +disrespect for his class; and then think of the vast and rapidly growing +numbers of the free laborers of the north, receiving every day great +accessions of foreign immigrants avoiding the south as they would the +plague; think of all these, and you begin to discern what a mighty power +was rising against slavery.</p> + +<p>This has brought us to the place where we can properly treat the +contention for the Territories. Consider their vast area. Remember that +our people have settled thereon in such numbers that thirty-two new States +have been added to the old thirteen, and others still are to be added. +Here for some generations was land for the landless; the full meaning of +which Henry George has made us plainly see. The adventurous and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>enterprising of the old States of each section set their faces +thitherward in a constantly swelling stream. Attend to the only material +difference for us between the northerner and the southerner going west. +Each settler wanted a community like his native one. The northerner had +not been trained to manage slave labor and property; he did not like it; +he thought it out of date and vastly inferior to free labor; and he could +not endure to have himself and family live among negroes, repulsive to him +because of unfamiliarity. He had learned from its history in the south +that wherever slavery established itself it superseded all other labor. +Therefore he would none of it in his new home; and he settled in a +non-slave community. Of course the southerner, knowing nothing of free +labor and bred into a love of the slave system, settled among +slaveholders. And so for a generation or two free and slave States were +steadily added to the union in pairs.</p> + +<p>But the unsettled lands were diminishing in area. Its population +multiplying so marvellously, the north felt urgent need for the whole of +these lands. The great majority of settlers going thence into the +Territories were farmers. Note some of the more influential classes left +behind them. The parents, relatives, and friends who wanted them suited in +the west—this was the largest class of all, and it was of prodigious +intellectual, political, and moral potency. Then the manufacturers of +agricultural implements, and of many articles, all of which the +southerners either had their mechanic slaves to make by hand, and of +oldtime fashion, or did without; the millers, and many sorts of wholesale +merchants who had found slave owners poor and the employers of free labor +good customers; and these manufacturers and merchants were greedy for the +new markets which they could get only in free States.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>These are but the merest hints, but they serve somewhat to suggest the +all-powerful motives which at last united the great majority of northern +people, east and west, in intelligent and inveterate opposition to the +further spread of slavery.</p> + +<p>Now look at the southern situation. At the outset, note that his slaves +were the southerner’s only laborers, and practically his only property. +And note especially that this property was not only self-supporting, but +it was also the most rapidly self-reproducing that Tom, Dick, and Harry +ever had in all history. A reliable witness tells this: “On my father’s +plantation an aged negro woman could call together more than one hundred +of her lineal descendants. I saw this old negro dance at the wedding of +her great-granddaughter.”<a name='fna_24' id='fna_24' href='#f_24'><small>[24]</small></a></p> + +<p>Let me repeat that slaves were not only money-making laborers, but also +things of valuable property, which of themselves multiplied as dollars do +at compound interest. Let the northern man unfamiliar with slavery try to +understand this one of its phases by supposing that he has orchards +abundantly yielding a fruit which is in good demand, and that the trees +plant and tend themselves, gather and store the fruit, set out other +orchards, and do all things else necessary to care for the property and +keep it steadily growing. Such trees with their yearly produce and +prodigious increase—each by an easy organic or natural, and not by a +difficult artificial, process, relieving the owner from all but the +slightest attention and labor of superintendence—would soon be the only +ones in their entire zone of production; bringing it about that all other +occupations and property therein would be dependent upon this main and +really only industry. Such orchards would be somewhat like the slaves in +their automatic production<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> and accumulation, but they would be much +inferior as marketable property in many particulars.</p> + +<p>Although the profits of slave-planting were considerable, the greatest +profit of all was what the master thought of and talked of all the day +long,—the natural increase of his slaves, as he called it. His negroes +were far more to him than his land. His planting was the furthest removed +of all from a proper restorative agriculture. Quickly exhausting his new +cleared fields, he looked elsewhere for other virgin soil to wear out. The +number of the slaves in the south was growing fast, and the new lands in +the older slave States were nearly gone. To keep the hens laying the +golden eggs of natural increase, nests must be found for them on the +cotton, sugar, and rice lands of the Territories. In other words, the area +of slave culture must be extended; for whenever there is no land for a +considerable number of our workers, it is evident that we have a surplus +of slaves; and the effect of that will be at the first to lower the market +value of our only property, and then gradually to destroy it. So the +instincts of the southerners whispered in their ears.</p> + +<p>We hope that we now have helped you to an understanding of the active +principles each of free labor and of slave labor; how by reason of them +the interests of north and south in dividing the public domain were in +irreconcilable conflict; and how it was natural that the free States +should band together against, and the slave States band together for, +slavery. Thus the country split into two geographical though not political +sections, the political division which ripened later being as yet only +imminent and inchoate. That these sections had been made by deadly war +between free labor and slave labor is all that we have to say here. The +development went further, as we shall explain in the next<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> chapter—all of +it under the propulsion of the two active principles. They were always the +ultimate and supreme motors. Often they are not to be seen at all. Still +more often what they did was disguised. To read the facts of that time +aright you must always and everywhere look for their work. Do that +patiently, and you will detect every one of the many controversies over +matters affecting an interest of either section as such—whether questions +apparently of national politics, of morals, or religion, in newspapers, +pamphlets, reviews, books, and all the vast contemporary literature, in +the pulpit, on the platform, and in every place and corner of the entire +land where policy and impolicy or right and wrong were mooted—to be but a +part of one or the other of two great complexes of machinery, each geared +to its particular motor and kept going by its mighty push.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">GENESIS, COURSE, AND GOAL OF SOUTHERN NATIONALIZATION</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Nationalization</span> is the process by which a nation makes itself. The process +may be active for a long while without completion, as we see in the case +of Ireland; it may form a nation, but to be overturned and wiped out, as +the southern confederacy was; or it may find its consummation in such a +powerful one as the United States. The most conspicuous effect of the +process we now have in hand is to make one of many communities. But +sometimes a part breaks off from a nation and sets up and maintains its +independence as a country. Thus a portion of the territory of Mexico was +settled over from our States, and after a while these settlers tore +themselves loose from Mexico and became the nation of Texas. We shall tell +you more fully in another chapter how the separate colonies became +nationalized into the United States, and what we say here of southern +nationalization will illustrate to the reader that important +transformation, to understand which is of especial moment to us in +examining the brothers’ war. But we must emphasize the characteristic +feature of the nationalization of the south. I have searched the pages of +history in vain for an example like it. The idiosyncrasy is that the south +was homogeneous in origin, race, language, religion, institutions, and +customs with the north, and yet she developed away from the north into a +separate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> nation. I have long been accustomed to parallel the case of +Ireland’s repulsion from Great Britain, but I always had to admit that +there was dissimilarity in everything except the strong drift towards +independence and the struggle to win it;<a name='fna_25' id='fna_25' href='#f_25'><small>[25]</small></a> for the Irish are largely +different from the English in origin, race, language, religion, +institutions, and customs. The more you consider it the more striking +becomes this uniqueness of southern nationalization. Think of it for a +moment. Thirteen adjacent colonies; each a dependency of the same nation; +all settled promiscuously from every part and parcel of one mother +country, and therefore the settlers rapidly becoming in time more like one +another everywhere than the English were who at home were clinging to +their several localities and dialects; governed alike; standing together +against Indians, French, and Spanish, and after a while against the mother +country;—where can you find another instance of so many common ties and +tendencies, all prompting incessantly and mightily to union in a political +whole, which is ever the goal of the nationalizing process. That the +colonies did grow into a political whole is not at all wonderful to the +historical student. The wonder is that after they had done this a number +of them just like the others in the particulars above pointed out, which +fuse adjacent communities into a nation, turn away from the old union and +seek to form one of their own. The southern States all did the same thing +with such practical unanimity that even the foreigner may know that the +same cause was at work in every one of them. Manifestly there was a +nationalizing element in them which was not in the others, and which made +the former <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>homogeneous with one another and heterogeneous to the rest. +And that element which differenced the south from the rest of the union so +greatly that it was, from a time long before either she or the north had +become conscious of it, impelling her irresistibly towards an independent +nationality of her own, all of us natives know was the constructive and +plastic principle of her slave industrial and property system.</p> + +<p>It is not the purpose of the foregoing expatiation to prove to you such a +familiar and well-known fact as that slavery parted north and south and +caused the brothers’ war. Its purpose is to arouse you to consider +nationalization, and have you see how it acts according to a will of its +own and not of man, and now and then works out most stupendous results +contrary to all that mortals deem probabilities. You ought to recognize +that the forces which produced the Confederate States were just as +all-powerful and opposeless as those which produced the United States; +that in fact they were exactly the same in kind, that is, the forces of +nationalization.</p> + +<p>To have you see that even at the time of making the federal constitution +the south had grown into a pro-slavery section and was far on the road +towards independence, it is necessary to correct the prevalent opinion +that there was then below Mason and Dixon’s line a very widespread and +influential hostility to slavery. The manumission of his slaves by +Washington, the fearless and outspoken opposition to the institution by +Jefferson and some other prominent persons, and certain facts indicating +unfavorable sentiment, have been too hastily accepted by even historians +as demonstrations that the opinion is true. Here are the facts which prove +it to be utterly untrue. In 1784, three years before our epochal +convention assembled, Jefferson, as chairman of an appropriate committee +consisting besides himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> of Chase of Maryland and Howell of Rhode +Island, reported to congress a plan for the temporary government of the +West Territory. This region contained not only all the territory that was +subsequently covered by the famous ordinance of 1787, but such a vast deal +more that it was proposed to make seventeen States out of the whole. +Consider this provision of the report, the suggestion and work of +Jefferson:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“That after the year 1800 of the christian era there shall be neither +slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of said States, otherwise +than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been +convicted to have been personally guilty.”</p> + +<p>When the report was taken up by congress, Spaight of North Carolina made a +motion to strike out the provision just quoted, and it was seconded by +Reed of South Carolina. On the vote North Carolina was divided; but all +the other southern States represented, to wit, Maryland, Virginia, and +South Carolina, voted for the motion, the colleagues of Jefferson of +Virginia and those of Chase of Maryland out-voting these two southerners +standing by the provision. All the northern States represented, which were +the then four New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania, voted for +the provision. But as it failed to get the necessary seven States it was +not retained.</p> + +<p>Thus it appears that at the close of the Revolutionary war the interest of +the south in and her attachment to slavery were so great that by her +representatives in congress she appears to be almost unanimous against the +proposal to keep the institution from extending.</p> + +<p>This action of the south shows that both Virginia in ceding that part of +the West Territory which was three years afterwards by the ordinance of +1787 put under Jefferson’s provision which had been rejected when it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> had +been proposed for all the territory, and the south in voting unanimously +for the ordinance, were not actuated by hostility to slavery. The soil of +the territory north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi to which the +ordinance applied probably may have been thought by Virginians unsuited to +tobacco, the then sole crop upon which slave labor could be lucratively +used. Be that as it may, that the southern States in subsequent cessions +made not long afterwards guarded against slavery prohibition must be kept +in mind. When they are, it is proved that always from the time that +Jefferson’s provision failed to carry in 1784, as has been told above, the +prevalent sentiment of the southern people overwhelmingly favored slavery.</p> + +<p>Let us illustrate from later times. Writers who claim that the south, +meditating secession, purposed to reopen the African slave-trade, adduce +some relevant evidence which at first flush appears to be very weighty, if +not convincing. They show that A. H. Stephens of Georgia, who afterwards +became vice-president of the confederacy, in 1859 used language indicating +that he thought it vital to the south, in her struggle to extend the area +of slavery, to get more Africans; and they further show similar utterances +made at the time by certain papers and other prominent men of the south.</p> + +<p>But the constitution of the Confederate States, adopted in 1861, contains +this provision:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign +country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the +United States of America is hereby forbidden, and congress is required +to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.”</p> + +<p>Of course this solemn act unanimously voted for by the members of the +congress, Stephens being one of them, counts incalculably more in weight +to prove that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> predominant southern sentiment was against reopening the +African slave-trade, than the counter evidence just stated. Likewise all +that Washington, Jefferson, and other of their contemporaries may have +done or said against slavery is outweighed by the contemporary pro-slavery +legislation and measures dictated by the south. It is very probable that +during the time we are now contemplating anti-slavery men were really as +few in the south as union men were after the first blood spilled in the +brothers’ war.</p> + +<p>Recall the three compromises between north and south, mentioned above, by +which the union was formed, and you will understand that the fathers were +preaching but to stones when they impugned slavery. And at this point +meditate the language of Madison in the historic convention, which shows +that he saw accurately even then the permanence of slavery, and the +unequivocal geographical division it had made. He was discussing the +apprehension of the small States, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island, +that under the union proposed they would be absorbed by the larger +adjacent States. He affirmed there was no such danger; and that the only +danger arose from the antagonism between the slave and the non-slave +sections. To avert this danger he proposed to arm north and south each +with defensive power against the other by conceding to the former the +superiority it would get in one branch of the federal legislature by +reason of its greater population if the members thereof came in equal +numbers from every State, large or small, and at the same time giving the +south superiority in the other branch by allowing it increased +representation therein for all its slaves counted as free inhabitants. +This prepares you for the language which we now give from the report, and +which we would have you meditate:</p> + +<p class="blockquot"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>“He [Madison] admitted that every peculiar interest, whether in any +class of citizens, or any description of States, ought to be secured +as far as possible. Wherever there is danger of attack, there ought to +be given a constitutional power of defence. But he contended that the +States were divided into different interests, not by their difference +of size, but by other circumstances; the most material of which +resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of +their having or not having slaves. These causes concurred in forming +the great division of interests in the United States. It did not lie +between the large and small States. It lay between the northern and +southern; and if any defensive power were necessary, it ought to be +mutually given to these two interests. He was so strongly impressed +with this important truth, that he had been casting about in his mind +for some expedient that would answer the purpose. The one which had +occurred was that, instead of proportioning the votes of the States in +both branches to their respective number of inhabitants, computing the +slaves in the ratio of 5 to 3, they should be represented in one +branch according to the number of free inhabitants only; and in the +other according to their whole number, counting the slaves as free. By +this arrangement the southern scale would have the advantage in one +house and the northern in the other.”</p> + +<p>Madison meant to say that the great danger of disunion was that—we +emphasize his statement by repeating and italicizing the essential +part—“<i>the States were divided into different interests ... principally +from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These causes +concurred in forming the great division of interests in the United +States</i>.”</p> + +<p>How truly he expresses the economical antagonism of the southern and +northern States, although he hints nothing of the nationalizing tendency +of the former which was bound in time to show itself as one of “the +effects of their having slaves.”</p> + +<p>It seems to me that Mr. Adams overeulogizes the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> political instinct and +prophecy evinced by Madison at this tune. I cannot see that the latter +does anything more than merely recognize the fact then plain to all. Note +as proof this other passage quoted by Mr. Adams from Madison in the +convention, in which the material words are given by me in italics: “<i>It +seems now well understood</i> that the real difference of interests lies, not +between the large and small, but between the northern and southern +States.”</p> + +<p>If the historical expert but duly consider the important facts marshalled +in the foregoing he must find them to be incontrovertible proofs that in +1787, when our fathers were making the federal constitution, and for some +years before, southern nationalization was not simply inchoate, but that +it was growing so rapidly its course could be stopped in but one way; that +is, by the extirpation of slavery, which was both its germ and active +principle. This was before the invention of the gin. After that the lower +south and west quickly added a vast territory to the empire of slavery, +and southern nationalization received throughout its whole domain a new, a +lasting, and a far more powerful impetus. And when the cotton States, as +we call them, had really developed their industry, the southern +confederacy was inevitable.</p> + +<p>The fact of this nationalization is indisputable. When the confederates +organized their government at Montgomery, everybody looking on felt and +said that a new nation was born. Why ignore what is so plain and so +important? Thus Mr. Adams most graphically contrasts the two widely +different northern and southern civilizations which were flourishing side +by side,<a name='fna_26' id='fna_26' href='#f_26'><small>[26]</small></a> and with a momentary inadvertence he ascribes national +development only to the civilization north of the Potomac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> and Ohio, and +treats State sovereignty as anti-national. The fact is that a +nationalization, the end of which was southern independence, had been long +active, as we have perhaps too copiously shown, and the doctrine of State +sovereignty was really nothing but its instrument, nurse, and organ. Every +southern State that invoked State sovereignty and seceded was shortly +afterwards found in the new southern nation. Had that nation prospered, +the doctrine would soon have died a natural death even in the confederacy. +Nationalization is the cardinal fact, the <i>vis major</i>, on each side. The +free-labor nationalization of the north, purposing to appropriate and hold +the continent, fashioned a self-preserving weapon of the assumption that +the fathers made by the constitution an indissoluble union; the slave +nationalization of the south, purposing to appropriate and hold that part +of the continent suiting its special staples, assumed that the fathers +preserved State sovereignty intact in the federal union.</p> + +<p>The closer you look the plainer you will see that the United States held +within itself two nationalities so inveterately hostile to each other that +gemination was long imminent before it actually occurred. The hostility +between the statesmen of Virginia and her daughter States and those of the +north, and especially New England,—Jefferson on one side and Hamilton and +Adams on the other,—the party following the former calling itself +republican and that following the latter calling itself federalist, was +really rooted in the hostility of the two nationalities; and a survival of +this hostility is now unpleasantly vigorous between many northern and +southern writers and lecturers, each class claiming too much of the good +in our past history for its own section and ascribing too much of the bad +to the other. As a lady friend, a native of Michigan who has lived in the +south some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> years, remarked to me not long since, as soon as one going +north crosses the Ohio he feels that he has entered another country; +behind him is a land of corn-pone, biscuit, three cooked meals a day, and +houses tended untidily by darkey servants; before him is a land of bakers’ +bread of wheat, where there is hardly more than one warm meal a day, and +the houses are kept as neat as a pin by the mothers and daughters of the +family. Greater public activity of the county while there is hardly any at +all of its subdivisions, the representative system almost everywhere in +the municipalities, no government by town-meeting and no direct +legislation except occasionally, a most crude and feeble rural common +school system, distinguish and characterize the south; buoyant energy of +the township in public affairs, government by town-meeting instead of by +representatives, a common-school system energetically improving, +distinguish and characterize the north. The manners and customs of +southerners are peculiar. To use an expressive cant word, they “gush” more +than northeners. In cars and public meetings they give their seats to +ladies, while northerners do not. Southerners are quick to return a blow +for insulting words, and in the consequent rencounter they are prone to +use deadly weapons; while northerners are generally as averse to personal +violence as were the Greeks and Romans in their palmiest time. The +battle-cry of the confederates was a wild cheering—a fox-hunt yell, as we +called it; that of the union soldiers was huzza! huzza! huzza! From the +beginning to the end, even at Franklin and Bentonville, and at Farmville, +just two days before I was surrendered at Appomattox, the confederates +always, if possible, took the offensive; the union soldiers were like the +sturdy Englishmen, whose tactics from Hastings to Waterloo have generally +been defensive.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>This battle yell, this impetuous charge after charge until the field is +won, marks the fighting of the Americans at King’s Mountain—all of them +southerners; and it is another weighty proof of the early coalescence of +the south as a community on its way to independence.</p> + +<p>Many other contrasts could be suggested. Think over the foregoing. They +are the respective effects of two different causes,—a free-labor +nationalization above, and a slave-labor nationalization below, Mason and +Dixon’s line. The latter—its origin and course—is the especial subject +of this chapter. I believe that the proofs marshalled above demonstrate to +the fair and unprejudiced reader that southern nationalization commenced +before the making of the federal constitution, and afterwards went +directly on, gathering force and power all the while, until it culminated +in</p> + +<p class="poem">“A storm-cradled nation that fell.”</p> + + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">AMERICAN NATIONALIZATION, AND HOW IT MADE THE BOND OF UNION STRONGER AND STRONGER</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Greece</span> was going down in her contest with Macedon when she gave the world +to come the Achæan league, the first historical example of full-grown +federation. As Freeman says of such a federal government: “Its perfect +form is a late growth of a very high state of political culture.”<a name='fna_27' id='fna_27' href='#f_27'><small>[27]</small></a> This +historian thus summarizes its essentials:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Two requisites seem necessary to constitute federal government in +this its most perfect form. On the one hand, each of the members of +the union must be wholly independent in those matters which concern +each member only. On the other hand, all must be subject to a common +power in those matters which concern the whole body of members +collectively.”<a name='fna_28' id='fna_28' href='#f_28'><small>[28]</small></a></p> + +<p>No author has yet shown a better-considered and more accurate appreciation +of the benefits to different communities of federal union. But the +islander could not conceive—even at the centre of the British empire +spread over the world—the advanced phase of Anglo-Saxon federation in +America and Australia, which for want of a better name we may call, using +a grand word of our fathers, continental federation.</p> + +<p>And Americans of every generation have misunderstood the true nature of +our union, and especially how it was made and how it could be unmade. The +fathers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> were as much mistaken as to the real authorship of the +declaration of independence, the articles of confederation, and the +federal constitution, as Burke and many people of his time were as to the +true causes of the French revolution, or as the brothers were as to those +of their war. In all that the fathers did they were sure that they acted +as agents solely of their respective colonies or States, which they +believed to be independent and sovereign. Therefore they maintained that +the authorship of the three great documents just mentioned was that of the +separate States, when in truth it was that of the union. When the latter, +which had been long forming its rudiments, came into something like +consciousness, it at once spurred our fathers to make the declaration of +independence. The declaration corresponds to the later ordinances of +secession. And this union, gathering strength, led our fathers to make the +old confederation; and its articles and the belonging government are +closely paralleled by the constitution of the Confederate States and its +belonging government. As southern nationalization brought forth the +southern confederacy, so it was American nationalization that caused +secession from England, the declaration of independence, and the +confederation which won the Revolutionary war. To summarize the foregoing: +Southern nationalization evolved the southern union, and American +nationalization evolved the American union. The fathers, with the usual +undiscernment of contemporaries, by a most natural <i>hysteron proteron</i> +conceived the latter union to be the work, product, and result of the +constitution. In the intersectional contention, the south accepted the +mistakes of the fathers and rested her cause upon them, and the north, +instead of correcting them, substituted a huge and glaring mistake of her +own. Advocating the maintenance of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> constitution over all the States, +she sought to refute the doctrine of State sovereignty urged by the south +with the arguments of those who had opposed the adoption of the federal +constitution. Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane—we omit the others—argued +that the constitution, if ratified, would really wipe out State lines and +make the central government supreme in authority over the States, and +actually sovereign. Could the people of the thirteen States have been made +to believe this, they would have unanimously rejected the instrument. +Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and many others competent to advise, stood +in solid phalanx on the other side, and the people were convinced by them +that adoption would have no such effect. They decided that the arguments +were not good, and the constitution was ratified. But the discredited +arguments were afterwards, by a very queer psychological process, taken up +by Story, Webster, and a great host, and paraded as unanswerable +refutation of the doctrine of State sovereignty, and demonstration that by +the constitution the United States had acquired absolute supremacy over +the different States.<a name='fna_29' id='fna_29' href='#f_29'><small>[29]</small></a> At a later place we will try to show you how +Webster’s glory outshines that of every other actor, except Lincoln, in +the great struggle between north and south. But here we must emphasize +how, when supporting the fallacies of Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane, he +met the one real and signal defeat of his life, to which the drubbing he +received from Binney in the Girard College case was a small affair—a +defeat none the less signal because at the time, and long afterwards, it +was and still is crowned as a glorious victory by thousands upon +thousands.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>The force-bill had just been introduced into the senate of the United +States. It provided for the collection of the revenue in defiance of the +nullification ordinance of South Carolina. The next day, January 22, 1833, +Calhoun offered in that body his famous resolutions, embodying his +doctrine of nullification, under which he justified the ordinance just +mentioned. The 16th of the next month, Webster discussed the two cardinal +ones of these resolutions at length. As he summarized them, they affirmed:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“1. That the political system under which we live, and under which +congress is now assembled, is a compact, to which the people of the +several States, as separate and sovereign communities, are the parties.</p> + +<p>2. That these sovereign parties have a right to judge, each for +itself, of any alleged violation of the constitution by congress; and +in case of such violation, to choose, each for itself, its own mode +and measure of redress.”</p></div> + +<p>He had not long before contemplated making an address to the public in +answer to Calhoun’s pro-nullification letter to Governor Hamilton in the +form of a letter from himself to Kent; and it cannot be doubted that he +had got himself ready for this; nor can it be doubted that in the +twenty-five days’ interim he had not only worked over and adapted the +unused materials of the address mentioned, but he had most diligently made +special preparation for his speech—in short, it may be assumed that he +had bestowed upon the subject of the resolutions the most searching +examination and profound meditation of which, with his superhuman powers, +he was capable. In spite of all his conscientious labors, as I am now +especially concerned to impress upon you, he injured and set back the +cause of the union by defending it with answerable arguments—nay, rather, +with arguments helping the other side.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>At the outset he severely and sternly rebukes two terms of Calhoun’s, one +being the use of <i>constitutional compact</i> for <i>constitution</i>, and the +other being <i>the accession of a State to the constitution</i>. These terms +are utterly impermissible, and are to be scouted. If we accept them, <i>we +must acquiesce in the monstrous conclusions which the author of the +resolutions draws from them</i>. That is really what Webster says. Note the +confident positiveness of his pertinent language, some of which we +subjoin:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“It is easy, quite easy, to see why the honorable gentleman has used +it [constitutional compact] in these resolutions. He cannot open the +book, and look upon our written frame of government, without seeing +that it is called a <i>constitution</i>. This may well be appalling to him. +It threatens his whole doctrine of compact, and its darling +derivatives, nullification and secession, with instant confutation. +Because, if he admits our instrument of government to be a +<i>constitution</i>, then, for that very reason, it is not a compact +between sovereigns; a constitution of government and a compact between +sovereign powers being things essentially unlike in their very +natures, and incapable of ever being the same.</p> + +<p>We know no more of a constitutional compact between sovereign powers +than we know of a <i>constitutional</i> indenture of copartnership, a +<i>constitutional</i> bill of exchange. But we know what the <i>constitution</i> +is; we know what the bond of our union and the security of our +liberties is; and we mean to maintain and to defend it, in its plain +sense and unsophisticated meaning.”</p></div> + +<p>This is enough of the exorcism of that malignant spirit, constitutional +compact. Now as to the other malignant spirit. Webster says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The first resolution declares that the people of the several States +‘<i>acceded</i>’ to the constitution, or to the constitutional compact, as +it is called. This word ‘accede,’ not found either in the constitution +itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> the States, has +been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without a well-considered +purpose.</p> + +<p>The natural converse of <i>accession</i> is <i>secession</i>; and, therefore, +when it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the union, +it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. <i>If in +adopting the constitution, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, +nothing would seem necessary to break it up, but to secede from the +same compact.</i> But the term is wholly out of place.... The people of +the United States have used no such form of expression in establishing +the present government. They do not say that they <i>accede</i> to a +league, but they declare that they <i>ordain and establish</i> a +constitution. Such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in +all the States, without exception, the language used by their +conventions was, that they ‘<i>ratified</i> the constitution;’ some of them +employing the additional words ‘assented to’ and ‘adopted,’ but all of +them ‘ratifying.’”</p></div> + +<p>Note that I have italicized in the quotation certain admissions of +Webster, which, in case his premises should be disproved, concede the +cause to his adversary. And we will now tell you how Calhoun did disprove +those premises.</p> + +<p>He showed that Webster himself had in a senate speech called the +constitution a <i>constitutional compact</i>; and that President Washington, in +his official announcement to congress, described North Carolina as +<i>acceding</i> to the union by the ratification she had at last made of the +constitution.</p> + +<p>As to these two points Calhoun further sustained himself with +unquestionable authority and also argument inconfutable by one who, like +Webster, did not find the true <i>ratio decidendi</i>, that is, the effect of +evolution to bring forth the nation.</p> + +<p>The rest of Calhoun’s answer will be considered a little later. But what +of it has already been given covers the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> essentials of the controversy. In +supporting his proposition that the States were sovereign when they made +the constitution, and kept their entire sovereignty intact afterwards, he +was too strong for his antagonist. And yet had his knowledge of the facts +been fuller, how much better he could have done. He could have quoted from +all the great men who made the constitution and secured its ratification +language, in which <i>accede</i> is used again and again in the same sense as +it is in his resolutions.</p> + +<p>Likewise, he could have quoted language in which they designated the +constitution as a compact or something synonymous. Madison—to mention +only one of many instances—advocating ratification in the Virginia +convention, called the constitution “a government of <i>a federal nature</i>, +consisting of <i>many coequal sovereignties</i>.” What an effective <i>argumentum +ad hominem</i> could Calhoun have found in the provision of the constitution +of the State of Webster, to wit: that Massachusetts is free, sovereign, +and independent, retaining every power which she has not expressly +delegated to the United States.<a name='fna_30' id='fna_30' href='#f_30'><small>[30]</small></a></p> + +<p>Webster also made blunders in construing the context of the constitution, +as well as the clauses specially involved, in contrasting the constitution +with the articles of confederation, and in his reading of our +constitutional history. These blunders were exhaustively, ably, +relentlessly exposed.</p> + +<p>We who are trained either in forensic or parliamentary debate well know +the conquering and demolishing reply. Although, as we have just shown, +Calhoun’s reply could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> have been far more effective than it really was, +still its success and triumph were so evident that when he closed, John +Randolph, who had heard it, wanted a hat obstructing his sight removed, so +that, as he said, he might see “Webster die, muscle by muscle.”</p> + +<p>Master the question at issue, and read the two speeches as impartially as +you strive to read the discussion of Æschines and Demosthenes, and if you +are qualified to judge of debate between intellectual giants you must +admit that Webster was driven from every inch of ground chosen by him as +his very strongest, and which he confidently believed that he could hold +against the world.</p> + +<p>Yet the union men, who were hosts in the north and numerous even in the +south at that time, accepted Webster’s speech as the bible of their +political faith, and as its reward ennobled him with the pre-eminent title +of Expounder of the Constitution. They ignored, or they never learned of, +the pulverizing refutation. But the State-rights men and the south +generally understood. Webster also understood. He did not make any real +rejoinder. And his subsequent utterances are in harmony with the +State-rights doctrine to which Calhoun seems to have converted him.<a name='fna_31' id='fna_31' href='#f_31'><small>[31]</small></a> I +fancy that with that rare humor which was one of his shining gifts, he +dubbed himself in his secret meditations, “Expounder because not +expounding.” Later I shall tell you how Webster builded better than he +knew, and that there was, after all, in the speech that which fully +justifies the worship it received from the union men.</p> + +<p>But there is something else pertinent to be learned here. That the north +generally found out only what Webster said in the debate for his side, and +never even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> heard of what was said on the other, and that the south became +at once familiar with both speeches, proves that each section had already +formed its own belonging and independent public, and that the southern +public kept attentive watch upon all affairs of fact or opinion +interesting the other, while the northern public knew hardly anything at +all of the south. A large percentage of the southern leaders had studied +in northern schools and colleges. In this and many other ways they had +been instructed as to the north. Such instruction contributed very greatly +to southern supremacy in the federal government until the election of +Lincoln. We can now see that the powers in charge, as a part of their +work, made the great northern public, which, as Lincoln observed, was to +be the savior of the union, stop its ears to all anti-union sentiments or +arguments. How else can you understand it that the ante-bellum notices of +Webster, the memoir by Everett, the different utterances of Choate, and +many, many other sketches, are so utterly dumb as to Calhoun’s great +reply? And is not the same dumbness of Curtis, Von Holst, and McMaster, +writing after the war, due to the survival in the north of the old +constraint? a constraint so powerful that, while Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in +1883, did concede just a little to Calhoun, he stopped far short of the +full justice that I believe he would now render were he to traverse the +ground again.</p> + +<p>We must now go beyond what we have already hinted, and show you plainly +how both the union men and the State-rights men assumed untenable +premises, and how the south, maintaining a cause foredoomed, vanquished in +the forum of discussion her adversary, maintaining the side which fate had +decreed must win. In no other way can the reader be better made to +understand the incalculable potency of the forces which preserved the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> +American union after its orators and advocates had all been discomfited; +and in no other way can he better learn what principles are to be invoked +if he would grasp the real essence of the union.</p> + +<p>We emphasize the material and cardinal mistake of the union men, thus +phrased by Webster in the speech we have discussed: “Whether the +constitution be a compact between States in their sovereign capacities, is +a question which must be mainly argued from what is contained in the +instrument itself.”</p> + +<p>This was to abandon inexpugnable ground. That ground was the great body of +pertinent facts, known to all, which begun the making of the union before +the declaration of independence, and which, from that time on to the very +hour that Webster was speaking, had been making the union stronger and +more perfect. He ought to have contended that a nation grows; that it +cannot be made, or be at all modified, even by a constitution. Any +constitution is its creature, not its creator.</p> + +<p>How weak he was when he invoked construction of the federal constitution +as the main umpire. That constitution had been always construed against +him. The three departments of the federal government had each uniformly +treated it as a compact between sovereign States; and they kept this up +until the brothers’ war broke out. Mr. Stephens, in his great +compilation,<a name='fna_32' id='fna_32' href='#f_32'><small>[32]</small></a> demonstrates this unanswerably. But the State-rights men +had a still greater strength than even this, if the question be conceded +to be one of construction. As the author of the Republic of Republics +shows by a mountain of proofs, the illustrious draftsmen of the +constitution and their contemporaries who finally got the constitution +adopted—all the people, high and low, who favored<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> the cause—declared at +the time that the sovereignty of the States would remain unimpaired after +adoption.<a name='fna_33' id='fna_33' href='#f_33'><small>[33]</small></a></p> + +<p>To sum up, the generation that drafted and adopted the constitution, and +all the succeeding ones who had lived under it, agreed that the States +were sovereign.</p> + +<p>How could even Webster talk these facts out of existence? At every stage +of the intersectional debate the cause of the south supporting State +sovereignty became stronger. And there were great hosts at the north who +understood the record as the south did; and, while they hoped and prayed +that separation would never come, they conscientiously conceded State +sovereignty to the full. It seems to me to be the fact that, although the +federal soldiers cherished deep love for the union, a very great majority +of the more intelligent among them did not long keep at its height the +emotion excited by the attack on Fort Sumter, and soon settled back into +their former creed, holding, because of the reasons summarized above, the +States to be sovereign; and while they thought it supreme folly in the +south to set<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> up the confederacy, they still believed that to do so was +but the exercise of an indubitable right of the States creating it. From +what I saw at the time, and the many proofs that appeared to accumulate +upon me afterwards, this explains the unprecedented panic with which the +federal army abandoned the field at the First Manassas. Consider just a +moment. The federal army, giving the confederates a complete surprise, +turns their position and drives them back in rout. The confederates make +an unexpected stand, fight for some hours, and at last, assuming the +offensive, win the field. The troops on each side practically all raw +volunteers, very much alike in race and character. But the federals had +much more than two to one engaged, as is demonstrated by the fact that the +confederates had only twenty-five regiments of infantry in action, and +they took prisoners from fifty-five. The more one who, like me, observed +much of the war, thinks it over, the more clearly he sees that the flight +from Manassas is not to be explained because of the superior courage and +stamina of the southern soldiers. I believe that the union men, observing +how brave and death-defying their brothers on the other side were in +facing disaster that seemed irretrievable and odds irresistible, at last +became convinced that these brothers, defending home and firesides, were +right, and that they themselves, invading an inviolably sovereign State, +were heinously wrong; and thus awakened conscience made cowards of all +these gallant men. And it is thoroughly established, I believe, that +everywhere in the first engagements of the war, the southern volunteers, +if they were commanded by a fighter, showed far more spirit and stomach +than their adversaries. In the amicable meetings, often occurring upon the +picket line, when we confederates would with good humor ask the union men +how it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> that we won so many fights, it was a stereotyped reply of the +latter, “Why, you are fighting for your country and we only for $13 a +month.” It was but natural that, by reason of what has been told in the +foregoing, the south unanimously, and a very large number at the north, +should believe any State could under its reserved powers rightfully secede +from the union whenever and for whatever cause it pleased.</p> + +<p>We see now what the angry brothers did not see. The absolute sovereignty +of the States, and the right of secession both <i>de facto</i> and <i>de jure</i> +could have been conceded, and at the same time the war for the union +justified. The unionists could well have said to the south:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Your independence is too great a menace to our interests to be +tolerated, and the high duty of self-defence commands that we resist +to the death. The <i>status quo</i> is better for us all. Now that you have +set up for yourself, we must tell you, sadly but firmly, that if you +do not come back voluntarily, we must resort to coercion,—not under +the constitution, for you have thrown that off, but under the law of +nations to which you have just subjected yourself.”</p> + +<p>The man who of all southerners has given State sovereignty its most +learned and able defence—Sage, the author of “The Republic of +Republics”—says: “To coerce a state is unconstitutional; but it is +equally true that the precedent of coercing states is established, and +that it is defensible under the law of nations.”<a name='fna_34' id='fna_34' href='#f_34'><small>[34]</small></a></p> + +<p>To have received the confederate commissioners as representing an +independent nation, and made demand that the seceding States return to the +union, would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> been a far stronger theory than that on which the war +was avowedly waged; for it would have taken from the south that +superiority in the argument which had given her great prestige in Europe, +and even in the north. And lastly, under the law of nations, the federal +government, after coercing the seceding States back, would have had—even +according to the theory of State rights as maintained in the +south—perfectly legitimate power to abolish slavery. The statement that +emancipation was “sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by +the constitution, upon military necessity,” protests so much that one sees +that the highly conscientious man hesitated and doubted. And well may he +have doubted; for what warrant can be found in the constitution for +destroying that property which it solemnly engaged to defend and protect +as a condition precedent of its adoption?—that is, if the southern States +were still in the union and under the constitution, as was claimed by all +who justified the proclamation? But if the southern States had gone out of +the union, they had revoked their ratification and had thrown away all the +protection of slavery given by the constitution; and while the +constitution did not direct how the federal government should act in the +matter, the law of nations gave full and ample directions. Its authority +was not stinted nor hampered by any rights recognized in the constitution +as reserved to the States under it. The subsequent amendment, imposed as a +condition of reconstruction, shows that the people of the north seriously +questioned if slavery had been abolished by the proclamation and its +enforcement by the union armies.</p> + +<p>But this, strong as it was, would not have been the true theory. The true +theory—the real fact—is that at the outbreak of the brothers’ war, and +long before, the States had become more closely connected than the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> +Siamese Twins,—indissolubly united as integral parts of the same +organism, like the different trunks of the Banyan tree; and while the +southern nationalization was opposing the union forces with might and +main, it was really but an excrescence, with roots far more shallow than +those of the American union—a parasite like the mistletoe, growing upon +the American body politic, fated to die of itself if not destroyed by its +fell foe. For, as we have explained, the sole motor of this southern +nationalization—slavery—could no more maintain itself permanently +against free labor than the handloom could stand against the steam-loom, +or the draft-horse can much longer compete with artificial traction power.</p> + +<p>Now let us rapidly set in array the stronger supports of this true theory. +We should start with the impulse to combine which adjacency always gives +to communities of the same origin; and external compression and joint +interest to those of diverse origin, as we see in the case of the Swiss. +How clearly does our great American sociologist trace the effect of this +impulse in ancient society. First a body of consanguinei grows into a +gens; after a while, neighboring gentes of the same stock-language form a +tribe; then neighboring tribes, as some of the Iroquois and Aztecs, form a +confederacy. At this point the development of the American Indians was +arrested by the coming of the whites. “A coalescence of tribes into a +nation had not occurred in any case in any part of America,” says the +great authority.<a name='fna_35' id='fna_35' href='#f_35'><small>[35]</small></a> But we can easily understand what would have occurred +had the Indians been left to themselves. They would have passed out of the +nomadic state into settlements of fixed abodes, local and geographical +political divisions evolving from the old gentes and tribes, the +contiguous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> ones often uniting. History furnishes many examples of +neighboring communities coalescing into nations. One of the most +remarkable of all is the environment which has constrained peoples of four +different languages to coalesce into the little Swiss nation. Turning away +from prehistoric times and also ancient history, let the student +re-enforce the case of the Swiss, just alluded to, with the modern +nation-making in Italy and Germany. These few of the many instances which +can be given show how and what sorts of adjacent communities are prone to +co-operate or combine for a common purpose, and how such combination +develops at last an irresistible proneness to national union. Drops of +liquid in proximity to one another on a plane may long maintain each their +independent forms; but bring them into actual contact, and presto! all the +globules have coalesced into a single mass. After the belonging part of +the evolutionary science of sociology has been fully developed—which time +does not seem very far off—the subject will receive adequate +illustration. Then all of us will understand that, many years before +Alamance and Lexington, the colonies, in their defence of themselves +against the Indians and the French, in their intercommunication over +innumerable matters of joint interest, in the beneficent example of the +Iroquois confederacy and the advice of our fathers by the Iroquois, as +early as 1755, to form one of the colonies similar to their own,<a name='fna_36' id='fna_36' href='#f_36'><small>[36]</small></a> and +in many other things that can be suggested, were steadily becoming one +people, and more and more predisposed to political union. We shall also +see, much more clearly than we do yet, that the Revolutionary war, by +keeping them some years under a general government, imparted new and +powerful impetus to the nationalizing forces, which were working none the +less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> surely because unobserved. Our lesson will be completely learned +when we recognize that about the time the war with the mother country +commenced the globules, that is, the separate colonies, had become +actually a quasi-political whole,—a stage of evolution so near to that of +full nationality that it is hard to distinguish the two. It seems to me +that the nation had come at least into rudimentary existence when the +declaration of independence was made. Surely from that time on something +wondrously like a <i>de facto</i> national union of the old colonies grew +rapidly, and became stronger and stronger; and this to me is the +sufficient and only explanation of the seismic popular upheaval that +displaced the weaker government under the articles of confederation with +one endowed by the federal constitution with ample powers to administer +the affairs of the nation now beginning to stir with consciousness. And +yet so blind was everybody that in 1787 the delegates and their +constituents all believed the convention to be the organ of the States, +when in truth it was the organ of the new American nation. Prompted by a +self-preserving instinct, this nationality deftly kept itself hid. Had it +been disclosed, the federal constitution could not have been adopted; and +had a suspicion of it come a few years later, there would have been +successful secession. And so each State dreamed on its sweet dream of +dominion until the call to the stars and stripes rang through the north. +Then its people began darkly and dimly to discern the nationalization +which had united the States and become a hoop of adamant to hold the union +forever stanch. Of course to the south nothing appeared but the State +sovereignty of the fathers. Her illuded sight was far clearer and more +confident than the true vision of the north, and she magnified State +sovereignty which she thought she saw, and damned the American +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>nationality preached by the north as anti-State-rights, when at that very +time a nationality of her own had really put all the southern States at +its feet. It mattered not for the thick perception of the north and the +optical illusion of the south, the American nation was now full grown; and +by the result of the brothers’ war it made good its claim to sovereignty.</p> + +<p>The historian must accurately gauge the effect wrought by the wonderfully +successful career of the United States under the federal constitution in +its first years. War with France imminent, Pinckney’s winged word, +“Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute,” the sword buckled on +again by the father of his country—and peace; the extension of our domain +from the Mississippi to the Pacific by the Louisiana purchase; the +victories won against the men who used to say scornfully that our fathers +could not stand the bayonet, and the still more surprising victories won +with an improvised navy against the mistress of the seas, in the war of +1812; the brilliant operations of Decatur against Algiers; the military +power of the Indians decisively and permanently outclassed, until soon our +women and children on the border were practically secure against the +tomahawk and scalping knife; and perhaps above all the world-wide +spaciousness, as it were, and the inexpressibly greater dignity and +splendor of the public arena, as compared with that of any single colony +or State, which was opened at once to every ambitious spirit—these are +some, only, of the feats and achievements which gave the United States +unquestioned authority at home and incomparable prestige around the world. +And on and on the American nation rushed, from one stage of growth into +and through another, until the result was that for some years before +secession State sovereignty, for all of the high airs it gave itself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> and +the imposing show of respect it extorted, had become merely a survival.</p> + +<p>Thus did the American nation form, from a number of different neighboring, +cognate, and very closely-akin communities, under that complex of the +forces of growth and those of combination which imperceptibly and +resistlessly steers the social organism along the entire track of its +evolution. The nationalizing leaven was hidden by the powers in charge of +our national destiny in the colonial meal, and it had in time so +completely leavened the whole lump that Rhode Island, and North Carolina, +trying hard to stay out, and Texas desporting joyfully and proudly under +the lone star in her golden independence, could not break the invisible +leading strings, which pulled all three into the United States. Note how +Oregon and California, though largely settled from the south yet being +without slavery, in their extreme remoteness from the brothers’ war +adhered to the union cause. And had the southern confederacy triumphed in +the war, the States in it would have staid out of the federal union only +the few years necessary for slavery to run its course. When there was no +more virgin soil for cotton, the southern nation, which was merely a +growth upon the American nation, would have collapsed of itself, as did +the State of Frankland; and that continental brotherhood which brought in +Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Texas, would have commandingly +reasserted itself. The more you contemplate the facts, the more it is seen +that this continental brotherhood was and is the most vigorous tap-root +and stock of nationality in all history. The providence which at first +gradually and surely mixed the colonies into one people, then into a +feeble and infirm political whole, rapidly hardening in consistency, and +lastly into an indissoluble union, and which was from the beginning more +and more developing us into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> a nation—this overruling evolution, and not +constitution or lawmaking organs, has been, is, and always will be the +ultimate and supreme authority, the opposeless lawgiver, the resistlessly +self-executing higher law in America, creating, altering, modifying or +abolishing man-made constitutions, laws, ordinances, and statutes, as +suits its own true democratic purpose, often inscrutable to +contemporaries.</p> + +<p>The foregoing is the substance of the argument that must now take the +place of that made by Webster and the unionists after him, which was +convincingly confuted by the south. It proves the complete and immaculate +justice of the war for the union.</p> + +<p>This view differs from the other, which we admitted above to be very +strong, mainly in refusing to concede that a State is sovereign and can +legitimately secede at will. But under it, it ought to be conceded that +the States in the southern confederacy were for the time actually out of +the American union by revolution. It is not possible to say they were in +rebellion; that is an offence of individuals standing by an authority +hastily improvised and manifestly sham. It was not by the action of +individuals, but it was by the action of States, veritable political +entities and quasi sovereigns, that the confederacy was organized. When +these States were coerced back, they could not invoke the protection to +their slaves given in a constitution which they had solemnly repudiated. +The United States could therefore deal with them as it had with the +Territories from which it excluded slavery. While of course adequate +protection of the freedmen against their former masters ought to have been +provided, it should at the same time have been made clear to the world +that slavery was abolished solely because events had demonstrated it to be +the only root and cause of dismemberment of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> union. Such a familiar +example as the often-exercised power of a municipality to blow up a house, +without compensation therefor, to stop the progress of conflagration, and +many other seemingly arbitrary acts done by society in its +self-preservation, would have occurred to conscientious people +contemplating. And it would have been a long flight in morals above the +proclamation, merely to have justified emancipation on the ground that the +existence of slavery was a serious menace to the life of the nation.</p> + +<p>One’s logic may be often wrong, and yet his proposition has been rightly +given him by an instinct, as we so often see in the case of good women. O +this subliminal self of ours, how it bends us hither and thither, as the +solid hemisphere does the little human figure upon it, posing with a +seeming will of his own! Hence, and not from our argument-making faculty, +come not only our own most important principles of action, but also our +very strongest persuasive influence. And it is the subconscious mental +forces moving great masses of men and women all the same way—that is, the +national instincts—which are the all-conquering powers that the apostle +of a good cause arouses and sets in array. And while it is true that the +mere logic of Webster’s anti-nullification speech is puerile, the after +world will more and more couple that speech with the reply to Hayne, and +keep the two at the top—above every effort of all other orators. In the +reply to Hayne, in 1830, he had magnified the union in a passage which +ever since has deservedly led all selections for American speech books. +And now, in 1833, when dismemberment actually makes menace of its ugly +self, the great wizard of speech that takes consciences and hearts +captive,<a name='fna_37' id='fna_37' href='#f_37'><small>[37]</small></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> proclaimed to his countrymen that there could be no such +thing as lawful secession or nullification. The earnestness and the +emphasis with which he said this were supreme merits of the speech. And +thenceforth it was enough to the hosts of the north to remember that the +American, towering like a mountain above them all, had in his high place +solemnly declared that secession is necessarily revolution. And, to one +who is familiar with the hypnotizing effect of subconscious national +suggestion it is not strange that they scouted Calhoun’s demolishing +reply, and treasured Webster’s false logic as supreme and perfect +exposition of the constitution.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">For</span> a long while opposition to slavery was moderate and not unreasoning. +The first actual quarrel over it between the sections was when Missouri +applied for admission to the union in 1818. That was settled by the famous +compromise of 1820. The most of the anti-slavery men of that day stood +only against the extension of slavery. While many a one of them believed +his conviction was dictated, independently and entirely, by his +conscience, it was in fact given him because of his relation to the +free-labor nationalization claiming the public lands for itself. That was +also true of the great mass of northerners opposed to slavery down to the +very beginning of the war. They wanted the Territories for themselves. The +contest between the United States and England for Oregon is a parallel +case. The American felt, if this territory falls to the United States, I +and my children and children’s children can get cheap land somewhere in +it; but if it falls to England, I and they are forever shut out. In the +intersectional contest over the public lands northerners felt that they +would be practically excluded from any part of them into which slavery was +carried; for infinitely preferring, as they did, the free-labor system, to +which they had been bred, to the slavery system, of which they had no +experience, and against which they were prejudiced, they would never +voluntarily settle where it obtained. This, the prevalent view, brought +about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> compromise of 1820, by which all the territory north of 36° 30′ +was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the north, not because its +inhabitants were burning with zeal to repress the spread of what they +thought to be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they purposed +thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their own children.</p> + +<p>So much for what we have called the first quarrel between the sections +over slavery. Let us now glance at the stages following until the +root-and-branch abolitionist shows himself.</p> + +<p>For some twenty years after the Missouri compromise was made there was +hardly any public agitation at all as to slavery. In 1840 an abolition +ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much +smaller than had been currently predicted. It is not until January, 1836, +when, upon Calhoun’s motion in the senate of the United States to reject +two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, +there ensued a prolonged and passionate discussion, that we can say that +the old free-soil practically begins to pass into an abolition movement. +Here moral attack upon slavery seriously begins. If we think but a moment +we will understand it too well to explain it as an arousal of conscience, +which ought to have been aroused many years before if slavery was indeed +the terrible sin the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. The +agitation of 1830, the year that Webster replied to Hayne, and that of +1833, when he and Calhoun crossed swords over nullification, mark a great +advance of intersectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the +Missouri compromise. We can see now as we look back what contemporaries +could not see, that is, that the two were <i>avant couriers</i> of the southern +confederacy. But some of the contemporaries did discern the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>fact—not +consciously, but instinctively. With these there was, in subliminal +ratiocination, a process somewhat as follows: The southern confederacy, if +it does come, will disrupt the union, which assures, while it lasts, +immunity of our country from frequent wars upon its own soil, and from the +heavy load of great armies kept up even in the intervals of peace. This +disruption will establish in America all the evil conditions of Europe +from which our fathers fled hither. Slavery is the <i>vis matrix</i>, the sole +developing force, the life of this menaced confederacy. Let us abolish +slavery, and preserve the union.</p> + +<p>How accurately the common instincts—especially those protecting our +private interests—discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes +more of a marvel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally right, +the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter threatens great injury, they +excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. How else +can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ and +worshipping the same God, were at last divided, the northern churches +impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. Dwell upon this +fact until you interpret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and +the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the +other the most conscientious and best of the south unanimous that it is +morally right. Then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists, +and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire +people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that +of the other did the same things against it. When you do this, you must +admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are +members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions.</p> + +<p>The economic interest of the north was against slavery.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> It was her +interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free +workers. It was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there +be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put +thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army. +On the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so +great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to +preserve slavery, if that should be necessary. Each side feels deeply and +more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of +production and subsistence—the property to which of all it believes its +title most indefeasible. It required some years to bring affairs to this +point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the +root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course +all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of +the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to +masquerade as characters widely different from the true. When these +servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not +that of their masters, how the directors must smile. They have guaranteed +animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a +supreme momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically recognizes +in his <i>dux vitæ dia voluptas</i>. The passion of anger is the converse of +that of love. When consent cannot settle some great controversy that must +be settled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation +of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. In +the ripeness of time the Ransy Sniffleses<a name='fna_38' id='fna_38' href='#f_38'><small>[38]</small></a> come forth. They say and do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> +everything possible to bring on the impending mortal combat. They never +grasp the essence of the contention, for it is their mission to arouse +feeling, passion, anger. They are resistlessly—most conscientiously and +honestly—impelled to make the other side appear detestable and +insultingly offensive in heinous wrong-doing. The most zealous and the +most influential of the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they +vaulted into the arena. Garrison was twenty-six when he started the +“Liberator” in 1831, Wendell Phillips was some six years younger than +Garrison, and he was about twenty-six when he made his début with a +powerful impromptu in Boston, in 1837. Whittier was two years younger than +Garrison, and he was early a co-worker in the “Liberator.” It is +demonstrated by everything they said that they were entirely ignorant of +the south and its people, of the average condition of the slave in the +south, and especially of the negro’s grade of humanity. They never studied +and investigated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to +ascertain the truth. They assumed the facts to be as it suited their +purposes, given them by the directors, of exciting hatred of their +opponents,—and it added greatly to their efficiency that they fully +believed their assumptions. Knowing really nothing of the negro except +that he was a man, it was natural for them to believe, as they did, that +the typical, average negro slave of the south was in all the essentials of +good citizenship just such a human being as the typical, average white. If +they did not go quite so far, they surely claimed for him something so +near to it that it is practically the same. We shall, as suggested above, +treat this pernicious error more fully in later chapters.</p> + +<p>The root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> since the +emancipation proclamation became effective that the overthrow of slavery +was brought about by them; and thousands upon thousands believing it sing +them hosannas. But it is an undeniable fact that the superior power of +free labor in its irreconcilable conflict with slavery was bound to do in +America what it had done everywhere else. And without the abolitionist at +all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were few even if there had +been no secession, and very few if secession had triumphed. For free +labor—its fell and implacable foe—was on the outside steadily and surely +encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the extension that was a +condition of its life; and within its ring fence necessarily it was +rapidly exhausting all of its resources. It was the mighty counteraction +of free labor that crushed slavery. The root-and-branch abolitionist +thrown up by this movement which had set forward irresistibly, long before +he was ever heard of, and who believed that he started it and was guiding +it, strikingly examples the proverb</p> + +<p class="poem">“Er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben.”</p> + +<p>I believe that future history will give him credit only for having a +little hastened forward the inevitable.</p> + +<p>Another abolition misstatement ought to be corrected. Sumner fulminated +against what he called the oligarchs of slavery. And it was common at the +north to speak of southern aristocracy and southern aristocratic +institutions. Of course the slaves had no political privileges, no more +than they had in Athens, which has always been deemed the most genuine +republic ever known. There was in the old south no oligarch, or anything +like him, unless you choose to call such a man as Calhoun an oligarch, +whose influence over his State was entirely from the good opinion and +unexampled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> confidence of the free citizens of all classes, which he had +won. There was no aristocracy, except such a natural one as can be found +in every one of our States, as is illustrated by the Adamses in +Massachusetts, the Lees in Virginia, and the Cobbs in Georgia. In those +days property was much more equally distributed than now; and it was easy +for the energetic and saving poor young man, of the humblest origin, to +make his way up. In all my day there was universal suffrage, and it was +political death to propose any modification. I explained nearly thirty +years ago how southern conditions prevented the development of anything +like the beneficent New England town-meeting system.<a name='fna_39' id='fna_39' href='#f_39'><small>[39]</small></a> But for all of +that the entire spirit of southern society was democratic in the extreme, +far more so than it is now with the nominating machinery everywhere in the +south except South Carolina, controlled by corporation oligarchs. When the +root-and-branch abolitionist inveighed against oligarchy and aristocracy, +and aristocratic institutions in the south, he was just as mistaken as he +was in denouncing what he asserted to be the guilt in morals of +slaveholding.</p> + +<p>The more I study the abolitionists whom I distinguish as root-and-branch, +the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and more +emotional I find them to be. I have just mentioned some of their +misrepresentations; and in later chapters I shall dwell upon their +cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the human scale. I have +not sufficient space for more of these things. I will give just one +example of their wildness. They put in circulation that Toombs had said he +expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker +Hill monument,—a slander which they persisted in renewing after he had +solemnly and publicly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> denied it.<a name='fna_40' id='fna_40' href='#f_40'><small>[40]</small></a> In their excited imaginations they +were sure that the south was cherishing a scheme by which, under the help +of the court that made the Dred Scott decision, slavery was to be +established and protected by law everywhere in the north. The only +parallel I can think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some +poor souls in the Confederate ranks in front of Richmond in 1862, who, +when they learned that Jackson had got in the enemy’s rear, expressed +lively fears that he was going to drive McClellan’s army over them.</p> + +<p>And the fire-eaters,—how they got important facts wrong! They habitually +said that the northern masses were too untruthful and dishonest for us of +the south to stay in the partnership without disgrace and loss of +self-respect. I heard of one who was wont gravely to assert that +prostitutes and ice were all that the south was dependent upon the north +for; and these were only luxuries which it was better to do without. +Perhaps the height of falsification by the hotspurs was the assertion, +made everywhere again and again, that northerners were such cowards that, +even if they were spurred into a war in defence of the union, any one +average southerner would prove an overmatch for any five of them.</p> + +<p>It is now high time that each section turn resolutely away from these +fanatics, and the literature which they have made or informed, to seek +right instruction as to slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of +the masses on each side and of their leaders, and all other belonging +details, in the real facts. Especially must we understand the internecine +duel between free labor and slavery, and what was the purpose of the +directors of evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the +fire-eater upon the stage. When we grasp that purpose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> clearly, how +pretentious do we understand their claims and self-laudation to be, and +how clearly we see that they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that +became so vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the little +fice egging on the big dogs to do their fighting. I have still vivid +recollections of hearing in amicable interviews of hostile pickets these +characters denounced for keeping out of the war which, as was then said, +they had caused,—the fanatical abolitionists denounced by the federals, +the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the blue cockade wearers, by the +confederates.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">CALHOUN</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">After</span> John Caldwell Calhoun, who was born March 18, 1782, the birth-year +of Webster, had become large enough to go to the field, the most of his +time until he was eighteen was spent in work on the plantation. His father +had never had but six months’ schooling. There were no schools in that +region except a few “old field” ones, where the three R’s only were +taught. To one of these John went for a few months. The boy learned to +read, and manifestly he had acquired some habit of reading. In his +thirteenth year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, Moses +Waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. He found a circulating library +in the house. This was his first access to books. He read old Rollin, and +he probably moused about in Robertson’s History of America and Life of +Charles V, and Voltaire’s Charles XII. Having laid Rollin aside, he +assailed Locke’s famous Essay; but when he got to the chapter on Infinity +his health had become bad, doubtless due to his change from active to +sedentary habits and from physical to mental activity. So he was taken +back to his work at home. His father had died in the meanwhile, and his +mother, who had great business talent, taught him, as we are told, “how to +administer the affairs of a plantation.”<a name='fna_41' id='fna_41' href='#f_41'><small>[41]</small></a> It will appear in the sequel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> +that he was superbly trained.<a name='fna_42' id='fna_42' href='#f_42'><small>[42]</small></a> When he attained the age of eighteen the +family had become convinced that he ought to be got ready for a +profession. John, knowing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and +having resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this. But the +family persisted. This doubtless influenced him to turn the subject +carefully over in his mind; and the decision which he made showed an +understanding of his own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience +of his future which, when his youth, small opportunity of observation, and +want of schooling are remembered, are very wonderful. He gave this family, +who were not well-to-do, to understand he would not accept a limited and +makeshift education. Naturally they asked what sort did he mean, and he +answered, “The best school, college, and legal education to be had in the +United States.”<a name='fna_43' id='fna_43' href='#f_43'><small>[43]</small></a> Then they asked, How long did he think all this would +take, and he promptly answered seven years. To the average reader it seems +that the time necessary to carry this unschooled lad through the course he +proposed had been egregiously underestimated by him; but to the family, as +they thought of the appertaining annual expenses, it must have looked very +long. They had to give in. That irrefragable influence over his people +which showed itself as soon as he came upon the public stage begins here. +Some one long afterwards said of him, that if he could but talk with every +man he would always have the whole United States on his side. It is more +than probable that in the five years after he had left Waddell’s school he +had, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> plantation management and other interests of the family, +convinced them that he always acted or advised wisely. Another comment is +in place here. Study of the record of his early life convinces you that +very soon after, if not before, the commencement of his legal studies, he +decided to make law only a stepping-stone by which to enter public life +and also acquire the means to plant. I cannot help inferring that this +was—somewhat vaguely it may be—his intention already formed when he +dictated terms to the family as just told. It is not at all impossible +that to him who afterwards astonished the world by the sureness of his +prophecy there had even then been revealed the career awaiting; and so he +resolved to get ready for college in two years, and pass the rest of the +seven where, besides competent instructors, he would have cultivated +society, libraries, and the best of opportunities to qualify himself for +public life. Be our conjecture true or not, in two years after he had +opened his Latin grammar he entered the junior class at Yale, and two +years later he graduated with credit. After reading law in an office he +took a year’s course at the Litchfield law school in Connecticut, and then +he went into an office again for a while. Some time in June, 1807, he hung +out his shingle at Abbeville Court-house, as it was called up to the time +of reconstruction. A few days afterwards in that month occurred the attack +on the Chesapeake, and when the news came it caused a public meeting in +the town. Some good report of him must have been bruited about in the +community in advance of his coming. It is almost certain that his +education had greatly developed those powers of conversation mentioned +above, and that many listeners had greatly approved his views of the +outrage, and the patriotic indignation he uttered over it. It is not +stretching probability too far to assert that, young as he was, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> was by +far the ablest man that could be found in the locality to advise upon the +burning question which had arisen so suddenly. He was selected to draft +appropriate resolutions and present them. There is no record of these or +of his speech. But as we know that the resolutions carried, and that +tradition still reports admiringly of the speech, we may be sure that his +performance in both was extraordinarily good. Although there had been a +strong popular prejudice in the county—or district, as it was then +called—against lawyer representatives, October 13, 1807, less than four +months after the meeting just described, he was elected to the legislature +at the head of the ticket.</p> + +<p>In that day presidential electors were appointed by the State +legislatures. Shortly after the session of this legislature to which +Calhoun had been elected opened, there was an informal meeting of the +republican members to make nominations for president and vice-president. +The first was unanimously given to Madison. When the other was up, Calhoun +declared his conviction that there was soon to be war with England. At +such a time there should be no dissension in the party. He gave strong +reasons why George Clinton should not be nominated, as had been proposed; +and he suggested John Langdon of New Hampshire as the proper man. The +thorough acquaintance with the grave situation which he manifested, the +due respect he showed Clinton while opposing his nomination, and the +ability with which he discussed the question, advanced him at once to a +place among the most distinguished members of the legislature.</p> + +<p>“Several important measures were originated by Mr. Calhoun while in the +legislature which have become a permanent portion of the legislation of +the State, and he soon acquired an extensive practice at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> bar.”<a name='fna_44' id='fna_44' href='#f_44'><small>[44]</small></a> He +kept in the very midst of the political swim. His reputation as an honest, +true, and able adviser had become so great and influential that the +people, in their warm approval of the strong measures he advocated as +preparation for the threatened war, pushed him out as their candidate for +congress and elected him most triumphantly in October, 1810. The first +session of this, the twelfth congress, commenced November 4, 1811. Clay, +then speaker of the house, evidently expecting much of him, gave him the +second place in the committee on foreign relations. There came before the +house a measure contemplating an increase of the army in view of the war +which appeared to many to be nearer than ever. John Randolph was against +it. In March, 1799, a year before Calhoun started to school, Randolph, +then not twenty-six years old, had fearlessly met the great Patrick Henry +in stump discussion, and had, in the opinion of his auditors, got the +better of it. He was elected to congress in this year. Steadily since then +he had developed, until he was now one of the most prominent figures upon +the national stage. While his powers of discussion of a subject were +great, the power that especially characterized him was that of nonplussing +his antagonist with a snub or a sarcasm. Randolph made an earnest speech. +Calhoun replied. It is not enough to say of this speech that it evinces +full mastery of the subject. It presents every important view most +effectively, satisfactorily answering everything which had been said on +the other side. And it is especially happy in the wise use made at each +proper place of the commands of morality and patriotism.</p> + +<p>Mr. Pinkney has instructively and entertainingly <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>illustrated this speech +by his excerpts.<a name='fna_45' id='fna_45' href='#f_45'><small>[45]</small></a> To them I here add another, which I would have you +consider,—Randolph had strenuously insisted that the cause of this war, +said by the other side to be impending, should first be defined; and until +this plain duty was done there should be no preparation. To this Calhoun +said:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The single instance alluded to, the endeavor of Mr. Fox to compel Mr. +Pitt to define the object of the war against France, will not support +the gentleman from Virginia in his position. That was an extraordinary +war for an extraordinary purpose. It was not for conquest, or for +redress of injury, but to impose a government on France which she +refused to receive—an object so detestable that an avowal dared not be made.”</p> + +<p>This is a thrust which Randolph especially could appreciate.</p> + +<p>The more I examine this first speech of a very young member of congress +upon a question of such transcendent importance to the people of the +United States, the more sound, able, complete,—to sum up in one +word,—the more statesmanly it appears. I am confident that whoever will +weigh it carefully will agree with me. He will not be surprised to learn +that it carried the house decisively. Even in Randolph’s own State it drew +great praise. But its fame went abroad everywhere, and it was revealed to +America that she had found among her public men another giant.</p> + +<p>In the year 1800 Calhoun was a lad of eighteen, without even a complete +common school education. Represent to yourself clearly what he had +accomplished in the interval from the year last mentioned to December 12, +1811, when, not yet thirty, he made the speech we have just considered. If +any public man of America, burdened with such disadvantages, has +surpassed, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> even equalled, this meteoric stride, I do not now recall +him. I am not emphasizing especially that he got to congress in such a +short while. What I do especially emphasize is that he so early won place +as an eminent statesman. In these eleven years he lost no time at all in +idleness, or probation, or waiting.</p> + +<p>January 8, 1811, some three months after his election to congress, he +married his cousin, Floride Calhoun—not a first cousin, but a daughter of +a first cousin. His letters of courtship, not to her, but, in the old +style, to her mother; his only letter to her, written shortly before the +marriage; and other letters from and to him afterwards, all of which you +can read in the Correspondence,—show him to be such a lover, father, +brother, son-in-law, brother-in-law, grandfather, etc., as everybody +wants. Some South Carolinian, adequately gifted, ought to tell befittingly +the tale of Calhoun’s beautiful domestic life.</p> + +<p>I must now mention some other facts which will further enlighten you as to +the man.</p> + +<p>I was fourteen when Calhoun died. For four or five years before, and +afterwards until I went to the brothers’ war, I heard much of Calhoun from +relatives in Abbeville county and the Court House. I still recall most +vividly what a paternal uncle habitually said of the brightness and +unexampled impressiveness of Calhoun’s eyes, and the charm and +instructiveness of his conversation. In Georgia there was not a public man +whose course in politics commended itself to all of my acquaintances. I +had become accustomed to hearing much disparagement of Toombs and of +Stephens, with whom I was most familiar. But my South Carolina relatives, +and every man or woman of that State whose talk I listened to; every boy +or girl with whom I talked myself, yea, all of the negroes,—always warmly +maintained the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> rightfulness of Calhoun’s politics, national or State. I +thought it a good hit when a Georgia aunt of mine dubbed the Palmetto +State “The Kingdom of Calhoun,” and Abbeville Court House “its capital.” +This universal political worship was a great surprise to me. But there was +a still greater one to come. That was, that according to all accounts, and +without any contradiction, in spite of his living away from home the most +of his time, he yet gave his planting interests and all else appertaining +the very best management, and with such unvarying financial success it +would be unkind to compare Webster’s money-wasting and amateur farming at +Marshfield. In this community, where he seemed to be known as well as he +was before he removed to Fort Hill, some sixty miles distant, in 1825, he +had become a far greater authority in business than he had even attained +in politics. His acquaintances all sought his advice, which they followed +when they got it; thus making this busiest of public servants their +agricultural oracle.</p> + +<p>The reader will find in Starke’s memoir and the Correspondence ample +proofs of that diligent attention of Calhoun to his home affairs which +made him the exceptionally successful planter that he was. Starke happily +calls him “the great farmer-statesman of our country.”<a name='fna_46' id='fna_46' href='#f_46'><small>[46]</small></a></p> + +<p>Now let us see where he made his mark as an able business man in another +place. He was Monroe’s secretary of war from 1817 to 1825. When he entered +the office he found something like $50,000,000 of unsettled accounts +outstanding, and jumble in every branch of the service. He soon brought +down the accounts to a few millions. And he reduced the annual expenditure +of four to two and a half millions, “without <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>subtracting a single comfort +from either officer or soldier,” as he says with becoming pride. He +established it, that the head of every subordinate department be +responsible for its disbursements. His economy was not parsimonious. He +was especially popular at West Point, for which he did great things, and +with the officers and men of the army.</p> + +<p>And if one chose to look through the belonging parts of the Correspondence +and the other accessible pertinent records, he will find ample proofs that +he was ever alert to all the duties of his office, performing each one, +whether important or trivial, with the height of skill and diligence.</p> + +<p>Consider, as to his career in the war department, this language of one of +the most inveterate of his disparagers:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Many of his friends and admirers had with regret seen him abandon his +seat in the legislative hall for a place in the president’s council. +They apprehended that he would, to a great extent, lose the renown +which he had gained as a member of congress, for they thought that the +didactic turn of his mind rendered him unfit to become a successful +administrator. He undeceived them in a manner which astonished even +those who had not shared these apprehensions. The department of war +was in a state of really astounding confusion when he assumed charge +of it. Into this chaos he soon brought order, and the whole service of +the department received an organization so simple and at the same time +so efficient that it has, in the main, been adhered to by all his +successors, and proved itself capable of standing even the test of the civil war.”<a name='fna_47' id='fna_47' href='#f_47'><small>[47]</small></a></p> + +<p>Now let us glance at his magnificent success in winning for the United +States the vast territory of Texas and Oregon. The latter had long been in +dispute between us and England. Ever since 1818 it had been jointly +occupied under agreement. We wanted all of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> it; and of course as our +settlements in the west approached nearer and nearer, our desire for it +mounted. And England wanted all of it too. Soon after Texas achieved her +independence she applied for admission into our union, but as the settlers +had carried slavery with them free-soil opposition kept her out. Texas got +in debt, and the only thing for her to do was to tie to some great power +willing to receive her. England, seeing her opportunity, was trying to +propitiate Mexico in order, with the favor of the latter, to get Texas for +herself. Of course the south wanted Texas to come in, but the free-soilers +did not. And the north wanted Oregon; and although its soil and climate +did not admit of slavery, the south was against its acquisition unless the +concession be made that it be permitted to slavery to occupy all the +suitable soil of the Territories. As early as 1843 Calhoun, with his +piercing vision, saw the situation clearly. If the dispute as to Oregon +provoked war, England could throw troops thither from China by a much +shorter route than ours, the latter going as it did from the States on the +Atlantic coast around Cape Horn. That would be bad enough for us. But +suppose England gets Texas. A hostile power, with a vast empire of land, +will spring up under the very nose of the States, where our adversary will +acquire a base of operations in the highest degree unfavorable to us. Then +England will rise in her demands as to Oregon, and perhaps win all of it +from us. In an affair of inter-dependent contingencies it is of the first +importance to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing first. Texas +was ripe, Oregon was not. Calhoun saw the first thing to do was to annex +Texas. For when England cannot secure that base of operations in Texas she +will shrink from making Oregon a cause of war, and while she is +hesitating, Oregon—which is near to us and far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> from her—is steadily +filling with population in which settlers from the United States more and +more preponderate; and at the same time the populous States are fast +approaching. After a while the inhabitants will all practically be on our +side, and they will have hosts of allies to the eastward in supporting +distance, which would give us an invincible advantage in case war for +Oregon does come. This is what Calhoun styled “masterly inactivity” on our +part, and which, had it been fully carried out as he advised, Oregon would +now extend much further north than it does. To sum up in a line, he saw +that activity as to Texas and inactivity as to Oregon was each masterly.</p> + +<p>But the hotheads of the south and the fanatical wing of the anti-slavery +men at the north rose up, obstructing his way like mountains. At the same +time there was lack of vision in even the leaders of each section who +could rise to patriotism above prejudice. Polk blundered in not continuing +Calhoun as secretary of State, in which place he had made so good a +beginning that it soon accomplished the annexation of Texas. In his +inaugural Polk asserted that our title to Oregon was good, and to be +maintained by arms if need be; and he went further away from “masterly +inactivity” in his first annual message. He evoked great popular +excitement, and “Fifty-four forty or fight!” and “All of Oregon or none!” +came forth in passionate ejaculations in every corner of the land. Calhoun +had been called from retirement to take Texas and Oregon in hand, and when +Polk made a new secretary he went back into the retirement for which he +greatly longed. The record shows that the best men of all parties, north +and south, felt that as Tyler’s secretary he was the man of all to manage +the two matters so vitally important to the United States, and they deeply +regretted that the place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> was not continued to him by Polk. And now +instead of the happy settlement they had been sure the master would +effect, the country was face to face with a war that portended direful +disaster to each section. The eyes of patriots turned to Calhoun again; +and as he cannot be secretary, he must be in the senate. And a way being +made, he was seated in due time. It needs not to go into much detail. The +situation had changed greatly. The especial thing to do now was to avoid +war. And as a resolution to terminate the joint occupation had been passed +by congress, and as the ire of Great Britain had been greatly aroused, +there must at once be a settlement of the Oregon controversy. And so the +controversy was compromised and averted, this good result being mainly due +to the efforts of Calhoun. Even Von Holst calls his speech of March 16, +1846, great. It will live forever. It is paying it gross disrespect to +treat it as mere oratory, even if one concede to it the highest eloquence. +It voices the ripest wisdom of the ablest practical statesman dealing with +a most momentous public affair, in a crisis delicate and perilous in the +extreme. The vindication of the true course of action is majestic. But to +my mind the great achievement of the speech is his sublime philanthropic +deprecation of war between England and America. When the papers told us at +the outbreak of our war with Spain that all the British subjects on the +warships of the latter had thrown up their places, it seemed to me that +nothing else could so fairly omen co-operation of England and America in +the near future to democratize and make happy the world. And I believe +that that inexpressibly sweet token of Anglo-American brotherhood would +have been postponed at least a half-century, if not much longer, had it +not been for that speech.</p> + +<p>This speech likewise discomfited pro-slavery and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> anti-slavery fanatics +alike, and won the hearty approval of the wisest and best of every part of +the country.</p> + +<p>Calhoun’s self-education merits the closest attention. Railroaded through +school and college, as he was, his tuition was necessarily defective in +some important particulars. In the main he spelled accurately, but the +Correspondence shows that he wrote “sylable,” “indisoluably,” “weat” for +wet, “merical” for miracle, “sperit,” “disappinted,” “abeated,” etc. It is +doubtless to be regretted that he did not have larger familiarity with +polite literature. Admitting these faults, still we must know he had been +uncommonly studious and thoughtful to win his degree in four years after +his start to school; but his systematic study, careful observation, and +hard thinking really commenced with his entrance of public life, and were +kept up to his very death. Note this pertinent excerpt from Webster’s +memorial speech, in which I italicize a passage happily describing his +studies:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“I have not, in public nor private life, known a more assiduous person +in the discharge of his appropriate duties. I have known no man who +wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of +it in any pursuits not connected with the immediate discharge of his +duty. He seemed to have no recreation but the pleasure of conversation +with his friends. <i>Out of the chambers of congress, he was either +devoting himself to the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to the +immediate subject of the duty before him</i>, or else he was indulging in +those social interviews in which he so much delighted.”</p> + +<p>From his first speech in congress to the end of his life you note that he +has always mastered the pertinent facts, literature, and guiding +principles of whatever he has to do with, whether in speech or action. +This indicates continuous, most industrious, and most wise +self-instruction. I believe it was Mr. Parton who said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> that Jefferson was +the best educated man of his time. His full equipment from all belonging +learning and science was surpassed only by the versatility with which he +instantly solved all new questions. But Calhoun’s was more of a special +training than Jefferson’s. Having for some years learned by doing,—doing +after the best study and reflection, consistent with due promptness, that +he could give each thing he had to do,—his capital of knowledge and +developed faculty had become all-sufficient. Stephens, a profound student +of both Jefferson and Calhoun, makes this comparison:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Amongst the many great men with whom he associated, Mr. Calhoun was +by far the most philosophical statesman of them all. Indeed, with the +exception of Mr. Jefferson, it may be questioned if in this respect +the United States has ever produced his superior.”<a name='fna_48' id='fna_48' href='#f_48'><small>[48]</small></a></p> + +<p>Government—that is, good democratic government—he studied all his life +with rare devotion. His two special works,<a name='fna_49' id='fna_49' href='#f_49'><small>[49]</small></a> and the parallel parts of +his speeches, warmly commended by such a thinker and friend of democracy +as John Stuart Mill, are sufficing proof. In all the long tract from Plato +and Aristotle down to the popularization of direct legislation, which +commences with the publication of Mr. Sullivan’s pamphlet a few years ago, +there is to be found nobody who has penetrated so deeply into the secrets +of those principles by which alone true democracy must be maintained. With +what clear vision does he read us lessons from the unanimous veto of the +Roman tribunes; the political history of the twelve tribes of Israel; the +balance of interests in the English constitution and our own, intended to +guarantee what he calls government of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> concurrent majority. His +illustration from the confederacy of Indian Tribes is to be especially +emphasized as demonstration of his industry in collecting his materials +and of his great insight.<a name='fna_50' id='fna_50' href='#f_50'><small>[50]</small></a></p> + +<p>I must give still another example, which I am sure will yet benignly +enlighten America.</p> + +<p>Ever since Adam Smith fell into my hands in early manhood I have had a +strong predilection for political economy. My conviction during the +brothers’ war that proper management of the currency of the confederacy +was indispensable to the success of our cause initiated me into an earnest +study of the science of money. And later intense interest in the greenback +question, and afterwards the silver question, added to the impetus. The +longer I observed the more plainly I saw a few private persons controlling +the coinage, the greenbacks, and the national bank currency of purpose to +monopolize government credit, and also fix the interest rate and the price +level, at any particular time, as suited their selfish interests. The +remedy became clear,—government must retake and fulfil all its money +functions. Especially must it keep the country supplied with a volume of +money which never becomes either redundant or contracted. How to do this +properly brought up the question, What is money? What is it that makes a +sheep, or cow, or coin, or piece of paper, money? For the true answer to +this question is the very beginning and foundation of all monetary +science. I took up Ricardo again, who, with a solitary exception mentioned +a little farther on, had, from the time I turned into him during my study +of the confederate currency, of all the economists by profession, showed +to me the best understanding of the real nature of money; and of course +John Stuart Mill, Jevons, Carl Marx, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> others of less note, were +examined. The result confirmed Ricardo in his primacy; although I felt +that the true nature of money was assumed—rather vaguely—by him, and not +clearly expressed as it ought to be. I believed myself familiar with all +the important work of Calhoun. Somehow I had overlooked his contributions +to this subject. A few brief quotations from the more unimportant of these +I found in certain American books, which made me read the pertinent +speeches.<a name='fna_51' id='fna_51' href='#f_51'><small>[51]</small></a> It was a most inexpressible surprise to me to find that he +had perfected Ricardo. Briefly stated, this is the true doctrine according +to Calhoun. It is not legal-tender laws, nor is it intrinsic value, which +makes even gold go as money. Well, what is it? Calhoun was not the first +to answer it, for others had given the true answer; but they ran away from +it as soon as they made it. He divined the full satisfactoriness of the +true answer, which he demonstrated to be true by a method as nearly +mathematical as the case admits of. And he lightens up what was dark +before by showing that that is money, and good money, whatever it may +be,—gold, silver, paper, property, what not,—which the government +receives in payment of its dues. The practice of the government,—not +laws, nor the market value of different materials of money,—this is the +great thing. If the United States should refuse to receive gold for its +dues, that would so greatly lessen the demand for gold as money that the +coin would depreciate and drop out of circulation. Nothing—not the +precious metals, not diamonds of the first water, not radium, not the +bills of the best bank, not greenbacks, not treasury notes can maintain +themselves as money if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> the government will not receive it. This is the +first half of the subject. Calhoun adds the other by showing that whatever +the government makes money, its volume can always be kept of the proper +quantity,—which proper quantity varies with the needs of commerce,—so as +to avoid the too much or too little. His illustration from the treasury +notes of North Carolina, which could not be a legal tender under the +federal constitution, but which circulated briskly and buoyantly and +stayed at par for many years, because they were received without discount +by the State, and also because their volume was kept within bounds, will +yet greatly help the cause of honest money.</p> + +<p>In the achievement just told Calhoun not only excelled the economists of +his day, but he is yet in advance of all of the present except Del +Mar,<a name='fna_52' id='fna_52' href='#f_52'><small>[52]</small></a>—the only economist who has excelled Ricardo in divining the +essence of money. These two alone explain clearly and fully why it is that +bankers keep such tenacious grip upon the money function of +government—they thereby so shape its practice that their wares shall be +money, with all the incidents of profit therefrom, and no others shall. +Del Mar never quotes him; and I almost know he has never studied his views +upon this subject.</p> + +<p>America will yet have a “rational money,” a term which Prof. Frank Parsons +has happily chosen as the name of his invaluable book.<a name='fna_53' id='fna_53' href='#f_53'><small>[53]</small></a> To win it she +must fight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> many battles with the money power. When this war of the people +is waging by the people for the people, the doctrine of Calhoun will be +the banner of the right. After the sordid money oligarchy is overthrown +and the United States is blessed with a people’s money, that benign +deliverance will add prodigiously to the fame of Calhoun.</p> + +<p>My space does not admit of telling you how deeply Calhoun loathed the +spoils system. That must be borne in mind, and taken into account in any +true estimate of him as a statesman.</p> + +<p>I deem it especially important to have you consider his standing with the +people of his State. Literally his word was law in South Carolina. Hayne +in 1832, and Huger in 1845, resigned their seats in the national senate to +give place to him. Everybody in his State always wanted him to lead, and +everybody always wanted him to lead according to his own will. This +unwonted influence, utterly without precedent, was due to the accurate +measure which the masses had taken of him. As he lived and aged among them +they knew him better and better to be irreproachable in private and public +life, the ablest of the able, the most diligent of the diligent, and the +truest of the true as a representative or official, and of that severe and +lofty virtue which scorns all popularity that is not the reward of +righteousness. And so he became example, model, worship, to all classes. +The forty years political ascendency of Pericles in the Athenian democracy +is the only befitting historical parallel which I can think of. Familiar +with the State from boyhood, I have long thought its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> people the most +advanced of the south. In spite of the revenge wreaked upon her in war, +and in spite of the direr devastation of the twelve years of negro rule +following the fall of the Confederate States, that little community, with +her dispensary and her system of really direct nomination,<a name='fna_54' id='fna_54' href='#f_54'><small>[54]</small></a> to say +nothing of her wise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> management of all her material resources, is teaching +the nation lessons of the highest wisdom. These are the people from whom +Calhoun won a crown more resplendent than any other of our States has ever +bestowed upon a loved son. How eloquent were her last offices. Read Mr. +Pinkney’s extracts from the “Carolina Tribute,” narrating the reception of +his mortal remains in Charleston:<a name='fna_55' id='fna_55' href='#f_55'><small>[55]</small></a> the novel procession of vessels, +displaying emblems of mourning, the solemn landing at noon, an imposing +train moving amid houses hung with black, “a Sabbath-like stillness” +resting on the city, “The solemn minute gun, the wail of the distant bell, +the far-off spires shrouded in the display of grief, the hearse and its +attendant mourners waiting on the spot, alone bore witness that the pulse +of life still beat within the city, that a whole people in voiceless woe +were about to receive and consign to earth all that was mortal of a great +and good citizen.”</p> + +<p>Appropriately and impressively Mr. Pinkney closes his description of this +forever memorable demonstration by quoting Carlyle’s “How touching is the +loyalty of men to their sovereign man.”<a name='fna_56' id='fna_56' href='#f_56'><small>[56]</small></a></p> + +<p>Some men reserve out of the pillage of their fellows a great fund to +signalize their graves. Stronger cars must be made, bridges strengthened, +and too narrow passages avoided by long circuits in order that their huge +piles be transported to the conspicuous spot selected in a fashionable +cemetery. How the funerals which a weeping people give a Calhoun, +Liebknecht, Pingree, Altgeld, and other true ones dwindle such monuments +into smallness and contempt!</p> + +<p>I must add something here to what has been said in the foregoing of +Calhoun’s speeches. Somebody must after a while do for him what the +compilation called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> “The Great Speeches and Orations” has done so well for +Webster. His very greatest effort is that against the force bill, +delivered in the United States senate February 15 and 16, 1833. As an +appeal in behalf of the rights of the minority against the oppressive +majority it is unequalled. All through it, from its most befitting +exordium to the righteous indignation of the closing sentence, there are +passages which “the world will not willingly let die.” No one who has ever +given it attention can forget the paragraph defending Carolina against the +charge of passion and delusion; that demolishing as by a tornado the +assertion of a senator that the bill was a measure of peace; the far-famed +one as to metaphysical reasoning; what is said as to the nature of the +contest between Persia and Greece; the rupture in the tribes of Israel +graphically expounded; the first mention of the government of “the +concurring majority” as distinct from and far better than that of the +absolute majority; the lesson to us of the Roman tribunes. To read this +speech becomingly, purge yourself of all prejudice; by an adequate effort +of the historical imagination see all the main things of the then +situation, and put yourself fully in Calhoun’s place; so that you cannot +fail to feel all of his deep earnestness. You will have succeeded when you +can rightly appreciate this outburst:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Will you collect money when it is acknowledged that it is not wanted? +He who earns the money, who digs it from the earth with the sweat of +his brow, has a just title to it against the universe. No one has a +right to touch it without his consent except his government, and this +only to the extent of its legitimate wants. To take more is robbery; +and you propose by this bill to enforce robbery by murder.”</p> + +<p>When I pronounced that against the force bill, the greatest of his +speeches, I was not unmindful of his last,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> that of March 4, 1850, not +four weeks before his death. I can hardly class it as a speech. It was a +revelation of the woe in store for America if the abolition movement was +not checked. Its analysis and demonstration of the preponderant power of +the north, and its retrospection over the progressive stages by which the +former equilibrium of the sections had been destroyed, are as +clear-sighted as its prediction. Never in all history has an actor in a +revolution described its course behind him so understandingly, nor its +future course with such true prophecy.</p> + +<p>Let us give you the fewest possible selected brief passages that will do +something towards possessing you of the core of Calhoun’s valedictory to +the United States and the South.</p> + +<p>This is first in order: “How can the union be saved? There is but one way +by which it can with any certainty; and that is by a full and final +settlement, on the principles of justice, of all the questions at issue +between the two sections. The south asks for justice, simple justice, and +less she ought not to take. She has no compromise to offer but the +constitution, and no concession or surrender to make.”</p> + +<p>The vital concern of his section against abolition, and what it must do to +avoid it, he tells in these passages:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“[The South] regards the relation [of master and slave] as one which +cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two races to the greatest +calamity, and the section to poverty, desolation, and wretchedness, +and accordingly she feels bound, by every consideration of interest +and safety, to defend it.”</p> + +<p>“Is it not certain that if something is not done to arrest it [the +abolition movement], the south will be forced to choose between +abolition and secession?”</p></div> + +<p>If the south must choose secession, he justifies her by the example of +Washington, with a calm and repose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> that prove his deepest conviction of +its rightfulness, and with a power that cannot be confuted. He says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>[“The Union cannot] be saved by invoking the name of the illustrious +southerner whose mortal remains repose on the western bank of the +Potomac. He was one of us—a slaveholder and a planter. We have +studied his history, and find nothing in it to justify submission to +wrong. On the contrary, his great fame rests on the solid foundation +that, while he was careful to avoid doing wrong to others, he was +prompt and decided in repelling wrong. I trust that, in this respect, +we have profited by his example.</p> + +<p>Nor can we find anything in his history to deter us from seceding from +the union should it fail to fulfil the objects for which it was +instituted, by being permanently and hopelessly converted into a means +of oppressing instead of protecting us. On the contrary, we find much +in his example to encourage us should we be forced to the extremity of +deciding between submission and disunion.</p> + +<p>There existed then as well as now a union,—that between the parent +country and her then colonies. It was a union that had much to endear +it to the people of the colonies. Under its protecting and +superintending care the colonies were planted, and grew up and +prospered, through a long course of years, until they became populous +and wealthy. Its benefits were not limited to them. Their extensive +agricultural and other productions gave birth to a flourishing +commerce which richly rewarded the parent country for the trouble and +expense of establishing and protecting them. Washington was born and +grew up to manhood under that union. He acquired his early distinction +in its service; and there is every reason to believe that he was +devotedly attached to it. But his devotion was a rational one. He was +attached to it, not as an end, but as a means to an end. When it +failed to fulfil its end, and, instead of affording protection, was +converted into the means of oppressing the colonies, he did not +hesitate to draw his sword and head the great movement by which that +union was forever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> severed, and the independence of these States +established. This was the great and crowning glory of his life, which +has spread his fame over the whole globe, and will transmit it to the +latest posterity.”</p></div> + +<p>With what moving entreaty does he thus adjure the victorious north:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The north “has only to wish it to accomplish it—to do justice by +conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired territory, and +to do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves +to be faithfully fulfilled, to cease the agitation of the slavery +question, and to provide for the insertion of a provision in the +constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the south, in +substance, the power she possessed of protecting herself before the +equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of the +government. There will be no difficulty in devising such a +provision—one that will protect the south and which at the same time +will improve and strengthen the government instead of impairing and +weakening it.”</p> + +<p>“The responsibility of saving the union rests on the north, and not on +the south. The south cannot save it by any act of hers, and the north +may save it without any sacrifice whatever, unless to do justice and +to perform her duties under the constitution should be regarded by her +as a sacrifice.”</p></div> + +<p>This sleepless watchman since 1835 had again and again blown the trumpet +as the sword of disunion was coming upon the land. Now, the grave yawning +before him, he sees that sword nearer and sharper, and conscious that it +is his last public duty he sends forth to all his country a blast of +warning more earnest and more solemn than ever. Warning that the bloodiest +of all wars is coming, and that between brothers. Warning—it is the whole +of this dread deliverance. Here is the first paragraph:</p> + +<p class="blockquot"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>“I have, senators, +believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and +effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this opinion, I have +on all proper occasions endeavored to call the attention of both the +two great parties which divide the country to adopt some measure to +prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has +been permitted to proceed, with almost no attempt to resist it, until +it has reached a point where it can no longer be disguised or denied +that the union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the +greatest and the gravest question that can ever come under your +consideration,—How can the union be preserved?”</p> + +<p>And this is the last paragraph:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“I have now, senators, done my duty in expressing my opinions fully +and candidly on this solemn occasion. In doing so, I have been +governed by the motives which have governed me in all stages of the +agitation of the slavery question since its commencement. I have +exerted myself during the whole period to arrest it with the intention +of saving the union, if it could be done, and if it could not, to save +the section where it has pleased providence to cast my lot, and which +I sincerely believe has justice and the constitution on its side. +Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability both to the +union and my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have the +consolation, let what will come, that I am free from all +responsibility.”</p> + +<p>Had abolition been in charge of men, Calhoun, claiming, as appeared to +them, the most palpable rights under current views of justice, under the +constitution, under the law, and under patriotic duty, would have +prevailed. He never understood, no more than the abolitionists themselves +did, that providence was making an instrument of abolition to remove the +only danger to the American union, and that providence was not under human +constitutions, laws, and convictions of duty. As<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> you meditate this +superhuman achievement of the true citizen in his last stand for his +doomed section, does it not help you to appreciate better the high saying +of the Greeks, that the struggle of a good man against fate is the most +elevating of all spectacles?</p> + +<p>The speeches that will find place in the selection suggested above will +not enrapture the reader with the proud diction, learning, ornateness, and +exquisite finish of Webster, but he will find them everywhere to be proofs +of the dictum of Faust:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Es trägt Verstand and rechter Sinn<br /> +Mit wenig Kunst sich selber vor;<br /> +Und wenn’s euch Ernst ist, was zu sagen,<br /> +Ist’s nöthig, Worten nachzujagen?”<a name='fna_57' id='fna_57' href='#f_57'><small>[57]</small></a></p> + +<p>He will also note that many of the wisest and most eloquent passages are +almost the extreme of choice, but chaste and severe, expression. Here read +aloud the passage as to Washington quoted above from the speech of March +4, 1850, and you will hardly dissent.</p> + +<p>America owes it to Calhoun to publish a cheap edition of his best +speeches, and also of his “Dissertation on Government.”</p> + +<p>A word as to the “Dissertation” and the “Discourse on the Constitution of +the United States.” The project of these two books lay close to his heart +for many years. He intended them as his last admonitions to the people of +the great republic. Doubtless the special object of his retirement was to +finish them, but he had to return to the senate. What we have of the books +was written in the little leisure which he snatched from the pressure of +public duties, domestic affairs, and ill-health. The resoluteness with +which, in the midst of these difficulties,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> he worked at the self-imposed +task proves a lofty and unselfish love. He did not finish them to his +satisfaction. Darwin did not do that with his epoch-making “Origin of +Species,” for he found there was no need to do so. I believe that, as the +essentials of the belonging part of evolution are all to be found in the +“Origin of Species,” so all the essentials of Calhoun’s great doctrine of +government are fully set forth in his two books. To me the “Dissertation” +seems complete. I note with pleasure that, though slowly, it is steadily +climbing to the lofty height which is its due place in the world’s +estimation. And the “Discourse”—of which he did not live to finish the +final draft—surely leads all the productions of the State sovereignty +school. The providence which opposed his wishes was kind to his country, +to the world, and to himself in calling him from his desk; for it allowed +him to get Texas and Oregon for us, to give mankind his Oregon speech, and +his last, and thus to finish his good work and make his fame full.</p> + +<p>The foregoing is intended to influence my readers to turn away from Von +Holst, who wrote Calhoun’s life, with the smoke and dust of the brothers’ +war still in his eyes, and from Trent, who merely says ditto to Mr. Burke, +to Stephens, to the great Webster, to the touching “Carolina Tribute,” to +the happy and appreciative sketch of Pinkney, to the man himself and his +grand career, in order to find the facts and principles by which one of +America’s very greatest ought to be judged. And I do hope that they now +begin to discern that Calhoun was nothing at all of a doctrinaire, nor +chop-logic, nor fanatic, nor professional politician, nor ignorant and +over-zealous partisan, but was the very height of practical talent and an +extraordinarily successful man of affairs, of more than Roman integrity, +conscientious and diligent beyond almost all others in the duties of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> his +place, and a foremost statesman of wide and profound culture. Whether I +have accomplished my design or not, let me beg you to read for yourself +with careful attention what Webster said of him in the United States +senate just after his death. Remember two things as you read: (1) The +speaker and the dead had been opposed to one another in politics for more +than twenty years, the former being the great exponent of free-labor +nationalization and the other the great exponent of slave-labor +nationalization; (2) nobody ever weighed his public utterances more +carefully than did Webster, and that he would not say anything which he +did not believe, even as a politeness.</p> + +<p>Let us now try to follow with proper discernment this man whom we hope we +have proved to be good and wise through his titanic defence of the cause +which fate had decreed must fail. As our explanation of how evolution, and +not the north on one side nor the south on the other, brought forward the +crisis in which slavery, the sole menace of American dismemberment, was to +perish, is so nearly complete, we can be much briefer in the rest of the +chapter.</p> + +<p>The true beginning here is with the proposition that everything which +Calhoun did as the southern leader was prompted by a righteous conscience +and the highest and most unselfish patriotism. He was the very first to +discern the full menace of abolition to the welfare of the people he +represented. And when years afterwards the situation became darker and +more serious, and more and more importunately put to him the question, If +abolition can be avoided only by leaving the union, what ought the south +to do? he answered to himself, with the fullest approval of his +conscience, she must go out; for manifestly it is her paramount duty to +protect her citizens against any such invasion of their rights as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>abolition. But he had no illusion as to peaceable secession; and he +likewise worshipped the union, believing with deepest conviction that it +is far better for neighboring communities to be federated than +independent. And the memories of the great American history were as sweet +to him as they were to Webster. To sum up, only one thing in his opinion +could justify secession. That was control of the federal government by the +abolitionists. If that comes, the south must seek her independence, even +if it is beyond a sea of blood.</p> + +<p>Abolition was on its way then to overturn the supports of comfort and +domestic peace in the south, as it afterwards did. Suppose Webster had +seen the imminence of such a dreadful evil to New England, would he not +have felt that his duty to his section was now the great thing? My brother +who wore the blue, ought he not to have so felt? If the union had been +turned into a course which would not only impoverish and beggar the people +of New England, but would for long years actually deprive the masses of +those modes of business and labor by which they were subsisting themselves +and their families, can it be thought that Webster, with his exalted +admiration of the fathers, who endured all privations to win liberty from +their oppressors, would not have been heart and soul for secession?</p> + +<p>The only actual difference between the two great patriots was that to +Calhoun the dread alternative of looking outside the union for defence and +protection of home and fireside was commended by a cruel fate, while a +kind fate withheld it from Webster.</p> + +<p>I shall corroborate the foregoing by some pertinent excerpts from +Calhoun’s speeches in the United States senate. And as my purpose is to +build everywhere in this book, as far as possible, upon only the most +obvious facts and to vouch therefor the most accessible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> authorities, I +take the excerpts from quotations made by Von Holst:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“It is to us a vital question. It involves not only our liberty, but, +what is greater (if to freeman anything can be), existence itself. The +relation which now exists between the two races in the slaveholding +States has existed for two centuries. It has grown with our growth, +and strengthened with our strength. It has entered into and modified +all our institutions, civil and political. None other can be +substituted. We will not, cannot, permit it to be destroyed.... Come +what will, should it cost every drop of blood and every cent of +property, we must defend ourselves; and if compelled, we should stand +justified by all laws, human and divine; ... we would act under an +imperious necessity. There would be to us but one alternative,—to +triumph or perish as a people.”<a name='fna_58' id='fna_58' href='#f_58'><small>[58]</small></a></p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>“To destroy the existing relations would be to destroy this prosperity +[of the southern States] and to place the two races in a state of +conflict, which must end in the expulsion or extirpation of one or the +other. No other can be substituted compatible with their peace or +security. The difficulty is in the diversity of the races.... Social +and political equality between them is impossible. The causes lie too +deep in the principles of our nature to be surmounted. But, without +such equality, to change the present condition of the African race, +were it possible, would be but to change the form of slavery.”<a name='fna_59' id='fna_59' href='#f_59'><small>[59]</small></a></p> + +<p>“He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive that the subversion +of a relation which must be followed with such disastrous consequences +can be effected only by convulsions that would devastate the country, +burst asunder the bonds of union, and engulf in a sea of blood the +institutions of the country. It is madness to suppose that the +slaveholding States would quietly submit to be sacrificed. Every +consideration—interest, duty, and humanity, the love of country, the +sense of wrong, hatred of oppressors and treacherous and faithless +confederates, and, finally, despair—would impel them to the most +daring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> and desperate resistance in defence of property, family, +country, liberty, and existence.”<a name='fna_60' id='fna_60' href='#f_60'><small>[60]</small></a></p></div> + +<p>The student unfamiliar with the confederate side of the brothers’ war can +find the whole of it clearly stated in these short passages re-enforced by +the cognate ones quoted above from the speech of March 4, 1850. The +maintenance of the then existing relations between white and black was +vital both to liberty and existence. Because of the world-wide diversity +of the two races they cannot be socially or politically equal (a subject +which we will deal with specially after a while). And it was the duty of +the south to fight to the bitter end “in defence of property, family, +country, liberty, and existence.” This is the marrow of the quotations. +They convincingly show not only the grasp of the statesman, but the +prescience of the prophet, as has been plainly proved by the brothers’ war +and what followed in its track.</p> + +<p>Opposition to the tariff, which in his judgment favored the manufacturing +at the expense of the staple States, seems to have been the first thing +that led Calhoun to take a pro-Southern stand in politics.<a name='fna_61' id='fna_61' href='#f_61'><small>[61]</small></a> It finally +produced the famous nullification episode, which we have already somewhat +discussed. In this his platform was simply anti-tariff. But the current, +without his being aware of it, was carrying him resistlessly and rapidly +on into the anti-abolition career in which his life ended. It was the +petition presented in 1835 to congress against slavery in the District of +Columbia which,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> it seems, was the first thing that opened his eyes to the +menace of abolition. Note his wonderful foresight. Compare him with Cicero +just before the outbreak of the war between Pompey and Cæsar; or with +Demosthenes before Philip discloses his purpose towards Greece; or with +Carl Marx, predicting the future of co-operative enterprise. Cicero almost +foresees nothing—he mostly fears; Marx is utterly mistaken. The +divination of Demosthenes is far superior, and it is clear; yet it is +belated when it comes. But Calhoun sees with “appalling clearness,” as Von +Holst says, all the storm-cloud from which tempest and tornado will ravage +the entire land, just as its first speck shows on the horizon; and nobody +else will see that. If this abolition movement is not stopped in its +incipiency, it will soon get beyond all control. This he says over and +over in his public place. What a horrible spectre of the future haunted +him for the rest of his life! The south in her self-defence forced out of +the union, and then perhaps overcome in war. After her braves have +perished, and their dear ones at home have been plunged in the depths of +want, the triumphant abolitionists will have the former slaves to lord it +over them.</p> + +<p>His conscience commanded him to stand by slavery as the fundamental +condition of his people’s well-being; it also at the same time commanded +him to strain all his energies to save the union by making it the +protector instead of the assailant of slavery. This was the insuperable +task which the powers in the unseen put him in the treadmill to do. From +the time he commenced the discussion of the anti-slavery petitions until +his exclamation over the “poor south,” on his death-bed, life was to him +but a deepening agony of solicitude and utmost effort,—solicitude for his +country and section, effort to avert the danger that became greater and +more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> awful to him every day. He strove after remedies under the +constitution. The more he recalled the success of the single stand of +South Carolina against the tariff, the prouder he became of being the +author of nullification. Its dearness to him was that it was peaceable as +well as efficient. The better opinion of the State-rights school is that +nullification is an absurdity, and that South Carolina’s only true remedy +against the tariff was to secede if it were not repealed. But he knew +better than everybody else that secession meant internecine war between +the sections, and this influenced him to exalt peaceable nullification +above bloody secession.</p> + +<p>It needs not to consider each barrier, whether party combinations, +admission of new slave States, legislation, etc., that he tried to erect +against the incoming oceanic wave. But we must briefly consider the +amendment of the constitution which he proposed. He wanted the north and +the south each to have a president, as he said, “to be so elected, as that +the two should be constituted the special organs and representatives of +the respective sections in the executive department of the government; and +requiring each to approve all the acts of congress before they shall +become laws.”<a name='fna_62' id='fna_62' href='#f_62'><small>[62]</small></a> Do this, he urged, and neither section can use the +powers of government to injure the other, for whatever proposed law +menaces a section will be vetoed by its president. It profits the student +of the science of government to consider the historical examples which +Calhoun adduced here. They are indeed so apt that the hearing which has +ever been denied him should be granted him at least academically. He says: +“The two most distinguished constitutional governments of antiquity both +in respect to permanence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> and power had a dual executive. I refer to those +of Sparta and Rome.”<a name='fna_63' id='fna_63' href='#f_63'><small>[63]</small></a></p> + +<p>It is interesting to be informed that those same wise Iroquois from whom +our fathers probably got the precedent of the old confederation, put in +practice something very like what Calhoun advises. We append both the +account and instructive comment of Morgan:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“When the Iroquois confederacy was formed, or soon after that event, +two permanent war-chiefships were created and named.... As general +commanders they had charge of the military affairs of the confederacy, +and the command of its joint forces when united in a general +expedition.... The creation of two principal war-chiefs instead of +one, and with equal power, argues a subtle and calculating policy to +prevent the domination of a single man even in their military affairs. +They did without experience precisely as the Romans did in creating +two consuls instead of one, after they had abolished the office of +<i>rex</i>. Two consuls would balance the military power between them, and +prevent either from becoming supreme. Among the Iroquois this office +never became influential.”<a name='fna_64' id='fna_64' href='#f_64'><small>[64]</small></a></p> + +<p>But Calhoun lays much more stress upon another example,—that of the +protection which the Roman plebeians got in tribunes elected from their +own order alone, which tribunes could veto any act of the lawmaking +organs, all of which were then actually in the hands of their oppressors, +that is, the order of patricians; the result being that in course of time +the plebeians achieved equality.<a name='fna_65' id='fna_65' href='#f_65'><small>[65]</small></a></p> + +<p>Of course the inevitable could not be put off. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> yet ought we not to +admire the inventive genius of the statesman who of all proposed the +remedy that promised the best? And ought we not also to cherish in +affectionate memory this last and high effort of Calhoun to avert a +dreadful brothers’ war at hand, the end and consequences of which nobody +could then forecast?</p> + +<p>The situation of Rome granting tribunes to the plebs was widely different +from ours. That was a case of giving a veto to one class only, and to a +class which belonged to the entire body politic. Calhoun proposed not a +single veto, but two; neither one to be given such a class as we have just +mentioned, but a veto to each one of two geographical divisions, in one of +which there was a developed, and in the other a nascent and almost +complete, nationality, these two nationalities already closed with each +other in a life and death grapple. His hope must have been to confine the +combatants to an arena which could be effectually policed by the civil +power, and in which all fighting except with buttoned foils be prevented. +We may be almost sure that his heart broke when that presentiment which +often comes to the dying as clear as sunlight revealed the bloody war that +was quickening its approach.</p> + +<p>O the unutterable pathos of his life from 1835 to 1850! During this time +he was like the mother of a boy whom consumption has marked for its own. +In advance of all others she reads the first symptom, nay, she anticipates +it. All those who believe that they know him as well as she does, laugh at +her fears with unsympathetic incredulity. But her eyes never fail to see +grim death at the door, although bravely she hopes against hope, and +fights, fights, fights. Inexorably, relentlessly the end, which others now +begin to discern, comes on, but until the last breath of her darling she +has ever some suggestion of change of place or climate,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> of a new remedy, +of something else to be done. It is the supreme tragedy of her trial that +while outwardly she is all self-gratifying love, inwardly she is all +self-consuming misery. We say the love of a mother is greater than all +other. But we know that she loves her country better than she does her +child. Patriotism is as yet the strongest love of all. Realize that our +exalted patriot was tending and nursing the cause of his country. Think of +the noble Lee, his career of victory over, wearing away the winter at +Petersburg, hourly expecting his line, so tensely stretched in order to +face overwhelming odds, to break; think of him after it does break, on the +retreat, when he has discovered that his supplies have gone wrong; and +think of him when he must yield the sword as ever memorable as Hannibal’s. +The world has given Lee, and will long give him, rains of gracious tears. +But he was never plagued with Calhoun’s sharpened eyes to future disaster, +and he was confident that he would reach the mountains almost until the +very moment of surrender. Think rather of the great sufferers for high +causes,—Bonnivard, wearing a pathway over the stone floor of his prison; +Lear, of all of Shakspeare’s heroes, in the deepest gulf of misfortune; +and especially of Calvary and the crucifixion, for Jesus travailed for his +brothers and sisters. It is here you must look for the like of Calhoun. +For fifteen years that “mass of moan” which was coming to his dear ones +pierced his ears plainer and plainer and made his heart sicker and sicker, +and during this long bloody sweat he gave the rarest devotion and +self-sacrifice to his country which he feared more and more was to plunge +over the precipice. As we recall the scene of his death it makes us +rejoice to know that the cross he had borne so long has at last been cast +off and he has entered into the rest of the martyr-patriot. Then it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> +occurs to us that he carried with him his affections,—too lofty not to be +immortal,—and we cannot believe that the sad spirit ever smiled until +Wade Hampton, twenty-six years afterwards, re-erected white domination in +South Carolina.</p> + +<p>Dixie will never forget that one who of all her sons loved her best and +suffered for her the most. And it is my conviction that each noblest soul +of the north will after a while revere in Calhoun the American parallel to +the moral grandeur of Dante, of whom Michaelangelo said he would +cheerfully endure his exile and all his misfortunes for his glory.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">WEBSTER</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Calhoun</span> was the pre-eminent champion of the southern cause in the union, +while Toombs was that of southern nationalization seeking independence. +Webster was the pre-eminent champion of American nationalization seeking +continental union. Toombs and Webster are therefore in antithesis; and it +will be well for me to begin the chapter by anticipating some of the +characteristics of the former, who will be treated at large later on, and +briefly contrasting the two.</p> + +<p>By nature Toombs was so prone to action that even in his daily +recreation—talk with the nearest to him was by far the most of it—his +immense and tireless outpouring of fine phrase, wisdom, and wit was the +increasing wonder of all who knew him. Webster’s proneness was to repose, +almost indolence. He often seemed lethargic. His activity could be excited +only by the pressure of necessity. This difference between the two showed +itself very markedly in their several careers. Toombs, coming to the bar +in the last year of his nonage, took the profession at once to his heart, +settled in his native county, in a lucrative field of practice, overcame +all hindrances of natural defects and insufficient training seemingly by a +mere act of will, and in four or five years his collecting a +thousand-dollar fee in an adjoining county was no very uncommon thing. +When he was twenty-eight he was a fully developed lawyer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> and advocate on +every side—law, equity, and criminal—of the courts of that prosperous +planting community, then overrunning with cases of importance, and his +annual income from practice was $15,000. Webster went up much more slowly. +He read long and industriously; was not called until he was twenty-three; +for the next two and a half years was content with an income of $600 or +$700; and then for nine years at Portsmouth his average income was $2,000 +yearly. Even when Webster at thirty-four removed to Boston he was hardly +as a lawyer the equal of Toombs at twenty-eight; and I believe that the +latter was always the superior lawyer. The greater reputation of Webster +is due to the greater reputation of his cases, and of the tribunal wherein +he long held the lead.</p> + +<p>We see a like difference between the two in congress. Webster shirks the +routine duties of his place to gain opportunity for practice in the United +States supreme court. Toombs stays away from all courts during the +session, and gives every measure before the body to which he belongs its +proper attention, study, and labor. But the performance by him of all the +many duties of representative or senator, whether little or great, with +unparalleled diligence, ability, and splendor, has been so completely +obscured by the few of Webster’s great congressional exploits, that it is +not now cared for by anybody.</p> + +<p>The greater lawyer and the greater congressman has been accorded the +lesser renown. This is because of the relation which each one bore to the +two publics which I have tried to make you understand,—the southern +public and the northern public. Toombs’s legal career was mainly in the +courts of his own State. It was not much heard of outside, in even the +southern public, until his extraordinarily meritorious discharge of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> +congressional duties involving a mastery of law was observed. Although +some of Webster’s cases in State courts were celebrated, his greatest +ones, to be considered in a moment, were won in the United States supreme +court, in the eyes of both publics watching intently. The highest +accomplishments of Toombs in the non-sectional parts of his congressional +career were almost matters of indifference at the time to both publics, +becoming steadily more absorbed in pro- and anti-slavery politics; and +what he did in the other part of it excited the hostility of the northern +public, and brought him obloquy instead of good name. The few memorable +deeds of Webster in congress were victorious vindications of the cause +clearest of all to the northern, that is, the free-labor, public. That +public has at last not only conquered, but it has annexed the other as a +part of itself. And so Toombs’s fame as a lawyer and statesman has been +left so far behind that it can hardly hope ever to have impartial and fair +comparison with that of Webster.</p> + +<p>Just one more parallel, and I shall proceed with my sketch. Each one of +the two, in order to accept his mission of leadership, was plainly made by +his destiny to abandon a previously cherished doctrine for a new and +contrary one. Toombs was once an ardent union man, Webster was once almost +a secessionist. In his Taylor speech, made in the United States house of +representatives July 1, 1848, speaking of the then expected acquisition of +territory, Toombs said:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“All the rest of this continent is not worth our glorious union, much +less these contemptible provinces which now threaten us with such +evils. It were better that we should throw back the worthless boon, +and let the inhabitants work out their own destiny, than that we +should endanger our peace, our safety, and our nationality by their +incorporation in our union.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>The silly embargo measures, making war upon our own citizens instead of +our enemies, had deeply injured New England interests. On their heel came +the second war with England, into which the government of France had, as +Mr. Lodge says, “tricked us ... by most profligate lying.”<a name='fna_66' id='fna_66' href='#f_66'><small>[66]</small></a> This war +paralyzed the production and occupations of Webster’s people.</p> + +<p>A speech made by him July 4, 1812, is “a strong, calm statement of the +grounds of opposition to the war.”<a name='fna_67' id='fna_67' href='#f_67'><small>[67]</small></a> Mr. Lodge quotes and emphasizes a +passage as proof that Webster, although a federalist, and the majority of +his party in New England were—to use the words of the same +author—“prepared to go to the very edge of the narrow legal line which +divides constitutional opposition from treasonable resistance,”<a name='fna_68' id='fna_68' href='#f_68'><small>[68]</small></a> was +then standing by the union with might and main. This quotation, separated +from its circumstances and the immediate sequel, strongly supports the +contention. The speech being printed, circulated widely among those +federalists who were gravitating so strongly towards “treasonable +resistance.” By reason of it Webster was chosen as a delegate to a +convention, held the next month. This man, whom Mr. Lodge would have us +believe to be so fixedly counter to the then uppermost revolutionary +sentiment of his party, was chosen to be their mouthpiece. He wrote their +report—the “Rockingham Memorial” in the form of a letter to President +Madison. Mr. Lodge thus contrasts the report and the speech. “In one point +the memorial differed curiously from the oration of the month before. The +latter pointed to the suffrage as the mode of redress; the former +distinctly hinted at and almost threatened secession, even while it +deplored a dissolution of the union as a possible result of the +administration’s policy.”<a name='fna_69' id='fna_69' href='#f_69'><small>[69]</small></a> Then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> the biographer most confidently states +that in the speech Webster was declaring his own views, but in the other +document he was declaring those of members of his party.</p> + +<p>But the average American will be sure that those familiar with the speech +at the time did not strain its counsels as far away from their own as Mr. +Lodge does, otherwise they would not have elected him as delegate; and +further, he never would have made their report for them unless he had been +known to entertain their own sentiments.<a name='fna_70' id='fna_70' href='#f_70'><small>[70]</small></a></p> + +<p>The popular wave that he had thus mounted carried the draftsman of the +“Rockingham Memorial” into congress, where, while British armies were +actually treading our soil, he voted against the taxes proposed for +national defence. Mr. Lodge does not go the full length of sustaining this +conduct.<a name='fna_71' id='fna_71' href='#f_71'><small>[71]</small></a> The severe comment of another biographer will be cordially +approved by average readers, northern and southern.<a name='fna_72' id='fna_72' href='#f_72'><small>[72]</small></a></p> + +<p>The facts properly considered show that from the speech of July 4, 1812, +on, Webster, although he stood aloof from the Hartford convention +movement, was in full sympathy with the federalists of New England, whom +the national government by its unrighteous oppressions had driven to +contemplate disunion as a possible measure of self-protection.</p> + +<p>This attitude of Webster towards the union was entirely contrary to that +which afterwards became his power and glory among his countrymen. We wish +it noted that as he changed with the people of New <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>England from +anti-tariff to pro-tariff politics, he likewise changed with them in their +principles as to the union; and that Toombs went with the south, in an +opposite direction, that is, from embrace to rejection of the union.</p> + +<p>Having in the foregoing brought out the prominent characteristics of +Webster’s nature and career, and having also impressed you that he, like +all other great statesmen, could lead only by following his people, I will +cursorily trace him from stage to stage through his development. He was +selected in infancy, if not before by providence, to be made not the +expounder of the constitution, but the invincible defender of the union. +When his activity begins, he is at first to consolidate the union by the +management of some great law cases, and delivery of occasional addresses +to popular assemblies; and afterwards in his high place as United States +senator he is to demonstrate to the northern public its complete guaranty +of their highest material interests, and set it in their hearts above all +things else. Thus did providence assign to him the preservation of the +greatest of all democracies, to the end that there be no break in the +future course of human improvement.</p> + +<p>Before his activity begins the powers train him. They gave him a long +education, and a slow growth as a statesman. He could never remember when +he had been unable to read. His feeble physique while a child shielded him +from the labor required of the other children, and permitted him to enjoy +books. Early he soaked his mind in the King James version of the bible and +other good English standards. As he grew apace his opportunities of +reading were far better than those of Calhoun, who never saw even a +circulating library until he was in his thirteenth year, and soon was +taken away from that. These opportunities he used in his leisurely way. +His mind was strong and his memory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> good, and he digested and kept under +command what he read. His schooling and college course were in the main +continuous. He got to Dartmouth at fifteen, where he spent four years. +Here he made the reputation of being the best speaker and writer of all +the students. In his study for the law he took ample time. And in his +first years of practice he had much leisure. Besides revelling in the +Latin classics, Shakspeare, Milton, Pope, and Cowper, and much history, he +was keenly observant of what was going on about him. We know how Jeremiah +Mason gave him lessons both in law, rhetoric, and elocution to his great +advancement. We know too that his interest in current political questions +was vigilant. He took his seat in congress May, 1813, being then a little +over thirty-one. His speech against a bill to encourage enlistments made +January 14, the next year, shows, as Mr. Lodge says, that “he was now +master of the style at which he aimed.”<a name='fna_73' id='fna_73' href='#f_73'><small>[73]</small></a> Of this peculiar style I shall +say something after a while. Mention of his greatest exploits in +consolidating the union is now in order.</p> + +<p>The first of these is his conduct of the Dartmouth college case in the +United States supreme court. It is entirely out of place for me to give +even the briefest notice of the details which fill Mr. Shirley’s unique +book.<a name='fna_74' id='fna_74' href='#f_74'><small>[74]</small></a> Little more than emphasis of the effect of the decision to knit +more closely the bonds of union between the States is required. This +effect will be considered more carefully when we comment on Gibbons <i>v.</i> +Ogden, which finishes the important work commenced in the other. It needs +only to remind the reader now that the protection of contracts against +impairing State<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> legislation has contributed probably more than anything +else to the prosperous development of American internal trade and +commerce,—a most potent factor in consolidating the union,—and that this +protection originates in the Dartmouth college decision. But there is +something special to be said of Webster as to the case. He did not stress +the constitutional point—that upon which the judgment was finally +placed—either in his law-brief or argument. The victory is all due to his +consummate management of the court, especially of the chief-justice. The +latter really found the true ground of the decision. But the powers had +Webster in hand, and it suited their purposes to crown their <i>Liebling</i> +with the credit of the decision. When he found out the reasons given for +the ruling he had won, I fancy that a good angel of his destiny whispered +in his ear he ought to have discerned that the weal of all classes of his +entire country, and not merely that of its colleges, was at stake in his +case, and he must never in the future overlook such an opportunity again. +In his Hanover fourth of July speech, made when he was only eighteen years +old, to quote from the authority we make so much use of, “the boy Webster +preached love of country, the grandeur of American nationality, fidelity +to the constitution as the bulwark of nationality, and the necessity and +the nobility of the union of the States.”<a name='fna_75' id='fna_75' href='#f_75'><small>[75]</small></a> Mr. Lodge impressively adds, +“and that was the message which the man Webster delivered to his fellow +men.”<a name='fna_76' id='fna_76' href='#f_76'><small>[76]</small></a> His Fryeburg fourth of July speech, made not long afterwards, +was in the same strain. After the powers had thus started him in the way +they wanted him to go, we have noted above how he was carried by the +federalists of New England into a movement hostile to the union. This +brief wandering from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> his destiny, as it were, is to be compared with his +neglect to grasp the point in the Dartmouth college case which was in the +exact line of that high destiny. This shows how even the greatest genius +must stumble and grope before it has found the right road. I think the +Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, First Part of Henry VI, and the Sonnets of +Shakspeare are like examples.</p> + +<p>The Plymouth oration, delivered in 1820, begins a new and very important +stage of Webster’s career. As Virginia was the mother of the southern +States, so New England was in large measure the mother of the northern. +The latter was the very fountain of the free-labor nationalization. And as +she was known to be exceptionally advanced in intellectual as well as +material development, she was to all the free States both their great +example and highest authority. Hardly anybody has even yet fully taken in +all the permanent good which New England has done for herself at home and +for her children and scholars outside. Of course still less of it was +understood in 1820. But in the Plymouth oration Webster set forth so much +of it, the effect upon New England was magical. It was as if he had raised +a curtain concealing great riches and treasures of her merit and glory, +the existence of which had not been suspected. New Englanders all fell in +love with him, and accorded him the foremost place among their +counsellors.</p> + +<p>The anti-slavery spirit of the speech deserves special notice. I do not +mean to emphasize the oft-quoted passage denouncing the African +slave-trade; for everybody in the south—even the smuggler and the few +purchasers who encouraged him—had been against legalizing it, for reasons +mentioned above, from a time long before the southern States showed a +desire in the constitutional convention to stop the trade at once. I mean<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> +his mention of slavery in the West Indies. I do not think that he had the +south in mind, stressing as he does the absenteeism of the masters and the +mortgages of their lands for capital borrowed in England. But much else +that he says of the evil effects of slavery could be easily applied, at +least in some measure, to the system as it then existed in the south, such +as, for instance, the backwardness to make permanent improvements or endow +colleges. His contrast of New England with the West Indies is intended to +show that a free-labor community is far superior to a slave-labor +community in the most important elements of a good and progressive +civilization. His conviction of this truth is serious and undoubting. And +those few words, “the unmitigated toil of slavery,” which show that he +erroneously believed that the slave toiled as hard as the wage-earning +laborer, evince a strong moral revulsion on his part.</p> + +<p>We summarize as to the Plymouth oration. It made Webster really the +political leader of New England, which—the animosity excited by the +embargo and the late war having become a forgotten thing of the past—is +now both in command of and also in the van of the free-labor and +anti-slavery nationalization, destined by the powers to perpetuate the +union.</p> + +<p>We have told you how Webster—being at the time the very antipodes of what +he was afterwards when he talked with Bosworth as to the Rhode Island +case—missed the true and cardinal point in the Dartmouth college case, +and how the powers, after having Marshall to establish it, gave all the +glory of the great accomplishment to Webster. We come now to Gibbons <i>v.</i> +Ogden, argued in 1824, in which the latter made far more than ample amends +for his shortcoming, and taught even the great Marshall how to decide.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>New York State had given Fulton and Livingston for a term exclusive steam +navigation of all its waters, and Webster was to maintain that the grant +impugned the federal constitution and was therefore invalid. The question +was <i>res integra</i>, without analogies which often help us forlorn advocates +who cannot find a precedent and are utterly without any literature +suggesting the <i>ratio decidendi</i>. I know I cannot explain to a layman how +such cases as these bewilder and paralyze the typical Anglo-American +judge, who has walked all his life by precedent and not by sight. Further, +Webster’s side antagonized prevailing sentiment and, it would be hardly +too much to say, the public conscience; either one of which generally +sways courts more powerfully than the law-brief, argument, and appeal of +complete advocates. The only thing which Webster could oppose to these +formidable odds was just a clause of a sentence of the constitution, this +clause being only of twelve words when even the belonging context is read +into it,<a name='fna_77' id='fna_77' href='#f_77'><small>[77]</small></a> and appearing to be, we cannot say surplusage, but neither +well-considered nor of any particular force. Out of this he constructed +such a perfect and wise doctrine of the immunity of our interstate +commerce from local attack and restraint that every succeeding generation +has admired its wisdom more, and subsequent additions and extensions of +importance are all manifest conclusions from the promises which he made +good.</p> + +<p>Reading and reflecting for writing my “American Law Studies” familiarized +me with a few instances in which a man has left a lasting impress upon the +development of the law (some of which instances will be mentioned in a +moment). Thus I was led to meditate Webster’s work in this case; and it +becomes an increasing wonder to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> me. Read what his biographer tells of the +unfavorable circumstances of the preparation for the argument and how he +overcame them by superhuman effort. Read also his own account as given by +Harvey, how Wirt, his associate, older and of much more experience in that +court, disparaged the ground upon which he said he should stand, and +proposed another; and how Marshall drank in every word of Webster’s +argument, and afterwards virtually reproduced it in the opinion.</p> + +<p>But the great thing is what he did for the law. The current distribution +of the common law under its larger heads was made by Hale and Blackstone +after that of the contemporary civilians, which is founded upon that of +the Institutes of Justinian. This book is but a reproduction of that of +Gaius. So we may assert of this last mentioned author that it is his +systematization which still obtains both in the English and Roman law, +that is to say, the entire law of the enlightened world.<a name='fna_78' id='fna_78' href='#f_78'><small>[78]</small></a> A few English +chancellors perceptibly moulded equity; Mansfield almost created English +commercial law; in our country, Hamilton, in one argument overturned the +doctrine of tacking securities, and in another remade the essentials of +libel; our great text-author Bishop, with his treatise often worked over +in new editions, is really the enacter of the American law of divorce; and +Marshall’s additions to our federal law will never be forgotten. By what +he did in Gibbons <i>v.</i> Ogden, Webster has won a proud place in the small +company of great law-givers.</p> + +<p>And he is entitled to a liberal share of the glory which the Dartmouth +college decision has won, for without him Marshall would have had no +opportunity.</p> + +<p>To estimate the prodigious effect of the rulings in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> these two cases, try +to realize to yourself what would be the consequences to American trade +and commerce if the States were not effectually kept from infringing +contracts or granting monopolies of transportation. Try to realize the +loss, the inconvenience, the trouble, the vexation, all the evil that +would have unavoidably befallen us if these two companion decisions and +the subsequent ones following them as precedents or extending them as +analogies, had not made practically the whole of American inland business +a unit—to use Webster’s word—under the protection everywhere of the same +impartial law. The longer you think it over the more confirmed will be +your opinion that from no other cause has the evolution away from the old +independence of States towards a permanent union and a single organism of +perpetually federated communities been more furthered. The unification of +production and distribution thus given resistless impulse has almost of +itself alone worked the unification of all our States. So looking back +from the standpoint of to-day we may be sure that the powers had Webster +by his accomplishment in the cases now in mind, to build for perpetual +union far better than he knew.</p> + +<p>It needs not to dwell upon the Bunker Hill oration, made June 17, 1825. It +is, as I believe, the most familiar as a whole of all speeches to +Americans. It did not stop with adding greatly to the influence he had won +over New England by the Plymouth oration; it revealed him to the whole +country as its supreme orator. Bear in mind its theme, remembering how +large a part the battle of Bunker Hill was in founding our union.</p> + +<p>The plainest manifestation that providence ever made of its favoritism to +Webster was its having Adams and Jefferson both to die on the same day of +all the year the most commemorative of each. By the eulogy of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> the two +patriots which Webster made the next month he attained the height of his +popular celebrity. His subject was no longer one that principally +concerned New England and the north, but it was the co-operation of both +sections in making the United States. Slowly, but surely, he has climbed +to the top of authority, whence he ever draws audience and attention from +north and south, both in the present and for ages after the brothers’ war.</p> + +<p>These three popular speeches just noticed are unique in oratory, not in +their general character, but in the nobility of the subjects, the ripeness +of the occasion, the profound wisdom of treatment, and the extraordinary +elevation and perfection of style.</p> + +<p>Another stage begins in 1830 with the reply to Hayne. What Webster says +therein, recommending brotherly love between the sections, and commending +the union, he reproduced with grateful variation in many memorable +passages of later speeches. The original and reproductions are the most +precious gems of our literature, ranking in excellence even above Poe’s +poetry, America’s best.</p> + +<p>The speech of 1833 against Calhoun’s nullification resolutions, that which +won for Webster the cognomen, The Expounder of the Constitution, belongs +to the next succeeding stage, wherein he rose from supreme panegyric to +invincible defence of the union. As we have already given in a former +chapter this performance its due praise, we need not say more of it.</p> + +<p>This chapter would not be complete if we failed to glance at the +essentials of Webster’s greatness as an orator, and to point out the means +used by the powers to give him his extraordinary excellence. He did not +stale himself by discussing trivial matters. When he rose, people knew +that he had an important message,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> and they ought to attend. In harmony +with this was his uniform seriousness, gravity, and becoming dignity of +manner; and even in his merry-making humor, as instanced in describing +Hayne leading the South Carolina militia, he never stooped. He spoke to +the sound common sense and the regnant conscience of the masses. His +propositions, his illustrations, his argument went home without effort to +every one who thought at all and who cared for moral virtue. The entire +country has heard with great acceptance that Davy Crockett said to him, +“Mr. Webster, you are not the great orator people say you are; for I heard +your speech, and I understood every word of it.” Whether this be an +invention or not, it well characterizes his easy intelligibility. Herbert +Spencer could have exampled the main proposition of his able essay on +style by Webster’s best efforts, and every part and parcel of +them—statement of proposition, necessary explanation and narrative, +distinctions, illustrations, reasoning, invocation of feeling—appeal to +the sense of justice. I often feel that he is not more majestic in any +particular than the always manifest meaning of what he says. In this he +reminds of Bacon.</p> + +<p>He chose only the most important subjects; he befittingly addressed always +the higher nature of his hearers; and he always spoke with a transparent +clearness. But all this does not indicate more than the mere beginning of +true eloquence. The greatest teachers—those who win and keep the +admiration of the world—have, as their worshippers teach us, gifts of +expression commensurate with the desert of their communications. Remember +Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Vergil, Cicero, Dante, Bacon, Goethe, and above +all Shakspeare. As the reader hangs over them he becomes more and more +unconscious of what we call, rather vaguely, their style. Their diction, +in unhackneyed use of hackneyed words, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> metaphors that flash like +electric sparks, in appropriateness of varied rhythm, and all appertaining +jewels, becomes to him but a belonging of the much more precious sense. As +it must impart that without impediment it is unconsciously made as like it +as the protecting coloring of animals is made like that of the objects +amidst which they lurk. There has been but one other which admits of +comparison in world-wide secular importance with Webster’s theme—that +which inspired</p> + +<p class="poem">“Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.”</p> + +<p>We have learned how the Æneid was prized above all other poetry, not only +by the Romans themselves, but, long after they had become a mere name and +memory, by the different nations of Europe. Plainly it was because Vergil, +in that “stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man,” had fitly +celebrated the greatest factor delivering from barbarism, and spreading +civilization abroad, that had yet appeared in history,—the Roman empire. +The American union, immeasurably exceeding that empire in immediate good +to millions at home, and in fair promise to all the earth, was Webster’s +subject. It got from him an appropriate style. The variety of ornament in +his language reaches all the way from the modest violets of the +Anglo-Saxon common to Bunyan and King James’s version, up to the most +gorgeous trappings which are part and parcel of the sense in the best +passages of Paradise Lost. There is also a variety of idiom. He uses that +of the field or street, or of the gentleman or of the scholar, as best +suits. He affected short sentences, and also pure English words. He told +Davis to weed the Latin words out of his speech on Adams and Jefferson. +But when occasion calls he can revel in that latinity of our tongue which, +as De Quincey has noted, becomes intense with Shakspeare,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> when he is +soaring his strongest. If you are inclined to dispute this, look over the +last two sentences of the reply to Hayne. How you would lower this sublime +peroration into the dust, if you replaced the Latin with native +derivatives, or changed the long for short sentences in what is now above +all example in English or American oratory, and can be paralleled in +structure, “ocean-roll of rhythm,” and exquisite words only by the most +famous paragraphs of Cicero and Livy. As our last word here, Webster +always imparts the wisest counsel as to the American union in phrase +all-golden, and his eloquence is entitled to praise beyond all other, +because it is always what his high subject demands.</p> + +<p>As I have to do mainly with the permanent and lasting in Webster, I can +merely allude to his physical endowments, described with such rapture by +March, Choate, and many others of his time, and well summarized by Mr. +Lodge. I must remind the reader how it accorded with the purpose of the +powers to bestow upon their favorite majesty of form, mien, and look, a +voice that suggested the music of the spheres, action that would have been +a model to Demosthenes; in short, a physique for the orator superior to +any on record. These things helped him mightily in his day.</p> + +<p>Apparently I finished with Webster’s education some pages back of this. +But the more important part of it has not as yet been touched upon; and it +is incumbent upon me to tell it, because of the lesson we ought to learn +from it.</p> + +<p>The largest and most characterizing part of our education—perhaps it +would more accurately express my meaning to say our culture—each one of +us gets from his associations, from his contact with the people of all +sorts around him in his infancy, boyhood, and manhood often as far on as +middle age, if not sometimes farther.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> We get it by imitation, unconscious +and conscious, and by absorption from what we see, hear, and read, etc., +which absorption is often most active when we are least aware of it. Now +let us consider the community of which Webster was the product.</p> + +<p>In the Plymouth oration, as we have already suggested, he exhibits the +exceptional progress and acquisitions of New England. What other community +ever showed greater courage against danger or greater energy against +obstacles, and such wise building-up of a new country in a strange land? +The Pilgrim Fathers could not have liberty and their own religion at home, +and for these they went into the wilderness. There they kept the savage at +bay. With soil and climate both unfavorable they wrought out general +plenty and comfort. They prospered in industry. They equalized as far as +they could all in property rights. And these liberty-lovers gave the +regulation of local affairs to the town meeting, of which Webster says: +“Nothing can exceed the utility of these little bodies. They are so many +councils or parliaments, in which common interests are discussed, and +useful knowledge acquired and communicated.”</p> + +<p>Jefferson, the great apostle of popular self-government, most earnestly +longed to see all America outside of New England divided into such +townships as hers.</p> + +<p>But to return to the Pilgrims. They established schools and churches +everywhere. Free education was maintained by taxation of all property.</p> + +<p>Let us sum up. Here was a country in which everybody had been well trained +in the available ways of self-support and also of saving and +accumulating,—the very first essential to make good citizens. Such +citizens were required to administer their public affairs themselves; and +thus they received the very best political education<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> and training in a +school of genuine democracy,—which is the next essential. The children of +each generation were schooled better than those of the former, the +colleges and universities constantly did better with the students, and +libraries open to the public both multiplied and enlarged,—the third +essential. And education and business were rationally mixed, until in +Webster’s time it might be said with truth that the average New Englander +worked with a will, and wisely, every day to maintain himself and family, +and also found leisure to add something of value to his store of +knowledge. Here is another essential. The moral and religious atmosphere +became purer and purer, and more and more on all sides good intention was +conspicuous in the light, and evil intention hid itself deep in the dark. +This is the last essential.</p> + +<p>The foregoing is made up from the Plymouth oration. Webster was too near +to discern all the intellectual and moral advancement and the opulent +future promise of his own community, the proper fruit of the conditions +just summarized.<a name='fna_79' id='fna_79' href='#f_79'><small>[79]</small></a> Let us indicate by only such a paucity of examples as +we have room for. Able and fully furnished lawyers everywhere. Think of +Story, a most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> diligently attending judge and one of the best; also +finding time both to be the first law professor and most fertile and +eminent author of the age, exhausting English and American sources and +authority in his books, and crowding them with a civil law learning to be +surpassed only by that of the Roman jurists of Germany; let Ticknor, whom +we may call the founder of the post classical school of literature in our +country, suggest the students of modern languages who followed in an +illustrious line,—let him suggest also the famous historians, such as +Prescott, Bancroft, Hildreth, Motley, Parkman, really representatives of +the school just mentioned, using methods that got into the American air +first from Ticknor; let Channing suggest the pulpit,—Channing, who raised +religion from the gloom of dogma and orthodoxy into a life of angelic joy; +what can one say to describe Emerson in a breath,—the teacher to us all +of fit aspiration, right thinking, noble expression, the highest virtue +and truest religion, and who lived, as Dr. Heber Newton has lately told, +the most perfect of lives as a man; Hawthorne, showing the world sick with +its yearning for moral redemption that even a disgraced, lone, and +friendless woman can by a subsequent life of unreserved confession, +purity, and love to her neighbors turn a horrible brand of guilt into a +jewel more precious and brilliant than diamond,—how his consummate +achievement rebukes the sixty years’ dilatoriness of Goethe over his +unfinished Faust; and divine poets, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, and +Holmes,—the last two conspicuous in letters, Lowell being in my judgment +the greatest American man of letters; I have said nothing of the statesmen +and orators, beginning with Fisher Ames and John Adams,—and there are +others in every high round of the intellectual life known all over the +land whose names I must omit.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>In this enumeration I have intentionally looked somewhat forward; for what +is in one particular generation you cannot find out until its effects are +plain in the next. I want to accentuate it that Webster belonged to a +society which had made some of the extraordinary figures whose names are +given, and was making the rest of them. When the view just suggested has +been taken, and if in comparing New England with any other community—even +with Athens, Florence, England, or Germany, in their best eras—periods of +time be equalized and differences of population be properly allowed for, +it will appear that the conditions moulding Webster were more energetic in +productivity than can be found elsewhere. And if, in this comparison, the +relative general condition of the masses in each community be duly taken +into the account, the result will be far more favorable to New England; +for a high level of the masses is a much better proof of a fecund culture +than merely many striking individual instances.</p> + +<p>Thus we bring out the point that Webster was born, grew up, and lived in a +nursery prolific in men and women of extraordinary powers and virtues. How +insignificant is the muster-roll of any other part of our country! I +compare that of the south because I am familiar with it, and one can with +better manners disparage his own section than another. The ante-bellum +southern treasures of art and literature except speeches, political and +forensic, can be counted on the fingers of one hand without taking them +all. The poetry of Poe, a few essays of Legaré, especially that on +Demosthenes, Calhoun’s Dissertation on Government, and Toombs’s Tremont +Temple lecture, are all that are pre-eminent; and some of the historians +of our literature insist that Poe was southern only in his prejudices, and +not in his making. To turn away from authors, how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> few can be found to +compare in education, polish, and literary or scientific accomplishments +with average New Englanders of their several professions or occupations. +Toombs, in the diamond-like brilliance of his extempore effusion in talks +or speeches, is as solitary in the south as Catullus, the greatest of the +spontaneous poets of his nation, was in the Rome of his day.</p> + +<p>Webster absorbed and absorbed, assimilated and assimilated, all the better +elements of this marvellous New England culture, which I am painfully +conscious of having most insufficiently described above, until at last he +mounted its eminences in his profession, in the politics of democracy, +æsthetic taste, and especially statesmanly eloquence. So assured was his +stand upon these eminences that all the wisest and most refined of the +section spontaneously and involuntarily did him obeisance, recognizing in +him their ideal of wisdom and counsel befittingly expressed. We can stop +to give only two examples. Edward Everett is the one American master of +grand rhetoric. He heard the reply to Hayne, and, as he says, he could not +but be reminded throughout of Demosthenes’ making the unrivalled crown +oration. Choate, profoundly versed in the law, the incomparable forensic +advocate and popular speaker, daily flying higher with inspiration drawn +from Demosthenes and Cicero—he poured out his admiration in many +utterances that have already become classic. Webster was made in and by +New England, and not for herself alone. The toast, “Daniel Webster,—the +gift of New England to his country, his whole country, and nothing but his +country,” to which he responded December 22, 1843, tells but the truth. No +American other than a New Englander ever had what one may term such a +greatness breeding environment as he. And passing in review all the famous +children of those famous six States, whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> they spent their lives at +home as Choate, or developed elsewhere as Henry Ward Beecher, it is my +decided opinion that Daniel Webster as fruit and example of her culture is +New England’s greatest glory.</p> + +<p>There remain now but a few prominences of Webster for me to touch upon.</p> + +<p>His speech of March 7, 1850, was fiercely denounced by the root-and-branch +abolitionists. Horace Mann called him a fallen Lucifer. Sumner charged him +with apostasy. Giddings said he had struck “a blow against freedom and the +constitutional rights of the free States which no southern arm could have +given.” Theodore Parker could think of no comparable deed of any other New +Englander except the treachery of Benedict Arnold. Wittier condemned him +to everlasting obloquy in a lofty lyric, which from its very title of one +word throughout was reprobation more stinging than the world-known lampoon +of Catullus against Julius Cæsar. The effect of this tempest has not yet +all died out; and in many quarters of the north Webster is still regarded +as a renegade. His defenders, however, multiply and become more earnest +and strong. Let us consider this speech with the serenity and riper +judgment which should mark the historical writer of to-day.</p> + +<p>First and foremost let us grasp the wide difference of the situation from +that at the beginning of 1833. Then, the question was only remotely a +pro-slavery or southern one. A southern president, the most popular +American, of great firmness of purpose and extraordinary courage, had +taken a decided stand against the movement of one southern State hostile +to the general government,—a stand the more decided because he cordially +hated Calhoun, who was leading the movement. The southern leaders outside +of that State did not approve of nullification; most of them believing it +was an absurdity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> for a State to contend she could stay in the union and +at the same time rightfully refuse to perform a condition of that union. +It seemed that no southern State except Virginia would stand by South +Carolina in the event of a collision between her and the United States. We +can well understand that Webster could then see no danger to the cause he +loved above all others, that is, the union, in uncompromisingly demanding +that the revenue be collected, and with force if necessary.</p> + +<p>Nullification was palpably unjustifiable, even under the doctrine +prevalent in the south. We have explained how Calhoun’s extreme desire for +peaceable remedies only, led him to champion this illogical measure. The +theory of State sovereignty demanded that, instead of the nullification +ordinance, South Carolina pass an ordinance of secession, conditioned to +commence its operation at a stated time if the objectionable duties had +not been repealed. The situation in 1833 was that all the north and nearly +all of the south were arrayed under a southern leader against only one +southern State, making a demand which was plainly untenable in either one +of the two differing schools of constitutional construction.</p> + +<p>But the situation, in 1850, was a south solidly united, not upon such an +obvious heresy as nullification, but aroused as one man to protect the +very underpinning of its social structure. It was standing confidently +upon the doctrine of State sovereignty, which, as the historical records +all showed, was the creed of the generation, both north and south, that +made the constitution. As we have already told, Calhoun in 1833 probably +convinced Webster that the States were sovereign. That did not mean that +the force-bill was wrong; it meant only that if South Carolina chose, she +could rightfully secede. And we may say that this great argument of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> +Calhoun, demolishing as it does the premises of Webster, was really +irrelevant, for it did not support his own proposition. Now in 1850, as +Webster saw it, the south was justified by the constitution, however +foolish might be her policy, and he was too conscientious to oppose what +he believed right and just. In addition to this claim by the south of +State sovereignty as abstractly right, his conscience told him that some +of her practical demands were just. It had been provided not only that all +of Texas south of 36° 30′ be admitted with slavery, but further that four +other States be made out of the same territory. Although Webster was a +free-soiler from first to last, his conscience told him peremptorily that +the only honest course of congress as to the provision mentioned, which +was really a solemn contract with Texas, was to perform the contract in +good faith. This advice, of course, aroused the ire of the abolitionists, +who had united upon the position that no other slave State should ever be +admitted into the union. And he boldly said that the south was right in +her complaint that there was disinclination both among individuals and +public authorities at the north to execute the fugitive slave law. +Meditate these serious words:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men at the north, +of all conscientious men, of all men who are not carried away by some +fanatical idea or some false impression, to their constitutional +obligations. I put it to all the sober and sound minds at the north as +a question of morals and a question of conscience, What right have +they, in their legislative capacity or any other capacity, to endeavor +to get round this constitution, or to embarrass the free exercise of +the rights secured by the constitution to the persons whose slaves +escape from them? None at all; none at all. Neither in the forum of +conscience, nor before the face of the constitution, are they, in my +opinion, justified in such an attempt.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>I must believe that as time rolls on the outcry against this position of +Webster’s, so unshakably founded in conscience and reason as the position +is, must not only cease, but turn to words of praise and commendation. The +northern fanatics who tried to abolish slavery by repudiating such solemn +contracts as the resolution of March 1, 1845, respecting the admission of +Texas, and the fugitive slave restoration clause of the federal +constitution, <i>while purposing to stay in the union</i>, were just as morally +wrong as were the southern fanatics who proposed to stay in the union and +enjoy its benefits and not pay the taxes necessary for its maintenance.</p> + +<p>One other passage of this speech has been strongly attacked. Webster +opposed applying the Wilmot proviso to California and New Mexico, where, +as he said, “the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the +formation of the earth ... settles forever with a strength beyond all +terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist.” To apply the proviso +would be, as he added, to “take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance +of nature,” and “to re-enact the will of God;” and its insertion in a +Territorial government bill would be “for the mere purpose of a taunt or +reproach.” Mr. Lodge, reprehending most severely, confidently asserts that +though these Territories were not suited to slave agriculture, yet that +their many and rich mines could have been profitably worked by slaves.<a name='fna_80' id='fna_80' href='#f_80'><small>[80]</small></a> +He stresses the fact that certain slave owners declared that they would, +if they could, so work these mines. This distinguished author is to be +reminded of how cheaply Seius could replace any one of his slaves that he +worked to death in Ilva’s mines. Let him re-read the Captivi of +Plautus,—not to mention many other ancient records just as +instructive,—and realize that in that time it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> not only one race that +furnished slaves, but that every free human being was in lifelong danger +of falling to a master. The prisoners taken in the incessant wars kept the +slave markets glutted. A few months’ work of one of his slaves would bring +the master enough to pay the purchase money and leave a considerable sum +to his credit with the banker. The Spaniards worked their mines with +Indians to be had for the catching in near-by places. And Mr. Lodge +mentions mining with the labor of criminals and serfs. In all the +instances that he has in mind the worker can be had for his keep or a +little more than that. But to have mined with the slaves of the +south,—that was widely different. There was no way to get such a slave +except to rear or hire or buy him in a protected market. Does Mr. Lodge +really believe that Seius would have permitted his eight hundred slaves to +sicken in the mines of Ilva if each one had been worth at least $1,000 in +the market? Really the leading industry of the south was slave rearing. +The profit was in keeping the slaves healthy and rapidly multiplying. This +could be done at little expense in agriculture, where even the light +workers were made to support themselves. But had a planter gone into a +mining section, where he could get no land, for corn to feed his slaves +and stock, and for cotton to bring him money, he would have found no +margin of profit whatever in mining. I was reared in the gold-bearing +district of Georgia. I can remember old Mr. John Wynne, a wealthy cotton +planter living in Oglethorpe county, some six or seven miles from my +father’s, who, when—to use plantation parlance—he had laid by his crop +at the middle or end of July, would work his gold mine until +cotton-picking became brisk about the middle of September. He made money +out of his gold mine, without injuring his other far more valuable mine, +that is, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> natural increase of his negroes. And I heard of other such +mine workers. But you could not have tempted one of these shrewd business +men to settle with his slaves outside of a cotton-making district in order +to mine. Had either Mr. Clingman or Mr. Mason—mentioned by Mr. +Lodge—made the trial, he would have soon returned to his old neighborhood +a sadder and wiser man.</p> + +<p>The negro’s work as a slave in the coal and iron mines of the south never +commenced until after the thirteenth amendment freed him. Since then he +has done much cruelly hard work as <i>servus poenae</i>—a slave of +punishment—in these mines, for convict lessees, having no other interest +in him than to get all the labor possible during his term.</p> + +<p>So it is clear that Webster, in contending that the conditions in these +Territories were prohibitive of slavery was as statesmanly and +perspicacious as he was generally in other matters.</p> + +<p>His detractors charged that the entire speech was a bid for the support of +the south in his eager struggle for the presidency. That he passionately +longed for the chair was manifest. But his was not the sordid ambition of +the professional place-hunter. He had a heaven-reaching aspiration to show +America what a president should be in those angry times. He must have been +conscious that he was the only man of gifts to do the great deed. What an +appropriate climax that would have been for the invincible defender of the +union, who, when replying to Hayne twenty years before, had outsoared +Pindar in eulogizing South Carolina leading the south, and Massachusetts +leading the north, in the same breath; and who, neither from prepossession +in favor of his native community or resentment because of attack upon it +by those of the other section, had ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> been removed out of brotherly +love for all his countrymen alike. If you can do an all-important thing +for your fellows which you believe no one else can do, and are without +ambition for opportunity, are you not a poor grovelling creature? Webster, +knowing that secession could not be peaceable, and seeing it become more +and more probable, racked with fears for the union, and aghast at the +menace of fraternal bloodshed, like Calhoun, he cheated himself with a +futile remedy. We have told you of Calhoun’s proposal to disarm the +combatants. In his amiability Webster believed with his whole soul that he +could as president make his countrymen love one another as he himself +loved them, and that he could pour upon the waters now beginning to rage +oil enough to safe the ship of union through the tempest soon to be at its +height. It was an aspiration high and holy, deserving of eternal honor +from all America. You cannot read this great speech of March 7 aright if +you do not discern that Webster was seriously alarmed. When you see that a +dear one’s malady is fatal, you will not confess it to others,—not even +to yourself. His excited exclamations, “No, sir! no, sir! There will be no +secession! Gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession,” cannot +deceive a reader whose wont it has been to look into his own heart. +Webster did not see the future with the superhuman prevision of Calhoun; +but he had observed the course of things in that stormy session. Is it to +be believed that he had overlooked the tremendous significance of Toombs’s +speech of December 13, and of the wild plaudits it brought from the +southern members? And try to conceive what must have been the effect upon +him of that most solemn and the saddest great speech in all oratory of +Calhoun just three days before. Read the 7th of March speech by its +circumstances and it is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>revealed to you, as by a flashlight, that Webster +had peeped behind the curtain which he had prayed should never rise in his +lifetime. Horror-struck as he was, he would not despair of his +country,—he would not believe that the brothers’ union was about to turn +into a brothers’ war. Oh, let nobody dishonor his better self by seeing in +this glorious speech, which our best and most lovable have placed in their +hearts beside Washington’s farewell address, the bid of a turncoat. Rather +let us learn to understand its supreme statesmanly reach; its impartiality +towards and just rebuke of the orator’s own section and its merited +castigation of the other courageously given, while affection for both is +kept uppermost; its grand dignity, moral height, and pre-eminent +patriotism. Let us also learn properly to estimate the disfavor with which +he regarded ever afterwards during the rest of his life the active +anti-slavery men of the north, whom he could not understand to be other +than bringers of the unspeakable calamity he would avert. And let us give +him his due commiseration for missing the nomination, and realizing that +the hopes of saving his country which he had cherished so fondly were all, +all shattered. When we do our full duty to him we will, northerners and +southerners alike, agree that Whittier’s palinode ought to have gone full +circle before it paused.</p> + +<p>What is Webster’s highest and best fame? In answer we think at once of the +reply to Hayne, its loftiness throughout, its eagle ascensions here and +there, and most of all the organ melodies at the grand close, beside which +the famous apostrophe of Longfellow is harsh overstrain. The next moment +we feel he is higher in his profound love for his whole country than in +his unequalled eloquence. He and Lincoln were the supereminent Americans +who could never, never forget that the people of the other section were +their own <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>full-blood brothers and sisters. They are the supreme exponents +of that American brotherhood, more deeply founded and more lasting than +either one of the nationalizations which we have explained, out of which a +continental is first, and then a world-union to come. To save our union +was also to do the better deed of saving that brotherhood. For this each +strove in his own way. I believe that the people of the world-union will +pair them in Walhalla, and set them above all other heroes, crowning +Webster as the monarch of speech which prepared millions with faith and +fortitude for the crisis, and crowning Lincoln the monarch of counsels and +acts in the crisis. It will be understood that neither was called away +before his mission was finished. The greatest work of each was example of +the love with which we should all love one another; and that was +complete.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">“UNCLE TOM’S CABIN”</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> misrepresentations in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of the character of the +negro and his usual treatment in southern slavery have been taken as true +by the best-informed and most unprejudiced everywhere outside of the +south. The quotations which I make above from Prof. Barrett Wendell’s +<i>bahnbrechend</i> work on American literature<a name='fna_81' id='fna_81' href='#f_81'><small>[81]</small></a> show a rare and exemplary +freedom from sectional bias. But he is a most convincing witness to the +statement with which I begin this chapter, as I shall now show by two +other excerpts from the same book, making it appear that even Professor +Wendell has accepted without question the misrepresentations mentioned. In +these excerpts I italicize the important statements, and I follow each +with a contradictory one of my own. I invite close attention to what +Professor Wendell says on one side and I on the other, for they make up +issues of fact that must be rightly settled before the historical merit of +the work which is the subject of this chapter can be accurately judged.</p> + +<p>This is the first excerpt:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Written carelessly, and full of crudities, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ even +after forty-eight years, remains a remarkable piece of fiction. The +truth is that almost unawares Mrs. Stowe had in her the stuff of which +good novelists are made. Her plot, to be sure, is conventional and +rambling; but her characters, even though little studied in detail, +have a pervasive vitality which no study can achieve; <i>you +unhesitatingly accept them as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> real. Her descriptive power, meanwhile, +was such as to make equally convincing the backgrounds in which her +action and her characters move. What is more, these backgrounds, most +of which she knew from personal experience, are probably so faithful +to actual nature that the local sentiment aroused as you read them may +generally be accepted as true.</i>”<a name='fna_82' id='fna_82' href='#f_82'><small>[82]</small></a></p> + +<p>I say as to the characters in the novel that the negroes are monstrous +distortions, being drawn in the main with the leading peculiarities of +whites and without those of negroes; and that as to her most +representative southern whites Mrs. Stowe is utterly untrue to fact by +making them all anti-slavery. I say as to the “backgrounds,” that she knew +as little of them as she did of the negroes. I expect to demonstrate that +the “personal experience” claimed for her by Professor Wendell was scanty +and inadequate in the extreme.</p> + +<p>I now give the second and last excerpt: “She [Mrs. Stowe] differed from +most abolitionists <i>in having observed on the spot all the tragic evils of +slavery</i>.”<a name='fna_83' id='fna_83' href='#f_83'><small>[83]</small></a></p> + +<p>I do not dispute that her opportunity of learning southern slavery, small +as it was, was very far superior to that of the other prominent +abolitionists except Seward, who had taught school in the black belt of +Georgia.<a name='fna_84' id='fna_84' href='#f_84'><small>[84]</small></a> I maintain that she knew but little of southern slavery, and +they less; that what both they and she conscientiously and most +confidently believed to be their knowledge of this slavery, the slave, and +of the slaveholder, was but a prodigious mass of delusion and prejudice.</p> + +<p>I shall show, I think, that, instead of observing, she merely fancied and +imagined, and that, to say the least, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> is very misleading to allege +that this fancying and imagining of hers was done “on the spot.”</p> + +<p>By the words, “all the tragic evils of slavery,” Professor Wendell +evidently means that the evils of southern slavery to the slave were both +very many and very great. I shall show, I believe, that the condition of +the average negro in southern slavery was far better than it was in Africa +whence he came, and far better than it is now since he has been freed. +There are occasionally incident to every human condition—even to the +relation of parent and child—some tragic evils of its own. In the native +home of the negro in West Africa all the women and nearly all the men are +slaves of brutally cruel savages, without any protection of law whatever. +The social organism is in the very lowest stage; and there is complete +inability to evolve into a better one as the stationariness of ages +proves. In the new south, certain causes which I have described at length +in the last two chapters of this book have, ever since emancipation, been +steadily and with acceleration depressing the average negro; and the rise +of the few who have managed to acquire some property, or to get a good +industrial education, only brings out more conspicuously the misery and +wretchedness of the mass. It is correct to say that there was a vast +multitude of tragic evils to the negroes in West Africa; and it is also +correct to say that there is now the same to them in the south; but it is +not correct to say that the tragic evils of southern slavery to the slave +were frequent or general. The truth as to southern slavery ought to be +known everywhere, which is, that it raised the negro very greatly in +condition, and, now that he has been taken out of it, his progress has +been arrested, and he is relapsing.</p> + +<p>The great proposition of Mrs. Stowe and of the root-and-branch +abolitionists was that slavery in the south<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> was such a flagrant and +atrocious wrong to the negro, that every human being was commanded by +conscience to do everything possible to help him if he should try to +escape from his master. Combating this proposition, without any concession +whatever, I think it well that we try at the outset to ascertain how +southern slavery affected the negro, whether cruelly or beneficially. To +do this, his condition in his native land, his condition while a slave in +America, and, lastly, his condition after his emancipation, must be +compared. I beg my reader to follow me attentively as I now review and +contrast these three conditions. First, as to his condition in Africa. +Here is what Toombs said of him to a Boston audience, January 24, 1856:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The monuments of the ancient Egyptians carry him back to the morning +of time—older than the pyramids; they furnish the evidence both of +his national identity and his social degradation before history began. +We first behold him a slave in foreign lands; we then find the great +body of his race slaves in their native land; and after thirty +centuries, illuminated by both ancient and modern civilization, have +passed over him, we still find him a slave of savage masters, as +incapable as himself of even attempting a single step in +civilization—we find him there still, without government or laws of +protection, without letters or arts of industry, without religion, or +even the aspirations which would raise him to the rank of an idolater; +and in his lowest type, his almost only mark of humanity is, that he +walks erect in the image of the Creator. Annihilate his race to-day, +and you will find no trace of his existence within half a score of +years; and he would not leave behind him a single discovery, +invention, or thought worthy of remembrance by the human family.”<a name='fna_85' id='fna_85' href='#f_85'><small>[85]</small></a></p> + +<p>If my reader deems Toombs’s picture overdrawn let him consult those parts +of the recent work of a most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> diligent and conscientious investigator +describing the negroes of West Africa, and note what is there told of +heathen practices still surviving,—slavery of women to their polygamic +husbands, pitiless destruction of useless members of the family, robbery, +murder, cannibalism, the utter want of chastity.<a name='fna_86' id='fna_86' href='#f_86'><small>[86]</small></a> We quote this as to +slavery, which is especially important here:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Slavery, having existed from time immemorial, is bound up with the +whole social and economic organization of West African society. There +are, broadly speaking, three kinds of slaves: those captured in war, +those purchased from outside the tribe,—usually from the +interior,—and the native-born slaves. <i>All alike</i> are mere chattels, +and <i>by law are absolutely subject to the master’s will without +redress</i>. But in practice a difference is made, for obvious reasons, +between native-born slaves and captives taken from hostile tribes. +<i>The latter are numerous, and the severest forms of labor fall to +their lot. They are treated with constant neglect, and cruelly +punished on the slightest provocation. Their lives are at no time +secure; they serve as victims for the sacrifice; when sick they are +driven into the jungle; in times of scarcity they starve.</i>”<a name='fna_87' id='fna_87' href='#f_87'><small>[87]</small></a></p> + +<p>The master has the power of life and death over all slaves.<a name='fna_88' id='fna_88' href='#f_88'><small>[88]</small></a></p> + +<p>The same author adds: “<i>The pawning of persons for debt is exceedingly +common. If the debt is never paid in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> full, the pawn</i> and his descendants +become slaves in perpetuity.”<a name='fna_89' id='fna_89' href='#f_89'><small>[89]</small></a></p> + +<p>Surely the reader who has attended to these details which I have given +from Mr. Tillinghast will admit that the southern master transferred the +African into a condition far better than any he could find at home. In the +south two agencies gave him beneficent favor to which he and his fathers +had always been strangers. The law of the land protected his life and +shielded him from cruelty; and his high market value made it the interest +of his American master not to overwork or under- feed and clothe him. And +he was introduced into the first stage of monogamic life, which he +developed steadily and rapidly until he was freed. In this he was +travelling the only true road up from barbarism. If he could have but +stayed in it until, after some generations—perhaps centuries—chaste +wives and mothers had been evolved, he would have stood firmly on the +threshold of permanent civilization and improvement.</p> + +<p>Whatever evil of southern slavery to the negro my readers, prompted by the +root-and-branch abolitionists, may suggest, they will find on reflection +that it would have been far greater to him and more frequent had he +remained in Africa. Separation of members of the family has been +repeatedly emphasized as a most horrible evil of slavery in the south. +Such separation was incalculably more cruel and frequent in West Africa +than it ever was among the negro slaves in America. And how have the +root-and-branch abolitionists mended matters? What do we see in the new +south, now that slavery, the great rupturer of family circles, is no more, +and a master no longer can part parent and child, or husband and wife? +Before the end of the brothers’ war<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> there had not been a single +separation of a family among my father’s slaves. At much expense and +inconvenience he had bought the husband of one and the wife of another in +order to keep each one of these two pairs united. In 1866, Bob, a boy of +sixteen, who, because of his obedience and merry-making gifts, had always +been a greatly indulged pet, signalized his new-found freedom by stealing +from the house of one of our neighbors some articles of considerable +value. He fled from justice, and, never seeing his parents or his brothers +and sisters again, died among strangers. In 1868, Lewis abandoned his wife +Esther and their young child, and went to a distant town. Some ten years +afterwards, Bill, a brother of Bob, and several years younger, convicted +of an unmentionable crime, received a ten years’ chain-gang sentence. Not +long before this the body of one of his two wives who was at the time out +of his favor was found in a well. Reputable whites living near were +convinced that he had murdered her. If that be true, it should count as a +separation. While he was serving out his sentence his remaining wife +married again, and this should be set down also as a separation. Bob, +Lewis, Esther, and Bill were slaves of my father. He did not own twenty in +all. This example shows how, as to the same negroes, southern slavery +operated to prevent separation of families, and how freedom has operated +to encourage and stimulate it. It is not an exceptional example. My +maternal grandfather and a maternal aunt owned each many more slaves than +my father did. Some of my father’s near neighbors had slaves in +considerable number. In all of these slaves, while I knew them, there +never was a separation of a family except by death or the voluntary act of +parties to a marriage? But when they were freed in 1865 separation at once +became rife, and it has always been active. What I have just told is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> +fairly representative of the new south throughout the cotton States.</p> + +<p>There were now and then sales made of slaves which sundered man and wife, +and parent and child; but such were extremely few, and their proportion +was steadily decreasing under two potent influences. Restraint of them by +the law had commenced and was growing. But the stronger influence was +custom and public opinion. Before approaching sales at public outcry by +sheriffs or representatives of a deceased, and also before private sales, +the slaves to be sold were given opportunity to find their new masters. +There was generally a neighbor who owned husband, wife, parents, or +children, or wanted a cook, washerwoman, seamstress, boy to make a +carpenter, striker, or blacksmith of, somebody careful with stock, etc., +and the upshot would be that the man selected by the slave had got him. +The seller had natural feelings. His wife and all of his children would do +their utmost to get such new masters as the negroes preferred. I shall +always cherish in memory the affectionate regard which the mother of the +household and all the family habitually showed to their slaves. As I +write, a sweet reminiscence comes of how the children would always clamor +and mutiny against the most merited punishment of their nurse by father or +overseer. There is no doubt that the slave steadily won larger place in +the domestic affections, and that his treatment by each generation of +masters was more kind and humane. And as a part of this amelioration the +percentage of forced separation of slave families was all the while +becoming less.</p> + +<p>Let us devote a moment to the negro trader, as he was called, and his +slave-pens, which were the subjects of much and heated invective. The +first suggestion in order here is that there were such in West Africa, far +more frequent and far exceeding in cruelty any ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> known in the south. +To take the African away from the latter and turn him over to the former +was great kindness to him. I remind my readers, in the next place, that +the factors constantly minimizing separation of slaves from other members +of the family—law, public opinion becoming more sensitive, custom +becoming more merciful, and the sway of the domestic affections +stronger—were <i>pari passu</i> humanizing every incident of the commerce in +slaves as property. Lastly, the negro trader and the pen, by reason of the +small number of the slaves to whom they caused real suffering, were mercy +and prosperous condition itself beside the convict gangs and pens which +emancipation has put in their place, as will come out more clearly in a +short while.</p> + +<p>His use of the lash was a dire accusation of the master. The reader thinks +at once of the relevant words in a famous passage so often quoted from one +of President Lincoln’s messages: “If this struggle is to be prolonged till +... every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn +with the sword.” This was said March 4, 1865, a month and five days only +before General Lee’s surrender, and when all the great battles of the +brothers’ war had been fought,—a war by far the most sanguinary in the +world’s history. Blood did sometimes follow the blow of the lash, but not +often. The overseer who could not correct without breaking the skin always +lost his place. When the statement of Mr. Lincoln just commented on is +compared with the actual fact, it appears to be one of the most +extravagant hyperboles ever uttered.</p> + +<p>Before I have my readers to look at the actual facts I want to say a +preliminary word. The parent was enjoined by Solomon not to spare the rod. +The rod was permitted to the master of the apprentice, the school-teacher, +the drill officer, and others. It was often used<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> with great severity. As +we see from the Decameron husbands were wont to correct their wives by +beating them with sticks. Whipping on the bare back was a common execution +of the judgment of a criminal court. Our insubordinate convicts are +strapped. The usual punishment of a slave’s disobedience was to whip him. +A switch was not generally used, because by reason of his thick and tough +skin and lower nervous development—to use a common expression—it would +not hurt him. It was a familiar thing to me in my childhood to hear some +negro tell of the use of a switch on him by women or feeble men, how the +blows could scarcely be felt, and yet with what outcry and clamor he +pretended that each one gave him great pain. The cowhide, but far more +frequently the whip, took the place of the switch. The former was more and +more discredited, because it could seldom be laid on hard enough without +cutting the skin. The whip had a flat lash at the end, with which, as the +strap or paddle now used on our convicts, a stinging blow could be hit +that would not draw blood.</p> + +<p>An ordinary correction of a negro did not cause him as much pain as your +child, with his far superior sensitiveness, receives when you give him the +rod. Large and heavy as the overseer’s whip looked, the negro, with his +high degree of insensibility to physical pain inherited from his African +ancestors, who for a hundred generations or more had bestowed upon one +another all kinds of corporal torture, cared far less for it than the +abolitionist who insisted on making him merely a black white man, could +ever understand. How little of both mental and corporal suffering the lash +causes the average negro is strikingly shown by the fact that ever since +his emancipation, when he is detected in a serious offence, he is prone to +propose that he be whipped instead of being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> carried to court. If his +offer is accepted he strips off his clothes with alacrity, exclaims the +conventional “O, Lordy!” under every fall of the whip; and when the +contract number of lashes has been given he goes away with the look and +air of one who has just learned that he has drawn a lottery prize of +thousands; and his nearest and dearest, his wife and children, all his +sweethearts, congratulate him cordially, and the entire negro community +rate him as rarely fortunate. This is enough here of the lash; but a word +or two more will be appropriate when we give the chain-gang attention.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Run, nigger, run, patroller get you.”</p> + +<p>The riotous merriment of this air can be fully appreciated only by one who +has heard Cuffee sing it at the quarters while picking his banjo. It +completely confutes the charge often made that the patrol law was a cruel +one. To the negro, the execution of that law was more of fun and frolic +than punishment. Let this air, and all the others to which the slaves used +to dance, be meditated by those, if there are such, who incline to believe +that Professor DuBois has really detected, as he seriously contends, in +the negro melodies of the old south deep sorrow over slavery. If miserable +conditions give character to musical expression, the songs, if any, that +now come forth spontaneously from the mass of southern negroes—that is, +from those of the lower class, which class will be described later +herein—ought to be sadder than the tears of Simonides.</p> + +<p>My reader who has his memory stored with the raw-head and bloody bones +fiction of abolitionists who had never set foot on an inch of slave +territory, probably thinks of bloodhounds, and wonders if I will be frank +enough to mention them. He has been made to believe that runaway slaves +often had the flesh torn from their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> bones by these dogs. I witnessed +several chases of runaways, and in every one, when the negro was overtaken +by the dogs, he was in a tree far above their reach. Think about it, and +bring it home to yourself. Put yourself in the runaway’s place, you would +surely understand as well as a common house cat does how to avoid pursuing +dogs. Negro dogs, as they were called, were bred to be far more slow than +fox dogs. The tricks of the runaway would put the latter at fault so often +that they could hardly ever catch him. Further, the packs of negro dogs +were usually too small to overpower a stout negro. He was often armed with +a scythe-blade for use if overtaken where he could not find a tree. When +he could keep ahead no longer he preferred taking refuge to fighting with +the dogs. He knew he could kill or disable only the few that would rush in +recklessly, and that the others would stay too far from him to be hurt and +yet keep him at bay. He was now going to be caught, and he would think it +better not to provoke the ire of the owners by killing or injuring their +dogs.</p> + +<p>The negro hunted the ’possum and ’coon by night and the hare—the rabbit, +as everybody called it—on Sundays, half-holidays, and Christmas, either +with his young master or without him, and always with the dogs; which he +thus learned to control. A negro woman cooked the corn-bread and +pot-liquor, with which they were fed by her or some other slave. They were +always waiting near when the slaves ate by day in the fields or at all +hours of night in their cabins, and many a bit was thrown to them. Usually +there was the greatest friendship between the dogs on the plantation, +those intended for chasing runaways included, and the negroes. It was +great entertainment for a negro, at the command of his master, to give the +young negro dogs a race, as it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> called. These races were frequent, and +they were the entire training of the dogs for their business. A hunting +dog when lost will track his master. And many a runaway was caught by dogs +which he was in the habit of feeding and hunting with. The average negro +of those days, prowling so much at night as he did, necessarily became a +most expert dog-tamer. How often I have been diverted with this sight! A +strange negro, coming on some errand, intrepidly opens the front gate and +enters the yard of a dwelling. A savage dog dashes forward. Just as the +dog couches near for his spring, the negro, by a very quick movement, +takes off his hat and extends it to the dog. The latter turns his eyes +away from the negro, looks at the old, soiled wool hat, smells it, and +then retires, nonplussed.</p> + +<p>As a general rule a negro was safe from the bite of dogs. Running away was +not frequent. The almost insuperable difficulty of final escape from the +dogs prevented it. And it was in practice a most mild means of prevention. +I suppose that I knew and heard of the catching of some twenty odd slaves +in the contiguous parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene +counties, which constituted the locality with which I was familiar, and in +not a single case was one injured by the bloodhounds. The dogs that are +now turned loose after our convicts are of far more savage temper than +were the negro dogs of the old south; and consequently the human game, +when come up with, is more prompt to go up a tree than was the old slave.</p> + +<p>There was much less lack of food and raiment among the slaves than among +the class known as the white trash. It was considered a business blunder +not to keep them supplied always with more food than they wanted. They +were in better physical condition than the average white laborer now +shows.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>And they were not worked hard. Even in the longest days of the year, when +the battle with the grass was fiercest, at night the quarters were +resonant with mirth, song, and dancing as soon as the mules had been +watered, stabled, and fed.</p> + +<p>The foregoing is a report, from my observation on the spot, of “all the +tragic evils of slavery” to the negro in the south. I have been at pains +to make it as true as can be. I purpose to follow it now with a like +report of all the gladsome blessings to him of his freedom.</p> + +<p>His true and fast friends, the abolitionists, equalized him <i>per saltum</i> +to his master as a voter and office-holder. This single measure was sure +to make deadly enemies of white and black in the south, and to bring a war +of races in which the superior one was bound to conquer and become +absolute. This war did come, and was fought out. Profound peace has +reigned for some years, and the negroes now contentedly stay away from the +polls, and manifest no aspiration whatever for office and place.</p> + +<p>His same friends gave the ex-slave equality with his old master under the +criminal law. He had this in slavery only when charged with a capital +offence; and if he was charged with a graver one of the non-capital +offences, such as breaking and entering a dwelling, stealing something of +considerable value, he was brought before a statutory court of justices of +the peace, and if upon his summary trial he was convicted, his punishment +was usually a short term in jail, the sheriff to give him so many lashes +each day until he had received the full number adjudged in his sentence. I +never heard of one that was seriously injured by this kind of punishment. +It never gave him any permanent mental anguish. His conscience approved +whipping as the most fit punishment for every offence. The crimes of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> +negroes mentioned above in this paragraph were very infrequent. Their many +peccadillos were in practice wholly ignored by the law, and given over to +private and domestic jurisdiction. Cuffee would sometimes indulge a sudden +craving for fresh meat by appropriating a shoat or grown lamb, or he would +gratify a watering mouth by stealthy invasion of melon patches or sweet +potato patches and banks. And he was prone to other small larcenies. If +caught,—which was very far from always happening,—he was whipped; and +that was the last of it. Now he must replace the bounty of his master +which sheltered, clothed, and fed him comfortably all his life by living +from hand to mouth. His forecast utterly undeveloped, and more and more +losing the work habit, there is often but one way for him to avoid +starving or freezing, and that is to get the necessaries of life by +various acts which are crimes in the law. It is but a scanty supply that +he thus manages to get. His year is nearly always, from beginning to end, +but an alternation of short feasts upon the cheapest fare, and prolonged +fasts. Yet in the eye of the stern and severe law how many gross offences +does he commit by doing only the things which, if he did not do, he could +not keep soul and body together. And so he is brought before every court +of any criminal jurisdiction, and when convicted, as he generally is, for +he is nearly always guilty,—not in conscience, but guilty under the law +which his emancipators have put him under,—often he cannot find a friend +to pay his fine, and he must work it out in the chain-gang. The city has +its chain-gang, the county has its chain-gang, and the State works or +farms out its convicts. The percentage of whites among these convicts is +very small. Often when you encounter a gang at work you cannot find a +single white person in it. These negro convicts are many, many.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> As fast +as one’s time expires his place is filled by another. Disease, decay of +energy from irregular food supply, growing habits of idleness, and other +things in the train, bring forth tramps more plentifully, and from these +the chain-gangs are more and more largely recruited. These slaves of +punishment work under the eyes of guards furnished with the best of +small-arms loaded to kill. The most of them work in shackles. If they do +not work as their superintendents think they ought, they are strapped. I +have seen them working in the rain, as I never saw required of slaves. At +night they are put to sleep in a crowded log-pen, all of them chained +together, the chain being made fast to each bunk. The guards are practised +marksmen, known to be men who will promptly and resolutely “do their +duty.” This hell-like life constantly keeps each convict watching for +opportunity to make a dash for liberty. If the guards have anything like +fair shots when he starts, one more unmarked and soon forgotten grave is +dug and filled in the paupers’ burial ground, and that is the earthly end +of this poor derelict of the human race. Suppose he gets safely away from +the guard. In a few minutes the unleashed dogs are yelping on his track. +In the old days even the negro dogs were fed and tended by slaves, and +almost every dog in the land seemed to love negroes. But these bloodhounds +in the convict camps have been bred into a deadly hatred of every negro. +Escaping Cuffee is usually caught. Then more of the paddle, heavier +shackles, chains at night stronger and more taut, and the bosses harder to +satisfy as he works under greater hindrances—these make his lot more +hell-like than it was before.</p> + +<p>It is a melancholy proof of the insufficient dietary and bad hygiene of +the common negroes that these convicts fatten in spite of their cruel +hardships.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>The long-term convicts, farmed out to coal and other mine owners and +various manufacturers, and private employers, I know but little of from +observation. But what I hear makes me believe that their condition is +worse than that of those just described. This is to be expected, for two +reasons. First, they are worked for profit by persons whose only interest +is to get the largest possible product out of their labor. The labor +exacted by the owner, bear in mind, would not be severe enough either to +impair the market value or check vigorous reproduction of his slaves. +Second, the places where these convicts are worked are more or less +retired, and thus the employer escapes scrutiny nearly all the year. Think +of a negro who, receiving a twenty years’ sentence for burglariously +stealing a ham when he was hungry, is put to work in the coal mine! Who +ever hears of him afterwards? He is soon forgotten by his wife, who takes +another husband, and by his children either skulking here and there to +shun the officer, or toiling in a chain-gang. Here is indeed a bitter +slavery—bitterer by far than any West Africa ever knew. There the slave +does not labor underground and out of the sun so dear to him. His +manumission comes mercifully in many ways, long before the expiration of +twenty years—the sacrifice may need a victim; he may starve; he may fall +sick and be cast out in the bush. But the mine slave—the mine boss will +not whip him hard enough to give him even short rest from his work, work, +work; he shall always have enough of raiment, food, and sleep to keep him +able to work, work, work; when he gets very sick the mine doctor will +patch him up and send him back to his work, work, work; he will work, +work, work out his twenty years in this hell hole. Miss Landon in her +immortal invective against child labor exclaims:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> +“Good God! to think upon a child<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That has no childish days,</span><br /> +No careless play, no frolics wild,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No words of prayer and praise!”</span></p> + +<p>This factory child that never knew any of the proper joys of a child is +without either sweet memory or unavailing wish. But the mine slave, the +most of whose former life was passed in the open air, how he pines for the +splendor of his loved sun by day; how in his bunk he recalls his rounds by +night when the Seven Stars, the Ell and Yard and Job’s Coffin were his +clock and the North Star his compass. Each part of the revolving year +whispers to him when he is at work or dreaming. Christmas suggests the jug +with the corn-cob stopper, the ’possum cooked brown, the yams exuding +their sugary juice, the banjo picker and his song, the fiddle playing a +dancing tune, and the floor shaking under the thumping footfalls; the cold +weather following suggests the ’possum and ’coon hunt; the early spring +brings what he used to call the corn-planting birds and their lively +calls; and on and on his thoughts go over mocking-bird, woodpecker, early +peaches and apples, full orchards spared by frost, the watermelon, +solitary and incomparable among all things for a negro to eat, his Sunday +fishings and rabbit hunts, his church and society meetings, this and that +dusky love who fooled him into believing that he was dearer to her than +husband or any other man, especially some yellow girl, his nonesuch, +exceeding all other women as the watermelon excels all other produce of +tree or vine,—on and on his thoughts go over what he can never have +again. I need not say a word for the white victims of child labor, for +their race is rousing for their rescue, and I know its power to achieve. +But I do feel that it is my duty to put that friendless, forgotten, +long-term negro convict in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> the minds of my southern readers. If he must +be a convict, do not farm him out to mine operators or where he will be +worked behind any screen. Put all our convicts, both felony and +misdemeanor, upon the public roads until they need only a little working +now and then, say I. There the convicts will not be worked for profit, nor +in secret.</p> + +<p>The total of the negroes suffering in southern slavery from all causes +falls in amount far below that alone which has come upon him because he +was stupidly subjected to the white man’s criminal law, and not given +reformatories and other belongings of the system which we are perfecting +for juvenile offenders. The suffering in slavery was occasional only, and +soon over. The present suffering of the negroes under the criminal law is +constant, and is to be found rife in every locality. The aggregate of the +felony and misdemeanor convicts of Georgia now at hard labor is about +4,500. The convicts sentenced by city and town police courts for short +terms of days I cannot give with any approximate accuracy. I think it +probable that the number of those convicted each year in the municipal +courts is somewhat larger than that of those convicted in the State +courts. By reason of a late wholesale reduction of felonies the number of +long-term convicts does not increase,—it is at a standstill,—but the +number of the misdemeanor and municipal convicts steadily increases. More +than nine-tenths of those in each one of the three classes are negroes. +The stench, filth, and discomfort of their nights and the hardship of +their days, who can describe? How it moves my pity to see, as I often do, +the convict toiling incessantly for long hours, impeded and tortured by +his iron shackles, the paddle at hand, and a double-barrel or Winchester +frowning over him, each to be used on occasion by somebody who cares +nothing for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> and has no interest in him. Weary as the worker may be, a +word from the boss gives new impetus to his pick or shovel. Here is the +only place I have ever known on American soil where one can find “poor, +oppressed, bleeding Africa.” How different it was with the slave offender! +It mattered not what was the charge against him, he had persons related to +him both in interest and affection who would intercede powerfully at his +call. Wherever he might be,—in the sheriff’s hands, or locked up by the +overseer in the gin-house,—a messenger-service as secret and more sure +than wireless telegraphy even if not as quick, was at his command; and +some child, white or colored, or favorite servant would carry his +entreaties to the Big House. And the justices, or ole master or the +overseer, would be influenced by a word from ole miss, or the tears of +young miss, or the importunity of young master. In the end Cuffee’s +punishment would be made tolerable; and after it was over he would the +next night at the cabin brag joyfully of the many friends he had and what +great things they had done for him—the children of his master present and +showing more gladness than himself.</p> + +<p>Which of the two was the more humane and christian punitive system for the +negro? Which of the two was the better for him? That of slavery, or that +produced by the conditions which his professed friends put in place of +slavery?</p> + +<p>I assert it most solemnly that I never saw a negro slave worked in +shackles and under a loaded firearm, neither by his master nor an +overseer, nor by their command, nor by an officer of the law; and, +further, that I never had information or report that such had been done.</p> + +<p>When their emancipators led the negroes out of their cabins into their new +life it was something like throwing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> our domestic animals into the forest +and desert, where they, without formed habits of self-maintenance and +without knowledge of the new environment, must live, if they can live, +only in competition with their wild brothers and sisters knowing the +environment and who are self-maintaining experts therein. That comparison +serves somewhat. But this comes nearer: Suppose children between the ages +of eight and twelve, who have never been taught to do anything for +themselves, to be taken away from their parents, and settled among a +people lately made bitterly hostile to the children, as the whites were +made to the negroes by the effort of the emancipators to give political +equality—nay, supremacy—to the latter. Those emancipated children must +subsist themselves. How little they could earn by begging or work. They +would have to steal to live. Those that did not steal, and for whom no +companion would steal, would perish. The philanthropists who founded this +infantile colony would have outdone but by a very little those who thrust +the reluctant negroes into freedom.</p> + +<p>I ask my reader to add here mentally the full description which in my last +two chapters I have given of the lower class of the negroes in the +south—this description showing them to be ninety-five per cent of the +whole, far below their average condition in American slavery, and steadily +becoming worse.</p> + +<p>I believe that in due time the people of the north will make these +admissions:</p> + +<p>1. Any and every evil of southern slavery to the negro was accidental, and +not a necessary incident of the system, just as the occasional evils of +marriage to the parties are not necessarily incidental to that +institution.</p> + +<p>2. As this slavery had improved and was still improving the negroes so +prodigiously in every particular, and as their condition during the forty +years following <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>emancipation has been going uninterruptedly from bad to +worse, until now the extinction of the great body is frightfully probable, +as I shall show in my last two chapters, the sudden and sweeping abolition +of 1865 was an unutterable misfortune to these dependent creatures. +Emancipation ought to have been gradual. Especially ought there to have +been established something like the Roman patronate, under which the +freedman would have been sure of wise advice, beneficial overlooking, and +efficient protection from his former master.</p> + +<p>3. The grant at once of right to vote and hold place and office to the +southern negroes indiscriminately exceeds all blunders of democracy in +madness and stupidity.</p> + +<p>4. Southern slavery, so far from being wrong morally, was righteousness, +justice, and mercy to the slave. The federal constitution was simply +obeying the commands of good conscience in recognizing the slave as the +property of his owner, and protecting that property. Therefore, when the +federal government emancipated the slaves it ought to have given the +masters just compensation.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>So much for what American slavery was to the negro, and what its abolition +has done for him in the south. This can be told now. But for years the +powers watching over our union kept the subject in the dark. It did not +suit their purpose that the people of the union-preserving section should +see and understand. They had decreed that northern resistance to slavery, +as the solitary root of disunion, should go beyond refusing it extension +into the Territories. They chose to add another provocation of the +secession which they had planned as the means of abolishing slavery. This +new provocation was that the north be induced to make the fugitive slave +law a dead letter. To drive the south into early secession, perhaps it +would not be enough merely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> to deny her new territory. But unite the north +against the law mentioned, and encourage both running away and the +underground railroad by an active public opinion, then soon all along the +southern border slavery will lose its hold, some of the slaves escaping +and the rest going south. This zone will, after a while, be settled by the +friends and employers of free labor, who from year to year will push the +southern non-slave district further in. The menace of this hostile +occupation will steadily become greater to the slaveholders, and finally +it will convince them that they cannot protect slavery in the union.</p> + +<p>Many northerners who declared it was wrong to interfere with slavery in +the States, at the same time sympathized with the public opposition to +restoring the fugitive to his master. It is clear that they did not regard +this opposition to be what it really was; that is, actual war upon slavery +where it existed. To oppose execution of the law was both to invite and +help runaways. And if such invitation and help was persisted in, from one +end of Mason and Dixon’s line to the other, the risk of escape of slaves +and their consequent depreciation in market value would both steadily +increase. The refusal to enforce the fugitive slave law was therefore a +deadly attack upon slavery in the States; and this was so plain that the +union-loving people of Georgia declared in the famous Georgia Platform of +1850 that the union could not be preserved if that law was not faithfully +executed.</p> + +<p>The faithful guardians of the American union had “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” +written of purpose to prevent the execution of the fugitive slave law. +They hypnotized the root-and-branch abolitionists and Mrs. Stowe into +believing that to abet in any way the restoration of a flying slave was an +unpardonable crime; and that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> the obligation of conscience to refrain from +committing such a crime imperatively commanded disregard of all counter +provisions of the constitution and the law of the land. One cannot at all +understand the mighty abolition movement if he stop with the professed +motives of Phillips, Whittier, Garrison, Mrs. Stowe, and the rest. They +believed in their hearts, and declared, its purpose was to wipe out the +great national disgrace of slavery, to lift the slave out of an abyss of +unspeakable outrage and injustice, and to better his condition. As we have +shown you, they were, in their very extreme of conscientiousness, as wide +from the facts and right as wide can be. They were not doing their own +wills, as they thought they were. They but did the will of the fates. The +latter ruthlessly—so it seems to us now—sacrificed both the prosperity +and comfort of the southern people for several generations, and the very +existence, it may be, of nearly all the negroes in America, besides also +making a laughing-stock of the abolitionists—all to the end to kill that +nationalization which threatened the integrity of the American union.</p> + +<p>I believe that I can now take my reader on with me in what I have to say +of Mrs. Stowe’s book. Let him bear in mind that the object of the fates +was to have in it not a representation true to fact, but such an untrue +and probable one as would unite the people of the north in moral and +conscientious resolve against any and every attempt to restore a fugitive +slave. What the fates wanted was an author who appeared to have extensive +and accurate acquaintance with slavery, and who, while believing it most +conscientiously to be the extreme of evil to the black, was endowed with +the power to make the north see with <i>her</i> eyes. They found their author +in Mrs. Stowe, whom they had educated and trained from infancy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>In view of the mighty influence which “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” exercised upon +public opinion, it is important to examine what were Mrs. Stowe’s +qualifications to speak as an authority on southern slavery. And in this +investigation the same qualifications of all others who arraigned the +system for what they alleged were its heinous moral wrongs to the slave +are likewise involved. The statement of Professor Wendell, quoted above, +that she was the only one of the abolitionists who had observed slavery +“on the spot,” can be corroborated by overwhelming proofs. If it be made +to appear, as I think will be the case, that she was from first to last +under a delusion which metamorphosed the negro into a Caucasian, and +further that she had no real opportunities of learning the facts of +slavery, then the case of the root-and-branch abolitionists must fall with +the testimony of the only eye-witness whom they have called.</p> + +<p>Whether she was biased or not we will let her own words decide. Here they +are:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“I was a child in 1820 [she was then nine years old] when the Missouri +question was agitated; and one of the strongest and deepest +impressions on my mind was that made by my father’s sermons and +prayers, and the anguish of his soul for the poor slave at that time. +I remember his preaching drawing tears down the hardest faces of the +old farmers in his congregation. I well remember his prayers morning +and evening in the family for ‘poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa,’ that +the time of her deliverance might come; prayers offered with strong +crying and tears, and which indelibly impressed my heart, and made me +what I am from my very soul, the enemy of all slavery. Every brother +that I have has been in his sphere a leading anti-slavery man. As for +myself and husband, we have for the last seventeen years lived on the +border of a slave State, and we have never shrunk from the fugitives, +and we have helped them with all we had to give. I have received the +children of liberated <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>slaves into a family school, and taught them +with my own children, and it has been the influence that we found in +the church and by the altar that has made us do all this.”<a name='fna_90' id='fna_90' href='#f_90'><small>[90]</small></a></p> + +<p>No comment is needed. The passage shows that her strongly excited feelings +unavoidably shaped all her perceptions and formed all her judgments as to +everything in slavery.</p> + +<p>Now as to the means she had of acquiring the facts. Although she had seen +a little of Kentucky, a border slave State, she had never lived in it, nor +anywhere else in the south. Especially is it to be emphasized that she had +had no experience of the cotton region, the real seat of slavery, and the +only place where it could be fully studied and learned. She passed some +eighteen years in lower Ohio, just across the river from Kentucky, where +she saw much of escaping slaves. Of course, being aflame with zeal as she +was for her subject, she had observed closely the native negroes of the +north. Such of these as she met were widely different from the mass in +slavery; for, born and bred in the north, they had had the beneficent +training of the free-labor system, and also opportunity to absorb +considerable of a higher culture. These negroes were exceptional, even of +the northern natives. And the fugitives were also exceptional; for they +far excelled the companions left behind them in intelligence, spirit, and +every essential of good character. An ordinary Cuffee had liberty the +least of all things in his thoughts. A negro like Hector or Garrison, the +former escaping from Calhoun and the other from Toombs, was as much above +the average as the shepherd dog is above common sheep-worriers and +egg-suckers. Mrs. Stowe, as her book shows, had no conception whatever of +the ordinary plantation negro. And while she had seen much of some +Kentuckians, these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> were not representative southerners. They lived upon +the border, where slave labor found but little lucrative opportunity, and +they were also affected more or less with the sentiments of their nearby +northern neighbors. Naturally only those Kentuckians of the border who +really were of her opinion would consort with this decided anti-slavery +partisan; the others would stand aloof. Mrs. Stowe never knew either real +negroes or real slaveholders. And she also knew nothing whatever of cotton +plantation management. Some authors show an amazingly full and accurate +knowledge of countries and communities which they never saw. Burke’s +knowledge of every detail touching India occurs to me. Lieber had visited +Greece while Niebuhr had not. When the former had minutely described to +the other some famous landscape,—say the battlefield of +Marathon,—Niebuhr would make copious inquiries about remains of old roads +and belongings which the other had forgotten, although he had seen them. +Tom Moore had never been in Persia, but there is so much of that country +drawn to the life in Lalla Rookh that somebody applied to him the saying +that reading D’Herbelot was as good as riding on the back of a camel. Mrs. +Stowe could not collect, sift, and read facts, and see through the most +cunningly devised masks, as Henry D. Lloyd showed his marvellous power to +do in “Wealth against Commonwealth.” That was not her gift. Her gift was +to tell the best of stories—to vary it prodigally and artistically +throughout with wonders, with things to make you shudder and also thrill +with pleasure, with things to make you cry and laugh. Her emotional +invention was the great factor. Here is her own account:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The first part of the book ever committed to writing was the death of +Uncle Tom. This scene presented itself almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> as a tangible vision to +her mind while sitting at the communion-table in the little church in +Brunswick. She was perfectly overcome by it, and could scarcely +restrain the convulsion of tears and sobbings that shook her frame. +She hastened home and wrote it, and her husband being away she read it +to her two sons of ten and twelve years of age. The little fellows +broke out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through his +sobs, ‘Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!’”</p> + +<p>The description of Uncle Tom’s death is the goal and climax of the novel. +Its scene is laid far down in the south, hundreds of miles below any place +which she or the children had ever seen or studied. It would have been +more in order for her to submit the draft to observant residents of that +locality; but the fates did not intend that her convictions should be +weakened by real information. Evidently she considered that her truth to +fact was fully vindicated by the effect of the narrative upon her +children, who, like herself, were entirely without knowledge of the +subject. They wept and exclaimed over it. Why, of course, like all +children they loved horrible tales, which their weeping and lamentation +proved that they thought were true. Doubtless these same children had made +respectable demonstrations over Bluebeard or Little Red Ridinghood. And +now over Uncle Tom’s death, which is more dreadful than anything in +Dante’s Inferno, and as pure figment, their feelings were shaken with +storm and tempest as never before.</p> + +<p>The statement just quoted proceeds thus:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“From that time the story can less be said to have been composed by +her than imposed upon her. Scenes, incidents, conversations rushed +upon her with a vividness and importunity that would not be denied. +The book insisted upon getting itself into being, and would take no +denial.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>I often fancy, as I think over it, that the last quotation describes +suggestions from the fates.</p> + +<p>But we must let Mrs. Stowe finish what we have had her tell in part. +Informing us that, after writing “two or three first chapters,” she made +an arrangement for weekly serial publication in the <i>National Era</i>, she +says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“She was then in the midst of heavy domestic cares, with a young +infant, with a party of pupils in her family to whom she was imparting +daily lessons with her own children, and with untrained servants +requiring constant supervision, but the story was so much more intense +a reality to her than any other earthly thing that the weekly +instalment never failed. It was there in her mind day and night +waiting to be written, and requiring but a few moments to bring it +into veritable characters. <i>The weekly number was always read to the +family circle before it was sent away, and all the household kept up +an intense interest in the progress of the story.</i>”<a name='fna_91' id='fna_91' href='#f_91'><small>[91]</small></a></p> + +<p>This household had been indoctrinated by the zeal of Dr. Lyman Beecher +into believing unreservedly all the inventions of ignorant assailants of +slavery instead of the widely different facts.</p> + +<p>Before I begin a detailed statement of the material errors and perversions +of fact in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” I want to emphasize it that every one of +them appeared to northern readers, unfamiliar with the negro and the +south, to be true, and most efficiently helped to form and strengthen +sentiment against enforcement of the fugitive slave law.</p> + +<p>Many things that she writes show that Mrs. Stowe was completely ignorant +of the ways of the cotton plantation. I have space to mention but one. Tom +was bred in Kentucky, where no cotton was grown. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> Cassy, by reason of +her indulgent rearing, had had as little experience as Tom in +cotton-picking. Yet these two show such expertness that Tom can add to the +sack of a slower picker, and Cassy give Tom some of her cotton, and each +have enough to satisfy the weigher at night. The good cotton-picker is +surely a most skilled laborer. He must be trained from childhood to use +both hands so well that he becomes almost ambidexterous. The training that +the typewriter is now urged to take is a parallel.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stowe shows that she had no accurate knowledge of the sentiments of +the whites of the south as to slavery. As we have already suggested, there +may have been among the Kentuckians of the border some outspoken opponents +of slavery; but it is very probable that in her womanly ardor for her +great cause she lavishly magnified their numbers. In her novel she has +nearly all of her white southerners—I may add all of the attractive +ones—to declare themselves as abolitionists at heart. Misrepresentation +of fact could not be grosser than this. I was twenty-five years old when +the brothers’ war commenced. I had mingled intimately with the people, +high and low, of my part of the south. During all of this time I never +found out there was a single one of my acquaintances, man, woman, boy, or +girl, who did not believe slavery right. The charge implied by Mrs. Stowe +that we southerners were doing violence to our consciences in holding on +to our slaves is utterly without evidence; nay, it is unanimously +contradicted by all the evidence. As we and our parents read the bible, it +told us to hold on to them, but to treat them always with considerate +kindness.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stowe emphasizes the frequent cruelty of the master to the slave; and +she emphasizes more strongly still that under the law he was helpless. The +slave was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> not helpless. He was protected by law. Note this example, given +by Toombs:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The most authentic statistics of England show that the wages of +agricultural and unskilled labor in that kingdom not only fail to +furnish the laborer with the comforts of our slave, but even with the +necessaries of life, and no slaveholder could escape <i>a conviction for +cruelty to his slaves</i> who gave his slave no more of the necessaries +of life for his labor than the wages paid to their agricultural +laborers by the noblemen and gentlemen of England would buy.”<a name='fna_92' id='fna_92' href='#f_92'><small>[92]</small></a></p> + +<p>The witness just called has full knowledge, and is the extreme of frank +honesty and truthfulness.</p> + +<p>The statute-book demonstrates that the law was steadily bettering the +condition of the slave. I have not space to state the progression which +can be found in the different Georgia enactments. But I must mention two +instances. In 1850 the procedure of trying a white person charged with a +capital offence was extended to the slave. The code which came of force +January 1, 1863, and which had been adopted some while before, prevented +any confession made by a slave to his master—it mattered not how +voluntary or free from suspicion it might be—from ever being received in +evidence against him.</p> + +<p>I commenced law practice in 1857. From that time until I went to the front +I observed that public opinion was becoming more decided against +mistreatment of the blacks. The masters of <i>ashcats</i>,—as ill-fed negroes +were called in derision of their lean and dingy faces by the great +multitude of sleek and shining ones,—those who punished with unreasonable +severity, those who exacted overwork,—they were few and far +between,—they were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> all more and more detested; and grand juries became +more and more prone to deal properly with them. I would support this by +cases, if their citation would not be unpleasant to descendants of +parties.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stowe has his master to brand George Harris in the hand with the +initial letter of the former’s surname. She has Legree’s slaves to pick +cotton on Sunday. I never heard of any cases of branding human beings +except as a punishment for crime in execution of a judgment of conviction, +and very few of them. Tidying up the house, cooking, serving meals, caring +for the animals on the place, and such other things as are done everywhere +on Sunday, were of course required of the domestic slaves. Leaving these +out, no slave was ever put to work on Sunday except to “fight fire,” or at +something commanded by a real emergency. Their employers now exact from +thousands of white persons of both sexes all over the country a great +amount of such hard and grinding Sunday work as was never exacted of the +slaves in the south. Peep into stores, offices of large corporations, and +elsewhere, while others are at Sunday-school or church, and count those +weary ones you find finishing up the work of the last week.</p> + +<p>But all of the mistakes of Mrs. Stowe noticed in the foregoing are mere +matters of bagatelle as compared with the character and nature which she +gives the average negro of the south.</p> + +<p>She represents the women as chaste as white women, and the husbands +faithful to their wives even when separated from them. I shall now tell +the truth as I know it to be—the truth that all observant people who have +had experience with negroes know.</p> + +<p>The moment almost that a married pair of slaves were separated for any +cause, each one secretly, or more often openly, took another partner. Even +when not separated,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> infidelity of both was the rule. Mrs. Stowe has the +girls and their parents to shrink with horror from the desires of the +master. To the simple-hearted African the master was always great, and +there was among them not a woman to be found who would not dedicate +herself or her daughter to greatness, finding it so inclined,—husband, +father, brothers, and sisters all in their desire for a friend at court +heartily approving. The white whose concubine gave favors behind his back +to her slave friends was the stalest joke of every neighborhood.</p> + +<p>The mass of the negroes are more unchaste now than they were in slavery, a +subject of which I shall say something further in another chapter. But +even where the master’s steady requirement from one generation to another +of a stricter observance of family ties, and the natural imitation of the +ways of the dominant race, had lifted the slaves, in appearance at least, +far above their West African ancestors, not even mothers had become +chaste. Boys, girls, men, and women, both married and unmarried, were as +promiscuous by night as houseflies are by day. The horror of horrors in +this abyss of moral impurity to one of a superior race was their utter +unconsciousness of incest.<a name='fna_93' id='fna_93' href='#f_93'><small>[93]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>Mrs. Stowe has their philoprogenitiveness—as phrenologists call it—as +fully developed as the whites. One bred in the cotton districts well +remembers that it required all the vigilance of master and mistress, +overseer, and the deputies selected from the older slave women, to secure +from the mothers proper attention to their children, and especially to +keep them from punishing too cruelly. But I do not mean to say that this +parental misbehavior was as general as the unchastity mentioned. When the +mothers aged beyond forty-five or fifty, they would begin to think +somewhat less of beaux and somewhat more of their children.</p> + +<p>George Harris and Eliza are next of the slave characters in prominence and +importance to Uncle Tom. With their large admixture of white blood, their +comparatively good education and superb moral training, a southerner would +think that you were merely mocking him if you named these as fairly +representative negroes. As they are drawn, they are really whites—whites +of high refinement—with only a physical negro exterior, and that softened +down to the minimum.</p> + +<p>But Uncle Tom—I pray my northern readers to take counsel of their common +sense and consider what I shall now say of him. Rightly to estimate him, I +must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> begin with some contrasts. The first that occurs to me is Tyndarus, +the slave hero of the Captivi of Plautus, pronounced by the great critic +Lessing to be the most beautiful play ever brought upon the stage. +Tyndarus and Philocrates, his young master, taken prisoners, are sold to +Hegio. The two captives personate each other, and induce Hegio to send +home Philocrates, who was a wealthy noble, and keep only the born slave. +Hegio was scheming to recover his own son, now a slave in the land of the +captives, by a bargain for Philocrates, this bargain to be negotiated by +the counterfeit Tyndarus. Discovering how he had been duped, the anguished +father tells the real Tyndarus that he shall die a cruel death. This is +the reply of the slave:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“As I shall not die because of evil deeds, that is a small matter. My +death will keep it ever in remembrance that I delivered my master from +slavery and the enemy, restored him to his country and father, and +chose that I myself should perish rather than he.”</p> + +<p>That is exalted. But Tyndarus has not the complete goodness of Uncle Tom. +As soon as he is at last rescued from the horrible mines, to find +Philocrates true and himself a free man, he threatens woe to a slave who +had injured him, and looks approvingly upon the execution of his threat.</p> + +<p>Compare Uncle Tom with the good men of the bible, such as Moses, Peter, +and Paul, to mention no more. Not one of these was able always to keep his +feelings and tongue in that complete subjection that never fail Uncle Tom.</p> + +<p>Uncle Tom, in whom love alone prompts all thoughts and deeds, surpasses +every saint in Dante’s Paradise—he surpasses even the incomparably sweet +Beatrice, who now and then chides unpleasantly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>The climax of my comparison is reached when I suggest that Uncle Tom is +made from first to last a more perfect Christ than the Jesus of the +gospels. The latter, as Matthew Arnold and other reverent christians +remark, was sometimes unamiable. Remember his expulsion of the money +changers and traders from the temple, and the many opprobrious words he +used of and to the Pharisees. Growing recognition of the all-human Jesus +is benignly replacing a religion of superstition, intolerance, and dogma +with one of universal love and brotherhood. I cannot fully express my +appreciation of the liberal divines, from Charming to Savage, who are +preparing us so well for the millennium. But I am sure a new study of +Uncle Tom would give each one of them firmer grasp of christlikeness and +far more power to present it. Think over such instances in that holiest +and most altruistic of lives as these: He has just learned that he has +been sold; that he is to be carried down the river. His wife suggests that +as he has a pass from his master permitting him to go and return as he +pleases, he take advantage of it and run away to the free States. As +firmly as Socrates, unjustly condemned to death, refused to escape from +prison when his friends had provided full opportunity, Tom declared he +would stay, that he would keep faith with his master. He said that, +according to Eliza’s report of the conversation she had overheard, his +master was forced to sell him, or sell all the other slaves, and it was +better for himself to suffer in their place. And as he goes away he has +nothing but prayers and blessings for the man who sends him into dread +exile from his wife and children. He falls to a new master, whom, and his +family, he watches over with the fidelity and love of a most kind father, +doing every duty, but above all things trying to save that master’s soul. +Then his cruel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> fortune delivers him to the monster Legree. For the first +time in his life he is treated with disrespect, distrust, and harshness. +Yet he forgets his own misery, and finds pleasure in helping and +comforting his fellow sufferers, striving his utmost to bring them into +eternal life. He will not do wrong even at the command of his cruel +master, who has him in a dungeon, as it were, into which no ray of justice +can ever shine. And here he dies from the cruel lash—almost under it. He +falters some, it is true; but there was no sweat of blood as in +Gethsemane, nor exclamation upon the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou +forsaken me!” He went more triumphantly through his more fell crucifixion.</p> + +<p>I believe that the character of Uncle Tom is the only part of the book +which future generations will cherish; not for the lesson against slavery +it was intended to teach, but because it excels in ideal and realization +all imitation of Christ in actual life or the loftiest religious fiction. +Consider its marvellous effect upon Heine, as told by a quotation from the +latter in The Author’s Introduction to the book.<a name='fna_94' id='fna_94' href='#f_94'><small>[94]</small></a></p> + +<p>The detailed comparison which I have just made puts Uncle Tom upon a +pinnacle, where he is above all the saints in lofty, self-abnegating, and +lovingly religious manhood; and the reader notes how fruitlessly I have +tried to find another like him. But Mrs. Stowe was confident that she had +not exaggerated or overdrawn him, and further that such were common among +the southern slaves. Here is what she deliberately says in her Key:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The character of Uncle Tom has been objected to as improbable; and +yet the writer has received more confirmations of that character, and +from a greater variety of sources, than of any other in the book.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>Many people have said to her, ‘I knew an Uncle Tom in such and such a +southern State.’ All the histories of this kind which have thus been +related to her would of themselves, if collected, make a small +volume.”<a name='fna_95' id='fna_95' href='#f_95'><small>[95]</small></a></p></div> + +<p>Toombs once said to me, “It would have been a matchless eulogy of slavery +if it had produced an Uncle Tom.” But, as we see from the last quotation, +she claims far more. She really claims that it was fruitful of Uncle Toms +in every southern State.</p> + +<p>Shall we attribute this firm belief, that there were among the southern +slaves many who were better christians than Christ himself is represented +to have been, to a mere hallucination? That word is not strong enough. To +explain the belief, we must think of visions suggested by the hypnotizing +powers, or something like the spell on Titania, when Bottom with his ass’s +head inspired her with the fondest admiration and love.</p> + +<p>Although the foregoing is far from being exhaustive, it is enough; it +shows incontrovertibly that Mrs. Stowe builded throughout upon the +exceptional and imaginary. My father, a Presbyterian clergyman, with the +strictest notions as to the Sabbath, as he generally called Sunday, made +me read, when a boy, a book called, if I recollect aright, “Edwards’s +Sabbath Manual.” Be the title whatever it may, the entire book was but a +collection of instances of secular work done on Sunday, and always +followed closely by disaster, which appeared to be divine punishment of +sabbath-breaking. The author was confident he had proved his case. He +believed with his whole soul that if one should do on Sunday any week-day +work not permitted in the catechism, it was more than probable that God +would at once deal severely with him for not keeping his day holy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>This is a somewhat overstrained example of Mrs. Stowe’s method. I will +therefore give one which is as close as close can be. Suppose a diligent +worker to cull from newspaper files, law reports, and what he hears in +talk, the cases in which one party to a marriage has cruelly mistreated +the other. If he digested his collection with a view to effect, it would +prove a far more formidable attack upon the most civilizing and improving +of all human institutions than Mrs. Stowe’s Key is upon slavery; and if he +had her rare artistic gift he could found upon it a wonderful +anti-marriage romance. The author of such a Key and romance would be +confuted at once by the exclamation, “If these horrors are general, people +would flee marriage as they do the plague.” Let it be inquired, “If ‘Uncle +Tom’s Cabin’ and Mrs. Stowe’s Key truly represent, why did not more of the +blacks escape into the free States? and why did they not revolt in large +bodies during the war in the many communities whence all the able-bodied +whites had gone to the front far away?” and there can be but one answer, +which is, there was no general or common oppression of the African in +slavery—there were no horrors to him in the condition—but on the +contrary he was contented and happy, merry as the day is long.</p> + +<p>How was it that a book so full of untrue statement and gross exaggeration +as to an American theme found such wide acceptance at the north and +elsewhere out of the south? For years I could not explain. When I read it +at Princeton, I talked it over with the southern students. We pooh-poohed +the negroes, but we admired the principal white characters except Mrs. St. +Claire, whom we all regarded as a libellous caricature. The representation +of slavery was incorrect, and the portrayal of the negro as only a black +and kinky-haired white was so absurd that one of us dreamed that either<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> +would be taken seriously by the north. It was some ten years after the +brothers’ war that the true explanation commenced to dawn upon me, and it +has at last become clear.</p> + +<p>It is an important fact that the great body of the people of the north +knew almost next to nothing of the south, and especially of the average +negro. As one calmly looks back now he sees that in the agitation over the +admission of California, the cleavage between the two nationalizations +treated in foregoing chapters was becoming decided, and that the people +belonging to each were losing their tempers and getting ready to fight. +When even a political campaign in which the only question is, who shall be +ins and who outs, is on, each party is prone to believe the hardest things +of the other. But when such a fell resort to force as that of 1850 and the +years immediately following is impending, all history shows that those on +one side will believe any charge reflecting upon the good character of +those on the other side which is not grossly improbable. Such quarrels are +so fierce that we never weigh accusations against our adversaries—we just +embrace and circulate. Thus had the northern public become ripe for an +arraignment of the morality of slavery, which—as was with purblind +instinct felt, not discerned—was the sole active principle of the +southern nationalization. Even without the provocation just mentioned, a +northern man would liken the African in everything but his skin and hair +to a white. We always classify a new under some old and well-known object. +When the Romans first saw the elephant they thought of him as the Lucanian +ox. The automobile which propels itself around our streets is made as much +like the corresponding horse-drawn vehicle familiar to the public for ages +as can be. The northerner knew no man well but the Caucasian,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> and he had +long been led by a common psychological process to give his characteristic +essentials to the negro. And now when anti-slavery partisans positively +maintained that the latter was a white in all but his outside, adducing +seeming proofs, and the free-labor nationalization was with its leading +strings pulling all the northern people into line, even the calmest and +most dispassionate among them were influenced to believe that the negroes +were so much like our Anglo-Saxon selves it was an unspeakable crime to +keep them in slavery. And all tales of cruelty and horror found easy +credence.</p> + +<p>Thus had the northern public been made ready for “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” And +although the book wholly ignored and obscured the really live and burning +issue, and it was packed from beginning to end with the most gigantic +errors of fact, it took the section by storm.</p> + +<p>It is a great book. When something has been as persistently demanded as +long as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has been by the northern public and the +“Conquered Banner” by the southern public; when thousands upon thousands +of plain people weep over them and lay them away to weep over them again, +you may know—it matters not what the unruffled and sarcastic critic may +say—that each is a work of the very highest and the very rarest genius. +Tears of sympathy for tales of distress and misery, whoever can set their +fountain flowing is always a nature’s king or queen.</p> + +<p>I have read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” four times: first at Princeton in 1852; +the second time amid the gloom of reconstruction, more accurately to +ascertain northern opinion of the negro and forecast therefrom, if I +could, what was in store for the south; the third time as I was meditating +the Old and New South; and just the other day the last time. The more +familiar I become with it the greater seems to me the power with which the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>attention is taken and held captive. The very titles to the first twelve +chapters are, in their contents and sequence, gems of genius, and draw +resistlessly. I become more and more impatient with Ruskin’s reprehending +the escape of Eliza, when, with her child hugged to her bosom, she leaps +from block to block of floating ice in the Ohio until she is safe on the +other side—a marvel like the ghost’s appearance in the first scene of +Hamlet, exciting a high and breathless interest at the outset, which is +never allowed to flag afterwards. Whenever I begin to read the book, I +fall at once into that illusion which Coleridge has so well explained. I +accept all her blunders and mistakes as real facts, and although it is +hard to tolerate her negro travesties and the anti-slavery sentiments of +her southern whites, somehow they do not then offend me, and there is +chapter after chapter in which I follow the action with breathless +interest. “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Pilgrim’s Progress” are examples to +show how little of reality either entertaining or moving fiction needs. +From a mass of false assumptions, seasoned with the merest sprinkling of +fact; and especially from her taking for granted that the negro is really +on a par of development with the white, she has constructed the Iliad of +our time. The nursery tale out of which Shakspeare fashioned the drama of +Lear did not furnish him with smaller resources. What a wonderful action +he puts in the place of the nursery tale! how natural and probable it all +appears to us as it unfolds! how we hate, or pity, or admire, or love as +we cannot keep from following it! Likewise every reader in the north +accepted Mrs. Stowe’s novel as the very height of verity, and afterwards +saw in every fugitive slave a George Harris, or Eliza, or an Uncle Tom. +And the book evoked the same effect out of America. The most curious proof +of this that I can think of is the statue of The Freed Slave,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> which I saw +on exhibition at the Centennial. It has nearly all the peculiar physical +characteristics of the Caucasian; and it represents not a typical man of +African descent, but a negro albino, that is, a white negro, not a black +one. There are albino negroes, but there are also albino whites. That +statue shows what was European conception of the negroes whose chains were +broken by the emancipation proclamation. Its reception in America shows +also that the same conception prevailed here. Day after day I saw crowds +of northern people contemplating that counterfeit with deep emotion, many +of the women unable to restrain their tears.</p> + +<p>Surely “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in its propagandic potency is unrivalled. It +did more than the anti-slavery statesmen, politicians, preachers, talkers, +and orators combined. To it more than to all other agencies is due that +the people of the north took such a stubborn stand in opposition that the +south at last saw that the fugitive slave law had been practically +nullified. Thus the fates worked to bring about secession. For secession +was to bring the brothers’ war; and this war was to do what could not be +done by law or consent,—that is, to get rid of slavery as the informing +principle of southern nationalization.</p> + +<p>The post-bellum propagandic effect of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has been very +malign. With the companion literature and theories, it formed the opinion +that devised and executed the reconstruction of the southern States. The +cardinal principle of that reconstruction was to treat the blacks just +emancipated as political equals of the whites.</p> + +<p>Those who did this are to be forgiven. They had been made to believe that +the negroes of the south were as well qualified for full citizenship as +the whites, and it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> was but meet retributive punishment of the great crime +of slavery and waging war to hold on to it, that the masters be put under +their former slaves. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had made them believe it.</p> + +<p>The only parallel of mass of pernicious error engendered by a book, so far +as I know, is “Burke’s Reflections.” Constitutional England ought to have +followed Charles Fox as one man, and given countenance to the rise in +France for liberty. But Burke’s piece of magnificent rhetoric effectually +turned the nation out of her course, and had her in league with +absolutists to put back the clock of European democracy a hundred years or +more. Even yet intelligent Englishmen magnify that most unEnglish +achievement. The bad effects of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” have not been so +lasting in our country. We Americans get out of ruts much more easily than +the English. The north is now rapidly learning the real truth as to the +utter incapacity of the mass of southern negroes to vote intelligently, +and complacently acquiesces in their practical disfranchisement by the +only class which can give good government.</p> + +<p>We must utterly reject and discard everything that Mrs. Stowe and those +whom I distinguish as the root-and-branch abolitionists have taught, in +their unutterable ideology, as to the nature and character of the negro, +and in its place we must learn to know him as he really is—to tolerate +him, nay, to love him as such. This is the only way in which we can +prepare ourselves for giving the negroes their due from us.</p> + +<p>Further, we owe it to our proud American history, now that the brothers’ +war is forty years past, to ascertain the real cause of that mighty +struggle, maintained most laudably and gloriously by each side. Those whom +I am here criticising made many believe that the real stake was whether +the slave should remain the property<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> of his master or not. Note the +emphasized adjuration in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic:”</p> + +<p class="poem">“As he [Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.”</p> + +<p>A most beautiful sentiment, fitly expressed; but how it humiliates the +grand issue, which was whether federal government should live or perish! +And that greatest of American odes, Whittier’s “Laus Deo,” how wide of the +true mark is its sublime rejoicing! Celebrating the abolition of slavery +by constitutional amendment, the occasion demanded that he extol the +really benign achievement. That achievement was that all cause of diverse +nationalization in the States had been forever removed, and thus it was +assured that brotherhood of the nations was to grow without check. But the +rapt bard was blinded, as his utterances show, by what now almost appears +to have been a fit of delusional insanity. He says:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“Ring! O bells!</span><br /> +Every stroke exulting tells<br /> +Of the burial hour of crime.”</p> + +<p>What does he mean is the crime? Why, the delivering of certain Africans +and their descendants from lowest human degradation and misery, and +blessing them with opportunity and help to rise far upward? Had he seen, +as we do now, forty years later, instead of pouring out this wild and mad +delight, he would have dropped scalding tears over the “burial hour” of +all that promised anything of welfare to those for whom he had labored so +long and faithfully. And in the last stanza his command that</p> + +<p class="poem">“With a sound of broken chains”</p> + +<p>the nations be told</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“that He reigns,</span><br /> +Who alone is Lord and God!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>The poet misunderstood the “broken chains” as greatly as he did the +“burial hour.” Chains were broken, but their breaking was no blessing to +the negro. Golden chains of domestic ties, drawing him gently, kindly, +surely up to higher morality and complete manhood—these were broken; and +far other were forged for him, with which fear he has been made fast to +destruction. His only friends able to help alienated; what a clog! Given +back to African improgressiveness; what a fetter! How he is held to the +body of death by unbreakable chains of want, misery, vice, disease, and +utter helplessness! and how his shackles gall him and his convict chains +clank in every corner of the land which was once an earthly paradise to +him!</p> + +<p>Let us not sully with Whittier the glory of the federal arms by ascribing +to them as their chief triumph the gift of illusory freedom to a few +negroes. Rather let us inform ourselves with the spirit of Webster, and +give praise and thanks without end for the actual blessings and the richer +promise of the restored union to myriads of that race whose mission it is +to spread an inexpressibly fair socialism over all the earth.</p> + +<p>And let me say at the last, the people of the north should learn that all +the tragic evils which Professor Wendell and others outside of the south +have in mind belong only to the slave-ships, and by a strange +psychological metastasis—no stranger, however, than that by which the +fourth commandment, in popular conception, has been abrogated as to the +seventh day, and applied to the first day of the week—they have firmly +attached themselves to the reputation of southern slavery. For long years +we of the south, our mothers and our mothers’ mothers, our fathers and our +fathers’ fathers, have been charged with cruelties and outrages purely +fancied. These fabrications are the stock comparisons with which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> almost +every invective against the wrongs of any lower class is sharpened. The +writer or speaker whenever he is taken short says something of the +dreadful condition of the southern slave under the sway of an entirely +absolute master. Variety of the misdeeds invoked as illustration is +limited only by the promptness with which the utterer can think of what he +has read in abolition literature or its sequel. It is all mere parrot +gabble. To hear so much of it as we do is “a little wearing,” as Reginald +Wilfer said. Surely if our brothers and sisters of the north but think, +they will acknowledge that these so-called horrors of slavery were all +nothing but the inventions of the angry passions provoked by the powers in +the unseen after they had decided that slavery must be sacrificed in the +interests of the union. And these dear brothers and sisters will no longer +persist in asserting that southern slavery was but robbery and oppression +of and cruelty to the slave; that the system was evil to him of itself. +They will talk no more of the pro-slavery infamy, of the unscrupulousness +and perfidy of the slave power, and all such false twaddle, that can now +serve no purpose whatever except to offend good men and women and their +children without cause.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">SLAVERY AT LAST IMPELLED INTO A DEFENSIVE AGGRESSIVE</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Until</span> the crisis of 1850, slavery had never changed from purely defensive +tactics. This year made it seem that the north had fully resolved that +slavery should never be allowed another inch of new territory; and also +was very near, and was rapidly coming nearer to, the point of practically +preventing the enforcement of the fugitive slave law. We have explained +how slave property could not live unless it found new virgin soil in the +Territories; and we have also explained what a deadly blow it would +receive, in the refusal to restore fugitives. This refusal would be really +indirect abolition. Read the masterly sketch by Calhoun, in his speech +March 4, 1850, of the conquering advance of the anti-slavery party, until +now—to use his language—“the equilibrium between the two sections ... +had been destroyed;” and he demonstrates that the actual exercise of the +entire national political power must soon be in the hands of the +free-labor section. The south instinctively felt that the time for her old +tactics was over, and that she must do more than merely fend off the blows +of abolition. And, as we will tell in the next chapter, she found her new +leader in Toombs. Nullification as advocated by Calhoun was the extreme +energy of the pure defensive of the south. His proposed dual executive +amendment was merely that nullification be made a right granted to the +federal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> government instead of remaining one reserved to the States. +Toombs had grown up in the school of William H. Crawford. George R. +Gilmer, a follower of Crawford, tells of the latter: “He was violently +opposed to the nullification movement, considering it but an ebullition +excited by Mr. Calhoun’s overleaping, ambition.”<a name='fna_96' id='fna_96' href='#f_96'><small>[96]</small></a></p> + +<p>Toombs scouted nullification. Under his lead his State, in 1850, adopted +the Georgia Platform quoted above. This platform was considerate and +resolute preparation for the southern offensive.</p> + +<p>Next the south assumes initiative. Extension of slave-territory is so +great an economical <i>sine qua non</i> that she attacks its barriers. Using +her control of the then dominant democratic party she got the Missouri +compromise repealed. Her main purpose in this was to wrench from the +anti-slavery men the weapon of congressional restriction, then deemed by +them the most powerful of all in their armory. She also contemplated +extorting a concession of all lands in the Territories which could be +profitably cultivated by slaves from the north, alarmed into apprehending +that otherwise slavery might be carried above 36.30′.</p> + +<p>This repeal did more than anything else—more even than “Uncle Tom’s +Cabin”—to arouse the north into mortal combat with slavery. The historian +cannot understand why the south procured it, if he ignores that energy of +southern nationalization which we have done our utmost to explain. This +nationalization had got into what we may call the last rapids, and was +bound to go over the precipice into the gulf of secession.</p> + +<p>The bootless struggle by the south against overwhelming odds of northern +settlers to make Kansas a slave State was the sequel to the repeal of the +Missouri compromise. When the South understood that Kansas was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> really +gone, she advanced her forlorn hope in her endeavor to secure slavery in +the union. The essence of the compromise measures of 1850 was that the +demand of congressional non-interference with slavery in the States and +Territories, made by the south, was declared adopted as future policy. As +the forlorn hope just mentioned she now made the demand that the owner’s +property in his slaves, if he should carry them into a Territory, should +be protected by congress until its people had made the constitution under +which the Territory would be admitted into the union. Her adherence to +this demand split the democratic party; and the election of Lincoln +ensued. This election meant that slavery—the property supporting more +than nine-tenths of the southern people, and which was virtually their +entire economic system—was put under a ban. There was nothing for it but +depreciation in the near future; soon more and more depreciation; until +after prolonged stagnation and paralysis the value of all her property +would collapse as did that of the continental currency. That was the way +it looked to her. We believe that the facts show that her conviction was +right. She felt with her whole soul that the time had come to invoke State +sovereignty. So she seceded, with intent to save the property of her +people and maintain their domestic peace. Of course she purposed an +equitable apportionment of the public domain between herself and the north +under which she would get the small part that suited slave agriculture.</p> + +<p>The circumstances constrained the south throughout every part and parcel +of her offensive as powerfully as exhaustion of his supplies constrains +the commander of a garrison to a sortie upon what he has reason to believe +is the weakest point of the circumvallation. She was hypnotized by the +powers. They made her believe that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> she was always doing the right thing +to protect slavery when they were having her to do that only which assured +its destruction. She was all the while as conscientious as the mother who, +afraid of drafts, keeps the needed fresh air from her consumptive child +and thereby kills him.</p> + +<p>We recognize the resistless play of the cosmic forces upon the sun, moon, +and stars; upon our earth; in the yearly round of the seasons; in the +ocean tides; in storms and heated terms; in vegetation; and in things +innumerable taken note of by the senses. But this is not all of their +empire. They sway individuals, communities, peoples, nations, making the +latter even believe that they are having their own way when in fact they +are most servilely doing the will of the powers.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">TOOMBS</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Calhoun</span> solidified the south in resolve to leave the union if the +abolition party got control of the federal government. Just before his +death there commenced such serious contemplation of an aggressive defence +of slavery that we may call it an actual aggressive. Although by reason of +his unquestioned primacy he could have assumed the conduct of this +aggressive, he did not. Toombs was its real, though not always apparent, +leader, from its actual commencement until it resulted in secession. Thus +he played an independent part of his own, and deserves a chapter to +himself. While Calhoun was the forerunner, Toombs was both apostle and the +Moses of secession. As nearly all of my readers have never thought of any +one else than Calhoun in this capacity, the statement of Toombs’s +prominence just made will probably startle them. But I know if they will +follow me through the record they will all at last agree with me. In view +of Calhoun’s conspicuousness in the southern agitation from 1835 until his +death in 1850, this misapprehension of my readers is very natural. +Contemporaries following Sulla, named Pompey, not Julius Cæsar, The Great. +Similarly Toombs, as an actor in the intersectional arena, is as yet +dwarfed from comparison with the really great but not greater Calhoun.</p> + +<p>It is much more necessary than I saw such a method was with Calhoun to +deal first with what we may call the non-sectional parts of Toombs’s +career. And I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> wish to assure my readers at the outset that these parts +are exceptionally important and valuable not only to every American, but +to all those anywhere who prize shining examples of private virtue and +exalted teachers of good and honest government.</p> + +<p>I was nearly ten years old when Toombs’s congressional career commenced in +December, 1845. Living only eighteen miles from him I heard him often +mentioned. It was the delight of many people to report his phrases and +repartees. By reason of their wisdom or wit and fineness of expression, +the whole of each one lodged in the dullest memory. I never knew another +whose sayings circulated so widely and far without alteration. As they +serve to introduce you to his rare originality, I will tell here a few of +them that I heard admired and laughed at in my boyhood.</p> + +<p>He had not then left off tobacco, but he chewed it incessantly, and a +spray of the juice fell around him when he was speaking. Once while he was +haranguing at the hustings, a drunken man beneath the edge of the platform +on which he was standing, rudely told him in a loud voice not to let his +pot boil over. Toombs, looking down, saw that his interrupter had flaming +red hair: “Take your fire from under it, then,” he answered.</p> + +<p>In another stump speech he was earnestly denying that he had ever used +certain words now charged against him. A stalwart, rough fellow—one of +Choate’s bulldogs with confused ideas—rose, and asserted he had heard him +say them. When and where was asked. The man gave time and place, and added +tauntingly, “What do you say to that?” Toombs rejoined, “Well, I must have +told a d—d lie.”</p> + +<p>A rival candidate, really conspicuous and celebrated for his little +ability, in a stump debate pledged the people that if they would send him +to congress he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> would never leave his post during a session to attend the +courts, as he unjustifiably charged Toombs with habitually doing. The +latter disposed of this by merely saying, “You should consider which will +hurt the district the more, his constant presence in, or my occasional +absence from, the house.”</p> + +<p>In another discussion this same opponent charged him with having voted so +and so. Replying, Toombs denied it. The other interrupted him, and +sustained his charge by producing the <i>Globe</i>; and he expressively +exclaimed, “What do you think of that vote?” Toombs answered without any +hesitation—nothing ever confused him—“I think it a d—d bad vote. There +are more than a hundred votes of mine reported in that big book. He has +evidently studied them all, and this is the only bad one he can find. Send +<i>him</i> to congress in my place, the record will be exactly inverted; it +will be as hard to find a good one in his votes as it is now to find a bad +one in mine.”</p> + +<p>In the congressional session of 1849-50 Toombs had made his Hamilcar +speech, to be told of fully after a while. In this he avowed his +preference of disunion to exclusion of the south from the Territories so +positively and strongly that the ultra southern rights men hailed him as +their champion. But soon afterwards, with the great majority of the people +of the State, he took his stand upon the compromise of 1850 and the +Georgia Platform quoted above. This was really on his part a recession +from the extreme ground he had taken in the speech. In 1851, a coalition +of the whigs and democrats of Georgia nominated Howell Cobb, a democrat, +for governor, and Toombs, then a whig, canvassed for him with great zeal. +He had an appointment to speak, in Oglethorpe county, at Lexington, the +county seat. There were quite a number of ardent southern rights<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> men in +the county, who held that the admission of California, really in southern +latitude, with its anti-slavery constitution, called for far more decided +action on the part of the south than was counselled in the Compromise and +Georgia Platform. Hating Toombs, whom they regarded as a renegade, they +plotted to humiliate him when he came to Lexington. As he never shrank +from discussion they easily got his consent to divide time with—as the +phrase goes—a canvasser for McDonald, their candidate for governor. +Toombs was to consume a stated time in opening the stump debate; then the +other was to be allowed a stated time; after which Toombs had a reply of +twenty minutes—these were the terms. In opening, Toombs, as was natural, +stressed the compromise measures and set forth the advantages of +preserving the union; and he fiercely inveighed against the men who could +not be satisfied with the Georgia Platform, embraced as it had been by a +great majority of all parties, denouncing them as disunionists. The other +disputant took the Hamilcar speech of Toombs, made just the year before, +as his text. Deliberately, accurately, systematically he unfolded the +doctrine of that speech, and he did the same for the speech just made, and +contrasting the two, he put them into glaring inconsistency. Southern +rights stock rose and union stock sunk rapidly as the comparison went on. +In his peroration the speaker commented upon Toombs’s tergiversation with +such effective severity it elicited wild applause from the men of his +side. They had pushed themselves to the front. Toombs rose to reply. In +their riotous rejoicing over the great hit of their speaker, they forgot +the proprieties of the occasion; forgot that it was Toombs’s meeting, as +was said in common parlance; and they rapped on the floor with canes, and +even clubs provided for the nonce, howled, and made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> all kinds of noises +to drown his voice. Unabashed he looked upon them, smiling that grandest +and blandest of smiles. As the foremost of these roysterers told me long +afterwards, his self-possession excited their curiosity. They wanted to +hear if he could say anything to get out of the trap in which they had so +cleverly caught him; and they became still. “It seems to me,” he +commenced, “that men like you meditating a great revolution ought first to +learn good manners.” At this condign rebuke of behavior which, according +to stump usage, was as uncivil and impolite as if it had been shown Toombs +in his own house by guests accepting his hospitality, spontaneous cheers +from the union men, who were in very large majority, appeared to raise the +roof. In his highest and readiest style—for mob opposition always lifted +him at once into that—he reminded his hearers that their whole duty was +to decide whether they would approve the compromise and the Georgia +Platform or not; and that to discuss whether what he had spoken last year +before these measures were even thought of, was right or wrong, was to +substitute for a transcendently important public question a little +personal one of no concern to them whatever. “If there is anything in my +Hamilcar speech that cannot be reconciled with the measures which I have +supported here to-day with reasons which my opponent confesses by his +silence he cannot answer, I repudiate it. If the gentleman takes up my +abandoned errors, let him defend them.”</p> + +<p>How the union men cheered as he broke out of the trap, and caught the +setters in it!</p> + +<p>I heard much of this day, still famous in all the locality, when six years +afterwards I settled in Lexington, to begin law practice. Over and over +again the Union men told how their spirits fell, fell, fell as the +southern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> rights speaker kept on, until it looked black and dark around; +and then how the sun broke out in full splendor at the first sentence of +Toombs’s reply, and the brightness mounted steadily to the end. That +sentence last quoted is a proverb in that region yet. If in a dispute with +anybody there you try to put him down by quoting his former contradictory +utterances, he tells you that if you take up his abandoned errors you must +defend them.</p> + +<p>The interest excited in me by what is told in the foregoing was the +beginning of my study of Toombs, which never at any time entirely ceased, +and which will doubtless continue as long as I live. He has impressed me +far more than any other man whom I ever knew. Soon after his return, in +1867, from his exile I resolved I would try to write his Life under the +title, “Robert Toombs, as a Lawyer, Statesman, and Talker;” and for ten or +fifteen years I had been systematically collecting the data. These had +accumulated under each head—especially reports of his epigrams and winged +phrases—far more considerably than was my expectation at first. I added +to them very largely by copious notes of the record of his congressional +life which I read attentively in course, commencing immediately after his +death. In a few years I had finished my task. As yet I have not found the +times favorable for publication, and the MS. may perplex my literary +executor. Of course my object in the too egotistic narrative just made is +to inform you that I have bestowed very great labor and study upon the +subject, hoping thus to draw your attention.</p> + +<p>Robert Toombs was born July 2, 1810, on his father’s plantation in Wilkes +county, Georgia. He went to school at Washington, the county seat; then to +the State university; which having left, he finished his collegiate course +at Union. Next he spent a year at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> law school of Virginia university. +He never was a bookworm. His habitual quotations during the last fifteen +years of his life—when I was much with him—betrayed a smattering of the +Roman authors commonly read at school, a much greater knowledge of the +Latin quoted by Blackstone and that of the current law maxims, and +considerable familiarity with “Paradise Lost,” “Macbeth,” and the Falstaff +parts of “King Henry IV.,” and “Merry Wives,” Don Quixote, Burns, and the +bible. But this man, whose diction and phrases were the worship of the +street and the despair of the cultured, had no deep acquaintance with any +literature. Erskine got the staple of his English from a long and fond +study of Shakspeare and Milton; but Toombs must have drawn his only from +the fountains whence Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mariah get theirs, and then +purified and refined it by a secret process that nobody else knew of,—not +even himself, as I believe. If he had only corrected after utterance as +assiduously as Erskine did, of the two his diction would be much the +finer.</p> + +<p>The year before he came of age he was admitted to the bar by legislative +act. In the same year he married his true mate and settled at Washington. +For four years the famous William H. Crawford was the judge of the +circuit. Toombs was born into the Crawford faction, and the judge who, as +there was no supreme court then, was law autocrat of his circuit, gave him +favor from the first. The courts were full of lucrative business. The old +dockets show that in five years Toombs was getting his full share in his +own county and the adjoining ones. The diligent attention that he gave +every detail of preparation of his cases, had, in a year or two after his +call, made him first choice of every eminent lawyer for junior. One of +these was Cone, a native of Connecticut, who had received a good education +both literary and professional,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> before he came south. Toombs, who had +known the great American lawyers of his time, always said after his death +in 1859 that Cone was the best of all. Lumpkin used to tell that during a +visit to England he haunted the courts, but he never found a single +counsel who spoke to a law point as luminously and convincingly as Cone. +Another one of these was Lumpkin. He is, I believe, the most eloquent man +that Georgia ever produced. He had some tincture of letters; but he was +without Choate’s pre-eminent self-culture and daily drafts of inspiration +from the immortal fountains. A. H. Stephens admired Choate greatly. He +heard the latter’s reply to Buchanan. Often, at Liberty Hall—as Stephens +called his residence—he would repeat with gusto the passage in which +Choate roasts Buchanan for his inculcation of hate to England. Stephens +contended that if all that education and art had done for each—Choate and +Lumpkin—could have been removed, a comparison would, as he believed, show +Lumpkin to be the stronger advocate by nature.</p> + +<p>These three—Cone, Lumpkin, and Toombs—were often on the same side. But +whether Toombs had them as associates or as adversaries, they were always +in these early years of his at the bar, in his eye. With the unremitted +attentiveness of what we may call his subconscious observation, and a +receptivity always active and greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated +all of Cone’s law and all of Lumpkin’s advocacy—that is, he had, as he +did with the speech and language heard by him every day, transmuted them +into the rare and precious staple peculiar to his own <i>sui generis</i> self.</p> + +<p>In his first forensic arguments his rapid utterance was as indistinct as +if he had mush in his mouth, old men have told me. But after a year or two +of practice he developed both power and attractiveness. In due time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> when +Cone or Lumpkin were with him, he would be pushed forward, young as he +was, into some important place in court conduct. I myself heard Lumpkin +tell that the greatest forensic eloquence he had ever heard was a rebuke +by Toombs—then some twenty-seven years old—of the zeal with which the +public urged on the prosecution of one of their clients on trial for +murder. The junior—the evidence closed—was making the first speech for +the defence. As he went on in a strong argument, the positiveness with +which he denied all merit to the case for the State, angered the +spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demonstration of dissent +came from some of them, which the presiding judge did not check as he +ought to have done. Toombs strode at once to the edge of the bar, only a +railing some four feet high separating him from these angry men, and +chastised them as they merited. His invective culminated in denouncing +them as bloodhounds eager to slake their accursed thirst in innocent +blood. These misguided ones were brought back to proper behavior, and with +them admiration of the fearless and eloquent advocate displaced their +hostility, and carried upon an invisible wave an influence in favor of the +accused over the entire community, and even into the jury box. And the +narrator, who was one of Toombs’s greatest admirers, told with fond +recollection how the popular billows were laid by the speech of his +junior, and how he himself took heart and found the way to an acquittal +which he feared he had lost.</p> + +<p>This affair is illustrative of Toombs in two respects. In the first place +it shows his extempore faculty and presence of mind. I have seen him so +often in sudden emergencies do exactly the thing that subsequent +reflection pronounced the best, that I believe had he been in Napoleon’s +place when the Red Sea tide suddenly spread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> around, he would have escaped +in the same way, or in a better one. I do not believe that this can be +said of any one else of the past or present. In the second place it is one +of the many proofs extant that he could always vanquish the mob.</p> + +<p>He divined what offered cases are unmaintainable more quickly, and +declined them more resolutely than any one I ever knew. So free was he +from illusion that he could not contend against plain infeasibility. It +was impossible for clients, witnesses, or juniors to blind him to the +actual chances. For ten years or more, commencing with 1867, I observed +him in many <i>nisi prius</i> trials, and I noted how unfrequently, as compared +with others, he had either got wrong as to his own side or misanticipated +the other. But now and then it would develop that the merits were +decidedly against him. He would at once, according to circumstances, +propose a compromise, frankly surrender, or, if it appeared very weak, +toss the case away as if it was something unclean. When he had thus +failed, his air of unconcern and majesty reminded of how the lion is said +to stalk back to his place of hiding when the prey has eluded his spring.</p> + +<p>Stephens came to the bar some four years after Toombs did, and settled in +an adjoining county. I need merely allude to their long and beautiful +friendship, full details of which are to be found in the biographies of +the former. I merely emphasize the importance of Stephens’s help to +Toombs’s development in his early politics. The former got to congress two +years before he did. Toombs evidently relied greatly upon the sagacity +with which the other divined how a new question would take with the +masses. On his return from a brief and bloodless service in the Creek war +as captain of a company of volunteers, Toombs commenced a State<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> +legislative career, which Mr. Stovall has creditably told.<a name='fna_97' id='fna_97' href='#f_97'><small>[97]</small></a> I can stop +only to say it was honorable, and contributed greatly to his political +education.</p> + +<p>When Toombs was at the Virginia law school, he heard some of Randolph’s +stump speeches; and for a few years afterwards he often vouched passages +from them as authority. Stephens would tell this; and then with +affectionate mischief tell further that his friend, before he had finished +in the Georgia legislature, had ceased entirely to support his contentions +with anything else than his own reasons.</p> + +<p>Before he got to Congress, he had made reputation at the hustings. In 1840 +he crossed the Savannah, and meeting the veteran McDuffie in stump debate +is reported to have come off with the high opinion of all hearers, +including his adversary.</p> + +<p>Let us now take an inventory of him as he is about to enter congress. He +is the best lawyer in the State, except Cone, and fully his equal; while +as a speaker he did not have Lumpkin’s marvellous suasion of common men, +yet with them he was almost the next, and he was far greater than Lumpkin +in quelling the mob, convincing the honest judge that his law was right, +and convincing also the better men of the jury and citizens present that +the principles of justice involved in the issue of facts were to be +applied as he claimed; he had acquired enough of property to be considered +rich in that day, although he had always lived liberally; his legislative +and political career had convinced the people that he was incomparably the +best and ablest man of the district for their representative. It is to be +especially emphasized that he had practical talent of the highest order. +His plantation was a model of good management. His investments were always +prudent and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>lucrative. Practical men of extraordinary ability were bred +by the conditions about him. In the Raytown district of Taliaferro +county—about ten miles distant—my maternal grandfather, Joshua Morgan, +lived on his plantation of more than a thousand acres, which he managed +without an overseer. His father had been killed by the tories. His +education had been so scant that he found reading the simplest English +difficult, and to sign his name was the only writing I ever knew him to +do. But his plantation management was the admiration of all his neighbors. +His land was sandy and thin, but he made it yield more than ample support +for his numerous family, his rapidly increasing force of negroes, his +blooded horses, his unusually large number of hogs, cows, sheep, and +goats; and a fair quantity of cotton besides. The slaves loved sweet +potatoes more than any other food, and they were a favorite food in the +Big House. His supplies never failed, there being some unopened “banks or +hills” when the new potatoes came. His hogs were his special attention. +His fine horses required so much corn, and so much more of it was needed +for bread, that he could not feed it lavishly to his hogs. So he developed +a succession of peach orchards, with which he commenced their fattening in +the summer. These were four in all; the first ripened in July and the last +the fourth week in October. The fruit in any particular one ripened at the +same time, and he cared not how many different varieties there were. +Whenever he tasted peaches away from home that he liked, if they were not +from grafted trees, he would carry away the seed, and there was a +particular drawer labelled with the date, into which they were put. +Whenever he had need to plant a tree whose fruit was desired at that +particular time of the year, the seed was planted where he wanted the +tree. Many of his neighbors planted the seeds in a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>nursery, whence after +a year or two they transplanted the young trees; but my grandfather, as he +told me, saved a year by his method. He was always replanting in place of +injured trees and those he had found to be inferior. The “fattening” +hogs—that is, those to be next killed for meat—were turned into the July +orchard just as soon as the peaches commenced to fall; and they went on +through the rest of the series. There was running water in each orchard. +After peach-time, these hogs ran upon the peas which were now ripe in the +corn fields, the corn having been gathered. And for some two weeks before +they were to be killed they were penned and given all the corn they would +eat. What pride the good planter of that time took in keeping independent +of the Tennessee hog drover, who was the main resource of his rural +neighbors who did not save their own meat, as the phrase then was! +Observing that his hogs were not safe against roving negroes when away +from the house on Sunday, on that day they were kept up. One of my +earliest recollections is that of Old Lige driving them to the spring +branch twice every Sunday. For a long while he tried in various ways to +protect his sheep against worrying dogs. At last he had them “got up” +every night in some enclosure he wished to enrich near enough to the Big +House for his own dogs to be aware of any invasion by strangers, and he +never had a sheep worried afterwards. The foregoing is enough to suggest +the whole of the system. The management of its different trains and many +separate departments upon an up-to-date railroad was not superior in +punctuality and due discharge of every duty. He lived well, entertained +hospitably, and kept out of debt. Mr. Thomas E. Watson has lately given a +graphic description of good plantation conduct,<a name='fna_98' id='fna_98' href='#f_98'><small>[98]</small></a> which ought to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> +considered by all those who now believe that every planter was necessarily +slipshod and slovenly in his vocation. It was a good training school for +the born business man. Let me give an example to show how extensive +planting bred experts in affairs. The Southern Mutual fire insurance +company—its principal office being at Athens, some forty miles distant +from Toombs’s home—at the beginning of the brothers’ war had for some +years almost driven all other insurers out of its territory. It is still +such a favorite therein that it is hardly exaggeration to state that its +competitors must content themselves with its leavings. The plan of this +great company is a novel form of co-operative insurance—indeed, I may +say, it is unique. It was invented, developed, and most skilfully worked +forward into a success which is one of the wonders of the insurance world. +The men who did this were never any of them reputed to be of exceptional +talents. They had merely grown up in the best rural business circles of +the old south. A similar fact explains the mastery of money, banking, and +related matters which Calhoun acquired in a locality of South Carolina, +not forty miles distant from Washington, Georgia. It also explains why +Toombs, bred in the interior and far away from large cities, had perfectly +acquired the commercial law; had complete knowledge of the principles and +practice of banking, and those of all corporate business, and also a +familiarity with the fluctuating values of current securities equalling +that of experts.</p> + +<p>He was also, as I know, almost a lightning calculator, and fully +indoctrinated in the science of accounts.</p> + +<p>Surely this man, now thirty-five, is ripe for congress.</p> + +<p>January 12, 1846, the United States house of representatives having under +consideration a resolution of notice to Great Britain to abrogate the +convention between her and the United States, of August 6, 1827, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>relative +to the region commonly called Oregon, Toombs made his congressional debut.</p> + +<p>It is an able speech for a new member—especially for one grappling with a +question peculiar to a part of the country so far away from his own. +Convinced that the adoption of the resolution could give no just cause of +offence, he will not yield anything to those who merely cry up the +blessings of peace. The warlike note is deep and earnest. Then comes the +most original part of the speech. Showing great familiarity with the facts +and the applicable international law, he does his utmost to prove that the +title of each country is bad; and it seems to me that he succeeds. He +urges that the time has arrived when American settlers are ready to pour +into Oregon. “Terminate this convention and our settlements will give us +good title.”</p> + +<p>Of course I believe that Calhoun’s policy, as I have explained it above, +was the true one, and that we should have continued the convention as to +joint occupancy as long as possible. Toombs was bred among the followers +of Crawford, who regarded Calhoun as his rival for the presidency, and I +doubt if he ever did neutralize this early influence enough to enable +himself to do full justice to Calhoun. And as a further palliation, his +combative temperament must be remembered, and also that he had inherited +from a gallant Revolutionary father an extreme readiness to fight England.</p> + +<p>July 1, 1846, he discusses a proposal to reduce import duties in a long +speech, carefully premeditated as is evident. He shows great familiarity +with Adam Smith, economical principles, fluctuations in prices of leading +commodities, and the consequences of affecting legislation. Its main +interest here is the detailed argument in its concluding passages against +the expediency of free trade, of which he afterwards became an advocate.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>January 8, 1847, a speech on the proposed increase of the army is his next +considerable effort. He denounces the Mexican war as unjust in its origin, +but he reprehends its feeble conduct. He is very strong, from the southern +standpoint, in what he says of the Wilmot proviso. Here is a passage +characteristic of Toombs later on:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The gentleman from New York [Grover] asked how the south could +complain of the proposed proviso accompanying the admission of new +territory, when the arrangement was so very fair and put the north and +south on a footing of perfect equality. The north could go there +without slaves, and so could the south. Well, I will try it the other +way. Suppose the territory to be open to all; then southerners could +go and carry slaves with them, and so could northerners. Would not +this be just as equal? [Much laughter.] I will not answer for the +strength of the argument, but it is as good as what we of the south +get. [Laughter.]”</p> + +<p>Winthrop, who followed, commences by deprecating the necessity that +exposed him to the disadvantage of contrast with a speech which had +attracted so much attention and admiration. And Stephens praised the +effort greatly.<a name='fna_99' id='fna_99' href='#f_99'><small>[99]</small></a></p> + +<p>December 21, 1847, Toombs offered a resolution in the house, that neither +the honor nor interest of the republic demand the dismemberment of Mexico, +nor the annexation of any of her territory as an indispensable condition +to the restoration of peace.</p> + +<p>His Taylor speech of July 1, 1848, evinces warm whig partisanship.</p> + +<p>In his first years at the bar he loitered a while as a speaker. And one +who studies his record in congress discerns that it is some two years +before he commences to feel easy as a member of the house. The speeches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> +which I have mentioned above, with the solitary exception of that of +January 8, 1847, are labored communication of cram rather than the +peculiar language of the speaker who, when I commenced to observe him a +few years later on the stump, had become a marvel both of strong thinking +and fit expression extempore.</p> + +<p>I detect a gleam of the coming man, when August 4, 1848, and February 20, +1849, he exhibits his inveterate hostility to maintaining and increasing +an army in time of peace. Next he begins his lifelong war upon high +salaries, and the extravagance and waste of congressional printing. Note +what he says February 29, 1848, advocating reduction of salaries of patent +examiners; and his denouncing the evil of congress’s publishing +agricultural works, in two speeches, the one made March 20, 1848, the +other January 18, 1849. These are short, but strong, and their forcible +style gives sure promise that the true Toombs is at hand. He suddenly +found his real self in December, 1849, when his lead towards secession +commenced, as I shall detail later. After that date he soon becomes one of +the strongest and most influential members; and especially one whose +speech greatly attracts audience. I must support this assertion by the +record. With my limited space I must be very brief. My trouble is that the +many examples which I could use are all so good it is hard to decide what +must be left out. While I shall always give dates, so that my statements +can be checked by reference to the <i>Globe</i>, I need not confine myself +strictly to the order of time.</p> + +<p>His mastery of parliamentary law is a good subject to begin with.</p> + +<p>January 18, 1850, it was moved that the sergeant-at-arms act as doorkeeper +until one be elected. The chair decided that the question affected the +organization of the house and was therefore one of privilege. On an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> +appeal there was much discussion. Here is the part played by Toombs:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“<i>Mr. Toombs.</i> I apprehend that the speaker has committed error. This +is not an office known to the law; it was created only by the rules of +the house. The office of speaker and clerk alone are known to the +law.... It is not every officer whom by their rules they may choose to +appoint, that is necessary to the organization of the house. Suppose +that by a rule they provided for the appointment of a bootblack; could +a resolution for his appointment be made a question of privilege to +arrest and override all other business?</p> + +<p>Mr. Bayley inquired of the gentleman from Georgia if a rule was not as +clearly obligatory upon the house as a law.</p> + +<p><i>Mr. Toombs.</i> It is; but its execution is not a question of +organization.”</p></div> + +<p>A reversal was the result.</p> + +<p>The following took place February 20, 1851, and is a good illustration of +his forcible way of putting things:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“<i>Mr. Toombs.</i> (Interrupting Mr. Stanton) called the gentleman to +order. The committee ought not to tolerate this custom of speaking to +matters not immediately before it.</p> + +<p><i>The Chairman.</i> Does the gentleman from Georgia raise the point of +order that the remarks of the gentleman from Tennessee are not in +order because they have no reference to the bill before the committee.</p> + +<p><i>Mr. Toombs.</i> My point is that debate upon steamboats is not in order +upon a pension bill.</p> + +<p><i>The Chairman.</i> I decide the gentleman is in order. It has been +invariable practice to permit such debate in committee of the whole on +the state of the union.</p> + +<p><i>Mr. Toombs.</i> The practice may have been permitted; but it was wrong.”</p></div> + +<p>On appeal by Toombs the chairman was reversed.</p> + +<p>Though Toombs—a whig—had stubbornly opposed the candidacy of Howell +Cobb—a democrat—he soon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> became to the latter, after his election as +speaker, the leading parliamentary authority. Often there would be +confused clamor and wild disorder, nearly every member proposing +something. At a loss himself, Cobb would look at Toombs and see him +intently conning his Jefferson. Soon he would rise, and being recognized +by the speaker at once, would forthwith suggest the right thing.</p> + +<p>The foregoing was often told by Cobb, as his friends have informed me.</p> + +<p>February 24, 1853, he shows up the bad consequences of overpaid offices, +the duties of which the holders can hire others to do for half of its +compensation; and March 2, the same year, he thus speaks of a cognate +evil:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The gentleman seems to go upon the principle that as many clerks with +high salaries should be attached to one office as to any other—the +principle of equalizing the patronage of these different offices +without regard to the species of labor required by each.”</p> + +<p>I append here a collection of short extracts from Toombs’s speeches in the +lower house, which illustrate his power to tickle the ear by striking +presentation, epigram, and novel expression:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Debate always Harmless.</i> “A little more experience will show the +gentleman that he is mistaken, and that the absence of discussion here +does not accelerate adjournment. The most harmless time which is spent +by the house, he will find, is that spent in discussion.” February 17, +1852.</p> + +<p><i>Nominees of National Conventions.</i> “What are the fruits of your +national conventions?... They have brought you a Van Buren, a +Harrison, a Polk, and a General Taylor.... I mean no disparagement to +any one of these. All of them but one [Van Buren] have paid the last +debt of nature, and the one who survives, unfortunately for himself, +has survived his reputation.” July 3, 1852.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span><i>Two Classes of Economists.</i> “There is a class of economists who will +favor any measure by which they can cut off wrong or extravagant +expenditures. But there is another class who are always preaching +economy—who are always ready to apply the rule of economy and get +economical in every case except that before the house.” February 17, +1852.</p> + +<p><i>Principles of Banking.</i> “If we intend to regulate the business of +banking in this District, the bill does too little; if we do not, it +does too much, As it does not seek to control generally the business +of banking, but permits the issue of notes greater than five dollars, +it violates the principles of unrestrained banking, but does not go to +the extent of regulation by law. I think the public are more likely to +suffer, and to a greater extent, from bank issues above five dollars +than those under that amount.” January 11, 1853.</p> + +<p><i>The Dahlonega Mint, in his own State.</i> “I believe the mints at +Dahlonega, Charlotte, and New York are each unnecessary.... I do not +desire to continue abuses in Georgia any more than in New York. I am +willing to pull up all abuses by the root.... I think the existing +mint is adequate to the wants of the country.” February 17, 1853.</p> + +<p><i>Personal Explanations in Debate of Appropriations.</i> “I believe that +with all the abuses we have had in the discussion of appropriation +bills, we have never had personal explanations.” February 21, 1850.</p></div> + +<p>Toombs is now about to leave the lower for the upper house. He has grown +in all directions in the qualifications and powers marking the good +representative. There is no other man in the house, from either section, +whose ability is superior or whose promise greater. Three days before his +career in the United States senate begins, he made the following appeal, +protesting against hasty and reckless expenditure, which seems to me a +model of matter and extemporaneous expression:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“In this bill the fortification bill is introduced; and provision made +for private wagon ways for Oregon and California. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> is in it an +appropriation of $100,000 to pay somebody for the discovery of ether. +You have a provision for a Pacific railroad; and you have job upon job +to plunder the government in the military bill;—and the +representatives of the people are called upon to vote on all these +grave questions under five minutes’ speeches. You do gross injustice +to yourselves; you betray great interests of the people when you act +upon such important measures in this manner. Let the house reject the +amendments; let the senate devote its time to maturing bills, and send +them to us to be acted upon deliberately; and then whichever way +congress determines for itself, it will have a right so to do. But to +act upon them in this way, is not only to abdicate our powers, but to +abdicate our duties. Put your hands upon these amendments and strike +them out.” March 1, 1853.</p> + +<p>Manifestly all that he had learned of the pending bill was from having +heard it read. The instant apprehension and accurate statement, and the +exhaustion of the subject in far shorter time than his small +allowance—these recall what I often heard Stephens say, “No one else has +ever made such perfect and telling impromptus as Toombs.”</p> + +<p>His famous Hamilcar outburst did not consume all of his five minutes.</p> + +<p>Toombs was United States senator from March 4, 1853, until the spring of +1861. His peculiarities must be suggested. Although he was perhaps the +ablest lawyer in the senate, loved the profession with all the ardor of +first love, and had great cases with large fees offered him every day, he +resolutely subordinated law practice to his congressional duties. He did +much practice, but it was all in the vacations of congress. He did not +seek office. There is not to be found, so far as I know, a trace of any +aspiration of his during his congressional career for other than the place +of senator. If on a special committee, he worked energetically; but he +avoided the standing committees. He says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>“It is only occasionally that +I go to the committee meetings to make a quorum to act on important business. I do not attend them one day more +than I am obliged to, for I am quite sure it is not my duty unless +charged with a certain subject. This whole machinery is a means of +transferring the legislation of the country from those to whose hands +the constitution commits it to irresponsible juntas.... I say general +standing committees, without any exception, are great nuisances, and +they ought to be abolished.... They are not proper bodies to exercise +legislative powers. They are not known in the country from which we +derive our institutions. The English have no standing committees. They +raise special committees on special objects.”<a name='fna_100' id='fna_100' href='#f_100'><small>[100]</small></a> February 18, 1859.</p> + +<p>“The general business of the country,” as he expressed it, January 10, +1859, that was his concern. Each subject requiring the action of the +senate, whether important or trivial, received his industrious attention, +as his course and language on the floor always show; and he evidently +feels it his duty to furnish the body on all questions the utmost +instruction and aid that he can possibly give. He had no ambition to be +the author of novel measures—he was strenuous only to bestow upon every +subject of current legislation the proper consideration. His premeditated +efforts are but few. He never shows any distrust of his offhand faculty. +He takes part in nearly all the discussions, often being up several times +the same day on the same subject. He is seldom lengthy, hardly ever away +from the point needing explanation, and never, never dull. Generally he +comes with correcting fact or enlightening principle, and it is seldom +that his matter and words are not both impressive. I found it well in +writing the Life mentioned above to present the most of his senatorial +course by assorting his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> utterances under their proper heads, with the +briefest possible comment, rather than to narrate chronologically in the +common way of biographers. In his speeches it is only now and then that he +is steadily progressive as he was in the Iowa contested election case. His +advocacy or opposition is generally founded upon a principle, and from +this principle—usually central and self-evident—the different passages +radiate in aphorisms, self-supporting paragraphs, and detached +arguments,—this common radiation being their only connection. Accordingly +if you know what is the particular subject that is under discussion, a +part taken at random anywhere from any of his extempore speeches is nearly +always complete in itself and fully intelligible. Therefore we can have +him to give in his own words, in a comparatively small space, an +approximately full collection of the rich and varied teachings of his +senatorial career, although our chrestomathy would appear to one putting +it beside the unmutilated report of the <i>Globe</i> as a beggarly and jejune +abstract. I know of no other public man with whom this can be as +satisfactorily done. Of course the compilation made by me, as just told, +cannot be given here. He challenged every bad and defended every good +measure. He is on record both by speech, nearly always hitting the nail on +the head, and by vote, nearly always right, upon every one. What he did in +the house deserves close attention; but his actings and doings in the +senate, to which he belonged from March 4, 1853, until shortly after his +famous speech of January 7, 1861, when he left to go with his seceding +State, are such that I challenge all students of history to produce a +single example of such earnest grappling with and able handling of so many +matters of importance in so short a time—not eight full years—by any +member of ancient or modern parliaments.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>Having now, I hope, aroused my readers to some faint conception of +Toombs’s greatness as a senator in non-sectional matters, I must bring +that greatness into fuller view, if I can. I therefore add to the +foregoing catalogue the rough character sketch next following.</p> + +<p>We begin with his devotion to his duties. One examining the <i>Globe</i> will +hardly find any other member who calls as often for the reading of the +reports accompanying bills to pay private claims, and such other small +matters; and he will always observe that his immediate comment shows that +he has fully taken in what has been read. He said once, “I have been +reproached half a dozen times within the last two days as being rather +fractious because I desired to understand the business on which I was +called to vote.” August 3, 1854.</p> + +<p>The alert and intelligent vigilance which he gives every measure proposed +seems superior to that of all his colleagues. They acknowledge this by the +many inquiries they make of him for information as to pending bills. Thus +June 20, 1860, Green asks him where is the amendment? when was it adopted? +has the house disagreed to it? has it been before a committee? etc., and +every query is answered without hesitation. This but examples how the +other senators very often made a convenience of Toombs’s accurate note of +what was passing.</p> + +<p>He shows a like readiness upon facts of history—especially English and +American—on clauses of the constitution, or statutes, or treaties, +provisions of the law of nations, principles of political economy, +institutions, commercial systems, customs of particular nations, and all +such topics as may illustrate the pending question, however suddenly it +may have risen. And so he discusses every matter, grave or trivial, with +perfect grasp of the proposition submitted, and with fullness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> of +knowledge and understanding. He avoids strained and over-ingenious +reasoning. Plain and safe men never disparaged his arguments by calling +them hair-splitting or metaphysical. But though he took his stand upon the +palpable meaning of undisputed facts and the most plainly applicable +doctrines of reason and justice, he displayed an unparalleled power of +formulating in intelligible and striking words the key principles of +common affairs. This gift always found instant appreciation with practical +men, and they admired it as genius. Though he has his eye ever open to +principle, he is the very opposite of the mere doctrinaire. He is +practical, and always pushing business on, except when the bills depleting +the treasury—to use his favorite name for them—are up and likely to pass +because of the coalition between the opposition and the fishy democrats +which he is always exposing with exhaustless variety of language. Only +then he prefers to do nothing.</p> + +<p>As to his own measures, he changes words, accepts amendments—in short +makes every concession which will gain him the substance of his desire.</p> + +<p>We will here say a little of him as a speaker. He thus describes himself:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“I speak rapidly; but the idea which I intend to utter generally comes +out, sometimes perhaps with too much plainness of speech. What I say, +I mean; and the whole of what I mean generally gets out.” July 30, 1856.</p> + +<p>He shows in the following a contemptuous opinion of written speeches:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“As a general rule a speech that is fit to be spoken is not fit to be +printed, and one fit to be printed is not fit to be spoken.... The +senator from New York [Seward] comes in with his already in type; +other gentlemen around me, on both sides of the house, from all +sections of the union, who think proper to write<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> essays, bring them +here and read them to the senate.... I am not objecting to their +character, but I would rather read them in my room. Of course nobody +pays any attention to them here.” April 22, 1858.</p> + +<p>He did not habitually correct the report of his speeches, as he says May +13, 1858; at the same time entering a general disclaimer as to all that he +does not report himself. This disclaimer must not be pressed too far. If +you are familiar with the man you need not fear being led astray by the +inaccuracies, the number of which he greatly exaggerates. His stamp is so +unmistakable that you always know what is his. Extempore discussion was +his forte. Therefore nearly all the quotations I use in the Life which I +have written I intentionally take from his shorter, impromptu, and +evidently unrevised speeches. These unlabored effusions, it matters not +how dry or small the particular theme may be, have generally the double +merit of showing the true solution and refreshing with figure, apt +illustration, or wit.<a name='fna_101' id='fna_101' href='#f_101'><small>[101]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>In important debate he is conspicuously the strongest man in the senate. +We will run over the leading ones:</p> + +<p>July 28, 1854, a bill containing appropriations for places in nearly every +one of the States came up. Through the long debate he evinces uncommon +power and readiness. He is too tart in rejoinder, and too much gives the +rein to invective.</p> + +<p>In the two days’ debate of the mail steamer appropriation—February 27, +28, 1855,—he distinguishes himself.</p> + +<p>February 6, 1856, Toombs, with Hunter and Toucey, supports a resolution +proposing the origination of appropriation bills in the Senate. Sumner and +Seward take the other side. The argument of Seward is very elaborate, +notwithstanding his declaration at the outset that he is wholly +unprepared. It is demolished by Toombs in his most crushing style. Note, +too, how accurate the latter is as to the proceedings of the +constitutional <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>convention, how familiar he is with the abuses of wild +appropriations which he is trying to correct, and how graphically he +depicts them.</p> + +<p>July 28, 1856, the Black Lake harbor appropriation is the subject. All +that he says is noticeable for power; especially his replies to +interruptions by Pugh, Wade, and Cass. Though the bill was passed over his +head, as you read the report you feel that his was the actual triumph.</p> + +<p>July 30, 1856, another debate of river and harbor improvements. It is +begun by Hunter. Benjamin takes the lead in support of the bill; Toombs +joins discussion with the latter, who by his coolness and adroitness for a +while foils his adversary; but soon Toombs gets his feet firmly on the +constitution, and still more firmly upon the injustice of extorting the +support of commerce from other interests, and he is resistless. The +disputants often put questions to one another. Toombs’s promptness to +answer every adverse position is a taking exhibition. It is to be noted +that many sparkling sentences are struck out of him by the incessant +hammering of the others. At the close, he seems either to have wearied or +silenced his opponents. One cannot but feel that this is no arena for a +man who can make only written speeches.</p> + +<p>August 4, 1856, the subject being the improvement of the Mississippi, +Toombs urges that the valley is prosperous, and it should improve its +river. The examination he gives the question is profoundly searching. +Towards the conclusion of the debate, Cass reads the counter doctrine of +Calhoun, in the report of latter to the Memphis convention, his reason +being, as he says: “I will confess frankly my object in reading it. The +senator from Georgia has treated the question with great ability; and I +want the same vehicle that carries<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> his remarks to the public to carry +also the opinions and views of Mr. Calhoun, whose authority is vastly +better than mine.”</p> + +<p>Through the whole of this debate the faculty and force exhibited by Toombs +are wonderful even for him.</p> + +<p>Consider all that he says of the proper management of the post-office, +February 28, 1859.</p> + +<p>January 30, 1860, there was an animated debate, which occupied the morning +and was renewed in the evening. The vigorous blows which he deals the +coalition passing the appropriations—ever the theme of his severest +reprehension—and the review he makes of each item in the appropriation +bill, taken all in all, are high feats.</p> + +<p>His conduct, January 6, 1857, in the Iowa contested election manifests +such rare courage against party and section for the right that it must be +told at some length. We think it belongs with the more important matters +just noticed rather than to its chronological place.</p> + +<p>Harlan, a republican, had been sitting for some time as a senator from +Iowa. There was no contestant. The adverse report was grounded upon a +protest of the Iowa senate, stating that that body did not participate in +the so-called joint convention which had affected to elect Harlan. It +appeared that both houses of the Iowa legislature had met in joint +convention, had balloted without result, and the convention had adjourned +to meet at 10 A. M. the next day. On this day the senate—the majority of +its members manifestly being democrats and opposed to the sense of the +joint majority—met in their own chamber and adjourned before the hour +appointed for the assembling of the convention. But a majority of the +senate were present in the convention when it made the election—several +of them having been brought in by the sergeant-at-arms, and who protested +that they did not act in the proceedings.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> In the United States senate the +democrats were in a majority, but Toombs, who was always above mere party +considerations, supported the cause of Harlan, saying afterwards, “I +maintained his title, black Republican though he was, because I believed +it stood on right.” February 15, 1858. The decision was against Harlan; +but I do not think that an unbiased man who regards mere technical rules +as no more than the instruments of justice, will fail to concur with +Toombs. His treatment of the subject is extremely good and entertaining. +Every material fact is given prominence; every important distinction +taken, as, for instance, that the convention, as it could do no +legislative act and did not require the concurrence of the executive, was +not really the legislature, but only the persons constituting the +legislature acting in a body of their own as electors; and further, his +position that after the convention had organized it could proceed with the +election as long as it had a quorum. Having completed a most lawyer-like +and concatenated argument, which is a wonderful exhibition of concise and +exhaustive extemporaneous reasoning, he rises to the higher plane of +statesmanship and justice, in which he shows in a vivid light what a +monstrous evil it would be to approve the factious withdrawal of the +majority of the Iowa senate from the convention. Note especially the many +questions asked him by different members, and the readiness and +satisfactoriness of his answers.<a name='fna_102' id='fna_102' href='#f_102'><small>[102]</small></a> It is all in all one of the best +samples of Toombs’s dispassionate debate to which I can refer. Very +probably the democrats would have done right by Harlan had it not been for +Bayard’s argument, the special effectiveness of which was the use he made +of the case of his own election, in 1839, to the United States senate by +the Delaware legislature. As he stated it, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> was this: There being a +majority of one in the Delaware house of representatives in favor of the +opposite party, a majority of that house refused to go into the joint +balloting. Bayard was elected, and it was maintained by his party, the +democrats, that a majority of the members of the two houses had authority +to proceed; but he hesitated, and at last consulted Silas Wright, of New +York. The latter gave a decided opinion that such an election was invalid. +Whereupon Bayard succumbed, and his State was without a senator for two +years. I cannot help feeling that if Wright had considered the subject and +bottomed it on true principle, as Toombs afterwards did, Bayard would have +settled down in the opposite conclusion, and he and Toombs in concert +would have forced their fellow-democrats of the United States senate into +doing justice to an opponent.</p> + +<p>Many have been superior to Toombs in making perfect orations, but it is +hard to find in any deliberative body a match for him as a debater. +Charles Fox was a giant; but he did not have the strength, the grip, the +never remitted activity, the infinite thrust, the parry, illustration, +wit, epigram, and invincible appeal to conscience, feeling, and reason—in +short, the complete supply and command of all resources that marked Toombs +as foremost in the pancratium of parliamentary discussion. It ought to add +inexpressible brightness to his fame that he sought for no triumphs except +those of justice and good policy. He was far more than a mere logician in +debate. His brilliant snatches, his sudden uprisings, his thawing humor, +and flashing wit—all these did their part as effectively in winning favor +and working suasion as his array of facts and his ratiocination did theirs +in convincing. He was too prone to use harsh language towards the other +side. There are many places in his speeches where I wish he had used soft +instead of bitter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> words. That he could observe perfect parliamentary +propriety there are proofs in the <i>Globe</i>. Especially would I refer to his +behavior in the Harlan debate, spoken of a moment ago, and his discussion +of the Indiana senatorial election, June 11, 1858. Note the last +especially (belonging volume, 2943-2947) for his moderation, courtesy, and +invitation of question while he is most ably supporting the central +proposition he had before urged in the Iowa case.</p> + +<p>Yet, in spite of his occasional vehemence and acrimonious language, he +seems to have the respect and regard of even his most decided political +opponents. Wade and he recognize each the great merit of the other. Once +after applauding his honesty and frankness, Toombs says of him: “He and I +can agree about everything on earth until we get to our sable population, +I do believe.” March 22, 1858.</p> + +<p>Wade had already said this of Toombs: “I commend the bold and direct +manner in which the senator from Georgia always attacks his opponents.” +February 28, 1857.</p> + +<p>February 8, 1858, Fessenden said, “I am very happy to get that admission +from the senator from Georgia. It is made with his customary frankness and +clearness.”</p> + +<p>Hale also respects him. January 23, 1857, he says that Toombs ought to +have been on the bench, complimenting his desire for justice and fairness +as well as his legal ability.</p> + +<p>The northern democrat Simmons loves to praise him, as is evidenced by what +he says June 2, 1858, February 9, 1859, and June 23, 1860.</p> + +<p>Such unsought and spontaneous commendations of the great southern partisan +by northern men during the heat of sectional agitation are extraordinarily +strong proofs of his high character as well as great genius.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>Of course the southern members showed their appreciation. Especially note +what Bayard says March 21, 1860, and what Butler says January 6, 1857. I +could give many more such; but I shall only add here how, February 14, +1860, by reason of the importunate urgency of some of these, evidently +regarding him as the special southern champion, he is pushed into making +an able rejoinder to Hale, who had just concluded a reply to Toombs’s +speech on the Invasion of States.</p> + +<p>Toombs’s inflexible keeping to what he deemed the right course parallels +the absolute fearlessness with which Julius Cæsar, when a young man, clung +to the wife whom the all-powerful and bloody-minded Sulla commanded him to +put away. The Sulla of America are the people in their unconscientious +moments, and unpopularity the proscription threatened which disquiets +almost all public men with torturing apprehension. And so there is in +nearly every one some admixture of the trimmer. But Toombs never showed +fear either of the people at large or of those of his own State and +locality. He thus scourges juries assessing the value of land condemned +for the government:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“It has come to such a pass that in getting places for the army, it +seems to be considered better to be cheated by the owners of a site +out of a few hundred thousand for $10,000 worth of property rather +than trust a jury.” June 12, 1860.</p> + +<p>When he uttered the following he knew it was extremely unpalatable to his +section:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“The southern States from their sparseness of population do not pay +all their postal expenses. The whole mail service of the south ought +to pay its whole expenses, and I am ready to put it on that ground.... +I say the point to retrench is in the south.” February 28, 1859.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>The following distasteful lesson he read his own State:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“I know that some of the mail routes in my own neighborhood were taken +away, and I never was consulted about them, and I never thought it was +the duty or business of the postmaster-general to consult me. I have +not been to his office during this winter in regard to a single one; +and I have been very much complained of, even in my own county and +town, on account of it.... I have a word to say about the <i>Isabel</i>. +She touches at Savannah; and I have received memorials from people, +letters from interested people, from the Savannah chamber of commerce, +and others, saying, ‘By all means keep up the <i>Isabel</i>; we want it.’ +It is a very popular thing; it is a good ship, and has done its duty +well. What have I to do but follow my uniform line of policy, and give +them the same rules as everybody else? Sixteen years’ experience +here—and I was here in 1847, when this steamship system +commenced—have satisfied me that congressional contracts are always +unwise, and are the fruitful sources of boundless legislative +corruption. Therefore, I will never sustain one under any necessity +whatever.” May 28, 1860.</p> + +<p>February 22, 1859, though Iverson, his companion from Georgia, was the +other way, he advocated abolishing the mint at Dahlonega in that State, +and the mint also in North Carolina.</p> + +<p>The last instance we cite is his declaration, April 25, 1856, that he had +always voted against a claim of the daughter of Governor Irvin of Georgia.</p> + +<p>And to this proud independence he was without spot of corruption. This was +never questioned but once. May 13, 1858, he was taunted for having +supported the Galphin claim. When at last he sees that the charge is +seriously urged, in a becoming glow he demands an explanation. A +disclaimer of reflection upon his character being made, he gives a +detailed account of the claim,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> his steady support of it, and a complete +justification of George W. Crawford in the affair. At its close, Hammond +of South Carolina, who was familiar with all the details, bestowed upon it +his unqualified voucher. The lofty spirit and just indignation informing +this statement of Toombs from beginning to end distinguish it as that of +one who has kept out of dark places and walked so purely in the light that +accusation is far more of a surprise than insult.<a name='fna_103' id='fna_103' href='#f_103'><small>[103]</small></a></p> + +<p>He never showed any symptom of the presidential fever, which, to say +nothing of its many other victims, enfeebled each one of the great +trio,—Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Fully content with his place in the +senate, he did not look elsewhere. Taking popularity at its exact worth; +candid and frank to the extreme; contented in the course dictated by his +judgment and conscience though opposed by his people or party and his own +private interest; in no bargains with men nor smirching connections with +women, doing nothing in secret which, if published, would bring a blush; +elevated above the amiable weaknesses of unwise benevolence, ever +championing with all his powers the righteous cause of the weak and +unpopular,—as exampled in his maintaining the claims of certain persons +in Louisiana to the Houmas land against the formidable opposition of the +two senators from that State, in his extraordinarily eloquent appeal for +the naval officers retired without a hearing, in his heroic endeavor to +have his party seat the republican Harlan; incorruptible and really +consistent forever and always,—when he is scrutinized as a public man his +character rises into a grandeur of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> unselfishness, firmness of high +purpose, honesty, and power to show and do the right almost superhuman. It +stands by itself awe-striking and imposing.</p> + +<p>But let us particularize the special lesson of his senatorial career. We +must begin by suggesting his peculiar bent. It is clear that he chose as +his province commerce and industry, with the related themes of political +economy, finance, the currency, taxation, the tariff, the principles of +exchange and distribution, and so on.<a name='fna_104' id='fna_104' href='#f_104'><small>[104]</small></a> He probably had the best +business insight of all our prominent statesmen, Calhoun even not +excepted. Though Hamilton and Webster—the former especially—evince +titanic comprehension of financial theory, yet we see from their lives and +poor money-saving success that commercial and business affairs were not to +them both practice and theory as they were to Toombs. Of all his peers he +was most at home in the ways and principles which dictate proper +legislation as to trade and business. To judge by his words, uttered year +in and year out, nobody else ever saw more clearly that there ought to be +no tariff, improvement, job, or any other pets of government. The latter +should not foster such a class, yearly increasing in number, as it always +will, living idly and luxuriously upon the public income, that is, upon +the labor and property of others. This class supplants the vigorous +products of natural selection by pampered fatlings of bounty, always +raising their demands for support, and ever more and more clamorously +calling for the suppression of all self-supporting competition at home and +abroad. With the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> moral hardihood of Shakspeare, who shrinks not from +rudely shocking our feelings by making Henry V discard his old boon +companion Falstaff, Toombs never wearied of proclaiming the unpopular +truth that the government ought not to be the helper, guardian, patron, +protector, guarantor, surety, almoner, of any of its citizens. Ponder +these stout-hearted and golden words of his, although the evil represented +therein is now established and magnified into dimensions far beyond what +he could conceive when they were said—an evil, to suppress which let us +hope all patriots will soon unite:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Whenever the system shall be firmly established that the States are +to enter into a miserable scramble for the most money for their local +appropriations, and that senator is to be regarded the ablest +representative of his State who can get for it the largest slice of +the treasury, from that day public honor and property are gone, and +all the States are disgraced and degraded.” February 27, 1857.</p> + +<p>He is always preaching against the heinous abuse of diverting government +from impartially guarding the whole community and making it profit only a +few. His text is never far-fetched. He finds it in the proposed +legislation of the day, which it is his duty to consider in his place. He +cares not that he makes no present effect. Just before Bell’s bill for +improving the Cumberland river was passed, he said of it and its +companions: “These bills are passing <i>sub silentio</i>, and I suppose attempt +to resist is wholly useless. I wish it understood that I do not assent to +their passage. I am opposed to all of them.” February 24, 1855.</p> + +<p>He sees that the appropriations for harbors and rivers, lighthouses, +private claims, pensions, etc., are almost as baneful as was the +distribution of corn to the Roman populace, and yet the people everywhere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> +are eager for the corrupting gifts. Against his party, against many of his +section, he fights alone and single-handed, reminding of Horatius keeping +the bridge against the Etruscan host. Though always outvoted, he behaves +with spirit and dignity. Either he, or some one of the faithful few who +act with him in the slim minority, always have the yeas and nays recorded. +His grand purpose was to appeal to the American people upon an issue +involving the article of his creed which he had held up with so much +puissance and fidelity in days of evil report. These words contain the +motto of the long contest which occupied all of his non-sectional career +in the senate:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I think every one of these bills should be considered. I do not wish +to have them considered in such a manner as improperly to occupy the +time of the senate. I desire to spread before the country reasonable +information. That is the only purpose we can have now; because the +combination is sufficient to carry everything that the committee +report. But there is a day of reckoning to come; and I trust that +those who support this system will be called to judgment.”</p> + +<p>“I desire the truth to go to the honest people all over the country. +Let the taxpayers look at this matter; let the jobbers beware. ‘To +your tents, O Israel!’” July 29, 1856.</p></div> + +<p>The sectional agitation, mounting higher and higher, as Toombs said often, +blinded the people to this great subject. Secession came, and his +State—to him the only sovereign—called the solitary combatant away from +the ground that ought to be kept forever in loving memory for his long, +desperate, thrice-valiant stand. And the world should also remember that +the clauses of the constitution of the Confederate States, “prohibiting +bounties, extra allowances, and internal improvements,” came from +him.<a name='fna_105' id='fna_105' href='#f_105'><small>[105]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>The struggle that wins our deliverance from the monopolists now causing us +to go hungry, cold, and unshod is yet to be. I cannot say when; but I know +it will come soon, and that the people will conquer. As in that day +Calhoun’s monetary doctrine will be brought out of its obscurity to add +new lustre to his fame, as I believe, so I believe also that the name of +Robert Toombs will become an object of affectionate reverence to all his +countrymen, and the weighty and eloquent sentences in which he sought to +shield general industry from drones and rivals favored by government, and +in which he advocated that the public burdens be reduced to the minimum, +and then apportioned justly,—these stirring words will be quoted +everywhere to receive at last their due audience and favor. And when no +branch of our government either robs or gives to its citizens, Toombs’s +never-remitted, brave, unselfish, and gigantic endeavor to bring on this +millennium ought to be put by Americans in their Sunday-school books. When +we who fought the brothers’ war completely forget and forgive, as we soon +will, it will then be understood how much the sectional agitation impeded +him, and that when he was caught away from the senate by the whirlwind of +secession he was only fifty years old, and of such constitutional vigor +that he had the guaranty of at least a quarter of a century more of +undiminished activity. A fond imagination will inquire: Suppose the energy +spent upon the Kansas discussion; the protection of slavery in the +Territories; in the great speech of January 24, 1860, on the Invasion of +States, and in that of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, his supreme +effort, as most of his admirers claim, could have been saved for themes of +Pan-American concern; and suppose him remaining in the senate, eschewing +all other place, with increasing years loved the more by his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> people for +his courageous fidelity to the right, age assuaging his vehemence and +softening his invective, ripening his judgment and bringing him charity +and wisdom to the full,—to what a height and glory he would have grown!</p> + +<p>If there had been no slavery, I verily believe that the south would have +been the leading and most prosperous part of the union, and that Toombs +would have been the greatest American. Stephens knew Webster, Calhoun, and +Clay. The longer he lived the more positive he became in believing that +Toombs was superior in ability to each one of the three. I have heard him +say often that he had never found anything to which he could compare the +power of Toombs, discussing a great theme extempore, except Niagara.</p> + +<p>Turning back from these unavailing conjectures, I must say a last word as +to that part of Toombs’s career in the senate which I have been +discussing. Its exemplariness is not so much in single great achievements. +It is his uniform attention to the current duties of his place. Whether +the particular duty impending was important or trivial, whether it was +popular or not, it received from him at the proper time whatever effort +was needed for doing it rightly. His performance averages so high in merit +that I cannot find a like. No plodder ever kept more closely to the safe +and beaten path. But he did far more than plod. Almost every day for eight +years he showed how genius can manifest itself fully and fitly and find +its true activity in the common round of affairs; how it can better, +exalt, ennoble, and beautify daily routine. I believe that if you will +reflect over this, you will at last see that such are the greatest of men, +and those that the world most needs.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I now take up Toombs’s sectional career. The aggressive defence of +slavery, looming in sight as Calhoun<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> is within a few months of death, +called for a leader who did not hug the union, and whose eyes were shut to +everything but the justice and sanctity of the southern cause. Calhoun’s +last speech, that of March 4, 1850, was throughout an appeal to the north. +In that same session, and some while before that speech was delivered, the +true apostle of secession begins the proclamation of his mission, and some +time after Calhoun’s death and before the end of the session that +portentous proclamation was complete. Robert Toombs—then in his fortieth +year, and having as yet attained but little conspicuousness in +congress—is the man I mean. His appeal was really to the south.</p> + +<p>Just after the new congress assembled in December, 1849, a caucus of the +whigs, to which party Toombs then belonged, having met to nominate a +candidate for speaker of the house, he introduced a resolution to the +effect that congress ought not to put any restriction upon any State +institution in the Territories, nor abolish slavery in the District of +Columbia, and, the resolution being rejected, Toombs, Stephens, and a +small number of others retired from the caucus, and they did not act any +further with their party in the organization of the house. Toombs and his +following declared their purpose to disregard former connections and side +with whatever party accorded the south the guaranty demanded by the +resolution above mentioned. As these southern whigs, and also fourteen +northern democrats and whigs, would not support for speaker either Cobb, +the democratic nominee, or Winthrop, the whig, neither one of the two +nominees could muster the majority necessary under the rules for election. +Toombs’s tactics were like those of the commons who would not vote the +supplies until the king granted their wishes in other matters. At this +time all the southern democrats and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> a majority of the southern whigs were +opposed to his action. He was leading what appeared to be a hopeless +advance. This is the beginning.</p> + +<p>The next stage is when, after nine days of balloting for speaker without +result, a resolution was introduced declaring Cobb, who had received a +plurality, speaker, when Duer of New York opposing, said he was willing +for the sake of organizing to elect a whig, democrat, or free-soiler—only +that he could not support a disunionist. This manifest reflection upon the +whigs who had held themselves aloof made Toombs break the silence he had +theretofore kept.</p> + +<p>He surprised everybody—perhaps himself—with an impromptu of powerful +argument and burning eloquence. Note, in order to compare it with whatever +utterance of Calhoun you please, these passages:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Sir, I have as much attachment to the union of these States, under +the constitution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to have. I am +ready to concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable +man ought to sacrifice. I will do no more. I have not heeded the +aspersions of those who did not understand or desired to misrepresent +my conduct or opinions. The time has come when I shall not only utter +them, but make them the basis of my political action here. I do not, +then, hesitate to avow before this house and the country, and in the +presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to +drive us from the Territories of California and New Mexico, purchased +by the blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery +in the District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon +half of the States of this confederacy, <i>I am for disunion</i>; and if my +physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of +right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its +consummation.”</p> + +<p>“The Territories are the common property of the United States.... You +are their common agents; it is your duty while they are in the +territorial state to remove all impediments<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> to their free enjoyment +by both sections ... the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. You have +made the strongest declarations that you will not perform this trust; +that you will appropriate to yourselves all the Territories.... Yet +with these declarations on your lips, when southern men refuse to act +with you in party caucuses in which you have a controlling +majority—when we ask the simplest guaranty for the future—we are +denounced out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we +are met with the cry of ‘Union, union!’”</p> + +<p>“Give me securities that the power of the organization which you seek +will not be used to the injury of my constituents, then you have my +co-operation; but not till then.... Refuse them, and, as far as I am +concerned, ‘let discord reign forever.’”</p></div> + +<p>I must emphasize the effect of this speech made December 13, 1849,—nearly +three months before that of Calhoun last mentioned,—and which goes great +lengths beyond anything ever said by Calhoun. The <i>Globe</i> mentions that +the speaker was loudly applauded several times. Stephens, who was present, +says “it received rounds of applause from the floors and the galleries,” +and we can well believe his assertion that it “produced a profound +sensation in the house and in the country.”<a name='fna_106' id='fna_106' href='#f_106'><small>[106]</small></a> Another eye-witness, +Hilliard of Alabama, a southern whig who was not in sympathy with his +refusal to act with his party, relates with rapturous reminiscence the +full-orbed splendor with which Toombs unexpectedly rose upon the house at +this time. He tells: “A storm of applause greeted this speech. Mr. Toombs +had left his desk and taken his stand in the main aisle and the southern +members crowded about him.”<a name='fna_107' id='fna_107' href='#f_107'><small>[107]</small></a></p> + +<p>For completeness and height, and for sudden surprise, this speech exceeds +all impromptus on record. To appreciate it you must recognize it as surely +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>forerunning the future uprising of southerners as one man in what they +deemed the holiest of causes. When you do this you can adapt to it +Webster’s words:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“True eloquence ... does not consist in speech.... It must exist in +the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.... It comes ... like ... +the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous original, +native force.... Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is +eloquent.... This, this is eloquence; or rather it is something +greater and higher than all eloquence—it is action, noble, sublime, +godlike action.”</p> + +<p>The remaining facts of this remarkable session, which show that Toombs and +not Calhoun was the apostle of secession, can now be told very briefly.</p> + +<p>December 14, 1849, debate in the house was prohibited by resolution. On +the 22d the whigs and democrats, in order to organize without agreeing to +the demands of Toombs, joined in a resolution that the person receiving +the largest vote on a certain ballot, if it should be a majority of a +quorum, should be speaker. This was a palpable violation of the rules, but +perhaps authorized by the great emergency. When the resolution was +presented, Toombs, having resolved to prevent any organization until he +had secured the guaranty he was standing for, in defiance of the +prohibition of debate, made a demonstration of his surpassing endowment, +as compared with all other orators, to outmob a hostile mob and scourge +them into respectful audience. He adroitly led Staunton, introducing the +resolution, to yield the floor. Why should he want the floor? The house +had forbidden any discussion, and especially were nine-tenths of them deaf +to him, deeming him the cause of their failure to organize. Announcing his +purpose of discussion, he was called to order. Then a point of order was +raised, which the clerk tried to put. The yeas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> and nays being demanded, +the clerk began to call the roll. There was turmoil and din, but Toombs +held on, denying the right of anybody to interrupt him, supporting his +attack on the resolution by the constitution, the act of 1789, and the +high authority of John Q. Adams, challenging the right of the clerk +calling the names, and indignantly inquiring of the house how they could +so permit an intruder and an interloper in nowise connected with them to +interrupt their proceedings. At the last he forced the house into quiet, +and completed the argument he had risen to make. You will not understand +this marvellous achievement if you deem it, as many do, to have been +prompted by the pride of ostentation and the rage of turbulence. Toombs +was thinking only of securing the rights of his people. He was as earnest +in this cause as ever Webster was for the union. And destiny, +providence,—not himself nor other men,—was in this juncture revealing +him to the south as her leader.</p> + +<p>He now begins to be conscious of his coming leadership, and to feel that +he is an authority and entitled to pronounce <i>ex cathedra</i> upon the +question of southern equality in the disposition of the Territories. +Consequently, February 27, 1850, he made a long speech on the subject of +the admission of California—one far more elaborate and finished than his +average efforts. Especially to be noted is its ending with the famous +words of Troup, “When the argument is exhausted, we will stand by our +arms.”</p> + +<p>One other exploit of Toombs during this session must be told. It crowned +him as the leader of the south.</p> + +<p>Excitement had become intense. The extreme northern partisans for bringing +in California were challenged to answer if they ever would vote to admit a +slave State, and they declined to say that they would. Thereupon came from +Toombs an outburst which is perhaps the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> finest example of his miraculous +extempore declamation which has survived. He did not consume the five +minutes to which he was limited. We append the conclusion, which is a +little more than a third of the whole:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“We do not oppose California on account of the anti-slavery clause in +her constitution. It was her right to exclude slavery, and I am not +even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise—that is her +business; but I stand upon the principle that the south has the right +to an equal participation in the Territories of the United States. I +claim for her the right to enter them all with her property and +securely to enjoy it. She will divide with you, if you wish it; but +the right to enter all, or divide, I shall never surrender. In my +judgment, this right, involving as it does political equality, is +worth a thousand such unions as we have, even if they each were a +thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not for others, but +for myself. Deprive us of this right and appropriate this common +property to yourselves, it is then your government, not mine. Then I +am its enemy, and I will, if I can, bring my children and my +constituents to the altar of liberty, and, like Hamilcar, swear them +to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just rights, +and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the union, every +part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and for one I shall +strike for independence.”</p> + +<p>Stephens, ever a most accurate and trustworthy witness, says that of all +speeches which he heard during his congressional course, which covered the +years 1843-1859, this produced the greatest sensation in the house.<a name='fna_108' id='fna_108' href='#f_108'><small>[108]</small></a> +Its effect outside—that is, in the southern public—was widespread, deep, +and permanent. The comparison with which it closed had been, I believe, +used before; but what of that? It exactly voiced the revolutionary +sentiment which, as his deliverances on the 13th of December before +showed, was beginning to come into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> consciousness in his section. It gave +new impetus to the circulation of the other speeches. The young men of +Georgia, as I know, and perhaps those of other southern States, read them +over and over, reciting with passionate emphasis the most stirring +passages. Especially did they delight to declaim the peroration of the +Hamilcar speech, as that of June 15, 1850, has always been called in +Georgia. To the stump orators, the last mentioned and that of December 13 +became examples which they emulated only to find in their despairing +admiration that parallel was impossible. And even the retiring, quiet, and +elderly people who care for nothing but their daily business caught the +fire. Not long ago, one who is now old, who was entering middle age in +1850, and who has been a stanch union man all his life, told me that he +could not keep from reading these speeches over and over, and whenever he +read one of them, it made him for the time a disunionist.</p> + +<p>The part played by Toombs in the congressional session of 1849-50 seems to +me one of the most wonderful exploits in all parliamentary annals. Since +slavery is gone, and I can at last understand that it was all blessing to +the African and all curse to us, my joy is inexpressible. But I must ever +hold that its defence was one of the noblest efforts of the best of +people. It will soon be understood by the whole world, and especially by +our brothers of the north. They will acknowledge that neither Greek nor +Scot nor Swiss were more manly or heroic than southerners, and the +supporters of the Lost Cause will be crowned with such lustre and glory as +magnify Hannibal succumbing to Rome, or Demosthenes unvailingly stirring +up his country against Macedon. It will forever bring me ecstatic emotion +to recall the many, many places where my fellows suffered or fell at my +side without a murmur. Our victories at the opening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> of the brothers’ war; +then the drawn battles; then the defeats; and the round of sickening +disasters at the end,—all these come thronging back, and I can never be +other than proud of the prowess and endurance of our out-numbered armies, +the energy and untamable spirit of our people, and the devotion of our +blessed women to the weal of our soldiers. I often look back over the +track of what I have called the aggressive defence of slavery. Though it +was disguised under various names, such as the threat of disunion in +certain contingencies by the Georgia Platform, just division of the public +domain between the sections called for by all parties in the south, and +finally the demand for full protection of slavery in the Territories; and +though it was now and then seemingly at rest, that movement from the day +it set in was in reality one directly towards secession, and it kept on as +steadily as the Propontic. And as I look back at the further edge of this +retrospect, marking the beginning, towering above all who took high place +later,—even above Lee and Jackson,—ever comes more plainly into view the +majestic figure of Robert Toombs, revealing his unsuspected power like a +thunderclap from the sunny sky, December 13, 1849, when he extorts wild +acclamations of applause from the majority of southern whigs and all of +the southern democrats, both unanimous against his stand for a guaranty of +congressional non-restriction; a few days later coercing an infuriated +house trying to cry him down into wondering silence; and through the whole +session upholding his cause with such might that the single champion +proves an overmatch for the two parties striking hands against him, and he +finally conquers preaudience and dictation upon the main southern theme.</p> + +<p>I become more and more confident that future history will find the +achievement of Toombs in the session of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> 1849-50 to be the exact point +where the drift towards secession, which had before that been only latent +and potential, becomes actual, and that here is the dawn of the +Confederate States. The more I gaze at it the plainer and redder that dawn +becomes.</p> + +<p>We need not tell the rest of Toombs’s sectional career with much detail. +The all-important part of it historically is its beginning, and how he +vaulted into the lead of the aggressive defence of the south, which I hope +I have adequately told. From this time he showed in all that he did the +quality which Mommsen glorifies in Julius Cæsar,—ready insight into the +possible and impossible. Much discontent manifested itself in Georgia, and +also in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, against the compromise +measures, and especially against the admission of California with its +constitution prohibiting slavery. A convention being called in Georgia to +consider what should be done, there was thorough discussion. An +overwhelming majority of delegates opposing any resistance was elected. To +this result Toombs contributed more than any one else, and he really +shaped the platform finally promulgated by the convention. This—the +Georgia Platform of 1850, as we always called it—is a most important +document to the historian; for it was the weighed and solemn declaration +of some nine-tenths of the people of a pivotal southern State.</p> + +<p>The southern-rights men, as a small but noisy part of the southern people +then called themselves, had mistaken Toombs’s last-mentioned speeches in +congress as declarations for immediate disunion in case California was +admitted under her free constitution; and when he supported the compromise +measures, and also the Georgia Platform, they hotly denounced him as a +turncoat. In their blind fury they could not see, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> everybody else did, +that vehement and fervent language, proper to awaken one’s people from +perilous apathy, may really be at the time understatement, and that, after +the people have awakened, to seek in that same language the counsel of +right action would be the extreme of immoderate folly. The more you +meditate it the more plainly you discern that his leadership was masterly. +From the first to the last his appeal was to the middle class of property +owners—then so numerous that it was practically the whole of southern +society. His object at the first, as he declared, was to make with this +class the protection of their fundamental property interest the prominent +question of national politics. And the end showed that he not only took, +but that he kept, the right road. The Georgia Platform became the bible of +every political following in the State. The next year, 1851, Toombs, still +a whig, supported Howell Cobb, a democrat, for governor against McDonald, +one of the most popular men of the State, the southern-rights candidate. +Toombs’s side, which won by a large majority, was called the union party. +You will not be deceived by this if you keep in mind that Cobb was elected +on the Georgia Platform, which had pledged the people of the State to +resist, even to disunion, certain named encroachments upon slavery which +providence had already ordered to be made.</p> + +<p>In 1848 Yancey had aroused the people of Alabama into demanding that the +United States protect slavery in the Territories, and he advocated +secession in 1850. But in both these things he was premature. As compared +with Toombs he uncompromisingly stood for every tittle of what he believed +were the rights of the south. Toombs was a far more practical and able +opportunist. His falling back upon the Georgia Platform from a much more +advanced position, as I have just told, is an instance.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> I want to give +others. He always declared in private conversation after the war that the +democratic party was ripened and committed by Douglas and his co-workers +to the repeal of the Missouri compromise while he was kept away from +Washington by necessary attention to the interests of a widowed sister, +otherwise, with his commanding position at the time, he would have crushed +the scheme at its first proposal. When he returned to his public duties, +to his amazement he found that every prominent member of the party was +irrevocably for the repeal, and he could do nothing but embrace the +inevitable. Then he would say substantially, “Had it not been for that +administratorship which I could not avoid taking, we would all still be +working our slaves in peace and comfort. That Missouri settlement was not +right, but we had agreed to it; and with me a wrong settlement, when I +agree to it, is just as binding as a righteous one.”</p> + +<p>When others are urging that the United States ought to protect slavery in +the Territories, the record does not show that he is interested at first; +although when at last the question is forced into debate he makes by far +the strongest speech of all in championship of the Davis resolutions. I +believe the current sucked him in.</p> + +<p>Just after Lincoln’s election—an event which influenced nearly all of +even the most moderate elderly people of my acquaintance to declare at +once for a southern confederacy—he proposed that Stephens join with him +in an address to the people of Georgia, counselling that no immediate +secessionist nor non-resistance man be elected to the convention;<a name='fna_109' id='fna_109' href='#f_109'><small>[109]</small></a> and +later he professed willingness to accept the Crittenden compromise.</p> + +<p>The truth is that the ablest leaders, as we call them, do not lead—they +are led. If they should become non-representative, their followers would +go elsewhere.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> And those of these leaders whose influence is the most +potent and permanent are the conservative and moderate. Toombs was never +really ahead in the southern movement except when for a brief while in the +session of 1849-50 he planted the standard far to the front and called his +people forward. Afterwards there were always others who appeared to be +fighting much in advance of him.</p> + +<p>He companioned his people as they steadily developed their readiness for +the dread action commanded by the Georgia Platform if the north should say +not another inch of extension for slavery, and no extradition of fugitive +slaves. Of course he matured in feeling for secession far beyond what +appeared to be his ripeness in 1850. With all his conservatism, he was of +that stuff out of which the most earnest and biased partisans are made. +There are many who can admit nothing against those they love, and a still +larger number who hug their country with a religious acceptance of +everything in it as the best in the world. To him and his people, the +south, under the mighty influence of the nationalization we have +explained, had long been unconsciously displacing the union in their +hearts. As one may learn from his Tremont Temple lecture, he saw and +magnified all of the good in the society to which he belonged, and was as +blind to the bad as a mother is to the faults of her children. He was +often heard to run through an enumeration of southern superiorities. The +courage and valor of the men, the virtue and loveliness of the women, the +purity of the administration of justice and of the performance of all +public duties; especially did he love to say that the honesty of his +section was so well established that its few venal congressmen were like a +woman of easy virtue in a good family, whom the reputation of the latter +keeps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> from solicitation; and he would fall to praising the kingliness of +cotton, the beneficence of slavery both to master and slave, the delicacy +of our yam, the excelling flavor given by crab grass to beef and butter, +the juice of the peach of Middle Georgia, sweeter than nectar, the +incomparable melon, and cap the climax by asserting persimmon beer to be +more acceptable to the palate of a connoisseur than any champagne. And in +the days just preceding the great outbreak he had become more intense in +his deep love for his State and section. The raid of John Brown into +Virginia was, I think, the event which turned the scale with him, and made +him feel that secession was near. Taking the occasion offered by Douglas’s +resolution, directing the judiciary committee to report a bill for the +protection of each State against invasion by the authorities and +inhabitants of other States, January 24, 1860, he delivered in the senate +a speech which we must notice. It is common in Georgia to adopt the eulogy +of Stephens and pronounce the speech of January 7, 1861, justifying +secession, as Toombs’s greatest effort. But I hesitate, unable to decide +which is superior. He states his propositions thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I charge, first, that this organization of the abolitionists has +annulled and made of no effect a fundamental principle of the federal +constitution in many States, and has endeavored and is endeavoring to +accomplish the same result in all non-slaveholding States.</p> + +<p>Secondly, I charge them with openly attempting to deprive the people +of the slaveholding States of their equal enjoyment of, and equal +rights in, the common Territories of the United States, as expounded +by the supreme court, and of seeking to get the control of the federal +government, with the intent to enable themselves to accomplish this +result by the overthrow of the federal judiciary.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>Thirdly, I charge that large numbers of persons belonging to this +organization are daily committing offences against the people and +property of the southern States which, by the law of nations, are good +and sufficient causes of war even among independent States; and +governors and legislatures of States, elected by them, have repeatedly +committed similar acts.”</p></div> + +<p>The facts are reviewed closely and summed up with extraordinary force; the +subject is treated as carefully under the law of nations as under the +constitution; the quotation from Mill’s “Moral Sentiments,” and that from +Thucydides, narrating the successful effort of Pericles in persuading the +Athenians to resort to war rather than concede the right of the Megareans +to receive their revolted slaves, are appositely used; the conviction that +there is no longer safety for the south in the union speaks out in every +line; and, with the exception of a few overheated passages, the entire +speech is from the loftiest height of the statesman who bids his people +arm for self-preservation. Just preceding the peroration there are +paragraphs describing nervously and graphically the great resources of the +south and her rapid development from feeble beginnings, one of which +especially emphasizes the past and present of Virginia, adding at the last</p> + +<p class="poem">“One blast upon her bugle horn<br /> +Were worth a million men.”</p> + +<p>Next before this are words which invoke the northern democracy, but they +seem out of place and foreign. He abruptly ends his appeal to the national +classes who have his respect by saying, “The union of all these elements +may yet secure to our country peace and safety. But if this cannot be +done, peace and safety are incompatible with this union. Yet there is +safety and a glorious future for the south. She knows that liberty in its +last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> analysis is but the blood of the brave. She is able to pay the price +and win the blessing. Is she ready?”</p> + +<p>The last three sentences are the southern correlative of Webster’s soaring +when he magnified the union in his reply to Hayne. They were repeated over +and over by everybody with a wild acceptance utterly without parallel in +my knowledge, and after the election of Lincoln became the war cry of +Georgia.</p> + +<p>The position taken in the very conclusion of this truly Periclean speech +is especially to be attended to here. It is that in the event of the +success of the republican party in the next presidential election the +people of his State must redeem their pledge made nine years before in the +Georgia Platform.</p> + +<p>From this time on he is <i>facile primus</i> of southern champions. Note his +long and elaborate reply to Doolittle, February 27, 1860; the discussion +with Wade, March 7, 1860,—both relating to his speech last noticed above; +and his very able argument, May 21, 1860, on the duty of protecting +slavery in the Territories.</p> + +<p>During the presidential campaign of 1860 the Douglas men and the Americans +in Georgia charged the supporters of Breckinridge with plotting disunion +that would bring on war. The charge was generally denied. The truth is, +hardly anybody was aware that the awful crisis was near. Those who really +expected secession believed with Howell Cobb and his brother Thomas, and +with Thomas W. Thomas, that it would be peaceable, and perhaps they were +about a tenth; the rest followed Stephens, believing that the American +people on each side of Mason and Dixon’s line would, when it was demanded, +rise up in resistless co-operation and make safe both southern +institutions and the union. Generally Stephens was far superior to Toombs +in forecast and discernment of the sentiment of the masses.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> But while the +former was too wise to consider even for one moment the probabilities of +peaceable secession, he had a most un-American conviction that nothing +good was ever gained by war, and he so loved peace and the union that he +could not believe his people would secede. In his great sympathies Toombs +was here far more clear-sighted. While he was the only speaker in this +presidential campaign that was disrespectful to the union, often calling +it in derision “the gullorious,” and he gave no promise that withdrawal +from the union would be peaceful, and so appeared to be to himself and +alone, he was really the only one riding the waves of the undercurrent +rising every day nearer the surface, and soon to sweep all of us onward +upon its raging waters. The other speakers discussed the rival platforms, +but the nearer election day approached the more potently he was preparing +the people and himself for secession, though unawares to both. And when +Lincoln was elected,—the man who had solemnly published his belief that +this government could not endure permanently part slave and part free,—an +occurrence which aroused the south throughout as the firing upon Fort + +Sumter afterwards aroused the north, Toombs drank in every accession to +the emotion of his people, and towered more largely before them every day +as the soul of the revolution now palpable in its coming to all. When +secession was debated before the Georgia legislature, after enumerating +what he declared to be the wrongs of the south, he said, “I ask you to +give me the sword; for if you do not give it to me, as God lives, I will +take it myself.” In his immortal eulogy of the union the next night, +Stephens quoted these words, and Toombs, who was present, answered in a +voice of thunder, “I will.” The house rocked to and fro with frenzied +applause. Long afterwards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> Stephens told me that this outburst was the +first revealing sign to him that his people were rushing to war. He lost +his breath while gasping out the awful word, and there was terror in his +looks as if the direful ghost had risen again. Some ardent secessionists +professed themselves ready to drink all the blood that would be spilled, +but Toombs, in his warlike nature, was already revelling in the joy of +fighting for his people in this most sacred of causes. In one of his +speeches he eulogized beforehand those who were to fall in defence of the +south, giving them the requiem of sleeping forever where</p> + +<p class="poem">“Honor guards with solemn round<br /> +The silent bivouac of the dead.”</p> + +<p>I did not hear this, but a friend told me that the speaker’s electric +recitative made the hackneyed words forever new and fresh to him.</p> + +<p>I must go faster. January 7, 1861, Toombs made in the United States senate +his famous defence of secession. He presented in behalf of the south these +demands expressed in writing:</p> + +<p>1. Any person to be permitted to settle in any Territory, with any of his +property, including slaves, and be protected in his property till such +Territory is admitted as a State on an equality with the other States, +with or without slavery as its people may determine.</p> + +<p>2. Property in slaves to receive everywhere from the United States +government the same protection which under the constitution it can give +any other property, it being reserved to each State to deal with slavery +within its limits as it pleases.</p> + +<p>3. Extradition of persons committing crimes against slave property, as +commanded by the constitution.</p> + +<p>4. Extradition of fugitive slaves as commanded by the same constitution.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>5. Congress to pass efficient laws punishing all persons aiding or +abetting invasion of a State or insurrection therein, or committing any +other act against the law of nations that tends to disturb the +tranquillity of the people or government of the State.</p> + +<p>It is plainly evident to the unprejudiced that he had the warrant of the +constitution, the law of nations, of the practice and professions of the +great body of even northern citizens ever since the adoption of the +constitution, for every one of these demands. It is also as plainly +evident that every one was vital to each southern community, founded as it +was from basement to roof, upon property in slaves. The justice of his +demands could not be denied without repudiating the constitution, the law +of nations, and the solemn compacts of the fathers, their children and +children’s children. And providence had really made each one of these +astounding repudiations, in her purpose to extirpate slavery as the only +menace to the American union, even if the people so dear to Toombs must be +all cast out of their prosperity and comfort into beggary. But when a man +is fighting for his loved ones,—especially if he is fighting for his +country,—and he has the valor of Toombs, his not-to-be-shaken conviction +is that providence is on his side, and the nearer great disaster +approaches, the stouter becomes his heart. Toombs’s support of his +demands, and his defence of what he knew the south would do if they were +refused, are the most earnest words he ever spoke. Note these paragraphs:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“You cannot intimidate my constituents by talking to them about +treason. They are ready to fight for the right with the rope around +their necks.”</p> + +<p>“You not only want to break down our constitutional rights; you not +only want to upturn our social system; your people not only steal our +slaves and make them freemen to vote against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> us; but you seek to +bring an inferior race into a condition of equality, socially and +politically, with our own people. The question of slavery moves not +the people of Georgia one half as much as the fact that you insult +their rights as a community. You abolitionists are right when you say +that there are thousands and ten thousands of men in Georgia, and all +over the south, who do not own slaves. A very large portion of the +people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains there are +comparatively few of them; but no part of our people are more loyal to +their race and country than our brave mountain population; and every +flash of the electric wires brings me cheering news from our mountain +tops and our valleys that these sons of Georgia are excelled by none +of their countrymen in loyalty to the rights, the honor, and the glory +of the commonwealth. They say, and well say, this is our question; we +want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race +to degrade our own; and as one man they would meet you upon the +border, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. We will +tell you when we choose to abolish this thing; it must be done under +our direction, and according to our will; our own, our native land +shall determine this question, and not the abolitionists of the north. +That is the spirit of our freemen.”</p></div> + +<p>Here is the grand conclusion:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“This man, Brown, and his accomplices, had sympathizers. Who were +they? One who was, according to his public speeches, his defender and +laudator, is governor of Massachusetts. Other officials of that State +applauded Brown’s heroism, magnified his courage, and no doubt +lamented his ill success. Throughout the whole north, public meetings, +immense gatherings, triumphal processions, the honors of the hero and +conqueror, were awarded to this incendiary and assassin. They did not +condemn the traitor; think you they abhorred the treason?</p> + +<p>Yet ... when a distinguished senator from a non-slaveholding State +proposed to punish such attempts at invasion and insurrection, Lincoln +and his party say before the world, ‘Here is a sedition law.’ To carry +out the constitution, to protect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> States from invasion and suppress +insurrection therein, to comply with the laws of the United States is +a ‘sedition law,’ and the chief of this party treats it with contempt; +yet, under the very same clause of the constitution which warranted +this bill, you derive your power to punish offences against the law of +nations. Under this warrant you have tried and punished our citizens +for meditating the invasion of foreign States; you have stopped +illegal expeditions; you have denounced our citizens engaged therein +as pirates and commended them to the bloody vengeance of a merciless +enemy. Under this principle alone you protect our weaker neighbors of +Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua. By this alone are we empowered and +bound to prevent our people from conspiring together, giving aid, +money, or arms to fit out expeditions against a foreign nation. +Foreign nations get the benefit of this protection; but we are worse +off in the union than if we were out of it. Out of it we should have +the protection of the neutrality laws. Now you can come among us; +raids may be made; you may put the incendiary torch to our dwellings, +as you did last summer for hundreds of miles on the frontier of Texas; +you may do what John Brown did, and when the miscreants escape to your +States you will not punish them, you will not deliver them up. +Therefore, we stand defenceless. We must cut loose from the accursed +‘body of this death,’ even to get the benefit of the law of nations.</p> + +<p>You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard +constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What, +then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State a free State? We are +freemen. We have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I have +recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into +power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude thousands +of millions of our property from the common Territories, that it has +declared us under the ban of the union, and out of the protection of +the law of the United States everywhere. They have refused to protect +us by the federal power from invasion and insurrection, and the +constitution denies to us in the union the right either to raise +fleets or armies for our defence. All these charges I have proved by +the record; and I put them before the civilized<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> world and demand the +judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages and of heaven +itself, upon the justice of these causes. I am content, whatever may +be the event, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have +appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights. You have +refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had them, +as your court adjudges them to be just as our people have said they +are; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will +restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them, and +what, then? We shall ask you, ‘Let us depart in peace.’ Refuse that, +and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our banners +the glorious words ‘Liberty and Equality,’ we will trust to the blood +of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity.”</p></div> + +<p>No new nation about to be launched upon a sea of blood was ever heralded +with words that were above these in appeal to the conscience and strongest +affections of humanity. They are not outvied by those of Patrick Henry +reported by Wirt, or those of John Adams reported by Webster, which the +world will ever treasure as all gold. O that he had corrected them! He +could not use the file, as we have already said.</p> + +<p>Soon after making the speech he went away from the senate without taking +leave. March 14, 1861, that body passed a resolution reciting that the +seats before occupied by Brown, Davis, Mallory, Clay, Toombs, and Benjamin +had become vacant, and directing that the secretary omit their names from +the roll.</p> + +<p>It was clear from his incomparable and faultless leadership of the active +defence of the south, and his unique ability in affairs, that he was the +choice of the directors of southern nationalization for president of the +Confederate States; but these were overcome by stronger spirits, and Davis +was made president. I have always believed that Toombs regarded this as +the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> miscarriage of his life. He could not continue his connection +with the unbusinesslike conduct of the administration, and he retired from +his secretaryship of state. Read what his superiors say of him at +Sharpsburg, and what Dick Taylor with admiration tells of the help he +afterwards got from him in a dark hour, as specimens of his gallantry and +efficiency in the service. But his was not the nature of Epaminondas, to +doff his natural supereminence and sweep the streets. Pegasus did not show +more unsuited to the plow than he did to his inferior station in this +stage of the great conflict which was his meat and drink.</p> + +<p>The collapse came, flight from America, return at last to his stricken +people, and disability for the rest of his life. Though he had something +of even a great career at the bar, and in State politics, his longing for +the old south and discontent with the new increased, slowly at first, then +faster and faster. As infirmity from age came on apace, and his wife whom +he had always made his good angel went to heaven, every day he became more +lonely. He had survived <i>his</i> country. Such love as his for that loves but +once and always. The sacrifices that he had made for it became his +treasures. He hugged his disability as his most precious jewel. Our +gallant Gordon was not more proud of the scars on his face. Not long +before his mind and memory were failing, speaking of the past, he said +with the utmost firmness: “I regret nothing but the dead and the failure.</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Better to have struck and lost,<br /> +Than never to have struck at all.’”</p> + +<p>What a fall! Greater by far than Lucifer’s. Lucifer was rightfully cast +out because of heinous offence. But Toombs was cashiered because he had +been the best, ablest, and most faithful servant of his people, whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> +dearest rights were in jeopardy. According to our merely human view it is +the way of fiends to reward such supremacy in virtue and achievement with +hell pains. If we cannot hope confidently, may not we survivors at least +send up sincere prayers that the Lord will yet give this Job of the old +south twice as much of fair fame as he had before.</p> + +<p>If the defeated in the wars between England and Scotland and in the +English civil wars; and if Cromwell and the regicides who set up a +government that had to fall,—if all these have found respectful and fully +appreciative mention at last, why shall not Calhoun and Toombs look to +have the same after some years be passed? Trusting that such will come, I +close this sketch by suggesting where Toombs will, I think, be niched in +American history.</p> + +<p>He is often spoken of as the southern correspondence to Wendell Phillips. +There was nothing whatever in common between the two except extraordinary +fluency of zealous speech. Early in life, Phillips, almost a mere boy, +broke with Mrs. Grundy by advocating abolition before his neighbors were +ripe for it. While Toombs cared nothing for Mrs. Grundy, he always so +comported himself that he was her great authority. He was a very able +lawyer, who had made a considerable fortune by practice, and a thorough +statesman, when fate confided the southern lead to him; and while Phillips +was reckless and rash, Toombs never, never essayed the impossible with his +people. The more you balance him and Phillips against each other, the more +unlike you will find them. Prof. William Garrott Brown is quite correct in +pairing Phillips and Yancey.</p> + +<p>There is a northern character to whom Toombs as a southern opposite +corresponds in so many important particulars that it surprises me it has +not been <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>proclaimed. As Webster was the special apostle of the +preservation of the union, Toombs was the same of secession. Their +missions were parallel in that each one was the foremost champion of his +nationality, Webster of the Pan-American, as we may call it; and Toombs of +the southern. All through the brothers’ war their phrases were on the lips +and fired the hearts of each host, those of Webster impelling to fight for +the union, those of Toombs for the southern confederacy. Each was probably +the ablest lawyer of his day. Each was surely the ablest debater to be +found. Each was of sublime courage in defying what he thought to be unjust +commands of his constituents. And the last point which I think of is that +each was of most complete and perfect physical development, and was the +most majestic presence of his day. The busiest men in the streets of all +sorts and ranks always found time to look upon either Webster or Toombs as +he passed, and admire. I never saw Webster. But I believe that from his +pictures, from long study of his best speeches, and from what I have +greedily read and heard of him in a fond lifelong contemplation, I have an +almost perfect figure of him before my mind’s eye. Toombs from my boyhood +I saw often. I will describe him as I observed him at the hustings just +before the war. His face, almost as large as a shield, but yet not out of +proportion, was in continual play from the sweetest smile of approval to +the scowl of condemnation, darkening all around like a rising +thundercloud. His flowing locks tossed to and fro over his massive brow +like a lion’s mane, as was universally said. In every attitude and gesture +there was a spontaneous and lofty grace—not the grace of the +dancing-master, but the ease and repose of native nobility. His face was +not Greek, but in his total he looked the extreme of classic symmetry and +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> utmost of power of mind, will, and act. Princely, royal, kingly, even +godlike, were the words spontaneously uttered with which men tried in vain +to tell what they saw in him. He and just one other were the only men of +my observation whose greatness, without their saying a word, spoke plainly +even to strangers. That other man was Lee. I noted, when we were near +Chambersburg in Pennsylvania those three or four days before the great +battle, that, while the natives would curiously inquire the names of +others of our generals as they rode by, every one instantaneously +recognized Lee as soon as he came near. This publication of her chosen in +their mere outside which destiny makes is not to be slighted nor +underprized. And so remember that Webster looked the greatest of all men +of the north, and Toombs the greatest of all men of the south.</p> + +<p>To my mind I give each unsurpassable praise and glory when I call Webster +the northern Toombs and Toombs the southern Webster.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I add a note by way of epilogue. I observe with pain that the obloquy +against Toombs in the north seems to increase, while that against him in +the rising generation of the south—who do not know him at all—is surely +increasing. It is, however, a growing consolation to me to note that every +charge, currently made against him north or south, is founded either upon +complete mistake of fact or the grossest misunderstanding of his character +and career. It is a duty of mine not only to him as my dead and revered +friend, but a high duty to my country, to set him in his right place in +the galaxy of America’s best and greatest. I never knew a man of kinder or +more benevolent heart; nor one who had more horror of fraud, unfairness, +and trick; nor one whiter in all money transactions; nor one whose +longing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> and zeal for the welfare of neighbors and country were greater; +nor one who showed in his whole life more regard for the rights and also +the innocent wishes of everybody. The model men of the church, such as Dr. +Mell and Bishop George Pierce, loved him with a fond and cherishing love. +The humblest and plainest men were attracted to him, and they gave him +sincere adulation. Many of my contemporaries remember rough old Tom +Alexander, the railroad contractor. I saw him one day in a lively talk +with Toombs. As he passed my seat while leaving the car he whispered to +me: “Bob Toombs! his brain is as big as a barrel and his heart is as big +as a hogshead.” From 1867 until 1881 I was often engaged in the same cases +with Toombs, either as associate or opposing counsel, and I saw a great +deal of him. It falls far short to say that he was the most entertaining +man I ever knew. He was just as wise in judgment as he was original and +striking in speech. I am sure that his superiority as a lawyer towered +higher in the consultation room just before the trial than even in his +able court conduct. And he led just as wisely and preeminently in the +politics of that day, when it was vital to the civilization of the south +to nullify the fifteenth amendment. Georgia would indeed be an ungrateful +republic should she forget his part in the constitution of 1877. That was +deliverance from the unspeakable disgrace of nine years—a constitution +made by ignorant negroes, also criminals who, to use the words of Ben +Hill, sprang at one bound from State prisons into the constitutional +convention, and some native deserters of the white race—the constitution +so made kept riveted around our necks by the bayonet. The good work would +have remained undone for many years had not Toombs advanced $20,000 to +keep the convention, which had exhausted its appropriation, in session +long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> enough to finish our own constitution. The railroad commission +established by that instrument is really his doing. This post-bellum +political career of his, in which he restored his stricken State to her +autonomy and self-respect, has not yet won its full appreciation.</p> + +<p>If Toombs could but be delineated to the life in his extempore action, +advice, and phrase he would soon attain a lofty station in world +literature. It mattered not what he was talking about,—an affair of +business or of other importance, communicating information, telling an +experience, complimenting a girl, disporting himself in the maddest +merriment, as he often did after some great accomplishment,—his language +flashed all the while with a planet-like brilliancy, and the matter was of +a piece. Those of us who hang over Martial, how we learn to admire his +perpetual freshness and variety! But when we compare him with Catullus, +his master, we note that while his epigram is always splendid, the +language is commonplace beside that of the other.<a name='fna_110' id='fna_110' href='#f_110'><small>[110]</small></a> Toombs was even +more than Martial in exhaustless productivity and unhackneyed point, and +his words always reflected, like those of Catullus, the hues of Paradise. +Perhaps a reader exclaims, “As I do not know Martial and Catullus your +comparison is nothing to me.” Well, I tell him that I have read Shakspeare +from lid to lid more times than I can say, and that I have long been close +friends with every one of his characters, all the way from Lear, Othello, +Hamlet, and Macbeth at the top, down to his immortal clowns at the bottom. +Surely with this experience it can be said of me, “The man has seen some +majesty.” I have often tried, and that with the help of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> a few intimates +almost as deeply read in Shakspeare as myself, to find in the dainty plays +an equal to Toombs throwing away everywhere around him with infinite +prodigality gems of unpremeditated wisdom and phrase. Samuel Barnett, +Linton Stephens, Henry Andrews and my cousin, his wife, Samuel Lumpkin, +and S. H. Hardeman, all of whom knew him well, were among these. The end +of every effort would be our agreement that Shakspeare himself could +hardly have made an adequately faithful representation of Toombs.</p> + +<p>The mental torture of the last three or four years of his life I must +touch upon again. The most active anti-slavery partisan and most scarred +soldier of the union will compassionate if he but contemplate. I met him +only now and then. As I read his feelings—one eye quenched by cataract +and the other failing fast; his contemporaries of the bar and political +arena dead; the wife whom he loved better than he did himself sinking +under a disease gradually destroying her mind; ever harrowed with the +thought that his country was no more, and that he was a foreigner and +exile in the spot which he had always called home,—though I was full of +increasing joy over the benefit of emancipation to my people and gladness +at the promise of reunited America, my tranquillity would take flight +whenever he came into my mind. He was that spectacle of a good man in a +hopeless struggle against fate that moves enemies to pity. To me his last +state was more tragic and pathetic than that of Œdipus.</p> + +<p>Of course his powers were declining. I know that he would never have drank +too much if there had been no sectional agitation, secession, war, nor +reconstruction. His appetite was never that insane thirst, as I have heard +him call it, which impels one into delirium tremens. He always +disappointed his adversaries at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> bar calculating that drink would +disable him at an important part of the conduct. Others as well as myself +can testify to this. Near the end he deliberately chose to drain full cups +of purpose to sweeten bitter memories. With moderation he had more +assurance of longevity than any other of his generation; and he would, I +verily believe, have been green and flourishing in his hundredth year. He +lost his rare faculty of managing money. It was a shock of surprise to me +when the fire in August, 1883, disclosed that he had let the insurance of +his interest in the Kimball house run out shortly before. It was a +pitiable sight to see him in his growing blindness and wasting frame armed +by his negro servant along the streets of Atlanta in his last visits to +the place. During all this time he was dying by inches.</p> + +<p>But the sun going down behind heavy clouds would now and then send forth +rays of the old glory. It was in May, 1883, during the session of the +superior court of Wilkes, where I had some of my old business to wind up, +that I was last in his house. He had made invitations to dinner without +keeping account. At the hour his sitting-room was densely packed. A few of +us were late. When we arrived many were compounding their drinks. He +hospitably suggested to us new-comers that there was still some standing +room around the sideboard. In a little while the throng was treading the +well-known way to the dining-hall, which we overflowed so suddenly that +his niece, whom Mrs. Toombs, then keeping her room, had charged with +seeing the table laid, was astounded to find she could not seat all of the +bidden guests. Just as her flurry was beginning to make us uncomfortable +our host entered. In spite of his infirmity and purblindness he took in +the situation with his wonted quickness. He said in a tone of tender +remonstrance to his niece, “O, I do not object to having<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> more friends +than room; it is usually the other way in this world.” And with despatch +and order he had the surplus given seats at side tables. My eyes +moistened. I had an unhappy presentiment that this was my last observation +of the only man I ever knew whose fine acts and words never waited when +occasion called. I was aroused by the whisper of a neighbor, “Can any one +else in the world do such a beautiful thing on the spur of the moment?” +The admiring looks that followed inspired him, and his talk seemed to have +more than its old lustre and gleam.</p> + +<p>In his final illness, when paralysis was slowly creeping up his frame, and +he had lost the sense of place and time, he would now and then start from +his stupor and send across the State a bolt from the bow which no other +could bend. Somebody spoke of a late meeting of “prohibition fanatics.” +“Do you know what is a fanatic?” he asked unexpectedly. “No,” was replied. +“He is one of strong feelings and weak points,” Toombs explained. And +overhearing another say that an unusually prolonged session of the State +legislature had not yet come to an end, he exclaimed with urgency, “Send +for Cromwell!”</p> + +<p>He died December 15, 1885, in his seventy-sixth year.</p> + +<p>If I have told the truth in this chapter,—and God knows I have tried my +utmost to tell it,—ought not my brothers and sisters of each section to +lay aside their angry prejudices and bestow at last upon the only and +peerless Toombs the love and admiration which are the due reward of his +virtues, his towering example, his wonder-striking achievements, and his +incomparable genius? May that power which incessantly makes for +righteousness, and which always in the end has charity to conquer hate, +soon bring to us who really knew him our dearest wish!</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">HELP TO THE UNION CAUSE BY POWERS IN THE UNSEEN</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">If</span> you are not balked by adherence, either to the rapidly waning +overpositiveness of materialism, or to the ferocious orthodoxy which +denies that there has been any providential interference in human affairs +since that told of in the bible; and if you are exempt from the fear of +being regarded as superstitious which keeps a great number of even the +most cultivated people forever in a fever of incredulity as to every +example of what they call the supernatural, you have long since become +convinced that evolution is intelligently guided by some power or powers +in the unseen. I seem to myself to discern plainly in many important +crises of history the palpable influence of what are to me the directors +of evolution. Washington, to found our great federation, and Lincoln to +perpetuate it—these come at once as examples. Now follow me while I try +to show you what the directors did in preparation for and in conduct of +the brothers’ war, of purpose that the north should triumph and save the +union. Of course I am precluded from all attempt to be exhaustive. I shall +only glance at a few of the facts that appear to me cardinal and most +important.</p> + +<p>In the first place, they deferred the war until under the effect of +foreign immigration the population of the north greatly outnumbered that +of the south and had become almost unanimous against slavery; and until +the south was almost entirely dependent upon her railroads<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> and her river +and ocean commerce. Had secession occurred because of the excitement over +the application of Missouri for admission into the union with a slave +constitution, there might have been a war, but it would have been short, +the end being that every foot of the public domain admitting of profitable +slave culture would have fallen to the south. Suppose a serious effort had +been made in 1833 to collect the revenue in South Carolina, how long would +the south have endured invasion of the little State and slaughter of its +citizens? Even President Jackson would have soon forgotten his enmity to +Calhoun and recognized that blood is thicker than water. The time was not +then ripe, as the directors saw; and so they effected an adjustment of the +controversy. It did not suit the directors to have the war commence in +1850, for there was at the time no general use of ironclads, and the +railroad system was far from completion. Consider for a moment the +advantage to the north of having gunboats and the disadvantage to the +south of not having them. Fort Donelson really fell because of gunboats. +Grant got re-enforcements in time to save him from disastrous defeat at +Shiloh because of the command of the river by gunboats. The gunboats +caused the fall of Vicksburg. And it was the holding of the James from its +mouth to Fort Darling by gunboats which gave Grant such secure grip at +Petersburg that Richmond had to fall at last, and with it the confederacy.</p> + +<p>Now a word as to the southern railroads. Next to the navigable rivers they +were the lines of easiest penetration to invaders. Remember how the +British in 1898 advanced in Africa only as they completed their railroad +behind them. Of course had the railroad been already made their advance +would have been along it. How could Sherman have ever crossed the +devastated tract<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> from Dalton to Atlanta had he been without the railroad +behind him? During his retreat Johnston kept the invading army between +himself and the railroad without which it could not have been subsisted, +and staid so close that Sherman had him constantly in view; conduct which +is still lauded by some people in the south as masterly beyond compare.</p> + +<p>To conceive more vividly the river and railroad situation which I am +striving to explain, suppose that during the Revolutionary war the States +had been as dependent as the south afterwards became upon rivers and +railroads, and the British had and the Americans did not have iron-clad +gunboats; as matters now look, our forefathers would have been beaten back +to the foot of the throne. I believe that the railroads alone would have +rendered their subjugation certain.</p> + +<p>So much for the matchless judgment shown by the directors in deciding as +to the time of the war. I shall now tell what I have long thought is most +unmistakably their work in conducting that war.</p> + +<p>As soon as secession was an accomplished fact, they deprived the better +southern statesmanship of all guidance of the brothers’ war now inevitable +and about to begin. In such a war a proper executive is of far more +importance than good legislators and even good generals. Toombs was the +man who stood forth head and shoulders above all others as the logical +president of the southern confederacy. But the wily directors hypnotized +the electors into believing that Davis, because of his military education, +service in Mexico, and four years’ secretaryship of war, was the right +man. It is generally believed in the south that the considerations just +mentioned turned the scale in favor of Davis. But sometimes I think that +the true explanation is different. Stephens has told how Toombs was got +out of the way.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> When this narrative<a name='fna_111' id='fna_111' href='#f_111'><small>[111]</small></a> was published, both Toombs and +Davis, with many of the partisans of each were alive, and regard for them +may have kept him silent as to a reported mischance to Toombs, which +provoking opposition—as was whispered—from some of those who had been +among his most earnest supporters, decided him to retire. A biographer +writes: “There was a story, credited in some quarters, that Mr. Toombs’s +convivial conduct at a dinner party in Montgomery estranged from him some +of the more conservative delegates, who did not realize that a man like +Toombs had versatile and reserved powers, and that Toombs at the banquet +board was another sort of a man from Toombs in a deliberative body.”<a name='fna_112' id='fna_112' href='#f_112'><small>[112]</small></a></p> + +<p>Something like that stated in the quotation just made did happen, as +Stephens was wont to relate at Liberty Hall—the name which he gave his +hospitable home at Crawfordville, Georgia. I was present more than once at +such times.</p> + +<p>Such could have been the work of the directors.</p> + +<p>Georgia, being the pivotal State of the new federation, was by many +conceded the presidency. Besides Toombs she had two other men, far abler +statesmen than Davis and then as conspicuous in the public eye—A. H. +Stephens and Howell Cobb. The election of either one of these would really +have been the same almost as the election of Toombs, for the three were in +complete accord, and Toombs was the natural and actual leader. So great +was their fealty to him that neither one could have been induced to stand +for the place after he had missed it. The directors saw to it that neither +one of the three should be president of the Confederate States.</p> + +<p>Suppose that Toombs—or that either Stephens or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> Cobb—had been made +president, what a different conduct there would have been of the war. +Besides being the foremost statesman of the south, Toombs was its very +ablest man of affairs, and as far superior to Davis in practical and +business talent as a trained and experienced man is to an untrained and +inexperienced woman. Not intending to disparage the other great +qualifications of Toombs, I must emphasize it that of all his +contemporaries he alone evinced a clear understanding of the principles +according to which the confederate currency could have been better managed +than were the greenbacks by the other side. A letter of his during the war +to Mr. James Gardner, of Augusta, Georgia, published at the time in the +paper of which the latter was then editor, shows insight and grasp of the +subject equal to Ricardo’s. Toombs as president of the confederacy would +have had congress enact proper currency measures. When he was in place to +advise and lead, his influence exceeded by far that of any other man that +I ever knew.</p> + +<p>But this, important as it is, is far from being the most important. He and +Stephens were fully convinced at the very first of the overruling +importance to the confederacy of these two things: (1) to make full use of +cotton as a resource; (2) to prevent a blockade of the southern ports. I +make these extracts following from a speech of Stephens’s at +Crawfordville, Georgia, November 1, 1862:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“What I said at Sparta, Georgia, upon the subject of cotton, many of +you have often heard me say in private conversation, and most of you +in the public speech last year to which I have alluded. Cotton, I have +maintained, and do maintain, is one of the greatest elements of power, +if not the greatest at our command, if it were but properly and +efficiently used, as it might have been, and still might be. Samson’s +strength was in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> his locks. Our strength is in our locks of cotton. I +believed from the beginning that the enemy would inflict upon us more +serious injury by the blockade than by all other means combined. It +was ... a matter of the utmost ... importance to have it raised. How +was it to be done?... I thought it ... could be done through the +agency of cotton.... I was in favor, as you know, of the government’s +taking all the cotton that would be subscribed for eight per cent +bonds at a rate or price as high as ten cents a pound. Two millions of +the last year’s crop might have been counted upon as certain on this +plan. This, at ten cents, with bags of the average commercial weight, +would have cost the government one hundred millions of bonds. With +this amount of cotton in hand and pledged, any number, short of fifty, +of the best ironclad steamers could have been contracted for and built +in Europe—steamers at the cost of two millions each, could have been +procured, equal in every way to the ‘Monitor.’ Thirty millions would +have got fifteen of these, which might have been enough for our +purpose. Five might have been ready by the first of January last to +open some one of the ports blockaded on our coast. Three of these +could have been left to keep the port open, and two could have +conveyed the cotton across the water if necessary. Thus, the debt +could have been promptly paid with cotton at a much higher price than +it cost, and a channel of trade kept open till other ironclads, and as +many as were necessary, might have been built and paid for in the same +way. At a cost of less than one month’s present expenditure on our +army, our coast might have been cleared. Besides this, at least two +more millions of bales of the old crop on hand might have been counted +upon—this with the other making a debt in round numbers to the +planters of $200,000,000. But this cotton, held in Europe until its +price became fifty cents a pound, would constitute a fund of at least +$1,000,000,000 which would not only have kept our finances in sound +condition, but the clear profit of $800,000,000 would have met the +entire expenses of the war for years to come.”<a name='fna_113' id='fna_113' href='#f_113'><small>[113]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>The reader who carefully reflects over the passage just quoted may well +think that the extravagant profit pictured savors more of Mulberry Sellers +than of a cool-headed statesman; but if the war price of cotton be +recalled he readily agrees that under the plan proposed the south could +easily have got a fleet of the best ironclads. Such a fleet would have +kept the southern ports open. The advantage of which would have been very +great. It would have held the Mississippi from the first, or have +recovered it after the capture of New Orleans. It would have cleared the +gunboats out of all the navigable rivers in the south. And we must not +forget how it might have ravaged the northern coast, perhaps capturing New +York, and forcing an early peace.</p> + +<p>I must make you see the greatness of cotton as a resource. There has been +from soon after the invention of the gin a steadily increasing world +demand for it, and the south has practically monopolized its production. I +can think of no other product of the soil except wine and liquor that is +as imperishable. But wine and liquor spill, leak, and evaporate, while +cotton does neither. If you but safe it against fire it will not +deteriorate by age. In 1884 I was told of a sale just made of some cotton +for which the owner had refused the famine price in 1865. It brought the +market price of the day, and experts said it sampled as well as new +cotton. It was at least 19 years old. Wine and liquor cannot be +compressed, but the same weight of raw cotton becomes less and less bulky +every year. By reason of the foregoing, cotton is always the equivalent of +cash in hand. Now add the effect of the steadily growing war scarcity, and +remember how easy it was during the first two years of the war to carry +out cotton in spite of the blockade. The European purchasing agent of the +Confederate States <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>government says “it possessed a latent purchasing +power such as probably no other ... in history ever had.”<a name='fna_114' id='fna_114' href='#f_114'><small>[114]</small></a> He means +cotton. There were several million bales of it in the confederacy, all of +which could be had for the taking—much of it for merely the asking. And +there were a legion of carriers eager to run the blockade. I cannot +understand how Professor Brown could have ever written, “The government +had not the means either to buy the cotton or to transport it.”<a name='fna_115' id='fna_115' href='#f_115'><small>[115]</small></a> +Surely the government could have seized the cotton as easily as it did all +the men of military age, and collected the tithes in kind.</p> + +<p>If Toombs had been president of the southern confederacy, the very best +possible use of its cotton as a resource would have been made. At the +time, if but managed with the financial skill which he always showed, that +cotton would have been a great war chest in a secure place, always full +and appreciating. It is very probable that almost at the beginning of the +war the confederacy would have struck terror into its adversaries with +some warships far superior to any with which the United States could have +then supplied itself. In this case there never would have been any +Monitor. And the south would have had all the benefits of wise husbandry +and conduct.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>During his short premiership of the confederacy Toombs showed marked +ability. Note his extraordinary insight when instructing the +commissioners, that “So long as the United States neither declares war nor +establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of both +conditions;” and consider how accurately he foresaw that the north would +be rallied as one man to the stars and stripes by attack upon Fort Sumter, +and how earnestly he opposed the proposed attack.<a name='fna_116' id='fna_116' href='#f_116'><small>[116]</small></a></p> + +<p>Stephens was thoroughly against the policy of many pitched battles. He +counselled from the very first that we should draw the invaders within our +territory, where, having them far from their base and taking advantage of +our shorter interior lines, we could when the right moment came, by +attacking with superior numbers, virtually destroy their entire army. The +more I think over it, the more clearly I see that this was the true way +for us to have fought. Stephens’s influence would have been so great with +Toombs or Cobb as president that he would have shaped the conduct of the +war.</p> + +<p>There would have been no keeping of inefficient men in high command; and +no efficient one would have been kept out. Mr. Lincoln would have had an +executive rival worthy of his steel. As the former searched diligently and +with rare judgment for his commander-in-chief and at last found him in +Grant, so Toombs would in all probability have found the proper southern +general in the west. It would have been Forrest. The marvellous military +genius of this illiterate man, who at the beginning of the war could not +have put a recruit through the manual of arms, showed him far superior to +his superiors who sacrificed the southern army at Fort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> Donelson. The +lieutenant-colonel would not surrender, and his escape with his entire +command proved that he could have executed the offer he had made to the +commander to pilot the whole army out. From this moment Forrest moves on +and upward with the stride of a demigod. The night after Johnston has +fallen at Shiloh he alone in the southern army discovers that Grant is +receiving by the river thousands as re-enforcement, and he gives +Beauregard wise counsel which the latter is not wise enough to heed. Read +his letter of August 9, 1863, to Cooper, adjutant-general of the +Confederate States,<a name='fna_117' id='fna_117' href='#f_117'><small>[117]</small></a> in which he proposes to do what will virtually +wrest the Mississippi from the federals, and the sane comment thereon of +his biographer.<a name='fna_118' id='fna_118' href='#f_118'><small>[118]</small></a> Think of him just after the battle of Chickamauga; +how, had Bragg listened to him, he would have reaped the fruits of a great +victory which he was too stupid to know he had won. Meditate the capture +of Fort Pillow, in spite of its strong defences and the succoring gunboat, +by dispositions of his troops and a plan of attack which, though made and +executed on the spur of the moment, are the most superb and brilliant +tactics of all the engagements of the brothers’ war. And his incomparable +conduct by which the army of Sturgis was almost annihilated at Brice’s +Cross-Roads. The conception of Forrest is as yet, even in the south, very +untrue. He is thought of only as always meeting charge with countercharge, +in the very front crying “Mix!” sabring an antagonist, and having his +horse killed under him. When he is rightly studied he is found to be a +happy compound of the characterizing elements of such fighters as mad +Anthony Wayne and Paul Jones, of such swoopers and sure retirers as Marion +and Stonewall Jackson, of such as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>Hannibal, whose action both before, +during, and after the engagement, is the very best possible. Of all the +northern generals Grant showed by far the best grasp of the military +problem. I think Forrest’s grasp was equal. Toombs would have divined the +genius of Forrest. The confederate army under him would probably have +equalled—possibly surpassed—the achievements and glory of that under +Lee.</p> + +<p>It was one of Toombs’s epigrams that the southern confederacy died of too +much West Point. Of course one must not unjustly disparage the military +school. Yet there were plainly graduates on both sides who had in them too +much of it. This was true of Halleck and McClellan; also of Davis and +Bragg. Mr. Davis, by reason of his exaggerated West Point spirit, was not +nearly so well qualified as Mr. Lincoln for finding the few real generals +in the south. Toombs, with the help of Stephens and all the real statesmen +of the section, would have kept the best generals in command.</p> + +<p>Let us briefly summarize. Had Toombs been president these things would +have followed:</p> + +<p>1. The cotton of the south, fully realized as a resource, would have given +her an adequate gold supply, a stable currency, and an unimpaired public +credit. It would have also kept our ports open and the hostile gunboats +out of our rivers.</p> + +<p>2. There would have been no unwise waste of our precious soldiers. As it +was, their very gallantry in our contest with a foe so greatly +outnumbering, was made a guaranty of defeat.</p> + +<p>3. These magnificent soldiers would have been led always by the best +commanders.</p> + +<p>These were resources enough, and more than enough, to have won for the +south. I often paralleled her neglect to use them with the supineness of +the French Commune<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> in 1871. Lassigaray tells us how there were piles of +money and money’s worth in the bank deposits and reserves, which could +have all been had by mere taking.<a name='fna_119' id='fna_119' href='#f_119'><small>[119]</small></a> But the Commune made no use of this +great treasure. It surprises one as he reads of it. Then it occurs to him +that the new French government was in the hands of men who generally had +had no experience in government whatever. It was widely different with the +southern confederacy. No other revolutionary government ever started with +so little jolt and difficulty. The grooves along which it was to run were +all ready. “Confederate States” was instantaneously substituted for +“United States” in the constitution, organic federal statutes, and the +thoughts of the people, and the administration of the new government +seemed to everybody in the south but a continuation of that of the United +States. And this new federation was inaugurated by the best-trained +statesmen in America. That these men should have overlooked the great +resources we have pointed out is a far more strange and wonderful blunder +than was that of the raw and inexperienced managers of the Commune. You +can explain it only by recognizing it as the accomplishment of fate. Fate +put in charge of the fortunes of the confederacy an executive as just as +ever was Aristides, and as much respected and confided in by his people. +That executive most conscientiously drove out of the public counsels the +only men who could have saved the southern cause.</p> + +<p>To the foregoing I shall add but a few other instances briefly told.</p> + +<p>Grant was at the opening of his career put in a place which taught him the +importance of gunboats, and held there until his skill in using them had +given him resistless prestige. Beauregard’s failure to make use of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> +daylight remaining after the fall of Albert S. Johnston seems to have been +prompted by the powers who had the future conqueror in charge. Had he been +sent against Lee in 1862 or 1863 he would hardly have done better than +McClellan, Burnside, or Hooker. Compare how the powers in charge of the +Roman empire prevented a too early encounter of Scipio with Hannibal.</p> + +<p>Ordinary conduct ought to have captured McClellan instead of driving him +to the James. The tone of McClellan’s boasting over the flank movement by +which he successfully marched across the entire front of Lee’s army within +cannon shot is really that of a man who feels that he has miraculously +escaped an unshunnable peril.</p> + +<p>The directors sent Stuart astray and hypnotized Lee into believing that +Gettysburg was to be another Chancellorsville.</p> + +<p>They blinded Davis to the merits of Forrest. Especially to be thought of +here is the rejected proposal of the latter to recover the Mississippi +shortly after the fall of Vicksburg.</p> + +<p>I need not go further. The student of the brothers’ war can add to the +foregoing many other favors shown the union cause by the powers in the +unseen.</p> + +<p>Of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting to the last against +increasing odds with the resoluteness of hereditary freemen. In spite of +all their potency the powers were often hard pressed by Lee, Jackson, +Forrest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate soldiers. These +should have some such eternizing epitaph as this:</p> + +<p>“For four years they kept the fates banded against them uneasy.”</p> + +<p>The parallelism of the fall of the confederacy to that of Troy has +incalculably deepened the interest I take in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> Vergil’s great description. +Especially of late years do I realize more vividly how his goddess mother +removed the cloud darkening his vision, and gave Æneas to see Neptune, +Juno, and Pallas busy in the destruction of the burning city; and a lurid +illumination falls upon the statement,</p> + +<p class="poem">“Apparent diræ facies inimicaque Troiæ<br /> +Numina magna deum.”<a name='fna_120' id='fna_120' href='#f_120'><small>[120]</small></a></p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">JEFFERSON DAVIS</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">For</span> some time after the brothers’ war it was very generally believed that +Davis had been one of the Mississippi repudiators; that through all his +ante-bellum public career he had been an unconditional secessionist—what +we in the south mean by a fire-eater; that cherishing an accursed ambition +for the presidency of the southern confederacy he organized a secret +conspiracy which consummated secession; that as the chief executive of the +Confederate States he aided and abetted the perpetration of inhuman +cruelties upon federal prisoners of war; that he was accessory to the +murder of President Lincoln; and that when captured he was disguised as a +woman. I suppose that these accusations—all of which are utterly +untrue—are still in the mouths of many at the north. They have attained +some currency abroad. I note that the leading German encyclopedia—that of +Brockhaus—repeats those as to the conspiracy and disguise. But “The Real +Jefferson Davis,” as Landon Knight has of late presented +him,<a name='fna_121' id='fna_121' href='#f_121'><small>[121]</small></a>—without hostile bias and with something like an approach to +completeness—is at least beginning to be recognized outside of the south. +It is about as certain as anything in the future can be that all +detraction from the moral character and patriotism of Davis will after +some while wear itself out. I believe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> far greater favor than mere +vindication from false accusation will at last be awarded him in every +part of his own country and also abroad. Later in the chapter I shall try +to bring out fully the praise and appreciation which world history will, +as seems probable to me, shower upon his career. Here I can take time to +mention only the beginning of that great fame which we of this day have +looked upon. We saw him fall from one of the highest and proudest places +in which for four years he had been the talk and envy of the earth. We saw +him in sheer helplessness, accused of murder and treason, his feeble +health and personal comfort made a jest of, disrespect and insult heaped +upon him—we saw him endure all the most refined tortures of imprisonment. +Then we saw him set free—his innocence confessed by the acts of his +accusers. Then for over twenty years he lived with the people who under +his lead had been conquered and despoiled; and we saw them always eager to +pay him demonstrations of the warmest love; we saw them bury him with +inconsolable grief; and we see them keeping his memory green by +reinterring him in the old capital of the Confederate States, giving him +there a conspicuous monument, and making the anniversary of his birth a +legal holiday in different States. This—which we impressively mark now as +only a beginning of glory—must develop into something far larger.</p> + +<p>Whenever Davis comes into your mind, of course, you first think of that +with which his name is most closely connected—his elevation and his great +fall. Therefore it is quite right that we make our start from this point, +which is, that he was the head of a subverted revolutionary government. He +is one of a few who, like Richard Cromwell, Napoleon, and Kruger, were +suffered to survive deposition. Nothing in nature hates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> a rival more than +sovereignty—which, be it remembered, is the representative of a distinct +nationality. Note how inevitably a young queen bee is killed by her own +mother when found in the hive by the latter. Humanity has not in this +particular evolved as yet very far above bee nature; and the fate of +Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, usually befalls the sovereign head of a +defeated revolution. To the student of history it is a surprise that the +life of Davis was spared when American frenzy was at its height. Think of +some of the things which then occurred. Mrs. Surratt and Wirz were hanged; +the cruel cotton tax; the negroes were made rulers of the southern whites; +it was provided <i>ex post facto</i> that the high moral duty of paying for the +emancipated slaves should never be done. While good men and women both of +the north and the south will always censure with extreme severity the +treatment which Davis as a prisoner received, they ought to note it as a +most significant sign of American progress that he was at last allowed to +go forth and live without molestation the rest of his life among his old +followers.</p> + +<p>Before we begin the sketch which we contemplate let us bring out more +vividly the novelty of his example by contrasting him with the failing +leaders of revolutions mentioned above. Richard Cromwell could be +tolerated as a private man by the restored royal government, because his +protectorate had been, so far as he himself is considered, a mere +accident. It was the mighty Oliver, his father, that overthrew and +beheaded Charles I, and then took the reins of rule. These, when he died, +came to his son, who in ability and ambition was a cipher. They who set +him aside would have been ashamed to confess the slightest fear of him. +His captors exiled Napoleon, and Kruger exiled himself. Richard Cromwell, +having been cast out of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> protectorate, living forgotten in England, is +no parallel to Davis spending his last years in Mississippi honored by the +entire south with mounting demonstration to his death. Had Napoleon lived +in France and Kruger in the Transvaal, each after his overthrow, they +would be parallels. As it is, the subsequent life of Davis is without any +parallel.</p> + +<p>Having thus shown you what it is that Davis especially examples, let us +now give you briefly such a biography as suits the purpose of this book.</p> + +<p>The fairies bestowed upon him treasures of mind and heart, of form, mien, +and face, of speech and manners. He was not of the very first rank, as +Webster, Toombs, and Lee, who suggest comparison with the Pheidian Zeus, +nor was he in the next with Poseidon and Ares. When President Pierce and +the members of his cabinet were passing by Princeton, a throng of citizens +and students called them out during the stop of the train at the Basin. As +we went away it seemed to me that no speech but that of Davis was +remembered. Compliments were rained upon him. At last a student from New +York State cried, “He’s an Apollo!” and all the hearers assented with +enthusiasm. This placed him right,—at the head of the Olympians in the +third circle.</p> + +<p>Though he became a very prominent political leader, the choice of a +profession made by him was that of a soldier. And that profession was +always his first love. His early education, though very deficient and +limited, was far superior to that with which Calhoun had to be content +until he was eighteen. But Davis had when a boy something which supplies +educational defects—a taste for study and a fondness of and access to +books. When at the age of thirty-five he made his début in politics he had +become really a well-schooled and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> highly cultured man. He completed his +West Point course, graduating in July, 1828. His wife says: “He did not +pass very high in his class; but he attached no significance to class +standing, and considered the favorable verdict of his classmates of much +more importance.”<a name='fna_122' id='fna_122' href='#f_122'><small>[122]</small></a></p> + +<p>He served in the army until June 30, 1835, when he resigned. I will cull +from the entertaining narrative of Mrs. Davis certain occurrences of his +army life which are characteristic.</p> + +<p>Reaching a ferry on Rock river in Illinois, in 1831, with his scouts, he +found the boat stopped by ice, and the mail coach with certain wagons +going to the lead mines waiting on the bank. All the crowd put themselves +at his direction. He had the men to cut blocks from the ice for a bridge. +Water was poured upon each block as soon as it was laid, and this +freezing, the block was kept firmly in its place. Whenever a cutter would +fall overboard, he was sent to turn himself round and round before the +fire until he was dry and ready to resume work. The bridge was soon +finished, and the entire party crossed the river. This incident shows that +there was something in Davis’s appearance that invited full trust, and +that he was unwontedly quick and ingenious in expedient.</p> + +<p>How he disabled a disobedient soldier of ferocious temper and great size +by an unexpected blow, and then beat him into complete submission; and how +he captivated the other soldiers by announcing that he would not notice +the affair officially, illustrates his talent for command.</p> + +<p>Men desperate and well armed had taken possession of the lead mines, and +they were to be removed. He tried to induce their consent by making them a +speech. Some weeks later he sought another conference. Finding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> a number +of them in a drinking booth, he was begged by his orderly not to go in. +“They will be certain to kill you,” the orderly said; “I heard one of them +say they would.”</p> + +<p>“Lieutenant Davis entered the cabin at once, and, as they expressed it, +‘gave them the time of day’ [that is, he said “Good-morning” or what the +hour demanded]. He immediately added, after saluting them, ‘My friends, I +am sure you have thought over my proposition and are going to drink to my +success. So I shall treat you all.’ They gave him a cheer.”<a name='fna_123' id='fna_123' href='#f_123'><small>[123]</small></a></p> + +<p>How much more heroic is such Cæsar-like courage and tact in quelling the +mob than to butcher misguided men with musketry.</p> + +<p>I have reserved for emphasis here, as illustrating Davis’s presence of +mind and readiness in emergency, two incidents which are earlier in time +than what I have just been telling. The first is this. One of the +professors disliked and was inclined to disparage Davis while he was a +cadet at West Point. Lecturing on presence of mind, this professor fixed +his eye on Davis “and said he doubted not there were many who, in an +emergency, would be confused and unstrung, not from cowardice, but from +the mediocre nature of their minds. The insult was intended, and the +recipient of it was powerless to resent it. A few days afterwards, while +the building was full of cadets, the class were being taught the process +of making fireballs, when one took fire. The room was a magazine of +explosives. Cadet Davis saw it first, and calmly asked of the doughty +instructor, ‘What shall I do, sir? This fireball is ignited.’ The +professor said, ‘Run for your lives!’ and ran for his. Cadet Davis threw +it out of the window, and saved the building and a large number of lives +thereby.”<a name='fna_124' id='fna_124' href='#f_124'><small>[124]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>In the affair last told, Davis showed a freedom from confusion and an +alertness that is very rare. But the second thing which I have to tell is +still more remarkable.</p> + +<p>While stationed at Fort Crawford in 1829, he had set out in a boat with +some men to cut timber, accompanied by two <i>voyageurs</i>.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“At one point they were hailed by a party of Indians who demanded a +trade of tobacco. As the Indians appeared to have no hostile +intentions, the little party rowed to the bank and began to parley. +However, the voyageurs ... soon saw that their peaceful tones were +only a cloak. They warned Lieutenant Davis of the danger, and he +ordered his men to push out into the stream and make the best time +they could up the river. With yells of fury the Indians leaped into +their canoes and gave chase. There was little, if any, chance for the +white men to escape such experienced rowers.... If taken ... death by +torture was inevitable. They would have been captured had not +Lieutenant Davis thought of rigging up a sail with one of their +blankets. Fortunately the wind was in their favor, but it was very +boisterous. As it was a choice between certain death by the hands of +the Indians, or possible death by drowning, they availed themselves of +the slender chance left and escaped.”<a name='fna_125' id='fna_125' href='#f_125'><small>[125]</small></a></p> + +<p>These things which we have selected to tell of him prove that he had in +large measure some of the endowments which are indispensable to the +excellent soldier. They will be recalled by you when we tell his feats in +Mexico. I must say here that I do not mean to claim first-rate ability for +him; but I do believe that he was equal or almost equal to the best in +that great department of the military requiring the powers of the gifted +officer and not those of the few born generals of the world.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>It is a most amiable touch that he left the army to marry a woman the +choice of his heart, and give her a happy home. He cordially sacrificed +for her an occupation which he loved only less than herself. He had had as +brilliant a career as could be won by a lieutenant in garrison duty and +service against the Indians. It must be remembered he had been promoted to +first lieutenant for gallantry.</p> + +<p>It is proper to mention here one other fact of his army life. He had +resolved that if the regiment to which he belonged should be sent to help +execute the force bill in South Carolina, he would resign. Though he never +was a nullifier, his conscience could not permit him to abet in any way +the coercion of a sovereign State, as he always believed each one of the +United States to be.</p> + +<p>His wife lived only a few months. Her death was a fell blow. Her husband +mourned her for nearly ten years. Then he made a most happy marriage with +the lady who survives him.</p> + +<p>In 1836—the next year after the death of his first wife—he settled on a +plantation. Mr. Knight is especially happy in telling how, with his elder +brother Joseph, who had been a successful lawyer, but was now a rich +planter, as instructor and guide, he studied diligently for some while. To +quote:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“During the period of their residence together, the time not required +by business the brothers devoted to reading and discussion. Political +economy and law, the science of government in general and that of the +United States in particular, were the favorite themes. Locke and +Justinian, Mill, Adam Smith, and Vattel divided honors with the +Federalist, the Resolutions of ninety-eight, and the Debates of the +Constitutional Convention. It was said they knew every word of the +last three by memory; and it is certain that year after year, almost +without interruption,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> they sat far into the night debating almost +every conceivable question that could arise under the constitution of +the United States.”</p> + +<p>Jefferson Davis, as his congressional speeches and his book show, became +deeply versed in the subjects of the joint study just described. I must +note, however, that the discussion which engaged him for such a +considerable period of his ante-public life was had only with one who was +of the same State-rights creed as he himself was, and that it was all in +the closet, as it were. You can only begin the making of a great lawyer by +feigned cases and moot courts. Likewise the true political leader must +early be plunged into real contentions over questions of actual interest, +and thus almost from the very first mix practice with theory. Compare +Webster and Toombs, each at his outset combating with the ablest lawyers +of his State as adversaries, and also publicly discussing varied questions +of policy. I suspect that this prolonged closet training, with its +abundance of academic debate, had much to do in developing Davis into that +supra-logical consistency, stiffness, and unmodifiability of opinion which +is one of his special differences as a practical statesman from the two +great men last mentioned. This, and the mental habitude given by his +military education and experience, mark him as <i>sui generis</i> among our +political leaders. His public career shows more of the doctrinaire and +precisian than can be found in any other one of these.</p> + +<p>In the long post-graduate course which he took in private under his +brother, he was preparing for public life without being aware of it, as it +seems to me.</p> + +<p>He had now but one acquisition to make—to think on his legs and tell his +thoughts at the same time. Extempore speakers are generally made. But +Davis was a born one. He did not have that experience at the bar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> and in +the State legislature which has been the beginning of so many famous +American orators. The democrats of his county nominated him for the +legislature in 1843, and his first experience in public speaking was in a +stump-debate immediately afterwards with the redoubtable S. S. Prentiss, +Davis then being thirty-five years old. The debate consumed most of the +day. The disputants had each fifteen minutes at a time. The result of the +campaign was in favor of Prentiss. As Davis, a democrat, was merely +leading a forlorn hope in a county overwhelmingly whig, that was to be +expected. But the pluck, readiness, and power which he exhibited in this, +his maiden effort, pitted as he was against the ablest speaker of the +State, astounded the auditors, and it seemed even to the whigs that the +raw debater while nominally losing had really triumphed.</p> + +<p>The next experience he had is thus narrated by Mr. Knight: “Mr. Davis took +a conspicuous part in the presidential campaign of 1844, and was chosen as +one of the Polk electors. Before this campaign he was but slightly known +beyond his own county, but at its conclusion his popularity had become so +great that there was a general demand in the ranks of his party that he +should become a candidate for congress in the following year.”</p> + +<p>He had to receive just one more lesson as a speaker. In 1845 Calhoun was +coming to Natchez. Davis was selected to welcome him with a speech. He +made careful preparation, which his wife, whom he had lately married, took +down at his dictation. But when Calhoun had come, after a moment or two of +slowness in the exordium, Davis gave up trying to recite from memory, and +delivered with grace and effect an unpremeditated speech of taking +appropriateness.<a name='fna_126' id='fna_126' href='#f_126'><small>[126]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>What Mrs. Davis says of him as a speaker is so just and in such good +taste, that I quote it:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“From that day forth no speech was ever written for delivery. Dates +and names were jotted down on two or three inches of paper, and these +sufficed. Mr. Davis’s speeches never read as they were delivered; he +spoke fast, and thoughts crowded each other closely; a certain +magnetism of manner and the exceeding beauty and charm of his voice +moved the multitude, and there were apparently no inattentive or +indifferent listeners. He had one power that I have never seen +excelled; while speaking he took in the individuality of the crowd, +and seeing doubt or a lack of coincidence with him in their faces, he +answered ... with arguments addressed to the case in their minds. He +was never tiresome, because, as he said, he gave close attention to +the necessity of stopping when he was done.</p> + +<p>Only so much of his eloquence has survived as was indifferently +reported. The spirit of the graceful periods was lost. He was a +parenthetical speaker, which was a defect in a written oration, but it +did not, when uttered, impair the quality of his speeches, but rather +added a charm when accentuated by his voice and commended by his +gracious manner. At first his style was ornate, and poetry and fiction +were pressed from his crowded memory into service; but it was soon +changed into a plain and stronger cast of what he considered to be, +and doubtless was, the higher kind of oratory. His extempore addresses +are models of grace and ready command of language.”<a name='fna_127' id='fna_127' href='#f_127'><small>[127]</small></a></p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>He took his seat in the United States house of representatives in +December, 1845, he and Toombs, who was two years younger, beginning their +congressional careers together. Davis made a very creditable speech on the +Oregon question early in February, 1846. He was a modest member, but he +did all the duties of his place with praiseworthy diligence.</p> + +<p>Although he was a thoroughgoing anti-tariff democrat and Webster a +pro-tariff whig leader, he could not be induced to join in the effort to +make political capital for his own party by blackening the name of +Webster. The minority report of the committee which investigated the +conduct of Webster, as secretary of state, was really made by Davis, who +was one of the committee. The stand taken by the latter, and the true +presentation which he made, at last got the whole committee to adopt his +report substantially. Webster was greatly pleased with it.</p> + +<p>Early in May, 1846, Taylor had won his first victories. On the 29th Davis, +supporting joint resolutions of thanks to the general and his army, made +reply to what he deemed were unwarranted reflections upon West Point. He +emphasized Taylor’s operations as proving the high value of military +education. He asked Sawyer of Ohio, who had disparaged the Academy, if the +latter believed that a blacksmith or tailor could have done such good +work. Thus, without knowing it, he trod upon the toes of two members of +the house; for Sawyer had been a blacksmith, and Andrew Johnson, of +Tennessee, a tailor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> Sawyer took it good-humoredly, but Johnson, the next +day, passionately defended tailors, and used language very offensive to +Davis, implying that the latter belonged to “an illegitimate, swaggering, +bastard, scrub aristocracy.” To this the latter, justly indignant, +rejoined with cutting severity. There was never any love lost between the +two afterwards. When President Lincoln was murdered Johnson, succeeding +him, committed the unspeakable folly of offering by proclamation $100,000 +reward for the arrest of Davis as accessory. When Davis, having been +captured, was told of the proclamation he said to General Wilson—hoping +his words would be reported to Johnson—that there was one man in the +United States who knew the charge was false; this was the man who had +signed the proclamation; “for,” said Davis, “he at least knew that I +preferred Lincoln to himself.”</p> + +<p>Of course had Davis possessed the chief qualifications of popular +leadership he would have made a fast friend instead of a bitter enemy of +this man, whose rise from low estate to greatness proves that he had in +him elements of manhood and virtue that ought to have homage from the +highest and proudest.</p> + +<p>It was by his course in the Mexican war that Davis commenced life in the +eye of the nation. Without canvassing for the place—he never did canvass +for a place—he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi volunteers, +and “he eagerly and gladly accepted.” The president, authorized by a new +law, offered to make him a brigadier general. Mrs. Davis says: “My husband +expressed his preference for an elective office; when pressed, he said +that he thought volunteer troops raised in a State should be officered by +men of their own selection, and that after the elective right of the +volunteers ceased, the appointing power should be the governor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> of the +State whose troops were to be commanded by the general. This was his first +sacrifice to State rights, and it was a great effort to him.”<a name='fna_128' id='fna_128' href='#f_128'><small>[128]</small></a></p> + +<p>General Scott doubted if the percussion lock was as well suited to field +use as the flint lock, but Davis knew better. He had his men furnished +with the percussion-lock rifle, a very superior arm to the old +smooth-bore. He drilled his regiment well. And he kept its members from +pillaging.</p> + +<p>As the storming of Monterey opened, the head of the column recoiled in +confusion from a deadly cross-fire, “producing the utmost confusion among +the front of the assaulting brigade. The strong fort, Taneira, which had +contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag, and amid the wild +cheering of its defenders redoubled its fire of grape and canister and +musketry, under which the American lines wavered and were about to break. +Colonel Davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for orders, placed +himself at the head of his Mississippians, and gave the order to charge. +With prolonged cheers his regiment swept forward through a storm of +bullets and bursting shells. Colonel Davis, sword in hand, cleared the +ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers on, they mounted the works +with the impetuosity of a whirlwind, capturing artillery and driving the +Mexicans pell-mell back into the stone fort in the rear. In vain they +sought to barricade the gate; Davis and McClung [the lieutenant-colonel] +burst it open, and leading their men into the fort, compelled its +surrender at discretion. Taneira was the key of the situation, and its +capture insured victory. On the morning of the 23d of September, the +following day, Henderson’s Texas Rangers, Campbell’s Tennesseeans, and +Davis’s Mississippians, the latter again leading the assault, stormed and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>captured El Diabolo, and the next day General Ampudia surrendered the +city.”<a name='fna_129' id='fna_129' href='#f_129'><small>[129]</small></a></p> + +<p>Davis’s quickness, coolness, and dash—and especially his promptness to +take such wise initiative as is permissible to a colonel in action—shone +forth conspicuously in this affair.</p> + +<p>He was the very soul of the glorious stand of the Americans at Buena Vista +against odds of more than 4 to 1. At the opening of the battle a ball +drove a part of his spur into the right foot just below the instep, making +a very painful wound. He kept his seat as though nothing had happened. +Later in the day, his bleeding foot thrown over the pommel, he spurred his +horse into leaping a ravine, in which he saw a horse and cart beneath him +as he flew over. But his great exploit was the re-entering line of his +regiment and Bowles’s Indianians, with which he received the charge of a +host of heavy cavalry. His rifles being without bayonets, the hollow +square, then the approved mode of defence, was not to be thought of. So +necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which +poured something like two crossing enfilades into the head of the cavalry +column. The brilliant conception was brilliantly executed. The carnage +that befel the cavalry drove it from the field. Did not the spirit of +Napoleon looking on regret that he had not given the pesky Mamelukes like +punishment? The world has noted how Sir Colin Campbell learned from Davis +the right way of opposing infantry to the onset of heavy cavalry.</p> + +<p>The great distinction won most deservedly by Davis, as the colonel of a +raw regiment in these important engagements, is, so far as I know, without +any parallel. It was but natural that he should always afterwards believe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> +himself to be a great military genius. Of course he had become famous +throughout the whole country.</p> + +<p>There was a vacancy in one of the United States senatorships from +Mississippi, and Davis was appointed to fill it. I need not go into much +detail at this point. He was warmly greeted at his entrance into the upper +house. He maintained himself with growing ability. While he was +independent and self-reliant enough now and then to differ with Calhoun, +in the main he followed the latter as his leader. There was a dignity and +poise in his nature that suited the senate better than the house of +representatives. And he was doubtless frank when he asserted later that he +preferred the senate to any other place. As I contemplate his record at +this part of his life he impresses me as that one of all the more +prominent southern public men who was most fixed in the opinion that the +very surest preservative of the union was for the south to be always +unflinching and utterly uncompromising in demanding exact enforcement of +every constitutional protection of slavery. He loved the union most +fondly. It was only the south that he loved more. Conscientious +doctrinaire as he was, he believed that the rights of the south were so +plain and palpable that if they were but stated they would be conceded by +the great mass of the northern people. He thought it was to encourage +disunion to surrender even a jot of our claim to equality in the +Territories and that the fugitive slave law should be fully enforced. His +anticipation was that the more we yielded to the anti-slavery men the more +we would be asked to yield, until at last we would be driven into the +ditch, when we could save the south only by secession. So he counselled +with all his might that the south should resolve to surrender nothing +whatever—to go out of the union rather than so to do. Let the north +understand this and the abolition<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> party will disappear. That is the only +way to save the union. This explains why he refused to support the +compromise measures of 1850. He was beaten for governor of Mississippi on +that issue. He was classed with the fire-eaters. But that was utterly +untrue. Remember that in 1860 he actually contemplated being the +democratic presidential candidate, and that Massachusetts sent a +delegation to the Charleston convention instructed for him.</p> + +<p>A word or two as to his secretaryship of war. He was as up to date in +adopting every new thing of merit as he had been in insisting upon +percussion-lock rifles for his regiment in the Mexican war. The diligence +and prolonged labor which he conscientiously gave his official duties were +truly exemplary. I wish especially to have my reader reflect upon two +things belonging here. In selecting men to fill offices, from the highest +to the lowest, he was utterly regardless of their politics. When +remonstrated with by democratic partisans for not giving democrats the +preference in competition for appointments, he declared positively that he +should always make fitness and qualification the only conditions of such +selection. And his actions as long as he held the important office spoke +even louder than his words. Surely here is an example for these times to +profit by. The second thing really belongs to the same class as the first. +It is that when civil war actually prevailed in Kansas between the +anti-slavery men on one side and the pro-slavery men on the other, and the +commander of the federal troops in the Territory would virtually be +absolute in power, though Davis was the very extreme of pro-slavery he +gave the place to Colonel Sumner, an outspoken abolitionist, “whose honor, +ability, and judgment recommended him as the best man for the difficult +duty.”<a name='fna_130' id='fna_130' href='#f_130'><small>[130]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>The secretaryship must be noted as deepening the regular-army grooves in +which Davis’s thoughts and tastes had long been moving.</p> + +<p>He became United States senator again in 1857, which position he held +until the secession of his State. I need touch upon nothing but the +prominent part he took. Without knowing it he became the guide that +conducted the south in the aggressive defensive which the closing in +around her of the hostile lines imperatively dictated. All that he did of +importance but led up to or supported his famous resolutions of February +2, 1860. Their gist was that if the judiciary and executive could not and +the Territorial legislature would not protect slave property in any of the +Territories, congress was bound to pass efficiently protecting laws, to +remain of force until the Territory was admitted as a State, with a +constitution that authorized or prohibited slavery.</p> + +<p>Compare the speech he made for these resolutions with that made for them +by Toombs, and the wide difference of the two men comes out plainly. The +former is the height of commonplace morality and patriotism, expressed +with manly strength and eloquence, while the speaker does not see clearly +into the gulf of the brothers’ war into which his measure has been made by +the fates the lever to plunge America. That of Toombs shows titanic +mastery of law and statesmanship, and almost full discernment of the +national catastrophe at the door. It is destined, I believe, to stand in +the highest class of great speeches.</p> + +<p>Compare the last speeches of each in the senate. Toombs’s justification of +secession is with argument and appeal to conscience that the greatest men +cannot, and only cosmic forces, the fates, the directors of evolution, can +answer. Davis’s does satisfy the conscience of the typical southerner, and +in the tone preserved from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>beginning to end is a marvel of propriety. The +pathos of his leave-taking melted the sternest hearts on the other side. +It was especially in his freedom from offensive words and the gentlemanly +self-restraint of his manner that Davis showed as decidedly superior to +the other. In the speech of Toombs last noticed there are some harsh and +heated words that I would blot into complete oblivion if I could. There is +not a single line in the other that I can find fault with. I will here +parallel them in another place that is strikingly illustrative. Some years +after the war the people of Mississippi wanted to send Davis back to the +United States senate. To this end the legislature memorialized him to +apply for the removal of his disability. He replied that repentance ought +always to precede asking for pardon, and that he had not yet repented. One +day about the same time a sympathizing southerner asked Toombs if the +yankees had pardoned him yet. He scowled his darkest, and thundered, “No. +And God damn ’em, I haven’t pardoned them.” Of course the average man or +woman will cordially approve the decorum of Davis’s reply, and on +reflection will censure the other.</p> + +<p>Davis was completely representative of the real chivalry of the south; and +from the Mexican war on, this was more and more recognized in the section. +When he was made president of the confederacy the great majority of the +people approved. He is such a gentleman; so conscientious; so attentive to +his public duties; and then his military education and experience make him +far superior to Lincoln—this was said by the general. Thus were his +disqualifications for the place concealed from the people of the south.</p> + +<p>His chief defect was that not being a successful business man, he was not +a practical statesman. On this point we have already said enough.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>His own judgment upon himself was that he ought to command the armies of +the confederacy. To the very last he believed he had the extreme of +military ability. During the gloomy days that set in after Gettysburg he +often exclaimed, “If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we +could between us wrest a victory from those people.”<a name='fna_131' id='fna_131' href='#f_131'><small>[131]</small></a></p> + +<p>But he did not have extraordinary military capacity, as appears from the +facts which I will now tell.</p> + +<p>He was on the field at First Manassas when that unprecedented panic seized +the federal army. It was instantaneously understood by the latest recruit +looking on from our side. The men and line officers around me ejaculated, +“We ought to press forward and go into Washington with ’em.” Davis with +his training should have seen better even than these raw volunteers, and +recognized it was his part by pursuit to accelerate the flight and raise +that panic to its top. There were remaining several hours of daylight, +during which five of his men could chase a hundred and a hundred put ten +thousand to flight, and when night came the excited imagination of the +fliers would re-enforce the confederates with a vast host of destroying +monsters behind and before. The federals losing all organization, were +racing to escape over the bridge at Washington which was a little more +than twenty miles away. They were choking the roads with abandoned +vehicles and artillery. As it was, they seriously choked the bridge. Had +there been rapid advance by us, and firing in the rear, it is more than +probable we should have got the bridge unharmed. We should have added +thousands to our prisoners. But far more important than this, would have +been the arms, ammunition, wagons, horses, quartermaster and commissary +supplies of all sorts—in short, the entire<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> baggage of the enemy—that +would have been ours for the taking. And if the federals had destroyed the +bridge before we reached it, we should have had McDowell’s pontoons, or +captured material out of which to make a bridge of our own. We should have +crossed somehow, and at the place which circumstances and the insight of +genius suggested. The capital would have fallen, really without a blow; +and what an immense addition to our booty would have been here. And the +prestige! In a day or two our flag would have waved over Baltimore, the +consequence being that Maryland, with a throng of most true and valiant +fighters, would have been won for the Confederate States, and its northern +line instead of the Potomac would have become the frontier. All this would +have happened if Davis had been a Cæsar and had Cæsar-like used the one +great opportunity of the war. It must be set down to his credit that he +did far more than Johnston and Beauregard insist upon pursuit. But he does +not seem to have thought of it until night; and at last he permitted +himself to be reasoned out of it.</p> + +<p>There have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful supineness of our +army after this victory. We were without transportation means, and a +retreating army always outruns its pursuers, said Johnston. Mr. Knight +says Northrop had left us without commissary supplies, and of course men +without anything to eat had to wait until they could be fed. Beauregard +says we ought to have made for the upper Potomac, which was fordable. All +such reasons come from those who ignore the situation. A real general +would have said to his soldiers, in the first moment of the panic, “You +are weary; it will rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him +because of the obstructing bridge. You are hungry; there are full +haversacks and commissary wagons of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> your enemy just beyond Centerville +without defenders. Forward, and escort the grand army into Washington +city!” And such a general with just what infantry he could find to hand, +all the while being re-enforced by eager men catching up, pressing forward +as persistently as Blucher spurred with his cavalry after the French +flying from Waterloo, would have been in sight of Washington when the sun +rose.</p> + +<p>Mr. Knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of Davis as the military +chieftain of the Confederate States.<a name='fna_132' id='fna_132' href='#f_132'><small>[132]</small></a> I would abridge what can be said +here under these heads:</p> + +<p>1. Each particular army ought to have operated as a part of the whole +force of the confederacy, and that whole force ought to have been wielded +as one machine. Instead of trying to effect this end, the president +decided that all exposed points must be defended. The result was that +these were taken one after another by superior armies. A military man will +understand me when I say his strategy was below mediocrity. True strategy +dictated the abandonment of many places in order to assemble by using our +shorter interior lines a resistless power on a really decisive occasion. +McClellan, in Virginia, and Grant, in Mississippi, ought each to have been +captured as Burgoyne and Cornwallis were.</p> + +<p>2. He selected his generals and important officers according to his likes +and dislikes, and not according to their true qualifications.</p> + +<p>3. He was without practical administrative talent in any high degree. Such +a man as Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, would have shown far superior to +him.</p> + +<p>It will doubtless be the decision of future history that he was neither +statesman nor military man of sufficient ability for the presidency. He +did not want it. Compare<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> him as secession was dawning, with Toombs, who +was the man of all to be president. The latter scenting battle in the air, +was really eager for the inevitable fighting to begin; Davis was cast down +and dejected. He loved the union, and it was inexpressibly bitter to him +to part with it. And then he was sure that there would be a long and +bloody brothers’ war. What he wanted was to fight for the south so dear to +him. The news of his election as president was perhaps the greatest +surprise of his life. Says Mrs. Davis: “When reading the telegram he +looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a +few minutes’ painful silence he told me, as a man might speak of a +sentence of death.”<a name='fna_133' id='fna_133' href='#f_133'><small>[133]</small></a></p> + +<p>Writing of his inauguration at Montgomery, he says to his wife: “The +audience was large and brilliant. Upon my weary heart were showered +smiles, plaudits, and flowers; but, beyond them, I saw troubles and thorns +innumerable.”<a name='fna_134' id='fna_134' href='#f_134'><small>[134]</small></a></p> + +<p>And she tells this of his inauguration as president of the permanent +government:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Mr. Davis came in from an early visit to his office and went into his +room, where I found him an hour afterwards on his knees in earnest +prayer ‘for the divine support I need so sorely’ [as he said].... ‘The +inauguration took place at twelve o’clock.’ [The anterior proceedings +having been described, the contemporary account she quotes goes on +thus:]</p> + +<p>“The president-elect then delivered his inaugural address. It was +characterized by great dignity, united with much feeling and grace, +especially the closing sentence. Throwing up his eyes and hands to +heaven he said, ‘With humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging +the providence which has so visibly protected the confederacy during +its brief but eventful career,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> to Thee, O God, I trustingly commit +myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country and its +cause.’”</p></div> + +<p>Then she adds:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Thus Mr. Davis entered on his martyrdom. As he stood pale and +emaciated, dedicating himself to the service of the confederacy, +evidently forgetful of everything but his sacred oath, he seemed to me +a willing victim going to his funeral pyre; and the idea so affected +me that, making some excuse, I regained my carriage and went +home.”<a name='fna_135' id='fna_135' href='#f_135'><small>[135]</small></a></p> + +<p>So did this thrice-noble man sacrifice his dearest wishes and with +superhuman resolution step into the arena at the command of the fates, to +be the target of their wrath against his people.</p> + +<p>He was like Hamlet upon whom destiny had imposed a high task far beyond +his powers. We can believe that to the end of his presidency Davis sorely +sighed more and more often:</p> + +<p class="poem">“The time is out of joint: O cursed spite<br /> +That ever I was born to set it right.”</p> + +<p>His official career from beginning to end was full of fatal mistakes. But +in every one of these he did the right—to use Lincoln’s grand word—as +God gave him to see it. This will more and more through all the future +turn his failure to glory. He will be like Hector, who draws the +admiration of the world a thousand-fold more than Achilles, his +vanquisher.<a name='fna_136' id='fna_136' href='#f_136'><small>[136]</small></a></p> + +<p>At the last, when the sword of Grant had beaten down the sword of Lee, and +all of us, it seemed to me, knew that it was the highest duty of +patriotism to yield our arms, he was for fighting on. Casabianca would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> +not go with those who were leaving the burning ship until his dead father +bade him go. Davis would not abandon the cause of his nation without its +command; and it could give none; for it was dead and he did not know it. +He was trying his hardest to reach the west, intent upon prosecuting the +war from a new base, when he was taken.</p> + +<p>His capture was accepted by the southern people as the fall of the blue +cross. Every man, woman, and child old enough to think, in the late +confederacy became sick and faint. Sorrow after sorrow, and grief after +grief tore their hearts. The first was the thought, for all the blood we +have poured out during four years of such effort on the battlefield as the +world never knew before we have lost; we have been beaten, and we are +subjugated. The next thought that pierced was, the property that made our +homes the sweetest and most comfortable on earth has all been destroyed, +and for the rest of their lives our dear ones must pine in hardship and +misery. O how this pang actually killed many old men and women! It seems +to me that heart failure commenced in the south with the great harvest it +gathered in the first five years succeeding the war. But the agony of +agonies was that the negroes were put over us. Those five +years—particularly the last three of them—are the one ugly dream of my +life. To pay his debts, which would have been a small thing to him had he +kept his slaves, but which were now monsters, my father overworked +himself, while trying to make a cotton crop with freedmen. I did not learn +of his imprudence until I had been summoned to see him die. There was +something like this in every family. A night of impoverishment, misery, +contumely, and insult descended upon us, and the sun would not rise. I +kept the stoutest heart that I could. Now and then it was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> comforting +day dream to imagine how well it would have been for me if I had fallen in +the front of my men on the second day of Gettysburg, when I was trying my +utmost to make them do the impossibility of charging across the narrow bog +staying us, and mixing with the men in blue lining the other side. Had +that happened to me I should never have known, in the flesh, of our +decisive defeats, nor of the trials of my people after they laid down +arms; and even if my grave could not have been found, there would have +been at a place here and there for some years honorable mention of me with +tears on Memorial Day, to gladden my spirit taking note. This would +sometimes be my thought, and thousands of others had like thoughts.</p> + +<p>Early in this time of sorrow and suffering the women of the south +instituted Memorial Day. Each year when it comes they do rites of +remembrance to the fallen soldiers of the confederacy. These soldiers lie +in every graveyard from the Ohio and Potomac to the Rio Grande. When the +day comes these women in their unforgetting love assemble the people, have +praises and lamentations of their dead darlings fitly spoken; and then +they deck their graves with the fairest flowers of spring. It is an annual +holiday, sacred to grief for our heroes who died in vain. It is the +fairest, tenderest, and sweetest testimonial of love ever given—love from +those who have nothing else to bestow, lavished upon those who can make no +return; and it is further the most splendid and glorious, being the +co-operative demonstration of a whole people of “true lovers.”<a name='fna_137' id='fna_137' href='#f_137'><small>[137]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>I cannot say where and when the observance of Memorial Day began. Perhaps +Miss Davidson correctly asserts that it was in Petersburg, Virginia, in +1866.<a name='fna_138' id='fna_138' href='#f_138'><small>[138]</small></a> It had reached its height at Charleston, South Carolina, in the +spring of 1867, when as prelude to decorating the graves in Magnolia +cemetery, Timrod’s hymn, containing this oft-quoted passage, was sung:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Behold! your sisters bring their tears,<br /> +And these memorial blooms.<br /> +<br /> +“Small tributes! but your shades shall smile<br /> +More proudly on these wreaths to-day,<br /> +Than when some cannon-moulded pile<br /> +Shall overlook this bay.<br /> +<br /> +“Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!<br /> +There is no holier spot of ground<br /> +Than where defeated valor lies,<br /> +By mourning beauty crowned.”</p> + +<p>The “true lovers” could no more forget their living leader in prison than +they could forget their soldiers in the grave. “Out of sight, out of mind” +could not be said of Davis during his two years’ confinement. The concern +of his people mounted steadily. They made all his sufferings their own, +lamenting and praying for him as a loved father. When he was about to be +released on bond the news gave the south a wilder joy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> than did the +unexpected victory of First Manassas. He was brought in custody to +Richmond by a James river steamboat. Mrs. Davis thus describes how he was +received:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“A great concourse of people had assembled. From the wharf to the +Spottswood Hotel there was a sea of heads—room had to be made by the +mounted police for the carriages. The windows were crowded, and even +on to the roofs people had climbed. Every head was bared. The ladies +were shedding tears.... When Mr. Davis reached the Spottswood Hotel, +where rooms had been provided for us, the crowd opened and the beloved +prisoner walked through; the people stood uncovered for at least a +mile up and down Main street. As he passed, one and another put out a +hand and lightly touched his coat. As I left the carriage a low voice +said: ‘Hats off, Virginians,’ and again every head was bared. This +noble sympathy and clinging affection repaid us for many moments of +bitter anguish.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Davis was released, one gentleman jumped upon the box and +drove the carriage which brought him back to the hotel, and other +gentlemen ran after him and shouted themselves hoarse. Our people +poured into the hotel in a steady stream to congratulate, and many +embraced him.”</p></div> + +<p>Bear in mind the people, and where it was, and when it was, from whom this +show of respect so great, so earnest and unfeigned, spontaneously came. +They were of that part of the south which had lost more in blood, +property, and devastation than any other, and who, one might think, were +too embittered against their defeated leader to show him anything but +disapproval. They were also of a State which had not been readmitted into +the union. The axe was suspended over their necks by a party seeking +excuses for letting it fall; by a party to whom Davis was the most hated +of men. Surely these Virginians who thus risked their fortunes were the +truest of lovers.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>No reader of mine, though he search history and encyclopedias through and +through for years, can find anything like the Southern Memorial Day and +the honors given Davis in Richmond as we have just told. They unmistakably +mark an ascent of humanity. But it is not my purpose to emphasize them as +specially signalizing the south. Their great lesson is not learned if it +is not understood that they are glories of federal government. Under any +other form of government such demonstrations would be suppressed as +disloyal and treasonable.</p> + +<p>For more than twenty-two years after this auspicious day the ex-president +of the southern confederacy lived most of his time among his people. Their +love for him steadily grew. He proved worthy of it. He would not accept +the bounty they stood ready to shower upon him, and he was poor and +without money-making faculty. When Mississippi wanted to make him United +States senator again, he felt that he was too old and broken to serve the +State efficiently, and he declined. It occurred to all of us that he +sorely needed the salary of the place. He struggled on under the load of +poverty and ill-health. All of us knew that the latter came from that +cruel and inhuman imprisonment, and the more he suffered the closer our +hearts drew to him. The cause of his section he justified to the last, and +with all his energy. His book defending that cause was written under +difficulty almost insurmountable by man. His character as one tried in +every way and found true came out clearer and clearer. He showed more and +more of spotless virtue, becoming all the while to us a stronger +justification of the fight we had made under him for the lost cause. We +thought to ourselves with pride that the world will some day learn what a +good man he was, and that will be our complete vindication from the +slanders now current.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>Let me tell of some of the other demonstrations made over him. I witnessed +that in Atlanta, in 1886. April 30, all the State of Georgia was there, as +it seemed. Old and young, white and colored, waited impatiently for the +railroad train bringing him from Montgomery. My wife, divining the rare +sight thus to be gained, secured a station out of town where she could see +the train pass without obstruction. As long as she lived afterwards, his +car, prodigally and appropriately bedecked with the fairest May flowers of +the sunny south, was her proverb for that which pleases too greatly for +description.</p> + +<p>When he had come out of his bower of flowers and we knew he was resting, +we felt as if the angel of the Lord was here with tidings of great joy for +all our people.</p> + +<p>Who can describe the rejoicing of the next day that came forth everywhere +as Mr. Davis showed himself to his people! I have seen popular outbursts +of gladness, but nothing like this. It surpassed in profundity of feeling +and sustained energy and flow that which seemed to come straight out of +the ground when, in 1884, we knew at last that Cleveland was elected, and +the south was convulsed with an ecstasy of happy surprise. The women and +men who had tasted the war all crying; all pouring benedictions upon his +gray hairs as they came in sight; “God bless him” displayed on every +corner. I am utterly unable adequately to report this grand occasion. I +will tell only a few things that I saw or heard of. He passed by a long +line of school-children in Peachtree street. They made the sincere and +decided demonstrations of children whose pleasure is at its height. But +what was especially noticeable to me here was the behavior in the section +of colored children. Their delight seemed, if that were possible, to be +somewhat wilder and more unrestrained than that of the white children. The +occurrence has come back to me a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> thousand times. Is it to be explained by +Mr. Davis’s character as a master, to whom, as to all really typical +masters, his slaves were but a little lower in his affections than his +children? Or was it unconscious approval of the resistance by the south +with all her might against the emancipation proclamation, the end of which +may be the wholesale destruction of the black race in America, such +approval being suggested by a cosmic influence as yet inexplicable?</p> + +<p>When he was going through Mrs. Hill’s yard to enter her house, little +girls on each side of the walk threw bouquets before him, every one +begging, “Mr. Davis, please step on my flowers.” The feeble man tried to +gratify all of them. The flowers that he did step on were eagerly caught +up by the owners, to be treasured as the dearest of relics and keepsakes.</p> + +<p>I was told that some old grayhead who met him during the day, gently +raised Mr. Davis’s hands to his lips, saying, “Let me kiss the hands that +were manacled for me,” and as he kissed his tears fell in a flood.</p> + +<p>What we have just described occurred in Georgia—a State in which of all +during the brothers’ war the most formidable opposition to his +administration was developed. This opposition was lead or upheld by +Toombs, both the Stephenses, and Brown—the most influential of all the +Georgians at that time. That for all this the State gave him this +wonderful ovation shows how deep and strong is the southern sentiment that +glorifies the lost cause. It was Henry Grady, a Georgian revering and +treasuring the men I have just mentioned, who when Mr. Davis was in +Atlanta, in 1886, called him the uncrowned king of our hearts, the words +evoking plaudits from the entire south. And remember that Georgia voted +for Greeley in 1872, although Toombs and the Stephenses opposed him. I +think I was representative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> of the dominant public feeling at the time. +While my companions and I avowed the fullest confidence in Greeley’s +integrity and statesmanship, we each said we were in haste to honor with +our votes the northern man who got Mr. Davis bailed and became one of his +sureties. And Georgia is among the States which has made June 3 a legal +holiday, because it is the anniversary of Mr. Davis’s birth.</p> + +<p>Some northern paper sympathetically described the reception given Mr. +Davis in Atlanta, in 1886, as the swan song of the southern confederacy. +And to me it has always been the funeral of the old south. But there were +other obsequies and swan songs. When he died December 6, 1889, the south +sorrowed as it never sorrowed before. We are pleased to quote from the +memoir, the noblest monument a true wife has ever given a dead +husband—far nobler, more splendid and immortal than that which Artemisia +gave Mausolus. Mrs. Davis tells:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Floral offerings came from all quarters of our country. The orphan +asylum, the colleges, the societies, drew upon their little stores to +deck his quiet resting-place. Many thousands passed weeping by the +bier where he lay in state, in his suit of confederate gray, guarded +by the men who had fought for the cause he loved, and who revered his +honest, self-denying, devoted life. His old comrades in arms came by +thousands to mingle their tears with ours. The governors of nine +states came to bear him to his rest. The clergy of all denominations +came to pray that his rest be peaceful, and to testify their respect +for and faith in him. Fifty thousand people lined the streets as the +catafalque passed. Few, if any, dry eyes looked their last upon him +who had given them his life’s service. The noble army of the West and +that of Northern Virginia escorted him for the last time, and the +Washington Artillery, now gray-haired men, were the guard of honor to +his bier. The eloquent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> Bishops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the +clergy of all denominations, delivered short eulogies upon him to +weeping thousands, and the strains of ‘Rock of Ages,’ once more bore +up a great spirit in its flight to Him who gave, sustained, and took +it again to himself.”</p> + +<p>These aptly chosen words come short of describing the general grief. +Nobody can yet tell all of it. One but feebly expresses it by saying that +when Jefferson Davis died, broken-hearted men, women, and children +gathered in funeral assemblies everywhere in that vast area from Mason and +Dixon’s line on the north to the Mexican border on the south, wept over +his bier, and hung the air and heavens with black.</p> + +<p>In 1893 his remains were carried to Richmond, the dead capital of the dead +Confederate States, and there reinterred. The ceremonies were impressive, +and thoroughly in keeping with those I have narrated in the foregoing.</p> + +<p>And in 1896 the corner-stone of a monument to him was laid in Monroe Park. +On this occasion General Stephen D. Lee delivered an oration which, as a +monument itself, will long outlast the stone one.</p> + +<p>Thus has the overthrown and most evilly entreated president of the +Confederate States become, by some marvel of fortune, far more than the +proudest conqueror. The honors which every one who “can above himself +erect himself” estimates as the very richest, Mr. Davis has had given him +more prodigally than any other man. These honors that make everything else +shabby in appearance and cheap, are the spontaneous offerings of sincere +love from those who know us. Smiles, tender words, prayers for blessing, +tears of joy, admiration, pity, and sympathy, flowers—how dear are any of +these from a friend, brother, sister, father, mother, sweetheart, wife, +child.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> For almost a generation all these tokens were given the +ex-president by everybody in the south, and each year to his death they +were given in greater profusion. And really the whole south mourned at his +burial. Our wives, mothers, and other dear ones give us up, and we give, +them up, to fight and perhaps die for the country. We are so made that we +love the great brotherhood better than we do ourselves. And so an offering +of regard from that brotherhood—to be made to feel that throughout the +whole of it one is recognized as most worthy of love—the true man would +prize this above every other. Before this time this great honor has been +given only by happy ones to their victors—to such as Washington, Lincoln, +Grant. But the south has begun a new era. In the misery and ruin of her +subjugation she magnifies her deposed chief. Much of the applause heaped +upon the victor is selfish and feigned, but the whole of that given the +conquered hero comes direct and straight from the hearts of his +countrymen. It seems, therefore, to me that this decoration of the +conquered hero is the crown of crowns of this world. It is Davis’s +historical uniqueness that he has won this lone crown.</p> + +<p>The achievement is so counter to common-sense that it is not yet credited +nor understood. I cannot help believing that when all the fog raised by +the brothers’ war has cleared away, and our historians tell what brought +and what followed that war with unclouded vision of cosmic agency, that +Jefferson Davis will be permanently placed high in the American temple of +fame. There he will be the world’s contemplation, showing something like +Hester Prynne. As what was at first to her the branding placard of guilt +turned to a badge of the greatest righteousness, so has that which was +unutterable obloquy and disgrace to him become unparalleled fortune and +glory.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">THE CURSE OF SLAVERY TO THE WHITE, AND ITS BLESSING TO THE NEGRO</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> master got the curse and the negro the blessing of slavery.</p> + +<p>We set out by mentioning how certain ants have been injured by becoming +masters. Before this they were doubtless the equals of any +non-slaveholding tribe in self-maintenance. Now they “are waited upon and +fed by their slaves, and when the slaves are taken away the masters perish +miserably.”<a name='fna_139' id='fna_139' href='#f_139'><small>[139]</small></a> It did not become so bad as this with human slaveholders; +but the consequent disadvantage was very great, as we shall now exemplify +with some detail. We shall throughout keep to the average and typical man +and woman. And for brevity’s sake, we shall not look beyond the domestic +and agricultural spheres, because when the reader has learned what slavery +did in these, he can of himself easily add the little required to make +complete statement of its entire effect.</p> + +<p>In non-slave communities baby is tended only by mother and near relatives. +Though petted and indulged, it is steadily constrained into more obedience +to those who tend it. In due time the child is taking care of itself in +many things, and is also doing light chores. Until the parental roof has +been left he or she has every day something to do. What we may call the +open-air home-work is done by the boys, and the inside by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> girls. But +in the old south baby commenced its life as a slaveholder with a nurse +that it learned to command by inarticulate cries and signs before it could +talk. And to the end, as grandfather or grandmother, self-service in many +common things, as is usual with all other people, was never learned, but +great expertness in getting these things done by slaves was learned +instead.</p> + +<p>I was only fifteen years old in 1851, when I entered the sophomore class +in Princeton College, never having been out of the south before. Of course +much of my time at first was consumed in observing and thinking over many +sights very novel and strange to me. I came in August. Soon afterwards I +saw them saving their Indian corn. In the south we “pulled” the fodder, +and some weeks later we “pulled” the corn, leaving the stripped stalks +standing. But the New Jersey farmers, without removing the blades or the +ears, cut the stalks down, put them up in stacks, and after a while hauled +them to the barn. This was such a wonder that I described it minutely in a +letter to my mother. The next great surprise that I had was to note the +lady of the family and her daughters doing everything in and about the +house, which I used to see at home only the negroes do. They were +marvellously more expert and neat in despatch than the negroes. Their easy +and, as it seemed, effortless way of getting through their daily +employment grew upon me steadily. What I intently observed in those times +and reflected over much subsequently, I have had a recent experience to +refresh and enforce. In the summer of 1902 two ladies from Pennsylvania +took a house in Atlanta next to mine. They had never before been in the +south. I found out these lonely strangers at once, and was soon seeing +much of them. They kept no servant. The two did all the household tasks. +The younger washed the clothes. This is something which but few city +southern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> ladies, except those whose ancestors were not slaveholders, have +ever consented to do. The laundry of even the poorest families in our +towns is nearly always the care of a negro washerwoman. Although their +work was every day punctually done by my two new-found friends, and their +house always the tidiest, like the New Jersey ladies of my boyhood at +Princeton, they were never flustered nor worried, but were always pleasant +and agreeable.</p> + +<p>Plainly they lived in far more ease and comfort than the native +housekeepers. There are two classes of the latter. In one is the woman who +is greatly plagued by the waste, dishonesty, and eye-service of her negro +cook and housemaid, and always in craven fear that she will wake up some +morning to know that they have taken French leave. In the other class is +the woman who often must, with the help only of her children, do +everything at home. What a laborious, fatiguing botch they make of it! +Their day-dream all the year round is to find that needle in a haystack, a +servant who will take no more than the established holidays and always +come in time to get breakfast.</p> + +<p>I sorrow for these present housekeepers of the south. They all know by +heart and often retell to their children the tales of their mothers and +grandmothers,—how, early in the morning, the affectionate and faithful +nurses stole the children out of the room, without waking papa and mamma; +how the cook and the waiters, not superintended, had the best of +breakfasts ready at the right time; how at this meal there was happy +reunion of the family beginning a new day, the children bathed and in +their clean clothes, each one pretty as a picture and sweet as a pink; and +how all the affairs of the household under the magic touch of angel +servants were fitly despatched without trouble or worry to mamma, until +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> day ended by the nurses’ bathing the little tots again, putting them +to bed, and mammy’s getting them to sleep by telling “The Tar Baby” or +some other adventure of Brer Rabbit over and over as often as sleepily +called for, or by singing sweet lullabies. With this vision of a real +fairyland in which their ancestors lived not so very long ago, how can any +one of these mothers of the new south contentedly make herself the only +nurse, cook, and house servant of her family? For many a year yet, to do +every day the drudgery of all three will be the extreme of discomfort and +sore trial to her. We must give her loving words and sympathy without +ceasing, and trust her to the slow but sure healing of inevitable +necessity.</p> + +<p>This lamentable condition of our southern woman is due, as plainly +appears, to the miseducation given their ancestors by slavery. Slavery +went forty years ago; but it left the negro, and the dependence of these +women upon her as their only servant. It is indispensable that they cut +loose completely from this dependence. Their resolve should be firm and +unwavering that they will learn to minister to themselves and their dear +ones, and teach the blessed art to their children; as their northern +sisters have always done. I would have them here receptively contemplate, +as a part of the new lesson which they must learn, this true and +enchanting picture of a New England home:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“There are no servants in the house, but the lady in the snowy cap, +with the spectacles, who sits sewing every afternoon among her +daughters, as if nothing had ever been done, or were to be done,—she +and her girls, in some long-forgotten forepart of the day <i>did up the +work</i>, and for the rest of the time, probably, at all hours when you +would see them, it is <i>done up</i>. The old kitchen floor never seems +stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the various cooking +utensils never seem deranged or disordered; though three and sometimes +four meals a day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> are got there, though the family washing and ironing +is there performed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are in some +silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence.”<a name='fna_140' id='fna_140' href='#f_140'><small>[140]</small></a></p> + +<p>Of course it is not to be demanded that the southern woman exactly +reproduce the New England system of fifty years ago just described by Mrs. +Stowe. But she must learn to be entirely independent of servants in the +era of co-operation, electric dish-washers, and other helping machines, +about to begin.</p> + +<p>Let us see how it has been with the fathers and boys. The planting of the +old south required proportionally less cash outlay annually than any +common business that I now call to mind. The owner of 750 acres of +land—an ordinary plantation—worth $6,000, thirty slaves worth $18,000, +and mules and live-stock worth $1,000, had usually but five considerable +items of expense: the overseer with his family was “found”—to use the +then current vogue—and paid not more than $150 yearly wages; a few sacks +of salt to save the pork—a little to be given the live animals +occasionally; a few bars of iron for the plantation blacksmith shop—the +latter being furnished with bellows, anvil, tongs, screwplate, vise, and a +few other tools, all hardly amounting to $100 investment; sometimes coarse +cotton and woollen cloth for the clothes of the negroes, made by the +slave-women tailors (even in my day this cloth was, on many plantations, +spun and wove at home from the cotton and wool grown by the owner); and +the fifth item was a moderate bill of the family physician for attendance +upon the sick slaves. The whole would seldom amount to $350; and remember +the income yielding capital was $25,000. This planter paid no wages for +his labor; he bred his slaves, and all animals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> serving for work, food, or +pleasure;—in short, the establishment was self-supporting. The good +manager sold every year more than enough of meat, grain, and other produce +to pay the expense itemed a moment ago, and so the $1,200 from the sale of +his crop of thirty bales of cotton was often net income.</p> + +<p>The natural increase of slaves which I have explained above operated in +many cases to encourage wastefulness and idleness. But even in the +majority of these cases the estates more than held their own.</p> + +<p>Let us illustrate the change wrought by emancipation by having you to +contemplate a small middle Georgia farmer of to-day. If he employ but four +hands to his two plows, he will, in wages, fertilizers that have come into +general use since the war, purchase of meat, corn, and other supplies that +the slaves used to produce, necessarily lay out annually more than did the +planter making thirty bales as we mentioned above. If this small farmer +makes twenty bales—which is far above the average—worth, if the price +be, say, eight cents, $800—more than half of it will be needed to cover +his outlay. It is to be emphasized that as a general rule this farmer and +his boys have not yet been trained to work as steadily and diligently as +their circumstances demand of them. As the women slight in the house what +they regard as fit employment only of negroes, so the men do the same in +the farm. The whites of both sexes cling to the negro instead of making +good workers of themselves.</p> + +<p>In the old south money grew of itself. Now constant alertness is needed to +see that every dollar laid out comes back, if not with addition, at least +without loss. To keep from falling behind, the farmer must have a very +much higher degree of mercantile capacity than he could ever acquire under +the old system. And he and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> his boys ought to supplant much of the negro +labor he now employs by their own systematic and steady work. All these +necessary lessons are very hard to learn, because to do that we must first +unlearn widely different ones.</p> + +<p>This examination shows that the men of the new south are almost as +inadequate to the demands of the day as we found the women to be.</p> + +<p>I do not mean to say that our women and men have not improved at all in +their respective spheres in the last forty years. I believe that when due +allowance is made for the unavoidable effect upon them of the system into +which they were all born it must be conceded that the little improvement +which they have made is greater than what could have been reasonably +expected. But I see clearly that the habits of thought and the modes of +house and farm economy, bred first from our contact with the negro slave +and then with the negro freedman, are yet an oppressively heavy load upon +our section.</p> + +<p>I have now to do with a still greater evil as part of the curse of slavery +to the southern whites; which is, that it prevented the normal rise in the +section of a white labor class. If one but look steadily at developments, +either now in progress or surely impending, in Germany, France, England, +the English colonies, and the United States he sees that the workers most +of all are influencing the other classes to pursue the best policy in all +departments of government. The truth is that in every stage of society +there is the leading energy of some particular class. Let me make you +reflect over a few well-known examples. In their unremitted struggle with +the patricians, the plebeians of Rome gradually climbed out of their low +estate into complete political, civil, and social equality with the former +who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> had long been the constituency of the so-called republic. Some +centuries later a tacit combination of those belonging to each division of +the middle class dried all the fountains of civil disorder and made +domestic peace sure and permanent by establishing the Roman empire. Much +later employers of the free labor which had displaced slavery made +European towns democratic, and set them in such strong array against the +feudal barons that the latter were at last restrained from plundering the +new industry. The American revolution and the French revolution were each +mainly middle-class movements. By them the middle class cleared out of its +way, as far as it could, distinctions of birth, title, rank, and all other +special personal privileges. But, unawares, it put in the place of the old +hereditary lords and monopolists, known as such by everybody, a nobility +in disguise. The members of this nobility make no claim to our labor or +substance by reason of their having had such and such fathers or having +received such and such grants or patents to themselves as natural persons. +They pose as government agents in such functions as the transportation and +monetary, of which efficient, cheap, and impartial performance is vital to +the general welfare. Clandestinely they have had the law of the land made +or interpreted and the practice of government shaped each as they want it; +and sitting in their masks wherever these sovereign powers must be invoked +by producer or worker, it is these usurpers and not the legitimate public +authorities who must be applied to and given, not the just cost of the +service, but the supreme extortion possible. These masked rulers toll our +wages, profits, and property as insidiously and deeply as does indirect +compared with direct taxation. In fact they are government licensees, +levying upon us for their own benefit all the indirect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> taxation that we +can bear. Some—I may say, a large number—of middle-class property owners +and producers are heart and soul in strong and strengthening resistance +now forming against the tyrants they have unwittingly set up. But the +initiative and most effective elements of this benign uprising do not come +from the middle class. It was the workers who excited and kept at its +height the righteous indignation of the country that shamed the coal-trust +into decency. It is the workers who are the most influential of all that +strive to arm us with those plutocracy-destroying weapons, direct +nomination and direct legislation; and of all who demand that the +railroads pay just taxes; of all who would lay the axe at the root of +public corruption by having government resume its powers and do every one +of its duties without favor or prejudice to a single human being. It is +clear that the laborers are gathering all the anti-monopoly interests and +classes of society to their banner, and that from the steady and +increasing impulsion of these laborers, in unions and political campaigns, +industrial democracy will at last come in, to open the millennium by +keeping every man, woman, and child, except the wilfully idle and +criminal, permanently supplied with necessaries and comforts.</p> + +<p>Who are the laborers that are both to spur and lead us forward in this +great course? Why, the white laborers, whose interests and whose +qualifications to share in governments are the same as those of the rest +of us; who are really part and parcel of the body politic and whose sons +and daughters can be married by our sons and daughters without social +degradation to themselves or degeneration of the proud Caucasian stock in +their children. The negroes cannot do the great work we are contemplating. +They are strangers in blood. They are as yet far too low in development. +It is idle to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> think of making these aliens, whose highest interests are +irreconcilably antagonistic to ours and our children’s, allies of the +white laborers—a point which will be treated at large in later chapters.</p> + +<p>To bring out the situation more clearly, suppose that instead of the eight +millions of negroes now in the south we had eight millions of native white +workers and no negroes at all. Would it not be far better for us of the +section? Would it not be far better for the anti-monopoly cause in the +north? Ought there not to be a real labor party in the south instead of +what we now see? The so-called labor party of the south has a large +percentage of leaders whose chief activity is to win positions in the +unions, in agitation, in the city and State government wherein they can +serve themselves by delivering the labor vote to corporate interests, or +doing the latter legislative or official favor—a sure symptom that the +movement is as yet merely incipient. In no northern State have the +railroads and allied corporations such complete command of nominative, +appointive, and legislative machinery as in Georgia; and it seems to me +that Georgia is but fairly representative of all the south except South +Carolina, which has advanced further in direct nomination than any other +one of the United States. In many places the people of the north are +successfully rising against the corporation oligarchs. In New York and +Michigan the latter have been made to pay some of the taxes which they had +always been dodging. In a recent Boston referendum the street railroad, +which for years had ridden roughshod over the public at will, was snowed +under, although it had the machine, all the five daily papers but one, and +the outside of that, fighting for it with might and main. Los Angeles, +followed by three or four other towns, has just made a beginning with the +<i>Recall</i>. Oregon has direct<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> legislation. Illinois has pushed ahead with +both direct nomination and direct legislation. Cities here and there, in +very grateful contrast with the apathy prevalent in this section, have +awakened to the importance of rightly guarding the common property in +public-service franchises. I could cite many other examples which show +that the anti-plutocratic tide gathers force all over the north. Why is it +that there is this blessed insurgence against corporation misrule there, +and hardly a trace of it here? Simply because the north has and the south +has not the motor of insurgence—a real labor class, growing steadily in +zeal and organization, and rapidly increasing in numbers.</p> + +<p>That a southern State has no real labor class with potent influence upon +the public, puts it as far behind the most enlightened communities in +political and governmental condition, as it was with its slaves behind +them in productive condition. Such a State lacks a most essential organ of +the highest types of democracy.<a name='fna_141' id='fna_141' href='#f_141'><small>[141]</small></a></p> + +<p>To sum up: Slavery disqualified the white men and women of the south for +the domestic and business management proper to this era; and ever since +emancipation the presence of a large number of negroes available for labor +in house and on the farm, and preventing the coming in of any other labor, +has powerfully helped both races in their efforts naturally made to retain +the familiar ways of the old system. Thus the south has been sadly +retarded in her due economical rehabilitation. In the second place, it has +kept the political influence of labor at the minimum, and consequently +sent her backwards in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> true democracy, while England, the English +colonies, and the northern States, are slowly but surely going forward.</p> + +<p>These are the main things. Let me in briefest mention suggest some of +their results, which, at first blush, seem to be independent.</p> + +<p>Slavery engendered among the whites a disrespect for labor, which, +although now at last dying out, is still of hurtful influence.</p> + +<p>As negroes were always and everywhere in number sufficient to do every +task of labor, there was but little demand for labor-saving machines and +methods—a fact which prevented the southern whites from developing the +inventive faculty equally with their northern brothers. We all are +beginning to see that, except in much of agriculture and other activities +in which the process is that of nature and not of art, the future of +industry belongs more and more to the constantly improving machine.</p> + +<p>Think of such things as these in the brood of evils brought forth by +slavery;—agriculture primitive or superannuated in many particulars; our +entire structure of investment, production, and occupation bottomed upon +slaves, property in which could be, and was, totally destroyed by a stroke +of the pen; immigration both from Europe and the north repelled; slowness +in exploiting our water power and mines; inferior common schools, and lack +of town-meeting government due to the sparseness of the population and +their roving habits which were incident to the plantation system. I have +given some consideration to these in the “Old and New South,” and I refer +you to that.<a name='fna_142' id='fna_142' href='#f_142'><small>[142]</small></a></p> + +<p>Of course had there never been any negro slavery in America we should have +escaped the brothers’ war, its spilling of blood, its waste of wealth, and +the long sickness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> of the section unto death which has ensued. And to-day +in solid prosperity, institutions, government, and progressiveness in +everything good, the section would be abreast of the other. Nay, her +better climate, her agricultural products—especially her cotton, which +she would have learned to make with white labor—these and other resources +would, I fully believe, have by this time pushed her far into the lead. As +it actually is, she is far, far behind. She has been sorely scourged, not +for any moral guilt.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Some innocents ’scape not the thunderbolt.”</p> + +<p>It was because she did that which the wisest and best had done—the Greeks +who gave the world culture and democracy, the Jews who gave it religion, +the Romans who gave it law and civil institutions. She really did far +better than they did. She did not enslave the free. She merely took some +of the only inveterate slaves upon earth out of lawless slavery, in which +they would have otherwise remained indefinitely without recognition of the +dearest human rights, and placed them in a far other slavery which was for +them an unparalleled rise in liberty and well-being; which was, as becomes +more and more probable with time, the only opportunity by which any +considerable portion of the negro race can ever evolve upward into the +capability of enlightened self-government. In doing this she unconsciously +antagonized the purposes of the iron-hearted powers guarding the American +union, and when the critical moment of that union came, they dashed her to +pieces.</p> + +<p>It will be many a year before the pathos of southern history can be fully +told. I must satisfy myself here by saying only that the curse of African +slavery to her has been of magnitude and weight incredible, and that one +cannot yet be sure when it will end.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>The title of the chapter demands that I now tell you of the blessing of +African slavery in the United States to the negro. Of course there are +many who have been born into the unequalified condemnation of every form +of slavery, which was resolutely preached for years all over the north by +conscientious men and women of great ability and influence. Such will +exclaim against me, and perhaps some of them will not even read the rest +of the chapter. But it is my note, which becomes surer and more confident +every year, that the great body of men and women shrink from every +over-positively urged dogma. I have already mentioned those who are trying +to curb the evils of drink. All the while an increasing majority of them +recognize that to assert that any use of liquor, wine, or beer is a moral +wrong, as do a noisy few in season and out of season, is too extreme to be +true or even politic. The ultra democrat will zealously justify the +assassination of Julius Cæsar, while the wisest friends of the people +become more firmly convinced every century that the empire which Cæsar +founded was, by reason of the circumstances, the best possible government +for the Romans of that and the succeeding times;—the surest guaranty that +the main benefits of ancient civilization should be preserved for the +human race. And as there has now and then been something of substantial +good in even absolute government, there has also been good to the slave in +his slavery. Surely it was an improvement of the captor and a bettering of +the condition of the prisoner of war, not to barbecue the latter, as was +the custom for ages, but to have him work for a master. Perhaps the +fabulist Æsop had been a slave. Terence, a great Roman dramatist, surely +had been. Horace’s father had been one. It may well be true that it was +slavery that gave each one of these three immortals his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>opportunity. The +more familiar you become with ancient history the larger you estimate the +number of those to have been who as slaves got many of the benefits of +Greek and Roman civilization, which benefits they afterwards transmitted +to free descendants. I need not repeat what I have already told—how the +negroes in the mass were advantaged by transfer from slavery in Africa to +slavery in America. But do let me inquire, would Professor DuBois have +ever outstripped all the white children in a New England school, graduated +creditably from two American universities, studied at the university of +Berlin, acquired the degree of Master of Arts and then that of Doctor of +Philosophy, been made in sociology fellow of Harvard and assistant of the +university of Pennsylvania, become president of the American Negro +Academy, got the professorship of economics and history in Atlanta +University, and pushed forward as an author into prominent and most +respectable place; all before he was thirty-six years old—would Professor +DuBois have surpassed this brilliant career, if an “evil, Dutch trader” +had not seized his “grandfather’s grandmother—two centuries ago”?<a name='fna_143' id='fna_143' href='#f_143'><small>[143]</small></a> If +the transfer just mentioned had not been made what would now be Fred +Douglass, Booker Washington, Richard R. Wright, Professor DuBois, Bishop +Turner, and other great negroes, their good works and glory? Would Hayti +have arranged for some of its young men to be trained in farming at +Tuskegee? more especially do I ask, would negroes educated at Tuskegee be +now teaching the missionaries how to christianize the Africans of +Togoland? Who would now be arousing people north and south in behalf of +the race? and where could nine millions of blacks be found—or even half a +million—as far above the African level of to-day as ours?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>My conclusion is that the whites and the negroes of the south ought to +learn wisdom and interchange their holidays and great annual rejoicings. +The former ought to keep the anniversary of the emancipation proclamation +as the southern 4th of July, and the blacks ought to observe that day by +wearing mourning and eating bitter herbs. Further, the negroes of America +ought to celebrate the day when the Dutch ship landed the first Africans +at Jamestown as the dawn of their hopes as a people.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">THE BROTHERS ON EACH SIDE WERE TRUE PATRIOTS AND MORALLY RIGHT—BOTH THOSE +WHO FOUGHT FOR THE UNION, AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR THE CONFEDERACY</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> proposition of the heading has really been demonstrated in the +foregoing chapters. I feel that the demonstration should have impressive +enforcement. It will surely be for the great good of our country if the +brothers of each section be truly convinced that those of the other were +morally right in the slavery struggle from beginning to end.</p> + +<p>Let us begin by noting the ambiguity of the word “right.” Something may be +right in expediency, policy, or reason, and yet wrong ethically. Likewise +something may be a mistake and wrong in policy while it is right in +morals. General Sherman was a conspicuous example of the almost universal +proneness to confound right in the sense first mentioned above with it in +the other. The two are widely different—not merely in degree, but in +kind. That which is right or wrong in expediency is decided by the +understanding—by the head; that which is right or wrong ethically is +decided for every human being by his own conscience—by his heart. To try +with all my might to do a particular thing may be my highest moral duty; +to try with all your might to keep me from doing it may be yours. The +brothers who set up the southern confederacy and defended it, the brothers +who warred upon it and overturned <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>it—they were on each side sublimely +conscientious; for every one—to use the high word of Lincoln—was doing +the right as God gave him to see it. No people ever waged a war with +deeper and more solemn conviction of duty than did our northern brothers. +Rome, rising unvanquished from every great victory of Hannibal, much as +she has been most justly lauded by foremost historians, fell behind them +in supreme effort—in undaunted perseverance in spite of disaster after +disaster until the difficulty insuperable was overcome. We of the south +should be proud of this unparalleled achievement of our brothers. Most of +all should we be proud of the complete self-abnegation and unwavering +obedience to conscience with which they waded a sea of blood, for the +welfare of future generations rather than their own. I am glad to observe +that many who most affectionately remember the lost cause have come at +last to concede without qualification that the restoration of the union by +force of arms was morally right. But I note that as yet only a few at the +north—men like Dr. Lyman Abbott, Mr. Charles F. Adams, and Professor +Wendell—have learned that the south, in all that she did in “The Great +War,”<a name='fna_144' id='fna_144' href='#f_144'><small>[144]</small></a> was likewise morally right. To show that the confederates were +exemplary champions of a legitimate government, I need not repeat what I +have said above when I told how southern nationalization had given them a +country of their own as dear to them and as much mistress of their +consciences as the union was to the northern people. If there are those +who cannot bring themselves to allow the all-potent coercion of the +nationalization mentioned as justification, and who still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> think of us as +traitors and rebels, I beg them to give due consideration to the feelings +with which the southerner now looks back upon his life in the confederate +army. I call a most convincing witness to testify. I do not know a man who +ever followed what his conscience pronounced right more faithfully, who +was truer to the better traditions of the old south, and who was a more +devoted soldier in the brothers’ war, nor do I know another who now draws +from every class in his community more respect for real manhood and +honesty. All who know him will believe his word against an oracle or an +angel. Here is what he said thirty-seven years after the close of the war:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“That period of my life is the one with which I am the most nearly +satisfied. A persistent, steady effort to do my duty—an effort +persevered in in the midst of privation, hardship, and danger. If ever +I was unselfish, it was then. If ever I was capable of self-denial, it +was then. If ever I was able to trample on self-indulgence, it was +then. If ever I was strong to make sacrifices, even unto death, it was +in those days; and if I were called upon to say on the peril of my +soul, when it lived its highest life, when it was least faithless to +true manhood, when it was most loyal to the best part of man’s nature, +I would answer, ‘It was when I followed a battle-torn flag through its +shifting fortune of victory and defeat.’</p> + +<p>My comrades, how easy it is to name the word that characterizes and +strikes the keynote of that time and should explain our pride to all +the world—self sacrifice—that spirit and that conduct which raise +poor mortals nearest to divinity. Oh, God in heaven, what sacrifices +did we not make! How our very heart strings were torn as we turned +from our home, our parents, our children!... How poor we were! How +ragged! How hungry! When I recall the light-heartedness, the courage, +the cheerfulness, the fidelity to duty which lived and flourished +under such circumstances, from the bottom of my heart I thank God that +for four long years I wore, if not brilliantly, at least faithfully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> +and steadfastly, in camp and bivouac, in advance and retreat, on the +march and on the battlefield, the uniform of a confederate +soldier.”<a name='fna_145' id='fna_145' href='#f_145'><small>[145]</small></a></p></div> + +<p>The passage just quoted most truly expresses the feelings with which the +southern people stood by their cause and now look back upon the support +which they gave it. In this matter their word will be taken by everybody. +Their actions before, during, and ever since the war speak louder than +their word. There can be no doubt that in founding the Confederate States +and waging the resulting war everything they did was counselled by the +most tender and enlightened conscience. Bear in mind how they clung to +Davis and how they still remember him, winning the precious eulogy</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“—he that can endure</span><br /> +To follow with allegiance a fallen lord<br /> +Does conquer him that did his master conquer,<br /> +And earns a place i’ the story.”</p> + +<p>Bear in mind how truly they keep Memorial Day. The love which the south +gives Davis and her dead soldiers protests to all the earth and heaven the +righteousness of her lost cause. Calmly, serenely, confidently she awaits +future judgment upon her love. It needs that all the north appreciate this +fealty as the height of heaven-climbing virtue.</p> + +<p>The real soldiers of each section—those who—to use a confederate +saying—were “in the bullet department,” and fighting every day, learned +great regard for their foes; and when the war ended they became at once +advocates of speedy reconciliation. And the non-combatants on each side +felt far less resentment towards the actual fighters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> of the other than +they did towards its political leaders. It is a common error to overrate +the accomplishment of potent and ambitious men in tumultuous times. As the +world long ascribed meteorological phenomena to the mutations of the moon, +conspicuous above all things else as the apparent cause, so most people +now believe that revolutions are caused by the men who appear to be +leading. We have explained above that the only effective leaders—even of +revolutions—are those who are the most completely led by the people. To +lead, the leader must keep on the tide and let it lead him. If he makes +serious effort to balk it, he is at once stranded as a piece of drift +thrown out of the current. All of us—both those north and those south of +Mason and Dixon’s line—ought to learn this truth thoroughly. The former +should correct their false judgments as to Calhoun, Toombs, Yancey, and +Davis; the latter as to Sumner, Garrison, and Phillips. It was but to be +expected that these false judgments would be cherished all through what we +may call the era of civil fury. That begins with the excitement over the +admission of California and extends to the time after the war when the +project of giving a negro constituency the balance of political power in +each southern State was abandoned. But now as the brothers can look back +upon those evil days with at least the beginning of dispassionate +calmness, the task of convincing the whole people of each section that the +more prominent figures of the other in the era mentioned were all true men +and patriots, should be pushed forward with his whole might by every one +who loves his country. It is not demanded that we claim too much for them. +To begin illustrating: Toombs’s Tremont Temple lecture on slavery is such +an able and powerful defence of the south that its reputation must forever +increase. Yet as we consider it now we see that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> what he believed with all +his heart to be the perpetual pillar and weal of his community was in fact +its woe and ruin. We see, as to Calhoun, that if he had but given the +resources of southern slavery against the implacable oppugnancy of free +labor, roused for decisive combat, the sure and marvellous vision with +which he searched the innermost nature of money, he would have had to +acknowledge that the proud structure of southern society was wholly +builded upon sands. The rains descended and the floods beat, and we saw +the great fall. Of course we must admit that had our leaders been endowed +with unerring prescience they ought to have warned us, and striven heart +and soul for compensated emancipation. I need merely allude to State +sovereignty, treated fully above. We of the south now see that though in +advocating it we showed that the fathers were with us, and thus got the +better of the argument, yet that the north was right in historical fact, +and right also as to the true interest and welfare of America. Thus I have +indicated some important acknowledgments which we of the south must make +to our brothers of the north. Now I must state some that they must make to +us.</p> + +<p>The root-and-branch abolitionists and many following their lead +interpreted the statement in the declaration of independence that all men +are created equal and with inalienable liberty as both intentional and +actual condemnation of the slavery then existing in our country. They shut +their eyes to the significant fact that the same document published to the +world, as one of the causes justifying the solemn act therein proclaimed, +that the king had “excited domestic insurrections amongst us”; which means +he had instigated the slaves to rise against their masters. Many of the +signers owned slaves then and to the end of their lives afterwards. +Palpably the declaration did not mean to say that the negroes in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> America +were unjustly held in slavery, but did mean to say that inciting them—as +John Brown with the approval of Phillips, Garrison, and such, afterwards +sought to do—to gain their liberty by insurrection was inhuman and +atrocious. These root-and-branch abolitionists confidently alleged that +slavery in America was proscribed by the christian religion. Yet Jesus, +the founder, who definitely reprehended every particular sin, never once +denounced slavery. Paul, or some one else, whom the canon accepts as +speaking with the authority of Jesus, says: “All who are in the position +of slaves should regard their masters as deserving of the greatest +respect, so that the name of God, and our teaching may not be maligned. +Those who have christian masters should not think less of them because +they are brothers, but on the contrary they should serve them all the +better, because those who are to benefit by their good work are dear to +them as their fellow-christians. Those are the things to insist upon in +your teaching. Any one who teaches otherwise, and refuses his assent to +sound instruction—<i>the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ</i>—and to the +teaching of religion, is puffed up with conceit, not really knowing +anything, but having a morbid craving for discussions and arguments.”<a name='fna_146' id='fna_146' href='#f_146'><small>[146]</small></a></p> + +<p>The passage last quoted—to which several others from the new testament, +almost as strong, can be added—demonstrates that christianity did not +disapprove of slavery. Further, as I have already suggested, the slavery +not rebuked by Jesus and his apostles was mainly that of kin in blood and +race, of those who had been in a measure free themselves or descendants of +the free. The slaves of the south were far remote in blood,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> and their +native condition so bad that American slavery was for them elevation and +great improvement.</p> + +<p>The new testament, the declaration of independence, and the federal +constitution—surely three very respectable authorities, in America at +least—stand together in solid phalanx. They clearly demonstrate that the +charge that southern slavery was heinously wrong in itself, and that the +masters were wicked man-stealers and kidnappers, made for a long while in +every corner of the north, was mere opprobrium and abuse. Both sections +ought to learn that there was nothing in negro slavery to shock the moral +sense, but that on the contrary it was in its general effect of the utmost +beneficence to the slave. Both ought to learn also that the white-hot zeal +with which the institution was fought was due mainly to these things:</p> + +<p>1. Free labor had long been in an uncompromising hand-to-hand struggle +with slave labor. Years before this commenced the employing class had +subconsciously divined it was far more profitable to hire the laborer only +when his work was needed, and then let him go until he was needed again. +The worker with the advance of democracy had become more and more hostile +to a system coercing his labor and denying him all political and civil +rights. The co-operation of employer and laborer had expelled slavery of +white men from Europe. The feeling towards slavery had become one of +decided opposition.</p> + +<p>2. In America the opposition to slavery was powerfully re-enforced, first, +by the new cause the latter gave in competing with free labor for the +unsettled public domain, and then in its operation to nationalize the +south into a separate federation. With this combined the growing +conception among the northern people of the negro as a man who had reached +the stage of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>development characterizing the typical white. This huge +mistake, hugged to their bosoms and championed with unflagging zeal by the +ablest and most influential root-and-branch abolitionists, had a +prodigious propagandic effect. It identified the cause of the negro slave, +whom evolution had not yet made ready for liberty, with that of the +oppressed European who had been long ready for it; and consequently that +cause was continuously advocated with the passion which the French +revolution had started against human inequality. The root-and-branch +abolitionists at last excited a pseudo-moral paroxysm among thousands at +the north and kept it increasing for a long while.</p> + +<p>Facts which cannot now be gainsaid plainly justify me in denying that +conscientious conviction was the real primary motive. The northern and +southern churches split, all the wisest and best of the former standing +against, all those of the latter for slavery. You must see that their +moral convictions were secondary, not primary motives; that some superior +power had given to one side to regard slavery as wrong and to the other to +regard it as right; that it really had given the two sides differing +consciences. If you but invoke the universal history of mankind this fact +now under consideration will cease to appear marvellous. You will find it +to be the rule that the struggle for existence develops in every community +an instinct which resistlessly prompts to the maintenance of its great +economic interest. This instinct is the special preserver of the family, +of the neighborhood, of the country. It is not strange that that which +gives sustenance and comfort to one’s family, and what he sees all the +best of his neighbors using as he does, will seem unquestionably right to +him. It is not strange that, in such a serious conflict of interest as the +intersectional one of dividing a vast empire<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> between such fell +competitors as free labor and slave labor, each side will differ +diametrically in conscience as to right and wrong. Also it is not strange +that they should lose temper, shower abuse upon their opponents, and fill +the land with mutual accusations of heinous moral offences.</p> + +<p>It is just as far wrong to regard the controversy between anti- and +pro-slavery men—which was at bottom but a quarrel between north and south +at first over the division of the Territories between the free labor +system and the slave labor system, and later over the other question +whether a slave republic should divide the continent with the United +States—as a contest over a moral question, as it would be to make either +the American or the French revolution such a contest. All three—the +intersectional struggle as to slavery and the two revolutions—were mainly +impelled by a desire of each side in every one to better or hold on to its +material resources—that is, the leading impulsion was economic. Of course +the combatants on each side claimed that they themselves were right and +their adversaries wrong in morals. The rencounter between free labor and +slave labor was very much like that now on between capitalists and labor +organizations. Note how each side denounces the conduct of the other, +alleging it to be against moral justice. The most superficial observer +discerns that the real cause of difference between them is not one of +conscience, but one of interest. We ought to understand that the +crimination of the root-and-branch abolitionist and the recrimination of +the fire-eater were each but stage thunder. The southern master must be +wholly exonerated from the charge that in working his slave he committed +moral offence against the dearest American rights; the claim for the +African, who was in a far lower circle of development, of equal civil and +political <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>privileges with the white must be disallowed; and it be fully +conceded that the southern people, leaders and all, were but doing their +conscience-commanded duty throughout. Also we of the south must learn that +the root-and-branch abolitionist, even in his wildest moments—Sumner +refusing in the United States senate to show respect to Butler’s gray +hairs, Wendell Phillips degrading Washington below Toussaint, Garrison +denouncing the slavery-protecting constitution as a covenant with death +and an agreement with hell, John Brown’s raid into Virginia—was just as +conscientious as Robert Lee was when he was defending the soil of his +native State. They were each irresistibly constrained by the powers +working to save the union to think his particular action right and the +highest patriotism.</p> + +<p>When the quarrel is over, when the broil and the feud have been fought out +and the survivors have shaken hands, when the lawsuit has become a thing +of the past and the litigants have renewed their old relations, no wise +and good man keeps repeating the accusations of bad faith and of +unrighteous conduct which he passionately hurled against his adversary +during the variance. Rather he confesses to himself, “I wronged him when I +said those hot words;” and his repentance does not bring complete peace +until he has found his brother and taken all of them back.</p> + +<p>If it only could be, the nation ought to have a great reunion, a feast of +reconcilement, where, with proper solemnities, the people of each section, +with their forefathers and leaders, should be fully and finally exculpated +as to everything done for or against slavery by the people of the other +section. It is plain that both ought to forget and forgive. They ought to +do still more. They ought to compete each in utmost effort to vindicate +the favorites and loved ones of the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> the more intelligently, and to +admire and praise them the more enthusiastically. This would be to bring +the millennium nearer, and give our country “a nobleness in record upon” +all others. It only needs for this consummation to cast aside the remnant +of greatly diminished prejudice, and make a brief study of a small volume +of material evidence and of the ordinary principles which guide the +conduct of the good citizen. Such study will show that southerner and +northerner throughout their fell encounter have each the very highest +claims to the respect and love of the entire nation.</p> + +<p>What a golden deed it was of President McKinley when, December 14, 1898, +fully using a rare opportunity, he spake in his high place to the members +of the Georgia legislature this message of reunion:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Sectional lines no longer mar the map of the United States. Sectional +feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other. Fraternity +is the national anthem, sung by a chorus of forty-five States and our +Territories at home and beyond the seas. The union is once more the +common altar of our love and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice. The +old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories, which your +sons and ours have this year added to its sacred folds. What cause we +have for rejoicing, saddened only because so many of our brave men +fell on the field or sickened and died from hardship and exposure, and +others returning bring wounds and disease from which they will long +suffer. The memory of the dead will be a precious legacy, and the +disabled will be the nation’s care.</p> + +<p>Every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a +tribute to American valor. And while when those graves were made we +differed widely about the nature of this government, these differences +have been settled by the arbitrament of arms. The time has now come, +in the evolution of sentiment and feeling, under the providence of +God, when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you the +care of the graves of the confederate soldiers. The cordial feeling +now happily existing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>between the north and south prompts this +gracious act. If it needs further justification, it is found in the +gallant loyalty to the union and the flag so conspicuously shown in +the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of these heroic dead.”</p></div> + +<p>By the favor given Fitzhugh Lee, Joe Wheeler, and other old confederates, +and his earnest and successful efforts for universal amnesty to all who +had helped our cause, Mr. McKinley had already won the hearts of the +southern people. This speech increased our love a hundred fold. We +repeated the “soft words” over and over, companioning them with</p> + +<p class="poem">“O they banish our anger forever<br /> +When they laurel the graves of our dead.”</p> + +<p>On each one of our three subsequent Memorial Days during his life he was +thought of as tenderly as the precious dead. And since the death of +Jefferson Davis there has been no sorrow of the south equal to that over +his assassination. This is the age of funerals that crown with supreme +popular honor the doers of high deeds for country and race. The imposing +obsequies given the president, the demonstrations in his own section, and +those in foreign lands, have rarely been outdone. But he had a greater +glory. It was the genuine lamentation over him that day by reconciled +brothers and sisters in every southern household. You that know history +better, tell me when and where a whiter and sweeter flower was ever laid +upon a coffin.</p> + +<p>Let all of us on each side of the old dividing line strive without ceasing +to give the good work which the great peacemaker begun so well its fit +consummation.</p> + +<p>And replacing hate and anger with love, fiction with fact, and false +doctrine with true, let the people of the north and the people of the +south join heads, consciences, and hearts to ascertain what is our duty +both to negro and white, and then join hands and do that duty.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">THE RACE QUESTION—GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY</span></p> + +<p><sup>1.</sup> <span class="smcap"><span class="special">Dense</span></span> fogs from various sources have settled over this subject. The +root-and-branch abolitionists have made many believe that emancipation of +the slaves was the great object of the north in the brothers’ war. The +authors and defenders of the three amendments—especially of the +fifteenth—have made many others believe that the inferiority of the +southern negro is the effect of American slavery; that the cause having +been removed by emancipation he became at once ready and well prepared for +the exercise of political privileges; and that the practical denial to him +of this exercise is a heinous crime of the southern whites. Politicians +want southern negro ballots in national conventions and the northern negro +vote in elections. The bounty, both public and private, founding, +sustaining, and multiplying colleges, schools, and other negro educational +institutions, finds a growing host of beneficiaries—such as site-owners, +who scheme to sell for two prices, those who want to be presidents, +principals, professors, teachers, even janitors and floor-scrubbers, +schoolbook publishers, and still others—who would keep it copiously +flowing; and so they all magnify the ability of the typical negro and the +benefit to him of the institutions mentioned. Respectable and influential +magazines and newspapers, with an increasing number of negro readers, +really believe that very many more can be added by a little effort, and so +they champion what these readers favor. Persuasive speakers and writers +like Mr. Edgar Gardner<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> Murphy, unconsciously influenced either by +employers who would always have a wage-depressing lever at command, or by +those who would have Cuffee do what they ought themselves to do, overrate +the importance of negro labor as a southern resource. And the last fog +makers whom I shall mention are the inveterate optimists—amiable beyond +expression—who will not admit that there is now any serious menace to +either race in the south.</p> + +<p>The several fogs enumerated overlay one another in an aggregate too opaque +for the uncleared eye to pierce. As examples of their obscuring effect, +consider anything said in the census as to the negro, and the articles +“Negro Education,” “Negro in America,” and especially “Hayti” in the +Encyclopedia Americana lately published. The authors of the fifteenth +amendment, in making voters and rulers of late negro slaves, repeated what +had been done in Hayti. It seems therefore that the Encyclopedia must tell +nothing of the island but what is good. So we read in the relevant article +that it abolished slavery in 1804, being “the first country to rid +humanity of such a sad practice;” that there education “is compulsory and +gratuitous,” a sixth of the revenues being devoted to it, and the most +pleasant things concerning religion, liberal naturalization practice, +natural and artificial products, railroads, telegraph, and telephone. One +without other information would surely think the community greatly +advanced and blessed. Its true condition is thus told in Brockhaus by +somebody who does not swear by the fifteenth amendment: “It may be said in +general that the country is sparsely populated, partly because of +incessant civil wars, partly because of a high infant death rate.”<a name='fna_147' id='fna_147' href='#f_147'><small>[147]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>These fogs must be lifted. Great harm to each race will follow if we +persist in keeping the facts concealed.</p> + +<p>2. Do not confound the feeling that you are different from Jew, European, +protestant, catholic, absolutist, socialist, anarchist, or any other +white, with the feeling that you are different from negroes; for to do +this is to keep you from all clear thinking upon our present subject. The +former are all of our own race, and we can and do intermarry with them to +the improvement of our population. If the per cent of negroes was no +greater in the south than in the north, fusion could not be a very grave +matter; for should it become complete, our lily-white would not be +diminished by the fraction of a shade. But to absorb the eight millions of +them now in our section would make us chocolate, if not mulatto. Their +color is the smallest racial objection. Although their schooling for two +centuries and more in American slavery has elevated them—as Mr. +Tillinghast proves—far above what they were in native slavery, still +their cranial capacity, brain convolutions, and moral, intellectual, and +social development—inherited without fault of theirs—from West African +ancestors, are still greatly inferior to ours. Remote generations of our +forefathers were much lower than the present American negroes, as Darwin +admits in the oft quoted passage, describing his first sight of the +Fuegians. We should never forget that the Caucasian was once on a level +with those Fuegians. The negroes when they came to America were little +better. And yet they have gone up so much higher, it is plain that +evolution, if only permitted to work in a proper environment, will do for +them what it has done for us.</p> + +<p>But the whites cannot consent to intermarriage. That would greatly benefit +the negroes. While some who have never had good opportunity of actual +observation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> confidently contend that there are no backward or lower +races, we southerners have noted all our lives that a very great majority +of the negroes who climb above the level and prosper in occupation, have a +large admixture of white blood. It would be an enormous rise for the mass +if fusion were assured. But for us—why, we should disinherit our children +of their share in the grand destiny of the Caucasian race if we made +average negroes their fathers or mothers.</p> + +<p>Southern dread of amalgamation is not to be scouted as a mere bugbear. +Think of the half-breeds that lined all the border between the States and +the Indians; of how the whites have mixed with native races in Mexico, +Central and South America; of white and negro intermingling in Cuba, +Hayti, Jamaica, in the United States, and especially in the south. Think +of whites and negroes now legally married and marrying in the neighboring +States of the Union. In 1902, eight white women were living with negro +husbands in Xenia, Ohio;<a name='fna_148' id='fna_148' href='#f_148'><small>[148]</small></a> and there were children of all these mixed +marriages except one.<a name='fna_149' id='fna_149' href='#f_149'><small>[149]</small></a> Consider also that prominent negroes advocate +these marriages. Douglass had a white wife. He preached that the American +negro must set before himself assimilation as his true goal. Professor +DuBois is really a disciple of Douglass, as appears from some of his +utterances. We give in a footnote what another prominent negro has +recently said in public.<a name='fna_150' id='fna_150' href='#f_150'><small>[150]</small></a> The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> moment that the negro became an +influential factor in southern politics, a real agitation against the +anti-intermarriage laws would begin. There would come a small number of +negroes, controlling votes, of so much property and respectability that +their children would be regarded as eligible matches by some of the poorer +and more destitute whites. Marriages between such, solemnized on a visit +to a State permitting, would occur. And our laws last mentioned would be +more and more evaded and their repeal become gradually more probable. When +they had won political equality with the patricians, the Roman plebeians +repealed the prohibition of intermarriage which the former had stubbornly +maintained. These two orders were of the same race. Therefore +intermarriage could not be the boon to the plebeians that it would now be +to the southern negro, lifting him up as it would do. If he has +opportunity, he will struggle for it more resolutely than the plebeians +did. A small number of negroes have already been assimilated in America, +and a few more are still to be assimilated, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> I shall explain later on. +This sure deliverance from the destruction which now threatens is more and +more sought after by the intelligent few. And if the vote of the negroes +was allowed to count, it would not be long until, under the example and +appeal of their leaders, all of them would be making for that haven of +refuge. Mongrelism beats upon the border all around the south; it +threatens to burst forth from an exhaustless source within. We know we +must keep it out as Holland does the ocean. Subconsciously discerning that +fusion would probably follow the entrance of the negro into government, +the whites have made of the race primary and other measures <i>de facto</i> +disfranchising him, dikes against the filthy waters of mongrelism which +they would not have to wash over themselves. This is not because we hate +the negro. We love and cherish him. It is not to be demanded of us that we +sacrifice ourselves, our children, and our children’s children for his +sake. We will gladly do all that friends—nay, that near relatives—can +with justice ask of one another, to better his condition and rescue him. +We cannot give him political power at the cost of our degeneration.</p> + +<p>I would enforce the foregoing contents of this section with these +profoundly true and very forcible words of a northern man, now residing in +Columbia, South Carolina:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“A word about race hatred, race revulsion, or race antipathy. Many +people in the north believe the devil is the author of it, and some +people in the south are more devoted to it than to religion. Race +antipathy is really a race instinct, a moral anti-toxin developed by +nature in the individual whose environment involves constant and close +contact with an inferior race in large numbers. It works for the +salvation of the purity of the superior race.”<a name='fna_151' id='fna_151' href='#f_151'><small>[151]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>Professor DuBois says that “legal marriage is infinitely better than +systematic concubinage and prostitution.”<a name='fna_152' id='fna_152' href='#f_152'><small>[152]</small></a> And some writers seem to +think it would be well to coerce miscegenators to legitimate their +relations by intermarrying. An innocent girl—a maid—undone; all good men +and women are agreed that her seducer should be made to marry her.<a name='fna_153' id='fna_153' href='#f_153'><small>[153]</small></a> +But that is only where the marriage would be tolerated by society. Thus it +would not make man and wife of parties to an incestuous liaison. No +moralist contends that one who has received a favor from a public woman is +under obligation to become her husband. The miscegenation common is that +between white men and promiscuous black women. How idle is the attempt to +put these cases on a par with that of the ruin of a virtuous woman. And +Professor DuBois could not have rightly weighed the words in which he +represents them to be as criminal as those horrible offences which +especially provoke lynching; that is, that the negro woman who consented +most willingly to the embraces of her master was as foully wronged by him +as her mistress would be by a slave who outraged her against her +will.<a name='fna_154' id='fna_154' href='#f_154'><small>[154]</small></a> No. Intermarriage of these mixed lovers is not demanded by any +principle of justice. But the public weal does demand that such a +tremendous evil as amalgamation be kept off by the surest and most +decisive measures. It is playing with plague and curse unspeakable for us +of the south to permit the existence of any condition which tends even in +the slightest degree to legalize intermarriage.<a name='fna_155' id='fna_155' href='#f_155'><small>[155]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>3. Writers still under the spell of the root-and-branch abolitionists who +were wont to exalt Toussaint, the Haytian general, above our Washington, +strain hard to conceal the real cause of the lamentable conditions now +prevailing in Hayti and San Domingo. One tells us that because of the many +mountains, there being no railroad system, separate communities are +defended by almost impregnable natural barriers, and as neighboring +peoples are hereditary enemies, there is always war somewhere. The remedy +recommended is to build railroads in the island as the English have done +in Jamaica. Another writer tells us that we must not jump to the +conclusion that all the inhabitants of San Domingo are degraded negroes; +that while the population of the interior are sunk in ignorance, +superstition, and barbarism, yet in the capital and the coast towns there +are some people of apparently lily-white strain, well educated, speaking +two or three languages, who supply the mulatto republic with generals and +political leaders. The masses of these Dominicans are very patriotic, and +would indeed do finely if they were not divided into hostile parties by +self-seeking agitators. And you may consult many others who keep back the +real explanation. There is one cardinal fact which stands forth in the +history of Hayti as prominently as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> slavery does in the train of American +events which brought on the brothers’ war. It is this: soon after the +outbreak of the French revolution the mulattoes were accorded political +privileges, and then a little later—it was in 1794—France equalized the +negroes of her colonies just freed with the whites in political and civil +rights. This made the negroes of Hayti, who were in intelligence and +development somewhat below those of the south when the latter were +emancipated, full-fledged self-governing republicans. The whites were but +few. What of them were not massacred at once by the blacks fled for their +lives. The history of both the Haytian and the Dominican republic (the +latter achieving its independence in 1844) is the same. Their people make +a hell on earth of the most beautiful and fertile of islands. As slavery +was plainly the cause of the southern confederacy, the grant of political +power to the mulattoes and negroes not at all qualified to use it is just +as plainly the cause and sole author of chronic civil war and anarchy in +Hayti and San Domingo.</p> + +<p>This enfranchisement of semi-barbarians was from the ’prentice hand of a +new republic, without any experience in free institutions. The English did +far better when they emancipated the Jamaica negro by the act of 1833. +They gave him full protection of his liberty, person, and contract and +property rights. Five sixths of the 800,000 of its present population are +colored people or blacks. These—to quote the Encyclopedia +Americana—“have no share in the government whatever.” It further says: +“The Jamaica negroes are fairly good laborers when well fed; the menial +work of the island is performed by them, and they are regarded as +cheerful, honest, and respectful servants.”</p> + +<p>This happy condition of quiet and content is not due to the fact that the +railroads prevent settlement of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> negroes in separate neighboring +communities to quarrel and fight with one another; but it is because the +English never allowed them to get the taste of blood as the French +permitted to their brothers in Hayti; they have not been incited by +unseasonable political power to license and riot.</p> + +<p>The negroes of Jamaica are evidently bettering in condition slowly. They +need only enough of Booker Washingtons to rise much faster. I beg +attention to this comparison of Jamaica and Hayti, made by a well-informed +negro, a native of the former, who lived there until some nine years ago, +and who has lately lived several years in Hayti:<a name='fna_156' id='fna_156' href='#f_156'><small>[156]</small></a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“They [the negroes of Jamaica] aim at rising, but many make the +mistake of not rising, <i>in</i> but <i>out</i> of labor: the most intelligent +flock to the professions, civil service, &c. Few turn their steps to +what is for the real upbuilding of the country, agriculture, that for +which it is best adapted.</p> + +<p>“The people of Hayti and San Domingo are of a political turn of mind, +and sacrifice everything for politics, or are made to do so. That +island produces as fine coffee and cocoa as can be found anywhere, but +the most intelligent keep out and deprive these crops of scientific +cultivation.”</p></div> + +<p>The negroes of Hayti and San Domingo spurred by their politics into +perpetual fighting and bloodshed; the negroes of Jamaica peaceful and ripe +for industrial training, which it seems the English have resolved to give +them—if Booker Washington had to choose one of the two islands for his +future activity, do you not know that he would decide he could do great +things in Jamaica and nothing in the other?</p> + +<p>The thirteenth amendment emancipated the slaves <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>instantly and not +gradually, the fourteenth made them complete citizens of the United States +and of the particular State wherein they reside, and the fifteenth +practically conferred unlimited suffrage upon them. The Hayti, and not the +Jamaica, precedent was followed. The brothers that had conquered were +blind from civil fury: and they had been brought by the root-and-branch +abolitionists into full persuasion that the southern negroes were ready +for and entitled to these high privileges. By the amendments they +confidently tried to railroad the African slave in one instant of time up +the long steep to the topmost Caucasian who had established liberty and +self-government over a continent, and made it perpetual. We pray that they +be forgiven, for they knew not what they were doing. Had the white +population of the south been at the time as disproportionate to the black +as it was in Hayti in 1794, it would also have been massacred. But the +section was full of late confederate soldiers. When the fates had decided +against the dear cause for which they had fought for four years they +accepted peace in good faith. Now their conquerors turned loose a horde of +black plunderers to despoil the little that war had left. When I read +Professor Brown’s inability to say whether the work of the Ku-Klux was +justifiable or not,<a name='fna_157' id='fna_157' href='#f_157'><small>[157]</small></a> I thought of Christ’s asking if it was right to +do good on the sabbath day.</p> + +<p>The lesson to be learned here is that while it is now too late to make the +thirteenth amendment what it ought to have been, and there is perhaps no +need to alter the fourteenth, yet there must be abrogation of the +fifteenth as to the great mass of southern negroes. In fact this has +really come already through the white primary.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> Booker Washington is a +great, a decisive authority on this question. He counsels the negroes to +eschew politics. This is wise. It is the solid interest of the negro +masses that they accept the inevitable; just as the south gave up slavery +when we could hold on to it no longer.</p> + +<p>4. The southern negroes have split into what I shall roughly distinguish +as an upper and a lower class. The former includes property owners and +such as are in higher occupations, trades, and professions. I do not +believe that the entire class contains three per cent, but I shall take it +to be five per cent of the whole negroes in the section. Exact accuracy +here is not important. It needs only to be remembered that the lower class +outnumbers the other many times over. They are moving in different +directions. The dominant inclination of the upper class is towards +incorporation as citizens, exercising all the rights of the white. The +dominant inclination of the lower class is towards segregation in their +own circles. A true representative of the former would always travel in a +white railroad car, while a true representative of the other is perfectly +content with the shabbiest Jim Crow, if the whites be kept out of it. +Thousands in the south never think of any negroes but those of the lower, +thousands in the north never think of any but those in the upper class. +The lower class subsists mainly upon agricultural, domestic, and day +labor. There is a rural and urban section of each one of the two. The +rural section of the upper class has little promise of permanence and +growth, but its urban section seems to have securer foothold. For a while +this urban section will probably increase and rise in condition—both +slowly. This upper class is now steadily sending some of its members from +country and town, to settle in the north. As I read the signs its destiny +is ultimate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> dispersion over the entire country and gradual disappearance. +The lower class settles downwards steadily. The outlook for it is gloomy +in the extreme.</p> + +<p>5. Somewhere about 1890—which year we may regard as approximately +beginning the manufacturing era of the South—many whites in the section +had broken with the old ways and methods and resolved to substitute their +own for negro labor as far as possible. These awakened men and women +multiply. They are pushing the lower class out of all rural labor, and +both classes out of agriculture; and they are also pushing some of the +upper class out of the trades and more important occupations in both town +and country. Evidently the powers have decreed that the labor class of the +south shall be white and homogeneous with that of the north. These powers +who delivered the white laborers of the west from the Chinese will also +deliver the white laborers of the south from the negroes.</p> + +<p>6. There is soon to be a New Industrial South, in which the most advanced +machinery and laborers of the very highest skill are to be chief factors. +A little later there is to be a still more important New Agricultural +South. In this, the empirical restorative methods of the Chinese, which +Liebig, in his day, showed to be ahead of the world, must be far +surpassed. Economy of the enormous mass of fertile elements now washing +into the sea; adequate exploitation of the nitrogen of the air and of all +accessible mineral elements needed; scientific dairy industry, stock +rearing, fruit culture, and all related branches; farmers of the most +efficient training, and laborers whose deft hands are the proper +instruments of the strongest brains—all these must combine to give the +south that perfect intensive culture which she will add to her blessings +of climate and soil in order to supply the fast growing demand of all the +world outside for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> her especial products. Further, as everything now seems +to indicate, the southern yield of the more important minerals and metals +will lead that of the entire country. Further again, the bulk of +transcontinental railroad traffic must be across the south on snow-free +routes, and the upbuilding which in time will follow from this is as yet +incalculable. And when the inter-ocean canal connects us with the Pacific +trade—what new impetus will this give to our development! What needs and +opportunities there will then be for skilled labor, for inventive talent, +for managerial ability, for every element of a most highly organized +community of unwontedly many diversified prospecting interests. The demand +will be for a vast population of the very best strain and breed, knowing +the best methods of physical, moral, and self-subsisting education of +their children, out of whom will come the best of all workers and +producers. To attempt to do the required tasks of the new south of the +near future and hold our own against the competition of the world—to try +to do these with negro laborers, negro farmers, negro producers, negro +employers, would be like substituting the ox-wagon for the present +railroad freight train. Nay, it would be more like one with a wooden leg, +and a millstone around his neck, offering to run against a trained racer. +The negro laborer, farmer, manufacturer, and contractor show more clearly +every day that they are hopelessly outclassed in the struggle with white +competitors. As a body where they now are they are becoming useless and an +incubus. They will soon be still more in the way, and a more serious +hindrance to southern development. They keep back the immigration which is +especially called for. That is the immigration of northern and European +farmers, producers, and manufacturers of all kinds to teach us their +advanced methods, and the most skilled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> labor in every department to +stimulate with example our native white labor to its highest +accomplishment. The northern people would come south very largely if there +were no negroes here. Their desire to come increases steadily, and so does +our desire to have them come. The whites of both sections naturally +co-operate more and more earnestly to effect their joint wishes. The +disinclination of the United States supreme court to overturn the recent +anti-negro amendments of the constitutions of southern States, and the +palpably growing favor showed these amendments at the north are very +significant signs that the south is to be made more to the liking of +northern settlers.</p> + +<p>Since the last sentence was written that court has ruled it to be a crime, +punishable severely, to hold one to the performance of a contract to pay +his debt by laboring for you.<a name='fna_158' id='fna_158' href='#f_158'><small>[158]</small></a> The average negro has no resource but +credit on the faith of such a contract. So soon as it becomes generally +known that he cannot be lawfully held to its performance, the credit will +be denied. As has been suggested to me by an observant and far-seeing man, +the decision overturns the main pillar of the negro’s subsistence. It will +powerfully favor northern immigration, as well as the substitution of +white for black labor—that is, if it is vigorously enforced.</p> + +<p>7. I believe that the two races together, in the same community as they +are now in the south, are oil and water. Meditate the course and portent +of these facts. Immediately upon emancipation the negroes set up their own +churches and schools; they manifested approval of the separate passenger +car for themselves, politely hinting in season that the whites ought to be +kept out of it; and they influenced the planter to remove their cabins out +of sight and hearing of the Big<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> House. They showed a great +disinclination, the men to do agricultural work by the year for standing +wages, the women to hire as house servants. It was some while before the +whites really recognized this drift of the negro towards segregation, when +many of them—especially the wives and mothers—gave the rein to much +unreasonable resentment. Now, if you but know how to look, you will find +everywhere the proofs of deepening antagonism. The black driver will not +see even a white lady—not to mention a man—on the crossing, but he will +always see a negro of either sex. The face of the white inconveniently +stepping aside flushes with momentary anger. If your colored servant tells +you there is a lady at the door you may know it is a negro woman; he never +calls a “white ’oman” a lady. A negro woman is prone to make the most +prominent white lady give the street. In Atlanta, a negro man or a white +boy cannot safely go at night the former through the factory white +settlement, the latter through Summer Hill, a negro residence quarter. I +have been informed that where the mill operatives of Anderson, South +Carolina, have their cottages, there is conspicuously posted, “Nigger, +don’t let the sun go down on you here.” I hear that the same is true of +certain places in the Texas Panhandle; also that a negro settlement in the +Indian territory displays a similar warning to the white man.<a name='fna_159' id='fna_159' href='#f_159'><small>[159]</small></a> Parties +of black and white children meeting on unfrequented streets of Atlanta +nearly always exchange opprobrious language, often throw stones at one +another, and sometimes fight—a proof so significant that, whenever I see +it, it always makes me serious. The most decided change from old times +that I note is that white society everywhere proscribes mixed sexual +intercourse and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> the procreation of mulattoes with rapidly increasing +severity. The advocate of mixed marriages is more and more regarded as a +fiend. The white woman seized by a negro man—how gladly would she change +place with the victim of the torturing savage or of the tiger that would +mangle and eat her alive! This menace is everywhere, and naturally it is +magnified by excited imagination. It increases in fact. The trial of +negroes for capital offences was given the superior court of Georgia in +1850. From then until the end of the brothers’ war but two cases of rape +of white women by negroes are in the supreme court reports;<a name='fna_160' id='fna_160' href='#f_160'><small>[160]</small></a> and I +never heard of but two other cases occurring in that time. But there have +been many since. It steadily becomes more frequent. Women more and more +dread to be left alone. And now there is hardly a man in the Black Belt +who, when he is to be a night away from wife, daughters, mother, and +sisters, without help at call, does not have uncomfortable thoughts of the +sooty desecrator. The increasing effect of these multiplying outrages and +the increasing horror which they cause is proved by a fact which ought to +receive more intelligent recognition from everybody. This fact is that +lynching of a negro for rape, and lately for other crimes of violence +against whites, whether in the south or in the north, seems to be every +time marked with a greater outburst of popular fury. The public grows more +decidedly anti-negro. They give as little heed to the appeals of the +papers in these matters as they do to the editorials always advocating the +projects of the machine and corporations. The mob sweeps aside the +military. The military will not load its rifles. If they were loaded it +would probably refuse to fire, or would fire into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> air. A few exclaim +against lawlessness, while it is plain that the great mass of the whites +do not really condemn in their hearts.</p> + +<p>Let us try to understand the real cause of these things. The plainest +parallel that occurs to me is the riots and violence excited by attempts +to execute the fugitive slave law. The greatest of our southern statesmen +misunderstood. What they thought to be lawlessness was in fact the +struggle of nature by which the social organism of the United States +expelled all cause of dissolution. These hostile demonstrations of the day +against negroes are, as they seem to me, far other than acts of +unenlightened and ignorant race prejudice, to which some writers ascribe +them. They indicate, I think, another struggle of nature to expel a +foreign and death-breeding substance out of the American body politic; +they are each the protest of the self-preserving instincts against keeping +the negro with us to counteract our progress, to debase our politics, to +corrupt our blood, to injure us more than even successful secession could +have done. How aptly has Matthew Arnold said, “O man, how true are thine +instincts, how overhasty thine interpretation of them!”</p> + +<p>8. Plainly the disparity of the negro in the deadly struggle with the +white over every resource of subsistence fast becomes greater; plainly +does his stay in the south more and more injure both sections; plainly +under the effects of hard life, growing idleness and growing crime, +increasing ravages of disease, and the naturally engendered feeling of +helplessness, the average negro in the lower class gravitates downwards; +plainly this negro ought to have, in a sphere of his own, opportunity and +stimulus for self-recovery and progress. Plainly whites and negroes ought +to be separated. The latter seriously clog the evolution of the desired +southern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> labor class, and the southern whites completely exclude the +negroes from public life. The two are really each different communities in +juxtaposition, but not united. You may think of them as plants, one of +which has a diseased root, and the other has its top kept in the dark and +out of the sun. Both these evils result unavoidably from keeping the two +races together. So let us give the negro his own State in our union. That +will allow the root of the one plant to get well, and it will give the top +of the other permanently to the sun.</p> + +<p>We are rich enough and have land enough to give the negro this State, +which is his due from us. His especial need is to exercise political and +civil privileges, in his own community, all the way up from town meeting +to congress.</p> + +<p>If something like this is not done it is extremely probable that the great +mass of the lower class of the negroes will die out. Let not this crime be +committed by the American nation.</p> + +<p>9. We should be extremely liberal to the negro in education—in primary, +in industrial, and also in the higher. Especially ought we to combine the +second with the first, and give it the lead for both races.</p> + +<p>10. All the southern states should at once by proper constitutional and +legal provisions substitute judicial for mob lynching.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">THE RACE QUESTION—THE SITUATION IN DETAIL</span></p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> distinction between the two classes of southern negroes, glanced at in +the last chapter, is to be always kept in mind—at the beginning, in the +middle, and at the end, of our discussion. Its importance commands that we +say something of it here. Consider how enormously the two differ in +numbers. Five per cent of these negroes, that is, some four hundred +thousand, in the upper; ninety-five per cent, that is, seven million and +four hundred thousand, in the lower class. The latter, being nineteen +times as large as the other, first demands attention.</p> + +<p>In the country many of the men are croppers. A group of negroes—generally +parents and children—do the labor of preparation, cultivation, and +gathering, while the owner contributes the land, necessary animals, and +feed for the latter. The croppers get half the crop, and the land owner +half. The latter retains out of their half whatever he has advanced the +croppers. The advances must be limited with firmness, otherwise they will +cause loss. These croppers are the great bulk of the agricultural +laborers. So few of the men work for standing wages that they need not be +noticed. In the towns the men subsist upon day labor, the pay of which +ranges from 50 cents to $1.25. It hardly averages 80 cents. Some of the +women, both in country and town, take places as house servants and nurses +at weekly wages that vary from $1 to $2 with board. The growing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>disinclination of the women to these places is much stronger in the +country than in town. In country and town the women do laundry for the +whites at an average price per family of a dollar a week; and they get +jobs of sewing, cleaning kitchen utensils, scrubbing, etc. In the country +these women do some field labor, sometimes plowing, often hoeing. If +trained in childhood they make expert cotton-pickers. But the women +agricultural workers steadily decrease in number.</p> + +<p>The negro has inherited from a thousand generations of forefathers, bred +in the humid and enervating tropical West African climate, a laziness +which is the extreme contrary of Caucasian energy and enterprise.<a name='fna_161' id='fna_161' href='#f_161'><small>[161]</small></a> +Thus we are told of him in Jamaica, “In many cases a field negro will not +work for his employer more than four days a week. He may till his own plot +of ground on one of the other days or not as the spirit moves him.”<a name='fna_162' id='fna_162' href='#f_162'><small>[162]</small></a> +The first Saturday in June, 1904, I saw the thriving little town of +Abbeville, South Carolina, thronged with idle negroes from the surrounding +plantations. A merchant, who was kept busy in his store, offered to pay +several of them 75 cents to cut up a load of firewood—something more than +the market price. They do not work on Saturday unless compelled by +something unusual; and so each one replied at once, without any inquiry if +the logs were large or small, seasoned or not, and thus finding whether +the job was hard or easy, that the weather was too hot. And yet these +negroes all exhibited in their clothes and hungry looks unmistakable signs +of want. Those that superintend the gangs working for contractors in +Atlanta and the vicinity, all—except now and then one who has managed to +form a small party of picked laborers—tell me that it is very seldom that +a negro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> can be induced to work Saturday; if that does happen he will make +up his lost holiday by not returning to work before Tuesday. Your cook, +nurse, maid, or black servant of any kind will every now and then suddenly +inconvenience you by taking an utterly unnecessary rest. When Booker +Washington was starting his system of industrial training, as he tells us, +“Not a few of the fathers and mothers urged that because the race had +worked for 250 years or more, it ought to have a chance to rest.”<a name='fna_163' id='fna_163' href='#f_163'><small>[163]</small></a></p> + +<p>The negro has likewise inherited lack of forecast and providence. If at +the end of the year he finds himself with a small purse from his part of +the crop, standing wages, or profits from a tenancy, he will often +squander much of it for a top buggy, a piano which none of his family can +play, or expensive furniture. Those in the gangs just mentioned always +want to fool away their money before it is made. If one has been advanced +$4, and his wages amount to $5, he will hardly ever abridge his holiday by +turning up to get the dollar balance when the others who have not been +advanced are paid Saturday night. He will waste his cash on watermelons +and fish that an average white will not even smell. When forced down to it +he can live contentedly upon almost nothing. A very large proportion of +both sexes are happy upon a real meal every two or three days, and a sly +change of mate every two or three weeks. Toombs, who was always looking at +Cuffee, pronounced him “rich in the fewness of his wants.” Bring him out +more clearly to yourselves by comparison with an Irishman struggling up +from starvation wages of hard daily work into comfort and ease. Reflect +over the only success a cotton mill has had with black labor, which was +due to whipping the operatives for breach of duty.<a name='fna_164' id='fna_164' href='#f_164'><small>[164]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>In Atlanta—which of course is but like other southern cities in the +particular now to be mentioned—many of the men live upon their women. It +is a common saying that you cannot keep a colored cook if you do not allow +her to carry the keys. There is great complaint that the colored +washerwomen help their dependents out of the clothes. The criminal class +of negro men, women, and children is large and growing much faster than +that of the whites. Two very striking developments are the negro burglar +and the negro footpad. There are many breakings and entries every year in +Atlanta, many holdups of pedestrians, and nearly all of them are by +negroes. Now and then a negro snatches a lady’s purse from her on the +street. The prisoners sent to the Atlanta stockade during the twelve +months beginning December 15, 1902, were</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table"> +<tr><td> </td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td align="center">Colored.</td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td align="center">Whites.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Men</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">2325</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">1030</td></tr> +<tr><td>Women</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">1168</td><td> </td> + <td align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">100</span></td></tr> +<tr><td>Boys</td><td> </td> + <td align="center" class="botbor"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">471</span></td><td> </td> + <td align="center" class="botbor"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">18</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td> </td> + <td align="center">3964</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">1148</td></tr></table> + +<p>According to the twelfth census, the negro population of Atlanta was +35,727, and the white 54,090. So, while there are in every thousand of the +whites 21 of these criminals, there are in every thousand of the blacks +110. But the case is worse still. About an equal number of convicts +escaped the stockade by paying fines. Allowance for this will much +increase the per cent of negro criminals. I wish I could get the +approximate number whose fines are paid by their employers, white friends, +mothers, wives, and other relatives. I have observed facts which make me +confident that it is large. The number of boys<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> that in one year were sent +to the stockade—471—is a most important fact, showing as it does that a +large per cent of negroes become criminals in childhood. Nearly all of +these boys have been abandoned by their fathers. There are just as many +abandoned girls in the city. Of course under the prevailing conditions the +proportion of criminals in each generation must increase portentously.</p> + +<p>The depth of the negroes’ debasement is shown in the impurity of the +women. This is another inheritance from their ancestors. The “ancient +African chastity” alleged by Professor DuBois,<a name='fna_165' id='fna_165' href='#f_165'><small>[165]</small></a> if it ever existed, +was entirely prehistoric. A white who has not been bred in close contact +with the race is quite unable to understand the degree and universality of +this impurity. I will illustrate by a case which occurred in a prosperous +town of Middle Georgia not very long before I settled in Atlanta. A +prominent negro preacher had been caught in adultery. The woman, who was +the mother of several children, and her husband, were both members of the +same church as the preacher, and of unctuous piety. The detection was so +complete and certain, and it had immediately become so notorious that +church notice was unavoidable. The problem was how to whitewash the +affair. The office of a lawyer friend of mine in the town last mentioned +was waited on by a member of the church—a say-nothing sort of negro, who +always applied for leave to attend the meetings at which the preacher was +being tried. This office boy had returned several times with the news, +when inquired of, that nothing had been done. At last, one day he answered +that they had cleared the preacher. My friend commanded that this be +explained. The darkie said, in his laconic way, “Well, he ’fessed de act, +but he ’scused de act.” “How in the world did he excuse it?” was asked. +“He said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> his heart wasn’t in it.” “Were you fools enough to believe +that?” was ejaculated. The negro, with an air as superior as was +compatible with the great politeness of his race, replied, “He said it was +de debble dat had his body dar; but all de time his soul was at de throne, +praying for God’s people. In course we couldn’t blame him for what de +debble done.”</p> + +<p>This defence, suggesting the make-believe loan of his body by the friar in +the Decameron to the angel Gabriel, which, of course, had never been heard +of by the accused, convinced the church, willing to be convinced. It +appeased the injured husband, willing to be appeased. It fully vindicated +the gay clergyman and the erring sister, who were in effect told to go and +sin no more with such little discretion.</p> + +<p>Had this case, or another like it, occurred at that time or since in any +other negro church of that region, there would have been acquittal and +justification of the accused, although perhaps the good plea and the right +psychological moment to make it might not have been so aptly found.<a name='fna_166' id='fna_166' href='#f_166'><small>[166]</small></a></p> + +<p>The habits and customs of the race mix men and women always and +everywhere; and in those opportunities each one of the young and the old, +married and unmarried of both sexes—of even children just arrived at +puberty—chases a short-lived amour with ever eager zest.<a name='fna_167' id='fna_167' href='#f_167'><small>[167]</small></a> The blacker +the Lothario the more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> show of white blood he seeks in his fancies. Now +and then furious desire for real white overmasters him. Surprising some +unattended angel of a girl or matron, he chooses to see Rome and then die. +Her avengers pour kerosene on him and burn him to a crisp. His lusty +fellows think to themselves what Hermes, in the song of Demodocus, says to +Apollo of the mishap to Ares and golden Aphrodite—that is, that for the +same brief pleasure they would each gladly endure thrice the penalty.</p> + +<p>Professor DuBois says that the chastity of the negro women has improved so +greatly “that even in the back country districts not above nine per cent +of the population may be classed as distinctly lewd.”<a name='fna_168' id='fna_168' href='#f_168'><small>[168]</small></a> Inquire of +honest witnesses who have good opportunities of observing—the farmers, +small and large, and the storekeepers, in the country, those who do +contract work and the police in the cities—of all who have close access +to negroes at all times, and especially at night; and the concurring +report will be that right correction of Professor DuBois’ statement just +given cannot stop with mere inversion of his percentages; that the fact +is, no negroes in this lower class which we are now dealing with are +chaste except those whose physical condition has made a virtue of +necessity.<a name='fna_169' id='fna_169' href='#f_169'><small>[169]</small></a></p> + +<p>It is sadly true that men of all races are too prone to unchastity. It is +chaste women that give human <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>amelioration its main propulsion; for they +make every husband to know that the children around his fireside are his +own. If I were asked in what one particular had my life-long comparison +convinced me that the two races are farthest apart, I would unhesitatingly +answer, in the character of the women of each—the average white woman, +from her marriage on, forgetting all other men but her husband, the black +wife always with a paramour, if to be had.</p> + +<p>The tie which holds the family stanch is wanting. The men often cast aside +their domestic burdens, and begin their lives over in a distant region +with a new woman. The wife and mother left behind does not mope. She has +generally prearranged satisfactorily with another man.</p> + +<p>Disease is making great ravages in this lower class of negroes. I never +knew of a case of consumption among the slaves, and I can recall but one +serious case of pneumonia. Now these two diseases slay the negroes by +hundreds. Before the war the negro was regarded as immune from yellow +fever, and almost immune from dangerous malarial affections. He has lost +his charm against these also. There has been a dreadful increase of +insanity among them. The only ante-bellum case that I can recall was due +to an accidental injury of the head.</p> + +<p>It is but natural that the death rate among the negroes mounts fearfully. +Their great multiplication has far outrun their reasonable means of +subsistence. We note what a heavy burden a large family is to a man in +hard times. I must believe that the thirteenth census will show a still +greater negro death-rate.</p> + +<p>We shall sum up as to this lower class after we have described the +displacement of black by white labor.</p> + +<p>Now we must consider the upper class. We need<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> look only at its main +divisions, to wit, the negro farmers, and the well-to-do urban negroes.</p> + +<p>The rose-colored statements of Professor DuBois as to the former cannot +impose upon residents of the south.<a name='fna_170' id='fna_170' href='#f_170'><small>[170]</small></a> I shall begin with the negro farm +owners of Georgia. In what he says of them in the second Bulletin +mentioned in the last footnote he hardly ever looks away from the report +of the comptroller-general of the State. I shall deal with relevant facts +about which the comptroller-general is not required to concern +himself—and of which the census takes but little note. Where agricultural +land commands only a few dollars per acre a large part of it will get into +possession of purchasers under title-bond who expect to work it and pay +for it in annual instalments out of its produce. Of course the vendor sees +to it that he himself escapes taxation on this land, and so the +purchasers, although they may have paid him but a trifle or nothing at +all, are assessed as if they were the real owners, while the vendors are +retaining the title as security. Soon after the war many a white planter, +in order to get out of a failing business and procure capital for +something else, sold his land in whole or part. He could find no purchaser +but some exceptional negro; and the latter could buy only on credit. Much +of the lands so sold had to be retaken because the purchasers failed to +meet their payments. It was my observation when I left Greene county +twenty-three years ago that in that and the adjoining counties the number +of negro owners of agricultural land was decreasing, and it is my +information that such is now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> the case. This indicates an important fact +not shown in the reports of the comptroller-general, to wit, that a large +number of the negroes appearing therein as owners are really not owners, +and are losing their holdings.</p> + +<p>The next fact to be mentioned is that, as I learn from residents, many +farms of which a negro had acquired the fee are heavily encumbered, and +often fall to the local merchants.</p> + +<p>Further, as Professor DuBois states, “the land owned by negroes is usually +the less fertile, worn-out tracts.”<a name='fna_171' id='fna_171' href='#f_171'><small>[171]</small></a></p> + +<p>According to the comptroller’s report for 1903 the acres of white +ownership are 29,762,259, returned at a value of $121,629,094; which is +$4,139 per acre. The per cent of the total value owned by the blacks is +4.07. This result—that the negroes own a fraction over four per cent of +the improved lands of Georgia—must be corrected by proper deduction for +purchase money debts, and also for encumbrances. It must be further +corrected by another deduction. The negroes land is considerably below the +average of the rest in quality and market value. Yet while the white +returns at $4.08 an acre, the other returns at $4.13. This higher +valuation is not because of conscientious avoidance of tax-dodging. It +comes from that optimistic exaggeration characterizing the race, which is +vividly illustrated in Booker Washington’s gravely stating that the love +of knowledge by the average negroes of the south has become the “marvel of +mankind,”<a name='fna_172' id='fna_172' href='#f_172'><small>[172]</small></a> and in the extravagant assertion of Professor DuBois as to +their chastity commented on a few pages back.</p> + +<p>There are a few negro owners of farming lands that are prospering, but I +am credibly informed that as a class they are falling behind.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>The tenants—the renters, as they are commonly called—are the more +prosperous negro farmers. The whites hold on to their lands more firmly +than they did some years ago, and the tenantry class both of whites and +blacks is becoming larger. The whites in the Black Belt all believe that +the negroes generally belong to societies, in which they have bound +themselves not to hire to the former as house servants or for standing +wages except when they cannot otherwise subsist. So most of the cotton is +made by tenants and croppers. They grade as many bad and mediocre, and a +few good. The latter work with a will, and make fair crops. They send +their children off to expensive schools. When they die the property they +have accumulated is distributed and squandered, and a new +tenant—generally, of late years, a white—succeeds.</p> + +<p>It is to be observed everywhere that some reliable white man is generally +backing or superintending a negro farmer that can get credit. The negro +farmers, in almost any large county in the Black Belt that you may select, +that are an exception can usually be counted on the fingers of one hand.</p> + +<p>Their implements and methods are primitive;<a name='fna_173' id='fna_173' href='#f_173'><small>[173]</small></a> and they employ hardly +any labor except that of their own families.<a name='fna_174' id='fna_174' href='#f_174'><small>[174]</small></a> As soon as the negro +farmer’s children have grown up they leave him; the negro laborers in his +neighborhood become more idle every year, and they become also more +scarce. It is not to be thought of that he employ white labor. This class +will give no help to the new agriculture, which I have glanced at in the +last chapter.</p> + +<p>Twenty-odd years ago when I left the planting section, the white +landowners all preferred negro tenants. But white tenants are now +preferred. They do not send<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> their children to school as much as the +negroes do, but keep them at work while the hoeing, which is the first +main thing to the cotton farmer, and the gathering, which is the second +and last and greatest by far, are unfinished. The negroes’ hoeing and +other cultivation are bad; and after the crop is laid by until Christmas, +during which time comes the all-important laborious cotton-picking, they +spend so much of their nights at church they are incapacitated from doing +good work. They lose much time by going to camp-meetings in the late +summer and early autumn, and riding on railroad excursion trains at every +opportunity. The white tenants and their families, by careful “chopping +out” and hoeing, get the proper “stand” and they pick clean; the negroes +fall behind in both respects. The bettering credit of the white steadily +hits the negro harder. The only tenants who are good for the rent are the +class a few of whom have cash of their own and the rest can get credit +with the local merchant for necessary supplies. Such tenants the +landowners seek after, and find every year more and more among the whites, +and less and less among the blacks.</p> + +<p>Every year a larger part of the staple crops of the south is made by +whites. The negroes have lately decreased in Kentucky. Mr. Tillinghast +brings forward, from Hoffman, weighty proofs that in the State just +mentioned, which has just become the principal seat of tobacco growing, +and also in the largest yielding counties of Virginia, that black labor +constantly grows less of the crop.<a name='fna_175' id='fna_175' href='#f_175'><small>[175]</small></a> He uses Hoffman, too, to show that +white labor is slowly expelling black from rice production.<a name='fna_176' id='fna_176' href='#f_176'><small>[176]</small></a> The old +south believed that rice culture was sure death to the white, Mr. +Tillinghast quotes, as to the greatest agricultural product of the south, +this from Professor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> Wilcox: “It would probably be a conservative +statement to say that at least four-fifths of the cotton was ... in 1860 +grown by negroes; at the present time [i.e. in 1899] probably not one-half +is thus grown.”<a name='fna_177' id='fna_177' href='#f_177'><small>[177]</small></a></p> + +<p>Compare this further: “He [Hoffman] finds that ‘with less than one-half as +large a colored population as Mississippi,... Texas produced in 1894 +almost three times the cotton crop of the former State.’ Even more +significant is the fact that with almost twice the colored population of +1860, Mississippi, in 1894, produced less cotton than thirty-four years +ago.’”<a name='fna_178' id='fna_178' href='#f_178'><small>[178]</small></a></p> + +<p>Very significant are the facts lately published by the Agricultural +Department which show that in an area of some sixty-three per cent of the +production, the white outpicks the negro. “One hundred and fifty-two +counties, with a negro population amounting to seventy-five per cent of +the whole, averaged one hundred and eleven pounds per day, whereas one +hundred and ninety-two counties, with a white population constituting +seventy-five per cent or more of the whole, averaged one hundred and +forty-eight pounds per day,”<a name='fna_179' id='fna_179' href='#f_179'><small>[179]</small></a> that is, the white picked one-third more +than the black. There are other statements in this bulletin of importance +here. I can give this one only:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“In the Indian Territory and Oklahoma, where the whites represent +about eighty per cent of the population (including Indians) the +average number of pounds picked is greater than in any of the States +except Arkansas and Texas. The highest number of pounds picked in any +State is one hundred and seventy-two in Texas, the counties +represented having a white population of eighty per cent.”<a name='fna_180' id='fna_180' href='#f_180'><small>[180]</small></a></p> + +<p>In Arkansas the population of the counties mentioned was fifty-nine per +cent white, the rest negro.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>It is almost certain that the foregoing estimates do great injustice to +the whites. They assume that there is no inferiority of the negro to the +white except the per diem quantity of cotton picked. Ponder the statement +as to a county of Georgia which I now give.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“According to the ginners’ report, Madison county made sixteen +thousand bales of cotton in 1902. Its negro population is about three +thousand, its white, twelve thousand. The negroes are one-fifth and +the whites four-fifths, and out of every five bales the negroes ought +to have made at least one and the whites four. But the former do not +average as well as the others. The white who runs one plow, whose wife +and children do the hoeing and picking, probably makes ten bales. The +negro who runs one plow, whose wife and children hoe and pick, hardly +makes more than five or six bales. The greater part of the cotton +credited to negro labor is made by negroes who are superintended by +white men.”<a name='fna_181' id='fna_181' href='#f_181'><small>[181]</small></a></p> + +<p>Weighing all that I have just told, I am as sure as I can be of anything +in the near future, that the negro will soon be of greatly diminished +importance as laborer, cropper, renter, or farming landowner in the +staples of southern agriculture.</p> + +<p>There are other kinds of property than improved lands set out in the +report of the comptroller-general, such as $3,531,471 of horses, cattle, +and stock of all kinds, $810,553 of plantation and mechanical tools. Such +needs no separate consideration. These holdings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> do not in view of what we +have told, give the negro farmer any strong foothold.</p> + +<p>Nearly all that remains of the rural upper class—the negroes in trades, +professions, mercantile business, etc.—is so evidently dependent upon the +masses of the lower class, now gravitating away from the country that the +most of it can be incidentally disposed of at certain places later on in +the chapter and the rest be treated as negligible.</p> + +<p>The “city or town property” of the negroes of Georgia, according to the +report of the comptroller-general for 1903, amounts in value to +$44,668,620. From all that I can learn, while it is largely, it is +considerably less, encumbered than the real and personal property of the +negro farmers.</p> + +<p>A large admixture of Caucasian blood marks nearly every member of the +upper class both in country and town. I note that occasionally a coalblack +acquires property, on which his miser grip is tighter than that of an +accumulating Irishman; but such are very few. There is hardly a well-to-do +negro in work, occupation, profession, or property, who is not several +shades at least removed from coalblack. Mr. Tillinghast observes “that the +porters, cooks, and waiters on a Pullman train are usually mulattoes, +while the laborers in the gang on the roadbed are nearly all black.”<a name='fna_182' id='fna_182' href='#f_182'><small>[182]</small></a> +In this day when the pictures of prominent men and women are in many +illustrated magazines and papers, it is to be observed that hardly one of +a negro shows unmixed blood. Thus a recent monthly contains pictures of +Judson W. Lyons, R. H. Terrell, Kelly Miller, Archibald H. Grinke, T. +Thomas Fortune, Daniel Murray, and Booker Washington.<a name='fna_183' id='fna_183' href='#f_183'><small>[183]</small></a> Of these the +third only, to my eye, seems all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> negro; and I cannot be confident that he +is wholly without appreciable white blood. His head has the shape of a +white man’s.</p> + +<p>It is my observation that a negro entirely pure in blood hardly ever gets +out of the lower class; and that if he does he is much more unprogressive +than an average member of the upper class. Note what Bishop Holsey says of +how amalgamation with the white improves the descendants of the blacks, in +a passage quoted later herein.</p> + +<p>This upper class contains only persons of exceptional blood, talent, or +some other rare fortune. The higher education, and the education which is +now best of all for the negro—industrial education—is for this little +circle only. Hampton and Tuskegee do not open to all comers. Mr. +Tillinghast convincingly proves that those who have got really good +training at the two institutions just named are far above the average +negro in physical stamina, education, and other important +particulars.<a name='fna_184' id='fna_184' href='#f_184'><small>[184]</small></a> The graduates go forth, not to benefit their brothers in +the lower class, but to win for themselves surer and higher standing in +the upper class.</p> + +<p>Some of the resources which this urban section of the upper class have +enjoyed for a while they are losing, as I shall tell when I hereinafter +summarize the details of white encroachment. But other resources open to +them. Such are professions like dentists, eye, ear, and throat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> surgeons, +doctors, barbers, and others who must content themselves with only colored +patronage; such the growing retail trade, multiplying boarding-houses, +restaurants, and saloons, finding their custom exclusively in the +increasing negro town population. The number of negroes who become +teachers, lecturers, preachers, authors, etc., steadily augments. Other +resources of this upper class can be pointed out, but it needs not here. +Although nearly always when the father who has struggled up dies, his +property, as we saw to be the case with the negro farmer, goes, and no +child succeeds to his occupation, there is perhaps generally compensation +for his loss by the accession of some other who has got up out of the +lower class by an extraordinarily lucky jump. It is clear that the class +is without the wholesome influence of uninterrupted inheritance, from +generation to generation, of faculty and character progressively +improving. Take this inheritance away from the men and women of any +enlightened nation and it would be to lower them very near to the level of +barbarism. It is also nearly certain that there will be no further +infusion of white blood into this class, by reason of the hostility to +inter-mixture which becomes stronger—yea, intenser—every year. The +probable consequence will be the dilution of much of the white blood now +in the upper class through the lower class to such an extent that it will +practically disappear. But some of it, I think, will persist, perhaps +increase in degree—preserved by the aversion of many to intermarriage +with persons less white than themselves, and occasional intermarriage with +white persons in northern States.</p> + +<p>Exceptional ones of this class enjoy privileges of the higher education, +afforded by schools and colleges opulently endowed by private persons, +which education is bringing forth fruit in teachers, clergymen, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>representatives of the learned class. There are already some good books, +as well as sermons, speeches, poems, essays, and short articles, by +negroes which have won favorable opinion in our literature; and there is +evidently to be steady increase.</p> + +<p>There is among some of this urban upper class the beginning at least of +better things under the lead of better mothers. We must not be +unreasonable in our demands that these women who carry in their veins a +very appreciable proportion of polyandrous blood shall become immaculately +chaste at once. Leave them to the influence of the improving society in +which they move; to the noble and faithful efforts of such as Mrs. Booker +Washington; their persistent imitation of white mothers; the teachings of +the really christian pastors whom the negro universities are beginning to +send abroad in numbers far too few; but especially of all to devoted +conjugal, maternal, and domestic duty. This last has made the pigeon +mother unconquerably true to her life mate. It will do the same for the +negro woman.—Let us consider the class further for a moment.</p> + +<p>The longer you look at it with unbefogged eyes the more plainly you see it +is really a natural aristocracy hugging its special privileges more +jealously every year, and that cleavage in interest, affection, and +destiny between it and the other class goes on so steadily that it must +after some little while yawn in the sight of the entire nation. Here in +Atlanta, as seems to be the case in all the southern cities, there are +respectable negro districts and also negro slums. The latter are the more +numerous and far more populous. The inhabitants of these several districts +are almost as wide apart as are the whites in the fashionable circle and +the million of poor folk without.</p> + +<p>I must postpone my final contrast of these two classes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> until I have +completed what remains to be said of the displacement of black by white +labor. For a few years after the war it was so slow moving that I was not +confidently aware of it. Now it has proceeded so far, and so much +accelerated its pace, that I can indicate it with something like accuracy. +In the thirteenth chapter I noted its beginning. This was when the mother +and her girls took upon themselves the daily indoor work, and the father +and sons took upon themselves the outdoor work, morning, noon, and night, +around the house and the horse-lot,—the word which in the south +corresponds to the barnyard of the northern farmer. Especially significant +is it that a large per cent of the white matrons in the country have at +last discarded the negro laundry-woman and habitually themselves use the +washtub for their families. The impulse to supplant negro labor showed its +greatest energy where the black population had been sparse. I have heard +my friend, F. C. Foster, a resident of Morgan county, often mention that +what were before the war the rich and poor sides of that county have +become interchanged; where most of the large slave-owners lived was the +rich, but now is the poor side; and the other, where there were but few +slaves, is now the rich side.</p> + +<p>I see many proofs in every quarter that the whites of the Black Belt have +commenced to learn good lessons from their neighbors outside, and show +every year a greater self-reliance. Many more causes than I have space to +set down conspire to increase this self-reliance. The small farmer must, +by himself or his wife and children or white help, do such things as +these: work his brood mare; care for his blooded stock, fine poultry, and +bees; handle his reaper, mower, and more expensive tools and implements; +give all necessary attention to his orchards and larger and smaller +fruits,—industries which,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> with that of the dairy, are now pushing +forward with mounting energy; for he has learned that the average negro +cannot be trusted in these and many other things which can be suggested.</p> + +<p>I must not overstate the advance of white production and labor upon black +in the country. In the regions of densest negro populations the whites +show a backwardness in taking to work that is discouraging. A very +observant man familiar with Jackson and Madison counties of Georgia, both +of which are out of the Black Belt, and who now lives where negroes +outnumber the whites, not long ago made this comparison, while answering +my inquiries: “In Jackson and Madison the whites work. A farmer who runs +but one plow does all the plowing. He hires but one negro. In my present +county the one-horse farmer always hires two negroes, one to plow and the +other to hoe, and the only work he does is to boss them.” But the negroes +are going away from many parts, in fact from nearly all, of the Black +Belt. Wherever they have become scarce, the whites go to work; and, as is +now occurring in that part of Greene county called “The Fork,” and in +places in adjoining counties, the lands rise greatly in market value. In +many parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene counties, where +negroes were doing practically all the agricultural labor when I came to +Atlanta, I learn that many white boys are becoming good all-around +workers. It surprised me greatly to be told that in this region in +different places the white women and children, as soon as the dew is off +in the morning, go to cotton picking, and they become so efficient that +often no extra labor need be hired to finish that greatest task of all to +the farmer. Before the war, all of us white boys picked just enough of +cotton to learn that our backs could never be made to stand picking all +day. The whites now beating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> the negro in what we once thought he only +could do, and white women in the old slave regions doing the family +laundry,—these begin a marvellous economic revolution.</p> + +<p>The cotton mills and other manufactories rapidly springing up in many +southern localities are developing a class of white operatives. Mining of +various kinds is on the increase. Stone, slate, and marble cutting, +cabinet making, and other trades attract greater numbers to follow them. +White railroad employees, printers, engravers, stenographers, typewriters, +and those in numerous other gainful occupations, grow in numbers. White +women and girls stream to work for employers every morning. In all places, +if you but look long enough, you catch sight of swelling crowds of the +race who once lived almost entirely from slave labor now doing their own +labor.</p> + +<p>I will close what I have to say of this part of the subject by +observations of Atlanta. When I settled here, the barbers, shoe repairers, +blacksmiths, band-musicians, sick-nurses, seamstresses, ostlers, and +carriage-drivers were, so far as I noted, black almost without exception. +Now the first five are nearly all white, and whites steadily multiply in +the rest, although they are far from being in a majority. The only +expulsion of white by negro labor that I have noted is the substitution by +the bicycle messenger service and the telegraph of negro for white +messengers, made not long ago. These messenger services thrive by +exploiting child labor. By the change mentioned they got much larger and +stronger boys—often grown-up ones—for the same price which they used to +pay white children a year or two older than mere tots. Against the recent +loss just told I have these two recent gains of the whites to tell. There +had always been only negro waiters in the restaurants. In some of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> them +the eaters at the lunch counters are now served by a white man standing +behind it; and what he needs, if it is not kept in store so near that he +can reach it, is brought to him, at his command, by a negro, whom you may +call his waiter. This negro also wipes off the counter. After we became +used to white barbers we generally preferred them to the black ones. And I +note that a growing majority of those who frequent the counters like the +white waiters, although I now and then hear a growler say that he would +rather have a waiter that he can reprimand and speak to as he pleases. +Some of the restaurants begin to advertise that their help is all white. +With the superior alertness and quickness of his race, a white behind the +counter accomplishes more than twice as much as the former black. To use a +common saying, the white waiters keep at active work all their twelve +hours as if they were fighting fire, while the negroes commanded by them +take things easy. Every one of the whites is constantly on the lookout for +a better place; and generally he manages somehow, after a short while, to +get it. One who now serves me studies bookkeeping two hours every night, +and will doubtless soon be giving satisfaction in his chosen occupation to +some business house. The negroes look out only for tips, are interested in +nothing but amusements, and never get any higher. Bear in mind, they are +considerably above the average negro in qualifications and station.</p> + +<p>The other instance is that some co-operating Greek boys have recently +captured a very considerable proportion of the shoe-shining. They provide +more convenient and comfortable seats and give a better shine than the +negro does, in a much shorter time, and for the same price. It looks now +as if they are bound to make full conquest of the business. With my +experience it is more of a surprise to me to see clothes laundered,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> +tables waited on, and shoes shined by the whites, than even to see cotton +picked by them.</p> + +<p>But to go on with Atlanta. Occupations requiring the management of +machinery or peculiar skill are nearly always filled by whites. The street +railroad conductors and motormen are all white. The only negroes connected +with the road that I, as a passenger, generally see is the curve-greaser, +and now and then a helper on the construction car. The steam railroads +will employ a negro fireman because of his ability to stand heat, but they +do not trust him to oil and wipe. In the smaller buildings negro +elevator-runners some time ago were frequent, but now it is clear that the +whites will soon have the occupation exclusively. There is, I believe, +more building, in this year of 1904, in Atlanta than ever before. The +preparation of all the material is done by white labor in the +planing-mills and machine-shops, while the more unskilled work of putting +it in place is done by the negro carpenter.</p> + +<p>The lathers and plasterers are all negroes, there are more negro brick and +stone masons than white, and the carpenters are nearly all negroes, there +being but few young white ones. The painters are about equally divided. +The negro’s standard of living is so much lower than that of the white, +that where there is competition he proves victor by accepting a price upon +which the white man cannot live. But the latter does not throw up the +sponge. At the point where race competition begins he induces the negroes, +whenever he can, to join his union, and soon to have one of their own. +Just now (August, 1904) there are not enough of brickmasons to supply the +demand, and there is both a white and black union of that trade. But so +far there has been no success in the efforts made for a black carpenters’ +union. The negroes have of late years kept such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> firm hold of the trade, +that it seems no young whites come into it, there being but few white +carpenters in Atlanta under forty years of age. The negroes understand +that their grip is due to their ability to work for lower pay than the +whites, and when the union is proposed they say to themselves, that means +only more places for white carpenters and less for us. But the trend to +form unions seems to strengthen. There is a mixed union of tailors, +separate unions of blacksmiths’ helpers, moulders’ helpers, painters, and +also of brickmasons, as just mentioned. There is a black union of +plasterers and no white one. It is to be remembered that the initiative to +unionize the negro workman comes from the other race, the purpose being to +balk the exertions of employers to depress wages by encouraging the +cheaper worker. Consider the dilemma of the negro workman invited into the +union by whites. He foresees that if he accepts, his race will after a +while be swamped in the trade by white competition. At the same time he +foresees that if he does not accept, he cannot increase his income, which +in its smallness becomes more and more inadequate to sustain himself and +family under the constant demands of the day for larger and larger +expenditure. The immediate needs of those dependent upon him will +generally decide his course. I cannot say how long the negro carpenters of +Atlanta will refuse the proposal to federate themselves in a union with +the whites; but this I can say, that all attempts of the negroes to keep +the whites out of any well-paid vocation must fail, even with the most +resolute and stubbornly maintained effort. As I view it on the spot the +white forward movement palpably strengthens and the defence weakens. Bear +in mind that the whites receive constant re-enforcement from all other +white American and European communities, and the blacks are <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>confined to +their own resources of supply, all the while declining.</p> + +<p>What I have just told as happening in Atlanta intelligent and observant +negroes detect to be but a part of the general recession before white +competition. The National Negro Business League had its last meeting at +Indianapolis. In one of the resolutions adopted, mainly because of the +influence of Dr. Booker T. Washington, its president, occurs this +allegation, “During our discussions it has been clearly developed that the +race has been steadily losing many avenues of valuable employment.” The +resolution ascribes this to lack of proper training, and recommends that +the lack be supplied. A negro makes this acute and true comment, which I +would have attended to here, and considered again when further on I +discuss what the industrial schools can do:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“That the colored man has of late years been losing many avenues of +employment is quite true, but the conclusion that this is due to a +lack of training is not to be hastily accepted. Nobody believes that +our people are now less capable of work than they were when recognized +in these avenues of labor. As a matter of fact they are far better +equipped now than they were then, or Tuskegee and Hampton and the +other industrial schools that are crowded from year to year are making +a signal failure. In those days men were picked up here and there and +started in as apprentices as green as they could be. Now thousands of +them are prepared before they go out to work. The two chief reasons +our folks are not employed so universally now is, first, the fact, +that <i>the white south has gone to work with its own hands</i>, and +second, the negro refuses longer to work for nothing. <i>The continued +assertion by some of our leaders that a man who can labor will not be +discriminated against, is untrue. The preference is given to the white +man in almost every case, and the negro is allowed to do the work he +refuses.</i> It is well enough to ask our people to secure industrial +education, but it is wrong <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span>to place all our ills upon a lack of such +training or to recommend industrial education as a panacea. Though it +was quite inevitable that the league should adopt such a resolution as +an endorsement of its president’s policy.”<a name='fna_185' id='fna_185' href='#f_185'><small>[185]</small></a></p> + +<p>I have italicized in the quotation the statements specially pertinent +here. They are very weighty proofs supporting my proposition of fact, to +wit, that there is now waging between the whites and negroes an +internecine war for every opportunity of labor above the very lowest and +unskilled.</p> + +<p>I ask also that it be noted that the writer is utterly unconscious of any +negroes than those of the upper class. Not a thing that he says can be +applied to the ninety-five per cent.</p> + +<p>The death rate of the negro is coming close to, while that of the white +keeps far below, the birth rate. Rapid native increase and vigorous +immigration for the whites, nothing but slow and decreasing propagation +for the negroes; and larger and larger hosts of the former giving their +champions active sympathy and help—the event of this inter-race struggle +over the trades and occupations may be delayed, but it cannot be doubtful.</p> + +<p>The reader must not forget that the negroes now in mind belong all to what +I have called the upper class. Their number is so small and its promise of +increase so slight that I should hardly have done more than allude to +them, if the subject did not emphasize so impressively as it does the +inevitable expulsion of negro by white labor. Let me explain this fully. +Professor Wilcox, summarizing the pertinent information of the twelfth +census as to ten leading occupations competed for by the two races in the +south, states that in the year 1900 the per cent of negroes was larger in +seven and smaller<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> in nine of them than ten years before.<a name='fna_186' id='fna_186' href='#f_186'><small>[186]</small></a> That alone +shows white gain. But I want you to add to Professor Wilcox’s statement +something of which the census gives no hint, that is, the bound forward of +the negroes on one side, and the inaction of the whites on the other, +during many years beginning with emancipation in 1865. When that has been +done, the encroachment of white labor upon black effected in the +comparatively short time since its beginning appears almost prodigious. It +is somewhat like the race-horse, who, falling far behind in the first +stages of a long heat, at last wakes up and gains so fast that nobody will +bet against him. It means that the whites are now as ruthlessly taking all +opportunities of labor away from the blacks, as their fathers took his +lands away from the American Indian.</p> + +<p>We can now say our last word in contrasting the two classes. Many fail to +see clearly the difference between them. Thus Ernest Hamlin Abbott<a name='fna_187' id='fna_187' href='#f_187'><small>[187]</small></a> +and Edgar Gardner Murphy,<a name='fna_188' id='fna_188' href='#f_188'><small>[188]</small></a> in their pleasant discussions, only here +and there, and as if casually, say something which momentarily implies +existence of the lower class, and then relapse into claiming for all of +the southern negroes, if not the actual condition of the upper class, at +least hopeful possibility of soon achieving it. These two kind-hearted men +represent a large number who firmly believe that education and the church +are now rapidly elevating the negro masses, when the fact is far +otherwise. Many from the north see nothing but the upper class. In what he +writes of the negroes whom he knew in public life, the late Senator Hoar +was utterly unconscious of the average negro whom all of us in the south +know.<a name='fna_189' id='fna_189' href='#f_189'><small>[189]</small></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> Dr. Lyman Abbott, a most benign example of broad and almost +perfect tolerance to both sections, taking all southern hearts by his +loving sympathy with and full justice to the better sentiment of our +section in every matter of importance except the appointment of negroes to +office, he never seems to have in mind any negroes but the prominent ones +who are giving their fellows industrial or the higher education, and those +who have been blessed with either. Do but consider how pathetically he +lately lamented the case of the “white negro” lady shut out from the +circle of cultivation and kept confined in one of ignorance and lowness. +This last circle—its magnitude, its bad and desperate state—he really +knows nothing about. He can no more study its deplorable and heartrending +conditions than the mother can endure to have the expectoration of her +child threatened with tuberculosis examined under the microscope. Chicago +has been for some while “farthest to the front” in the struggle against +corporation rule. Her battles for direct nomination, direct legislation, +and municipal ownership have been chronicled more accurately and +intelligently in the <i>Public</i> than I can find elsewhere. Therefore I read +it with diligence; and I relish more and more Mr. Post’s sound and able +anti-machine and anti-plutocratic advocacy. But in everything that the +paper says or quotes on the race question I am pained to note that its +shortcoming is greater than its very high merit in preaching democratic +democracy. Mr. Ernest Hamlin Abbott does now and then call the negroes a +child race, but Mr. Post repudiates all backwardness and inferiority of +race. He seems to maintain the equality of the average negro to the +average white in all essentials of good citizenship with the zeal of +Wendell Phillips, when the providence of the American union frenzied and +deputed him to infuriate its defenders against the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> disunion slave-owners. +Mr. Post, as appears to me, believes with all his heart in the doctrine of +Mrs. Stowe and Whittier, to mention no others, as to the negro. Every +pertinent utterance in his paper indicates that he has no thought whatever +of the lower class. A most striking illustration of this is how he treats +the story of the negro Richard R. Wright.<a name='fna_190' id='fna_190' href='#f_190'><small>[190]</small></a> When the latter was ten +years old he won great fame by the answer he made General Howard, who had +inquired of the negro children at the Storrs School in Atlanta, just after +the close of the war, “Tell me what message I shall take back from you to +the people of the north?” His face ablaze with enthusiasm, the boy Richard +said, “Tell ’em we’re risin’.” Whittier went as far astray over this as we +saw that he did in his “Laus Deo.” In his poem celebrating he sang—</p> + +<p class="poem">“O black boy of Atlanta!<br /> +But half was spoken:<br /> +The slave’s chain and the Master’s<br /> +Alike are broken.<br /> +The one curse of the races<br /> +Held both in tether:<br /> +They are rising—all are rising,<br /> +The black and white together.”</p> + +<p>I never read the last two lines without in mind admonishing the author, +“Praise in departing.”</p> + +<p>When Mr. Post published the story, he ought to have mentioned that while +the boy who sent forth the winged words did rise and has become president +of the Georgia Industrial College, yet that such negroes are far more rare +than millionaires, and the main host of their people in the south were +sinking at the time, and have been sinking ever since. It is not true that +“all are rising.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> The whites have recently begun to rise; five per cent +only of the negroes, most of whom are largely white, are rising, while the +rest of them are doomed, if the nation does not interpose. And the colored +dentist of Chicago, slighted by some of the white dentists—Mr. Post sees +in him, just as he sees in Richard R. Wright, a representative of the +negro millions.</p> + +<p>These conscientious and amiable gentlemen are wasting much effort +uselessly. There is no very urgent problem as to the upper class of +negroes. It has two strings to its bow. If the lower class should perish, +a large part of it—perhaps the greater part—will be assimilated. Every +day I detect a larger movement toward the north among our better-to-do +negroes. I hear of girls that get places as chambermaids and cooks, of +boys that find places as ostlers or other domestic service; and I have +heard of a few families who have gone in a body, also of some men who have +left wife and children here. They believe the north will allow their votes +to be counted, will not proscribe them in society as the south does, and +they will probably get for themselves or their descendants intermarriage +with whites. The determination of these southern negroes towards the north +will probably gain in volume and energy. It is plain that those who go do +much increase their chances of final absorption into the body of whites. +This assimilation is one of the two strings. And if the American negroes +shall one day be conceded their own State, as I hope and pray for, their +leaders must come from the upper class. That is the other of the two +strings.</p> + +<p>This upper class of southern negroes has demonstrated full ability to take +care of itself. It has its schools and colleges, newspapers, magazines, +and augmenting literature, its widening circle of students and readers, +and its good shepherds and able leaders. It rapidly wins favor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> in the +south. A few of our residents see no other negroes but those in this upper +class, a most striking instance of which is Joel Chandler Harris’s +sweeping assertion “that the overwhelming majority of the negroes in all +parts of the south, <i>especially in the agricultural regions, are leading</i> +sober and <i>industrious lives</i>.”<a name='fna_191' id='fna_191' href='#f_191'><small>[191]</small></a> When one who fully understands the +situation studies the assertion just quoted he sees from the context that +the writer was led to make it because he had at the time in his eyes only +a few of the better negroes in the Atlanta upper class. This is powerful +testimony to their prosperity and self-maintaining faculty. Similarly the +Chicago <i>Public</i> rates the four hundred inhabitants of Boley in the Creek +nation as common or average negroes. According to a news dispatch +mentioned in that paper the town is only a year old, has “two churches, a +school-house, several large stores, and a $5,000 cotton gin, owned and +controlled exclusively by negroes.” It is without a system of law and +without municipal government, and “yet no serious crime or offence of any +kind has been committed in the place.” These four hundred negroes do not +permit any white man to settle in the town. Commenting in conclusion upon +the news, the <i>Public</i> says, “If that dispatch is not a canard, +Anglo-Saxon civilization has something to learn of one race which it has +outraged and abused and despised.”<a name='fna_192' id='fna_192' href='#f_192'><small>[192]</small></a></p> + +<p>Any such place as Boley, if a reality, is peopled only by negroes of the +upper class, and, further, only by those who have been sifted out from the +rest of that class by a peculiarly drastic selection. Had they not each +had remarkable good fortune, extraordinary capacity, and exceptional +experience and training, Boley<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> would never have been heard of. I ask that +the fair-minded make two comparisons. 1. Suppose four hundred negroes—not +naturally selected, but taken in a body, just as each one comes, from the +masses of the lower class described herein—given opportunity to found a +town of their own amid what we may call Boley conditions, what would be +the result? You may be sure that what occurred in Hayti when the reins of +government were suddenly given to the negroes at large would in some sort +be repeated. 2. Compare Boley in all its bloom and happy condition as +described in the <i>Public</i> with certain communities of select whites, which +have flourished now and then for years, without formal government; say the +Amana community. If this be rightly done, social organism of select whites +will at once appear to be incomparably superior to that of select negroes.</p> + +<p>I have tried my hardest to make my readers see as clearly as one bred in +the south ought to see what a world-wide difference there is between the +small upper class and the numerous lower class of negroes. If I have +succeeded they will agree with me that it is the better policy to leave +the upper class, for the present, just where it is. If this advice be +followed, that class will flourish, and some day either be assimilated, or +be giving benign salvation to the lower class in the negro State. +Especially should this upper class eschew politics. Booker Washington in +preaching this is the only real American prophet of the day. With all of +his zeal for his race, he is far better appreciated in the south than in +the north, and perhaps just as popular. What a lamentable arrest of its +benign development it would be to this upper class to turn it away from +industrial betterment of its condition to lead the mass of the negroes at +the polls in a struggle for rule and office! That would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> be something like +renewing the conditions that developed the Ku-Klux Klan.</p> + +<p>It is the great body of the southern negroes—those in the lower class, +who have no string at all, nor even a bow—that demands the profoundest +attention. I wish I could make every white man, woman, and child of +America see them just as they are. As I compare them with what they were +in 1865 I note they have advanced somewhat in mental arithmetic, because +of practice in computing small sums of money involved in their wages and +purchases; that they have learned somewhat of self-providence, and very +much endurance of want (which last is really a reversion to a trait of +their West African ancestors); and that the per cent of illiteracy among +them has been greatly lessened. On the other hand, each generation becomes +more disinclined to work, and its vagrants multiply; each generation more +prone to live by crime, more unchaste, and more quick to desert their +conjugal partners and children. Especially are they far more unhealthy and +prone to insanity, and their death rate rapidly rising. They have no +resource but unskilled labor of the lowest and cheapest grade; white +competition in agriculture and domestic service, machinery in other +fields, such as the scrape which has superseded the dump-cart, the +improved steam-shovel and method of handling construction trains, and the +steam laundry, steadily curtailing that resource; a slothful, improvident, +and wasteful disposition curtailing it still further. The resurrecting +hand of the trades union cannot reach down to them. Steadily they are more +useless to every upbuilder of the coming south except the wage-depresser. +More and more they get in the way of real progress in every direction. And +as their supplies of necessaries diminish they get in one another’s way. +Nearly all of the whites who were bound to them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> in the domestic love of +the old south times are dead. Most naturally and unavoidably as the new +generation discerns the growing incompatibility of their stay in the +section with its true welfare, unfriendliness comes and grows. Listless, +lethargic, careless, without initiative, without opportunity and coercion +to make use of it, these multitudes of inveterate have-nothings are in a +bottomless gulf of want, immorality, crime, and disease. A true +philanthropist has familiarized the world with the “submerged tenth.” Mr. +Ernest Hamlin Abbott, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, Dr. Abbott, +Mr. Post, stand beside me on the strand, and fix your eyes, minds, and +hearts upon the slowly drowning ninety-five per cent of the southern +negroes. Lay aside the excess of your devotion to the upper class. It does +not need it. The Chicago dentist, as the <i>Public</i> itself reports, was +really more than indemnified for the insult given him because of his color +by the sympathetic resentment of white members of his profession. Why will +you keep agitating the nation in behalf of a few thousands, who are well +able to maintain themselves, and neglect millions who require, as Mr. +Tillinghast says, some heroic remedy for their salvation?</p> + +<p>I shall now tell you the utter inadequacy of Hampton, Tuskegee, and the +like, after which I shall consider what, in my judgment, is the only +remedy.</p> + +<p>The annual output, as we may call it, of all the negro educational +institutions in the south is a mere drop in the bucket when compared with +the enormous need. The latest reliable figures accessible to me are those +of Booker Washington for 1897. They are as follows: 13,581 receiving +industrial training, 2,108 collegiate education, 2,410 classical +instruction, and 1,311 “taking the professional course,”<a name='fna_193' id='fna_193' href='#f_193'><small>[193]</small></a>—the last +three aggregating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> 5,829. Suppose the entire 17,999 were following +industrial courses, and that every one graduated with credit; and suppose +there be added the work of the land companies providing homes and every +other enterprise helping the negro in any way—suppose this output to be +trebled annually from this time on (which is far above possibility for +many years yet, to say nothing of probability), what would be its +accomplishment? Why, no more than a slight shower in a few townships +during the drought a few years ago would have done in preventing injury to +the Kansas corn crop. When you attend, you understand that the great +advantages of these excellent institutions are only for a few lucky +negroes,—picked ones of the upper class,—and not for the millions whose +crying need is for opportunity to earn honest daily bread and a really +benevolent coercion to use the opportunity. The problem, what to do for +this mass, cannot be solved by philippics against such things as <i>de +facto</i> or constitutional disfranchisement of the blacks, lynching them, +showing them disrespect in military parades, giving them Jim Crow cars, +and not dividing the educational fund more liberally with them; nor would +it contribute one jot or tittle towards its solution if every lady in +America cordially received in her drawing-room the few negroes who have +most deservedly won the respect of the nation. To solve this problem, +something must be found which will train and elevate the average negro, +while the exceptional one is at the industrial school or college, or +studying for a profession; something which will check the prevalent +reversion away from monogamic family life, and stimulate that life to +develop steadily; something also which will impart to this entire mass +permanent and strengthening impulse to better its condition. The only +thing that can do this is to separate the negro as far as may be from the +whites, give him his own State<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> in our union, and constrain him there with +vigilant kindness to subsist and govern himself in such ways as suit him. +I have long thought that our negroes had far stronger claim upon the +nation for land than the uncivilizable redskins on whom we have lavished +so much expense in vain.</p> + +<p>Righteousness demands that we give the former full opportunity to develop +normally in self-government. Put him in a State of his own on our +continent; provide irrepealably in the organic law that all land and +public service franchises be common property; give no political rights +therein to those of any other race than the African; compel nobody to +settle in this State, but let every black reside in whatever part of the +nation that pleases him; let this community while in a Territorial +condition, and also for a reasonable time after it has been admitted as a +State, be faithfully superintended by the nation in order that republican +government be there preserved,—do these things, and there need be no fear +that the examples of Hayti and San Domingo, which were not so +superintended, will be repeated. Nearly all of the American Indians, +because of rigid adherence to their old customs and ways, were crushed by +Caucasian rule. But the negro, wherever he comes in contact with a +superior, shows a pliancy, a self-adaptability to new circumstances, to +which no parallel has ever been suggested, so far as I know. If civilized +self-government will but kindly keep him a while at its labor school where +he is to learn by doing, I am profoundly convinced that he will develop +into the very best of citizens. And I am also just as profoundly convinced +that if something like what I recommend is not done at a comparatively +early day, after some while, as there are now in America a few prosperous +Indians and in New Zealand a few prosperous Maoris, we will have here and +there a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> few prosperous negroes; but the rest of them will either be +confirmed degenerates, or have gone no one will know whither. And Booker +Washington, the moral exemplar of the day, rivalling Horace’s</p> + +<p class="poem">“Iustum et tenacem propositi virum,”</p> + +<p>as he resists the pernicious counsels of the overwhelming majority of +negroes and keeps to the wise and right course which they passionately +condemn; who is far more able and who has accomplished infinitely more of +good than Toussaint or Douglass—he will be a great hero statesman of a +great cause lost. The historian of the future that has something like +Shakspeare’s genius for contrast will make his glory and that of Calhoun +magnify each other by comparison.</p> + +<p>The foregoing as to a negro State, which is the result of years of +observation and reflection, had all been written for some time when I fell +in with the address of Bishop Holsey, mentioned above. It is the +proposition of the address that a part of the United States should be +assigned to the negroes. I add an abstract from the synopsis of his views +given in the address:</p> + +<p>1. Negroes and whites “are so distinct and dissimilar in racial traits, +instincts, and character, it is impossible for them to live together on +equal terms of social and political relation, or on terms of equal +citizenship.”</p> + +<p>2. The general government only has power to settle the problem, and it +ought to settle it.</p> + +<p>3. Separation of the negroes and whites “is the most practicable, logical, +and equitable solution of the problem.”</p> + +<p>4. “Segregation and separation should be gradual ... and non-compulsory, +so as not to injure ... labor, capital, and commerce ... where the negro +is an important factor of production and consumption.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>5. The southern negroes should petition the president and congress “for +suitable territory ... as ... equal citizens ... and not go out of their +country to be exposed to doubtful experiment and foreign complications. +Afro-Americans should remain in their own country, in the zone of +greatness, and in the latitude of progress.”</p> + +<p>6. The government should, in effecting segregation, maintain “civil order, +peace, progress, and prosperity.”</p> + +<p>7. The place for the negroes may be in the western public domain, such as +a part of the Indian Territory, New Mexico, or elsewhere in the west.</p> + +<p>8. No white person unless married to a negro, or a resident federal +official, to be allowed citizenship in the negro State or Territory, but +all citizens of the United States to be protected therein as in the other +States.<a name='fna_194' id='fna_194' href='#f_194'><small>[194]</small></a></p> + +<p>9. Only those of reputable character and some degree of education, and +perhaps those possessed of a year’s support, to become citizens. Criminals +and undesirable persons to be kept out.</p> + +<p>It was gratification extreme to me to find a prominent negro so much in +accord with my long-cherished project. I hope there is a determination of +the mass of southern negroes thitherward, as seems to be indicated by the +activity both of Bishop Holsey and also by that of Bishop Turner. With +nearly all of the negro writers and speakers now in the public eye +upper-class sympathies are dominant. But Holsey, demanding a State in the +union, and Turner, putting his whole soul into immigration to Liberia, are +actuated by lower-class<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> sympathies. The others just mentioned really +advocate assimilation,—and at bottom, only the assimilation of the upper +class,—but these two are of far different and higher ambition. They are +patriotic, and as true to their race as that famous heathen who rejected +christianity when told that it consigned his forefathers to perdition. He +declared he would go to hell with his people and not to heaven without +them. The others are representative of only some five per cent, these two +represent the ninety-five per cent—the real negroes. I never took to +Bishop Turner’s proposal, for all of the ability with which he advocates +it, because I want the negroes where our nation can foster and protect +their State, it matters not what may be the resulting pains and expense. I +highly approve the earnestness of Bishop Holsey in objecting to +expatriation by the Afro-Americans.</p> + +<p>Let our negroes have their own State. That will be the fit culmination +which was foreshadowed in their deserting the galleries assigned them in +our churches and flocking to their own churches, immediately upon +emancipation, and their effecting soon afterwards the removal of their +cabins from the old site. Their masses have ever since been inclining +towards a community of their own by an internal impulsion in harmony with +the external white expulsion. The impulsion and the expulsion are each, as +it seems to me, manifestations of the same all-powerful cosmic force.</p> + +<p>Further, I would say a negro State makes a precedent for the world +federation. Each race that ought not to intermarry with others can +flourish under its separate autonomy. Then loving brotherhood between +white, yellow, red, and black people will bless all the earth. Whether the +proneness of opposites to fancy each other, progressively going from the +smaller to the greater <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>differences, will ultimately compound a universal +color, no man can now tell.</p> + +<p>Of course some reader has exclaimed, “Your proposal is absurdly +chimerical.” Is it indeed chimerical to demand of the great republic that +it do its very highest duty? Suppose an ignorant, neglected child taken +home by a rich man, taught to work, the world of industry, with all of its +prizes, kept in his sight, until he begins to cherish the hope that some +day he can have a happy fireside of his own; suppose further that just as +he reaches the age of discretion the adopting father sets him where he may +see the fair world plainer and long for it more than ever, but so +completely strips him of all means and opportunity that there is nothing +for the outcast but ignoble life and uncared-for death. How you would pity +the outcast! how you would curse the false father! I cannot believe that +the nation will prove such an unnatural parent to these its helpless and +lovable children. It may be that some thousands of them, nay, some +millions, may be left to perish in their dire constraint. But when the +people fully understand, their consciences will awaken, and they will give +the American negro a bright house-warming.</p> + +<p>Suppose we do not give him his State, or suppose it will be long years +before we give it to him, what do you say we are to do for him?</p> + +<p>We must help Booker Washington and his co-laborers to the utmost. Grant +that they can snatch only a few brands from the burning. Is it not most +praiseworthy to save even one? Further, I can never abandon the hope that +the nation will yet allot the negroes their State, even if to do it land +must be condemned on a large scale. When that fair day does dawn on +America, out of the scholars of these worthy teachers will come many a +good shepherd for the blacks in their new land. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> may now be but a +glimmering of hope. All the good must join in effort to enlarge and +brighten it.</p> + +<p>We should not begrudge the higher education to the few in the upper class +who can get it. The negroes need teachers, preachers, writers, and others +of the learned occupations.</p> + +<p>We should impartially equalize the negro population to the white in common +school privileges. Both ought to have rational industrial training. The +right primary education is just beginning to show itself. It will more and +more recognize what a prominent factor the hand has been in evolution. +Think of the superiority of animals with, to those without, hands. What a +high brain the elephant has made for himself by exercising his single +hand; the polar bear kills the seal by throwing a block of ice; the ’coon +goes through his master’s pockets for sweetmeats; the greater intelligence +of the house-cat as compared with the average dog is due to long use of +the forepaws as rudimentary hands. Think of how we note humanity dawning +in the monkey ever busy with his hands. Think of the importance of his +hands to beginning man. With them he could gather fruits, rub fire-sticks +together, make war-clubs, spears, fish-hooks, bow and arrows, bar up his +cave door against beasts of prey, elevate his roosting place in a tree too +high for night prowlers, and do all other vital things up the whole ascent +to civilization. The steady enlargement of man’s brain has been mainly +because of his progressive use of his hands; for whenever a new thing was +to be done his brain had first to acquire faculty of telling hands how to +do it. To train the hands is the true way to develop brain power. The +negroes in American slavery had risen far above the level of West African +hand ability, and at emancipation they were prepared to go higher by leaps +and bounds. Had they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> from that time steadily on been drafted off into +their State, gradually, as Bishop Holsey suggests, and a tithe of the +millions which have since been lavished in giving them premature literacy +and smattering of learning been applied in teaching their children +handicraft faculty and the best methods of labor, the promise for them now +would be satisfactory to their dearest friends. Somebody wisely advises, +Never do the second thing first. Those who took charge of the negro when +he was freed tried to make him do the hundredth or thousandth thing first. +Instead of patiently schooling him in handicraft and self-support until he +was really ready to take part in his own self-government, they made the +ignorant and inexperienced slave of yesterday a complete citizen, and +plunged him up to his neck into politics and letters. What a baleful +<i>hysteron proteron</i> was this. The looming greatness of Booker Washington +is that he teaches by his actions that the seeming advance was in fact +prodigious retrogression, and he strives with all his might to draw the +negro backwards to his right beginning. Let us further his good work by +incorporating the utmost practicable of his industrial training in our +common school system for both whites and blacks. America has learned +important military lessons from the redskin; and, as I am almost sure, she +acted on his suggestion when she confederated the separate colonies. Let +her now show similar good sense in permitting a negro to teach her the +true system of education for the new times.<a name='fna_195' id='fna_195' href='#f_195'><small>[195]</small></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>Now as to lynching. It is entirely wrong to conceive of a popular outbreak +against one who has outraged a sacred woman as lawless. It is the furthest +possible from that, being prompted by the most righteous indignation. The +wretch has outlawed himself. Society can no more tolerate such an insult +to its peace than it can permit a tiger to go at large. It is under no +obligation to him whatever. It is the people dealing with him that should +concern us. We ought to keep them from brutalizing themselves and their +children. We must put down lynching with gentle firmness. The first thing +to do is to shorten the “law’s delay” as much as possible. After the State +has made the enabling constitutional amendment, if such be necessary, let +an act provide that whenever an alleged crime likely to excite popular +violence has been committed the governor select a judge to try and finally +dispose of the case, three days only, say, being allowed for motion for +new trial or taking direct<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> bill of exceptions; both the supreme court and +the court below to proceed as fast as may be through all stages until +acquittal or execution. Let the governor earnestly ask for some such +measure, and let him also, after he gets it, impressively appeal to the +people to assist in enforcing the law. With this preparation, more than +ninety per cent of the whites will approve the most decided action of the +military protecting prisoners, if that be necessary. Just at this time +(September 27, 1904) there is a very decided manifestation of +anti-lynching public opinion in the south. We should strike while the iron +is hot, and bring it about that the law itself make quick riddance of the +ravisher. It should be a spur to us that the party opposed in politics to +the great majority of southerners finds much support and help from every +lynching in this section. Why should we play into its hands?</p> + +<p>The last thing that I have to say is that the south ought to invite +immigrants only of white blood. We want no settlers from whose +intermarriage mongrels would spring. All Europeans should receive +welcome—the Germans perhaps the warmest. But in my judgment those that +will most advantage us are the truckmen, growers of the smaller and larger +fruits, grass, grain, and stock farmers, manufacturers, miners, builders, +contractors, business men, and skilled laborers, of the north. It looks +now as if the cotton mills of England as well as of the north would be +profited by coming to us; and it also seems probable that there will be +for many years so great a demand for our cotton that the worn-out soil of +the older parts of the lower south must be restored to more than virgin +richness by the method which Dr. Moore has patented and made a gift of to +the nation, or some other intensive culture; and that there must be +consequently great multiplication of southern mill-operatives<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> and +agricultural workers in the near future. Recall what we have said in the +last chapter as to the future promise of the section. Every day the south +by disclosing some new opportunity cogently makes new invitation to +immigrants. It is the interest as well as the duty of the nation to remove +the great clog upon development of the south. That clog is the presence of +some millions of unassimilable negroes in the section. It is also the best +interest and the highest duty of the nation to segregate these negroes +into a territory of their own. As Bishop Holsey says, and what I believe +with my whole soul, “The union of the States will never be fully and +perfectly recemented with tenacious integrity until black Ham and white +Japheth dwell together in separate tents.”<a name='fna_196' id='fna_196' href='#f_196'><small>[196]</small></a></p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I must add an epilogue to these chapters on the race question as I did to +that on Toombs.</p> + +<p>Brothers and sisters of the north, you should learn why there is a solid +south. There is but one cause. It is the menace to the whites from the +political power given the negroes by the fifteenth amendment. There is +nothing in your section—in its past or its present—from which I can +illustrate to you the gravity of this menace to us. In not one of your +States are there ignorant negroes in so great a number that, by combining +with the debased whites, they can make for it such a constitution and laws +and set up such authorities as they please. We, your brothers and sisters +of the south, have lived under the rule of this foulest of coalitions. We +know from actual experience how it plunders and preys upon honest workers, +producers, and property owners; how it licenses and fosters crime. In my +own State, from the first day that a governor, elected by fiat voters and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> +ex-whites, as we called the latter, was inaugurated, until we virtually +restored the supremacy of our race by carrying the three days’ election in +December, 1870, fifty dollars would get a pardon for the greatest offence, +and robberies, burglaries, horse-stealing, and the like each went free for +a much smaller sum. Is it forgotten that the negro speaker was voted one +thousand dollars by a South Carolina legislature, ostensibly as extra +compensation for unusual services, but really of purpose to reimburse him +for a bet lost upon a horse race? Why, the foremost of our people in +virtue, wisdom, and patriotism were agreed that these sordid tyrannies +should be subverted at once and at any cost to ourselves. The emergency +justified any practice, device, or stratagem at the polls by which we +could defend our homes, families, and subsistence against assassins of the +public peace, wholesale robbers of the people, and instigators and +protectors of every crime. It justified the shotgun and six-shooter in +politics just as legitimate war justifies the musket in the hands of the +soldier. It called forth most righteously the Ku-Klux. That spontaneous +resistance finds a close parallel in the battles of Lexington and Bunker +Hill, fought before American independence was declared. But the Ku-Klux +fought for something still dearer than the dear cause for which our +forefathers bled in the two battles just mentioned. Had the latter failed +in the war they had thus begun, their children and people would +nevertheless have had such good government as England is now giving the +defeated Boers; but had the southern whites failed in their defence, their +land would have for long years been befouled like Hayti, and those who had +not been slaughtered unspeakably degraded. I think that all our countrymen +who so rightfully eulogize the heroes of Lexington and Bunker Hill should +also learn to give the greater praise to the southern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> heroes whose +indomitable spirit routed the madmen that, with all the power of the +federal government in their hands, tried their best to give the section +over to negro rulers. Brothers and sisters, “picture it, think of it,” +until you can fully understand that hour of our trial. All my northern +acquaintances who have resided in the south for several years—they are +many—come to look at the subject just as the natives do. A candid and +honest settler from Vermont has told me how he was made to change his +mind. Conversing with a southerner, he had reprehended the different ways +in which the negro’s ballot had been rendered nugatory. The other replied, +“Suppose that there was an incursion of Indians given suffrage into your +State in such a mass as to make them seventy-five per cent of all the +voters, wouldn’t you whites in some way manage either to outvote or +outcount them!” The Vermonter answered in the affirmative. We had to +deliver ourselves. We used the only means at our command.</p> + +<p>It was not to be thought of that these negro governments be endured, even +if tempered by the Ku-Klux, for government is in its nature lasting and +permanent while the other was only temporary. They would have gradually +gathered strength. Then there would have been rapid enrichment of a few +exceptional negroes and rapid expulsion of the whites impoverished by +emancipation, from all their little that was left. And then, the leading +negroes desiring nothing else so much, there would have come many white +men and women, each one willing to climb out of the depths of want by +intermarriage with a prosperous negro. Who can predict what would have +been the future of mongrelism thus beginning? We of the south are most +conscientiously solid against what we know from actual trial to be the +worst and most corrupting of all government;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> and we are still more solid +against everything that tends to promote amalgamation. Can you blame us +for standing in serried phalanx by white domination and against the +misrule exampled in the early years of reconstruction, and for our own +uncontaminated white blood and against fusion with the negro? We must be +solid in the face of these dangers, and as long as they are threatened by +the presence of millions of negroes in our midst. There is no other +solidity in the south. In all matters of the locality republicans and +democrats count alike. When one offers to vote in the primary, if his name +is on the registry list, and he appears on inspection to be white, his +vote is accepted; and he generally casts that vote, not for the interest +of a political party, but for that of the public. The triumphant election +in November, 1904, of independents or democrats, in four northern States +which at the same time went for Mr. Roosevelt, indicates solidity for the +true local welfare of the people as against the behests of party. So what +the white primary has produced in the south, has commenced in the north. +And the result in Missouri, voting for Roosevelt, republican, and Folk, +democrat, shows that what we may call federal independentism has commenced +in the south. This will spread as the people learn it does not hurt them +to split their tickets while voting upon national questions, if they but +maintain their solidity while voting upon State or municipal.</p> + +<p>Now may I be allowed some decided words, most kindly and inoffensively +spoken, as to appointing negroes to federal offices in the south. It is no +sound argument for it that now and then some negro may have been appointed +in a northern community which manifested no opposition. Consider the case +of Mr. William H. Lewis, a negro lately made assistant district<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> attorney +in Boston by Mr. Roosevelt. He is a Harvard graduate, was captain of the +Harvard eleven while in college, had represented Cambridge in the +Massachusetts legislature, and the community was not at all averse to his +appointment.<a name='fna_197' id='fna_197' href='#f_197'><small>[197]</small></a> Therefore when it was made there was no disregard of the +wishes and feelings of Boston and the regions adjoining. But when a negro +is given office in the south, it is felt by all the community to be an +insult. Would President Roosevelt cram the appointment of a white down the +throats of a northern community in which all the best citizens protested +against it? Would he not confess to himself that the wishes and feelings +of these good people ought to be respected, even if he considered them +foolish and unreasonable? It seems to me that he would, and that he would +find for the place somebody else in his party acceptable to the locality. +Why should he not do the like when his southern brothers and sisters who +have such convincing reasons against the encouragement of negroes in their +politics, protest unanimously against his filling an office in their midst +with a negro? Will he snub them because a negro has more sacred right than +a white? Is that what he means by keeping open the door of hope and +opportunity? Or will he snub them because enough of punishment has not yet +been given them, and because the south is still a province or dependency +on which he is justified in quartering his partisans and pets without +regard to the feelings and wishes of all the better inhabitants?</p> + +<p>Brothers and sisters of the north, I cannot believe that any one of you +who impartially considers the subject, would ever approve appointing even +the most competent and deserving negro to a southern office in the teeth +of universal objection by the whites of the community.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>My last word is to implore every honest one in the country to lay aside +all prejudice and master the southern situation before judging. Whoever +does this, whoever will accurately place himself in the shoes of a good +southern citizen, will, I most firmly believe, approve the attitude of the +south, with his whole heart and soul.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span></p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span></p> +<h2>APPENDIX</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang"><span class="smcap">The Old and New South</span>, a Centennial article for the International Review, +afterwards corrected and published separately. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. 1876.</p></div> + +<p>The approach of the Centennial Celebration is not hailed in the south with +the demonstrative joy of the north. It would be out of taste to expect +that the former should appear to triumph greatly over the life of the +nation preserved at the cost of her recent overthrow. Her late antagonist +can rejoice in a vast and happy population, great material prosperity, and +the fresh fame of a world-renowned success. It is meet, while remembering +she has so lately saved the union by her stupendous armipotence, that the +north should exult as a people never did before. The south has been made +to feel the pangs of a sudden impoverishment and the incalculable +discomfort of complete economical unsettlement; and she has not learned +the new lessons which she must learn to become self-sustaining and +progressive. But her earnest spirits, doing painfully the slow task of +repairing lost fortunes; seeking after the system proper to succeed +planting; striving to make their homes pleasant again and to give their +children a fair hope in the land,—these intent workers, who are most of +them scarred confederate veterans, even if they will not say it loudly, +have come around to hold in steadfast faith that it is far better the Blue +Cross fell, and the American union stands forever unchallengeable +hereafter. And they have brought with them the great mass of their people. +They cannot joy so happily as the north, but they have a warm welcome for +the Great Commemoration. For they see that the evils which followed as the +scourge of defeat are soon to pass away, while the fall of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> slavery and +the failure of secession are to prove greater and greater blessings as +years roll on.</p> + +<p>And so the time has come for a southerner calmly to discuss the past, +present, and future of the south. He has no use for the methods of popular +and unscientific politics, wherein everything is blamed or applauded as +being the result of party measures. The intentions and motives of the +actors, on both sides of the late strife, will give but proximate +explanations. How the two sections became, to use the fine phrase of Von +Holst, economically contrasted; how the southern people and their +representative politicians were bred, under their circumstances, into +opposition to the union; and how the northern people and their +representative politicians were bred, under widely different +circumstances, into love of the union; how the long clashing in politics +culminated in civil war; how the south was utterly crushed and her whole +industrial system destroyed; how she slowly re-erects herself into a new +condition better than the old,—the ultimate solution of these questions +can only be found by discussing them in the light of those laws of +development which give every community a policy suited to what it discerns +to be its best interest. These laws are of far more importance than the +politician, who is but their creature. Leaving to others to fight over the +old struggles of the political arena and bandy hard words with one +another, we will try to discuss our subject in the manner we have +indicated to be appropriate.</p> + +<p>To understand the present and future, we must first understand the past. +To understand the New south, we must first understand the Old south, the +distinguishing feature of which was negro slavery. Mr. Stephens, then +Vice-President of the southern confederacy, in an address to a large +assembly in Savannah, in March, 1861, said of the new government: “Its +foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that +the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to +the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” There is no doubt +slavery was the corner-stone of southern society; and when it was removed, +four years later,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> a thorough disintegration of the whole fabric was the +logical result.</p> + +<p>When our country was first settled, the southern regions were far more +attractive in soil and climate; and their other natural +resources—minerals, good harbors, navigable streams, water-power idling +everywhere, to mention no more—were equal to those of the other section. +The subsequent advancement of the north has been so rapid as to excite the +wonder of the world; while it is said by us of the south, jesting upon our +worn-out and exhausted land, that we have done worse for the country than +the Indians before us, who stayed here many centuries and yet left the +soil as good as they found it.</p> + +<p>The plantation system was the great barrier to southern progress. From its +first historical appearance, among the Carthaginians, from whom the Romans +seem to have derived it, this rude and wholesale method of farming has +rested on slaveholding. Its workings have been similar everywhere. In +Italy, under the Roman republic, absorbing the petty holdings, it drove +out the small farmer; it destroyed the former respect for trades and +handicrafts, and brought them into disfavor; it prevented the development +of the industrial arts; it created a non-reciprocal commerce. Centuries +later, it did the same things in our southern States.</p> + +<p>A sketch of the leading features and results of the plantation system, as +it existed in America, is our proper beginning.</p> + +<p>The driver, as the negro foreman was called, was not very common in the +south, and was generally under the superintendence of the overseer. Could +the planters have made a good overseer of the driver, of course they would +have consulted their interest, and reproduced the ancient slave-steward of +Rome. Slaveholders keep their slaves under careful surveillance, but they +do not usually overlook them in person. It is not often that a master +engages in an employment which brings him into daily and intimate contact +with the lowest orders, and which he instinctively feels to be degrading. +The planter could have neither his first choice, which would have been a +slave overseer, nor his second choice, a superintendent from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> his own rank +in society; and so, as the next best thing, he took as overseer a white +hireling from the non-slaveholding class. The tillage of the fields was +thus intrusted to the overseers, who were, for the most part, men of +little education and business skill, and who had no interest in their +employment except to draw its wages. Thus the foremost, if not the only, +southern industry was managed by incompetent and careless agents.</p> + +<p>The Roman master, in the later days of the republic, having always vast +markets open to him, shunned the expense of providing for women and +children, and bought new slaves instead of breeding them; but the closing +of the African slave-trade, and the softer hearts and manners of modern +times, led our planters, at last, to rely on propagation as their only +source of supply. The negroes were, therefore, well cared for, and, in a +genial clime, increased rapidly. This increase, however, did not keep pace +with the increasing demand for southern products, and so the market value +of the slave rose rapidly. To the Roman slaveholder, land was almost +everything, and his rustic slaves nothing; to the southerner, the slaves +were almost everything, and the land nothing. There was no careful +cultivation of the soil, no judicious rotation of crops, and no adequate +system of fertilization. Southern husbandry was, for the most part, a +reckless pillage of the bounty of nature. The planter became possessed +with a roving spirit, and was continually seeking “fresh land,” as virgin +soil was termed. In the older sections, where there was most stability, +the best farming consisted in judiciously eking out the natural fertility +of the fields, and when that was exhausted, in leaving them to recuperate +by years of rest. Thus a given working force required, year by year, a +greater and greater allowance of land, and the plantations became steadily +larger, the small farmer retiring, and the white population becoming +continually less. Many of these older sections turned, from being +agricultural communities, into nurseries, rearing slaves for the younger +States where virgin soil was abundant. The fertile lands of the new +settlements, by yielding bountiful crops, gave fresh impulse to the +plantation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> system, and here the small holdings were absorbed more rapidly +than they had been in the older States. The southern slaves, regarded as +property, were the most desirable investment open to the generality of +people that has ever been known. They were patient, tractable, and +submissive, and never revolted in combined insurrections, as did the +slaves of antiquity. Their labor was richly remunerative; their market +value was constantly rising; they were everywhere more easily convertible +into money than the best securities; and their natural increase was so +rapid that a part of it could be squandered by a shiftless owner every +year to make both ends meet, and he still be left enough of accumulation +to enrich him steadily. And so the plantation, or rather the slave, system +swallowed up everything else.</p> + +<p>There were no distinct industrial classes. There were negro blacksmiths, +negro carpenters, negro shoemakers, etc., all over the land, but they were +mere appendages to the plantations, and far inferior in capacity and skill +to the artisan slaves of antiquity.</p> + +<p>The commerce of the south was non-reciprocal. She traded raw produce for +manufactures which she should have made herself, or which she should have +got in exchange for manufactures of her own. The over-mastering energy of +slave property, dissolving, as it were, all things into itself, kept her +from that development of trades, manufactories, and industrial arts which +is the solid and unprecedented progress, and far more durable wealth, of +the north.</p> + +<p>There were a few exceptions in the way of restorative agriculture, and of +diversified investments of capital in railways, manufactories, inland +navigation, and mercantile enterprises. All along the northern border +there were efforts to let go slavery, and non-slave industry was slowly +emerging in a few places; but these things were as dust in the balances. +The slave system was rooted in the best portions of the land, and nearly +all of the productive wealth of the south was in, or dependent upon, +planting. Implacable enemies of slavery were rapidly increasing in numbers +and power, but she continued blindly sacrificing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> everything to rear +negroes. When actual emancipation came—that nipping May frost—the south +showed, on a gigantic scale, in her poverty and one solitary and +portentously dried-up source of wealth, a parallel to Ireland, smitten +with famine by the sudden failure of her only supply of food. When the +charity of the world and the returning bounty of nature had again fed the +Green Isle, everything fell back into the old track, and she could go on +smoothly as before. But not so with the south: her wealth has fled; her +occupation, the plantation system, is gone; and she must, for a +generation, grope painfully in the dark, trying novel ways of subsisting, +enduring want and many failures, before finding again the light of plenty +and comfort.</p> + +<p>The duties of the planter have changed. The management of a farm is not +like that of a plantation, and one skilled in the management of slaves is +not necessarily efficient in the directing of freedmen. Many other +countries have been impoverished by wars; but is not this instantaneous +and almost complete taking away of a great people’s mode of living unique +in history? The most resolute secessionist would have lost heart and put +up his sword, could he have seen, before the war commenced, how easily the +solitary prop of southern wealth and comfort could be overturned, to be +set up no more. But in none of the ablest of the anti-secession arguments +of 1860 were the consequences of defeat predicted.</p> + +<p>Some portions of our country have been built up into a high degree of +prosperity by a steady influx of foreign settlers. How much has been added +to the power and wealth of the northern States by the immigration from the +old lands of those who, when first they come, can do no more than subsist +themselves by their own industry, almost defies computation. How the force +of the preponderant population of the north pressed upon the south during +the war, and at last crushed her down! Slavery repelled the free immigrant +from the south, and he went elsewhere with his power to enrich and defend.</p> + +<p>The uniform and rapid advancement of civilization is mainly due to the +struggle of the poor to better their condition. These<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> efforts result in +complex division of labor, accumulation of wealth, and better than these, +in the production of a great population engaged in diversified industries. +In such a population, improving year by year in business habits, consists +the strength of a nation. The slave had no hope of rising, and the system +of which he was a part repelled free workingmen, and thus the south lost +the benign emulation and energy of a lower class. The ancient slaves were +not alone rural laborers and domestic servants, as were those of the +south. The former, being of kindred blood with their masters and near +their level in natural capacity, were initiated in the various industries, +some of which flourished greatly under their management. Though the slaves +of old were very degraded, they were not as low and grovelling as those of +our day. Enfranchisement was common; and, in a few generations afterwards, +the descendants of the freedman were indistinguishable amid the body of +free citizens. The ancient states were not, therefore, prevented by +slavery from having advanced and diversified industries, nor were they +denied the impulse of a possible rising from the lower to the higher +classes. But the American slave was of the remotest race, far below his +master in development, and the horror of receiving him into the body of +free citizens grew continually stronger. The law discouraged manumission, +and frowned upon the increase of freedmen. Thus, the African slavery of +the south was the most hopeless form of servitude the civilized world has +ever seen; and, by preventing the formation of a great class of freemen, +engaged in respectable industry, it killed the very roots of social +progress. These influences of slavery, so repugnant to American ideas, +will be more vividly seen and understood in the answer to the question, +What would have been the present condition of the south had it not been +for slavery? Undoubtedly her land would have smiled with a fertility +richer than the endowment of nature; her industrial arts would, ere this +time, have branched out into multifarious activity; her own ships would +have been carrying her produce and manufactures abroad; and, as the crown +of all, she would have had a teeming population of workers, whose +education in the methods of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>self-support would have been the assurance of +unlimited future advancement. In brief, in all the elements of the +greatness of a community, the south might now have equalled, if not +excelled, the north.</p> + +<p>But there are some other effects of slavery to be noted before the outline +of the Old south can be clearly and fully drawn.</p> + +<p>Among the planters, costly and liberal instruction was given to a few of +those who were to adorn places of leisured ease, or to fill the necessary +professions and public positions; but, in the midst of the sparse and +shifting rural population, there could not be that devotion to the +education of all, which is one of the most conspicuous glories of the +northern States.</p> + +<p>In consequence of the sparseness of the planters and their roving habits, +there was not that subdivision of different portions of the counties into +small self-governing wards, which Jefferson so fondly desired. He said of +the New England townships, that they had “proved themselves the wisest +invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of +self-government, and for its preservation.” He also said that he +considered the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging +on two hooks, to wit, “the public education, and the subdivision into +wards.” This government of every vicinage in its home affairs by itself, +as originated in New England, and is now spread far and wide throughout +the northern States, is the most beneficent achievement of American +democracy. By this coercion of the citizen to participate in the constant +administration of public matters directly concerning his interests, +self-government becomes, as it should be, the business of everybody, and +everybody is compulsorily educated in the best of all learning for the +race.</p> + +<p>The finale of slavery remains to be told. As opposition to it increased +from without, the south became more and more closely united. She honestly +believed that wanton intermeddlers were attacking her dearest rights. The +steady and continually strengthening warfare against slavery, and her +continuous and earnest defence of it, began—it is impossible to determine +precisely when—to knit her into a nationality of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> own. He who +understands what Mr. Bagehot calls “nation-making” will discover, in the +past history of the south, if he looks attentively, many signs of this +tendency, which steadily progressed unperceived on her part, and still +more so on the part of the north, until the south began to coalesce into a +nation as compact as her scattered and random elements would permit. The +long advocacy and support of slavery in the political arena had fevered +her whole people, and finally, under these promptings to a national life, +politics absorbed nearly all of her intellectual powers.</p> + +<p>There is a striking parallel between this sustained effort of the south +and the struggle of Ireland, when the latter, for the fifty years ending +with the advent of the present century, was arrayed against the British, +in their encroachments upon her independent government. During this +half-century, Ireland maintained that she was an independent integral part +of the British Empire, just as Virginia contended that she was a sovereign +in the federation of States. Ireland, like a southern State, challenged +every seeming interference, by the general government, in her local +affairs; and the claims put forth, in each instance, were inexorably +contested by an adverse government, claiming supremacy and supported by +superiority of power. Both were on the eve of revolutionary secession +without knowing it. The results in Ireland and the south were similar: +there was but one intellectual activity, namely, politics. The memory of +all Irishmen of that time not forgotten—and many of their names are +familiar words—is nothing but resistance to English aggression. Even +Curran, Ireland’s great forensic advocate, made his world-wide fame in +defending Irishmen against the prosecutions of the British ministry. It +was much the same at the south in the period antecedent to the civil war. +She had neither literature nor science; but she had statesmen and +advocates, who will be remembered as long as her soldiers and generals.</p> + +<p>The national germ had long been growing below the surface, in darkness, +and at last it burst into view, and shot up into a body of amazing +proportions. There was not the birth of a new nation at Montgomery in +1861; only the majority of this vigorous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> young member of the family of +nations was there proclaimed. But, for all of the eloquence of its orators +and the virtue and bravery of its people, it was, as compared with its +adversary, in raw and untutored nonage, and the great disaster that befell +four years afterwards was then preordained. It was her unshunnable fate +that she should be denationalized on the battle-field.</p> + +<p>The late war was a conflict between implacable enemies. Each belligerent, +standing up for national life, was resistlessly coerced to fight to the +last. Neither can be blamed. The past may be taxed with lack of wisdom. It +may be that as Scotland and, more lately, Ireland have been peacefully +denationalized, a preventive, anticipating the dreadful event of war, +might years before have been devised by statesmanly forecast. The actual +combatants—the southerner fighting for the confederacy, and the northern +soldier bearing up the flag of the union—were equals in manhood and +virtue. The survivors, federal and confederate, at last see this, and +therefore they go in company to decorate alike the graves of the dead of +both armies.</p> + +<p>The cause of all these evils—the backwardness and stationariness of the +south; a wasteful husbandry, without other industries; the instability of +her wealth; her want of a great class of freemen engaged in the different +arts; her barbarically simple social structure; her neglect of common +schools; the absorption of all her intellectual energies in feverish and +revolutionary politics; and, finally, secession and the reddened ground of +a thousand battle-fields—was slavery. It is gone. The malignant cancer, +involving, as it seemed, every vital and menacing hideous and loathsome +death, was plucked out by the roots; and after a ten years’ struggle of +nature, we see the body politic slowly but surely reviving to a health and +soundness never known before.</p> + +<p>Here we find the dividing line between the Old and the New south. The +former ended, and the latter began, with the giving of freedom to the +negroes—an event which will prove in the future to have been an +emancipation even more beneficial to master than to slave. Immunity from +all the evils of slavery<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> which we have catalogued will distinguish the +New south from the Old.<a name='fna_198' id='fna_198' href='#f_198'><small>[198]</small></a></p> + +<p>The sudden impoverishment of the southern people, and the unlooked-for +change in their ways of living and thinking, had they occurred in the most +peaceful times, and been followed with the best of government, would have +produced a profound shock and a long paralysis. But the bitterness of +subjugation, and the mistake of needlessly offensive and goading +government, with harsh reconstructive measures, have prolonged the +lethargy. And yet the American union shows benignly in the present +condition and promised future of the section. The ten years since<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> +emancipation are instructive. Slowly has the New south been disentangling +herself from the débris of the Old, and she has emerged far enough to +enable us to perceive that a better era has commenced. Much has been lost, +but more has been saved. All the germs of true wealth and power and the +solid well-being of a community have survived; and solace for the past and +earnest of a great future may be found in the fact that she has reached at +last, and for the first time, a position in which she can develop these +elements, free from the suffocating hindrances of former days. We may now +properly inquire, What of the past does the south retain, and in what will +consist her future progress?</p> + +<p>She retains her genial climate, her kindly soil, and her many natural +resources. If the peace of the American union is assured, as everything +now graciously promises, these natural advantages will, in a few +generations, far more than compensate for all her losses, and ultimately +place her in the very van of progress.</p> + +<p>The best inheritance of the New from the Old south is the southern people. +We have seen how slavery checked industrial development, and how many of +its other effects were hurtful. After allowing fully for all these, there +will be found a great residuum of progressive energy, of intellectual +strength, and of moral worth in the people of the southern States. They +need not fear a comparison, in these respects, with the most enlightened +communities. Great men, like Washington, Jefferson, Calhoun, Jackson, and +Lee; political and military heroes, judges, lawyers, and orators, such as +the south has given birth to, in unbroken succession,—are the +unmistakable signs of a great people.</p> + +<p>The rank and file of the confederate armies have given proof that the men +of the south must be classed, in all the elements of complete character, +with the best that the world has ever seen. Crime was so infrequent that a +single morning of the term of a rural court, before the war, nearly always +sufficed to dispose of every indictment; there was little want or +pauperism; virtue was everywhere the rule in private life, and there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> was +seldom even the suspicion of corruption in government or the +administration of justice. The history of this people since the war shows +that they are possessed of the best Anglo-Saxon mettle. They are slowly +beginning to thrive wherever they have been left to govern themselves, in +spite of the complete industrial revolution, the loss of property, and +change of occupation, of which we have written. And in many places, where +reconstruction has been harshest, and negro misrule yet prevails, the +whites have developed an unlooked-for self-maintaining capacity, and have +demonstrated that even there must be the eventual predominance of +intelligence and virtue, should “natural selection” alone work to secure +it.</p> + +<p>The southern people have learned much wisdom in the last ten years. Their +heavy vote in 1872 for Horace Greeley—a man to whom a foreigner would +have supposed them unappeasably hostile—if there was nothing else, would +alone suffice to show that they are rapidly laying aside all hindrances to +progress. And now that slavery is gone and she has so quickly conquered +the animosities of the war, the south may be likened to a capable and +energetic young man, who, having failed, as the result of inevitable +misfortune, in a wrongly-chosen business, has been relieved of all +embarrassments and has entered upon his proper calling. More may +reasonably be expected of such a man than of one more prosperous who has +not had the like discipline.</p> + +<p>As her nationalizing tendency has been destroyed by the removal of +slavery, and as her future must necessarily be shaped by union influences, +she will heartily embrace the political creed of the union. The doctrine +of the sovereignty of the States, which was advocated with very great +ability by many of the southern statesmen—notably by Calhoun, in his +speeches in congress, and in his “Discourse on the Constitution of the +United States,” and with still more taking effect by Mr. Stephens in his +“Constitutional View of the War between the States,”—has now no disciples +at the south. General Logan gave expression to the prevailing creed of the +present, when he said, at a recent reunion of former confederate +companions:</p> + +<p class="blockquot"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span>“In considering, then, the future of the south, there is one fact +suggested at the outset which has been demonstrated to us by the logic +of events. It is, that under the operation of causes, which, although +unseen at the time, appear now to have been inevitable in their +results, a vast <i>social organism</i> has been developed, and is now so +far advanced in its growth as a <i>national body politic</i>, and no longer +a mere aggregation of States, that <i>unity</i> is a necessity of its +further development. In reviewing the past, we can now clearly see +that this national organism has been <i>gradually developed</i>; and, while +many seek by various theories to account for the failure of the +confederacy, the result may be regarded as the necessary consequence +of those laws of development under which this social organism—the +United States—was being evolved.”</p> + +<p>And the south is pleased to observe that there are no genuine signs of too +much centralization. On the contrary, the town system is destined to +spread fast and far; and the increase of local option laws; the splitting +of larger into smaller counties; the strengthening tendency to submit +constitutions and many legislative acts to voters; the greater disposition +often to amend the State constitutions in the interests of progress; the +vigorous growth in each State of its own body of laws; the rapid +multiplication of towns and cities, with governments peculiar to each, are +some of the many convincing proofs that local self-government is +increasing and flourishing. Of the last particular Judge Dillon says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“We have popularized and made use of municipal institutions to such an +extent as to constitute one of the most striking features of our +government. It owes to them, indeed, in a great degree, its +decentralized character. When the English Municipal Corporations +Reform Act of 1835, was passed, there were, in England and Wales, +excluding London, only two hundred and forty-six places exercising +municipal functions; and their aggregate population did not exceed two +millions of people. In this country, our municipal corporations are +numbered by thousands, and the inhabitants subjected to their rule, by +millions.”</p> + +<p>Reflecting southerners see, in the present condition of the southern +States, the very strongest possible guaranty that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> true balance +between national cohesion and local freedom is to be preserved. They see +that the happy equilibrium is of a character so permanent and stable as to +have survived the convulsion of civil war. The southern States are not +held as conquered provinces. On the contrary, aside from the abolition of +slavery and the fundamental legislation securing to the old slaves the +full fruition of their freedom, there has been no perceptible change in +the relations of these States to the United States.</p> + +<p>Surely, to the student of history, wherein <i>vae victis!</i> is written on +every page, this fact has wonderful significance. It recommends the +American form of government to the rest of the world as the incoming of +the new stage of civilization, wherein oppression and war shall become +unknown. However long contending armies may devour populations and +paralyze industry elsewhere, we are assured that war-sick America will +fight with herself no more. This assurance repays the south a thousand +fold for all that she has lost and endured.</p> + +<p>The great economical interest of the south is her agriculture; and in this +industry, as well as among those who conduct it, a constant transition has +been taking place during the ten years since emancipation. There is a +melancholy change in the homes of landholders from the case and comfort of +<i>ante bellum</i> days. The neat inclosures have fallen; the pleasant grounds +and the flower-gardens, once so trim and flourishing, are a waste; all the +old smiles and adornments are gone. Change at home is accompanied by still +greater change without. The negroes—and they constitute the great bulk of +the laboring population—tend to become a tenantry, cultivating the land, +in some instances, for a part of the produce, but oftener for a fixed sum +of money. Many of these realize from their labors little more than enough +to pay a moderate rent. Others work for wages, either in money or in some +portion of the crop made by their labor. As the negroes are scarce, and +their labor so important, they have often, directly or indirectly, a voice +in the area of land cultivated, the mode of cultivation, and the kind of +crop raised. The result, in many places, is retrogression. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span> face of +the country is much altered. Only a small part of the land, as compared +with that tilled before the war, is under cultivation, the remainder +becomes wild. Could the fallen confederates return they would not in many +places recognize their old homes. Nearly every man of average business +ability could control his slaves, before the war, with little trouble; but +it now requires far more than ordinary capacity to find and keep good +tenants, to employ laborers amid the present scarcity, and to retain and +make them remunerative when employed. The freedman is a different +character from his former slave self, and is to be governed by different +methods; and the true art of managing him is cabalism to many who were +prosperous planters before the war. Multitudes of these show great +despondency, for there have been thousands of failures among them.</p> + +<p>But when we examine into this depression, we find that it is but the +result of the transition from the former <i>régime</i>, and not a deep-seated +and fatal decay of the vitals. These are some of the symptoms of assured +recovery, noted within the last three or four years: a steady contraction +of credit, and widening prevalency of the cash system; growing conviction +that the whites must depend upon their own labor more, and less on that of +the negroes; augmenting number of land-owners who decline to secure the +merchants advancing supplies to their tenants and laborers; a greater +acreage devoted to food crops; general advocacy of diversified planting; +spreading dissatisfaction with the laws giving large exemptions to +debtors. Southern economical affairs, in their sinking, “touched bottom” +(to use the forcible expression now in vogue) about the end of 1874.<a name='fna_199' id='fna_199' href='#f_199'><small>[199]</small></a> +There has been a probable increase since of the mass of distress, as the +heat of a summer day increases, by accumulation, for a while after noon, +though the sun is imparting less and less. Steady amelioration will soon +be general. A new system is slowly developing, and can be plainly +discerned among the rubbish of the old. The change from former days most +noticeable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> now is the multiplication, increased energy, and continually, +growing trade of the smaller towns. This is due to the decay of planting, +which was a wholesale system, and the coming-in of farming, which is a +small trading system using much less concentrated capital. The large +moneyed man, for evident economical reasons, buys in commercial +centres—in cities—but the small purchaser must needs buy in the nearest +market. Allowing for the great increase of farmers, and the control by the +negroes of their earnings, there are many thousands more of small buyers +in the south than there were before the war, and towns build up to sell to +them.</p> + +<p>There is another fact, not so noticeable as the rapidly growing local +trade, but still more important. A class of new planters, consisting +mainly of men too young to have become fixed in the methods and habits of +former days, is springing up. They are new yet; but there is, in many +parts of the south, at least one who is teaching many watching idlers by +deeds and silence. They have remodelled their domestic economy, +accommodating it to their smaller incomes and to the uncertainty of +household help. They have discarded the outside kitchen, have substituted +the cooking stove for the old voracious fireplace, and have brought the +well with a pump in it, instead of the old windlass and bucket, under the +roof of the dwelling, so that the household duties may be more easily +despatched by their wives and children. And they have also remodelled +their planting. They diversify their crops and products, raising more +grain, and introducing clover and new forage plants. Some abandon entirely +the cultivation of the old slave crops, and supply the nearest towns with +feed and provisions. These planters of the New south till less land, and +strive to improve it; they study the superiority and economy of machinery; +they provide themselves with better cotton-gins, often using steam to work +them; they have presses which require fewer hands than the old +packing-screw; better plows are used; and harrows, reapers, and mowers, +which, in many parts of the south, were seldom known before the war, are +now common. This little band keeps pace with agricultural progress, as +recorded in the journals; they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> seek for and find many new sources of +profit; they prepare the people for laws fostering the interest of the +planter in many particulars; they mold the opinion of their neighborhood; +and their ability, skill, and wealth slowly increase. They struggle with a +new order of things, having to think for themselves at every turn, and +often misstep and fall in the dark, but they pick themselves up, and find +the way again. The light of the new experience which they are kindling +grows brighter each year, and is beginning to draw some of their neighbors +to travel in it.</p> + +<p>It is not our object to give a false impression of the influence of the +class of farmers last referred to. They are but few, and their efforts are +but the beginnings of the happy coming change. Their courage, power, and +numbers are manifestly on the increase; and, as there is no other +progressive activity in agriculture, and they meet no opposition save the +passive resistance of despondency and inaction, it is almost certain that +they will lay deep and sure the foundations of the needed renovation of +the south. It is their belief that, to make agriculture generally +prosperous, and to school the people to habits of thrift and saving, are +the first steps, and that manufactories and trades and heterogeneous +industries will naturally follow.</p> + +<p>They desire northern settlers, to add useful features to agricultural +economy, and diversify planting. A few have come, and they are prospering. +It seems rational to expect a steady influx of these for many years, +bringing capital and methods better suited to the needs of the changed +times, raising the value of landed property out of its impeding +prostration, and strengthening the industrial force. The climate; the +abundance of cheap, cleared land; the long settlement having demonstrated +the country to be healthy; the fact that plowing and other important +outdoor work can be done on the farms all the winter round; the many +railways, the multiplying towns and growing cities; the variety of +products, and easy access to market—now that slavery and the animosity of +war are gone, and the misrule of the carpetbagger has ended nearly +everywhere—these, and many other advantages daily disclosing themselves, +excel most of the new States and the Territories in offering <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span>inducements +to immigrants; and, in due course of time, a vast number of settlers, both +American and foreign, will be added to the population. There are many +indications that the immigration of stock-raisers, wool-growers, +market-gardeners, orchardists, beekeepers, in fine, small farmers of every +kind, adapted to the soil and climate, will soon begin in earnest. When it +does, the rebuilding of the south will be rapid.</p> + +<p>The coming-in of northern capitalists, to invest in railways, mines, +manufactories, and other large moneyed enterprises—most especially to +develop the great resources of water-power—may be expected to begin at +once, and considerably, upon the close of the centennial year. It seems +now that this is the most powerful agency that may be expected to begin +immediate work, in introducing the much-needed higher type of industrial +organization.</p> + +<p>The feelings of the two races toward each other were, for a few years +after the war, bitterly hostile. The whites had, all their lives, seen the +negroes in slavery, and from their infancy they had heard their preachers +defend slavery, not in the abstract, as their phrase was, but in the +concrete. The “concrete” meant African slavery, which was justified on the +ground that the African was divinely intended in his nature for slavery, +which was to him christianization and civilization, so long as he remained +a slave; while, the moment he was set free, he would revert to his +primitive barbarism. When these God-given slaves were suddenly cut loose +from mastership, and the wealth of the capitalist, the portion of the +orphan, and the mite of the widow were swept away at once by emancipation, +either directly or as a necessary consequence, there was a great shock +given to the whites. But when, three years afterwards, a new constituency +was created, in which the slaves, just emancipated, outnumbered the +whites, in many counties, the storm of passion that burst forth can hardly +be described. The whites feared that the old relation was about to be +inverted, and that they would be made slaves to the negroes. There was +many a deed of violence, and many a poor negro paid his life for a few +offensive words.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span>But a wonderful change has taken place. When the southern States were +“reconstructed,” as it is termed, in 1868, a negro school-keeper or +preacher, if known to be a republican in politics—as he generally +was—was hardly safe anywhere beyond the limits of a city. The negro +schools were often broken up by mobs, and sometimes black congregations +were attacked at night in their churches and dispersed by armed whites in +disguise. Now, the colored children troop securely to school, and the +colored churches and their congregations are sternly protected by law +everywhere. Seven years ago a colored person could hardly get justice, in +even the plainest case, from a jury of the other race. Now, in all of the +courts, he has the influence of white men to aid him, and rarely is an +unjust verdict rendered against him. He makes better friends of the +whites. There is no need for him to legislate or hold office over them; he +cannot yet do these things right for himself. He rises, however, and his +importance is felt more and more. His labor is a necessity. Learning to +use it aright, he will surely win all that he deserves. The healthful +sentiment prevails everywhere, at the north as at the south, and with the +late slave also, that to force his growth is as unfortunate to him as is +misjudged parental assistance, which often keeps adult children from ever +becoming self-reliant. The colored race in the south must be educated by +the struggle for existence into self-maintenance. This training, like the +material recuperation of the south, will require time, with patience and +hopefulness.</p> + +<p>The negro tends resistlessly to a fixed position in his own class. He does +not wish to ride in the same railway-car with fine ladies and gentlemen, +nor could you persuade him to send his children to a mixed school to be +teased by white scholars. He will not be legislated out of his natural +circle, where he feels comfortable, into one where he will be ill at case. +He seeks for himself a separate home, school, church, and occupation, in +all of which he can, at a distance, imitate the white, to whom he is ever +looking up. The statute books may be covered with laws having a different +purpose, but they will be as powerless to check the current of separation +as prescribed rates of interest are <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>impotent to keep down usury when +money is dear. In a domestic world, a company and circle of his own, the +negro will make a start for himself.</p> + +<p>But the negro is grossly misunderstood. It is too generally forgotten that +he is many centuries below the white in evolution. Slavery has elevated +him far above the savagery of Africa, and introduced him to perhaps his +only chance of civilization.</p> + +<p>His future in the south is a mystery. Many of his best friends do not +believe that he can hold all the great advantages that he has gained in +the last ten years. The whites have been muzzled by hostile government. +They were stunned, while the negro was stimulated, by emancipation. Their +natural effort to hold on to the <i>ante bellum</i> system has also helped the +old slave. But, when small and diversified farming is fully developed, and +accumulating capital brings in the higher industries, there may be a +general need for more efficient and skilled labor than the average negro +can supply. While he is forever safe politically against the white, he may +not be economically safe.</p> + +<p>In noticing the leading features of the New south, we have merely hinted +at her rich natural endowments. We have deemed of more importance the +character of her people, the new views and principles beginning to assert +themselves, the great economical changes following and to follow the +abolition of slavery, and the potent effects soon to be wrought by copious +immigration. For upon these the future mainly depends.</p> + +<p>The south is in a thorough and long transition. Her fields are to be made +fertile and to smile beautifully with an infinite variety of products; her +provisional labor is to be gradually supplanted by a permanent system; +industries, trades, and manufactories are to be founded and everywhere +multiplied; she is to have local organizations which will foster more of +self-government; her common schools are to be reconstituted and rendered +truly serviceable to all; and she has also her part to do in literature, +science, and art, as well as in domestic and national politics. We must +not be oversanguine in hope of her immediate progress; but we can +certainly take courage, when we find that every one who perceptibly +influences society by precept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> or by example—whether he be prominent like +Gordon or Lamar, or only a humble planter leading the fore-row in his +fields—is seeking for and finding the right path. These leaders must, in +the nature of things, have a larger following every year. In due time, +their children and their children’s children will make the south of a +piece with the more prosperous portions of our country.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>[I intended to incorporate in the foregoing these two passages, but by +some inadvertence they were not printed in their several places:</p> + +<p>I said of Von Holst:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Though he does not equal Mommsen’s vivid delineation of the effects +of Roman slavery, his work is in grateful contrast with most of the +anti- and pro-slavery literature of America, by reason of his freedom +from ethical declamation, and his presentation of the real evils of +slavery, in the light of social, and especially economical, laws.”</p> + +<p>I also said of the negro:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“His flexibility; his receptivity to civilization, so different from +the inveterate repugnance of the Indian; his satisfaction and almost +complete freedom from discontent, insuring him against any violent +change; the probably long necessity for his labor; are all great +things in his favor.”]</p> + + + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span></p> +<h2>INDEX</h2> + +<p class="note">[To decide what is the right handle to a passage not pointed to by a +chapter title, and place it in an index where an average reader will +expect it, is often very hard. An alphabetical list of proper names and +rememberable words that are in or near passages which one may wish to look +for is much more easy to make than a minute subject-index, and it supplies +much surer clews. What an <i>Index Nominum</i> does for the Latin or Greek +scholar suggests the serviceableness of this Index.]</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="index"> +<span class="large"><strong>A.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Abbott, Ernest Hamlin, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Abbott, Dr. Lyman, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Abolitionists, root-and-branch, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Achæan league, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Adams, Charles F., <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Adams, John, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Adams, John Q., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Æschines, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Æsop, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Africa, “poor, oppressed, bleeding,” <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Alamance, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Alexander, Tom, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Altgeld, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Amana community, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Aristides, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Aristocracies, natural, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Aristotle, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Athens, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Atlanta stockade, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>B.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Bacon, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bagehot, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Barnett, Samuel, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.<br /> +<br /> +“Battle Hymn of the Republic,” <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bayard, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Beatrice, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Beauregard, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Beecher, Henry Ward, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Beecher, Dr. Lyman, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Benjamin, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Benton, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bentonville, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bible, the, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Binney, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bishop, J. P., <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Blaine, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Boley, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bonnivard, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Breckinridge, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Brockhaus, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Brooks, Preston S., <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Brown, John, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Brown, Joseph E., <a href="#Page_317">317</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Brown, Prof. William Garrot, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Buena Vista, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bunyan, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Burgoyne, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Burke, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Butler, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>C.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Cæsar, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>.<br /> +<br /> +California, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span><br /> +Calhoun Correspondence, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Calhoun, Floride, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Calhoun, John C., <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Casabianca, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cass, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Catullus, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Centralizing and decentralizing forces in America, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Channing, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Chase (of Maryland), <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Chase, Salmon P., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Choate, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cicero, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Classics, ancient, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Clay, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cleopatra, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cleveland, Grover, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Clingman, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Clinton, George, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cobb, Howell, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cobb, T. R. R., <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Coleridge, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, the Anglo-African composer, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Comings, S. H., <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cone, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Confederate States, its evolution similar to that of the United States, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">African slave-trade prohibited by its constitution, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its commissioners, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +Cornwallis, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cosmic force and law, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cotton, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cowper, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Crawford, George W., <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Crawford, William H., <a href="#Page_218">218</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Crittenden compromise, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Crocket, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cromwell, Oliver, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cromwell, Richard, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cumming, Major Joseph B., <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Curran, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Curtis, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>D.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Dahlonega mint, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dane, Nathan, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dante, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Darwin, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Davidson, Miss, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Davis, Jefferson, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Decameron, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Decatur, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Declaration of independence, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Delaware, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Del Mar, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Demodocus, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Demosthenes, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.<br /> +<br /> +De Quincey, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dillon, <a href="#Page_442">442</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dispensary, South Carolina, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dixon, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Doolittle, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Douglas, Stephen A., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Douglass, Frederick, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dred Scott decision, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br /> +<br /> +DuBois, Professor, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Duer, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dumas, father and son, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>E.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +“Edwards’s Sabbath Manual,” <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Epaminondas, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Erichsen, Hugo, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Erskine, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Everett, Edward, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>F.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Falstaff, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Farmville, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Faust, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fessenden, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fire-eaters, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.<br /> +<br /> +First Manassas, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Force-bill of 1833, <a href="#Page_65">65 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Forrest, <a href="#Page_290">290-293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fort Darling, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span><br /> +Fort Donelson, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Foster, F. C., <a href="#Page_396">396</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Frankland, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Franklin, battle of, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Freed Slave, the statue, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Free-labor and slave-labor systems, their antagonism, <a href="#Page_45">45 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Freeman, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fuegians, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>G.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Gaius, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Galphin claim, <a href="#Page_245">245 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Gardner, James, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Garrison, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Georgia Platform, <a href="#Page_8">8-11</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Germany, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gethsemane, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Giddings, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Goethe, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gordon, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grady, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grant, U. S., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Greeley, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Green, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grinke, Archibald H., <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grover, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grundy, Mrs., <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.<br /> +<br /> +“Gulliver’s Travels,” <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>H.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Hale, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ham, descendants of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hamilton, Alexander, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hamilton, Governor, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hamlet, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hammond, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hampton, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hampton, Wade, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hannibal, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hans, the Berlin horse, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hardeman, S. H., <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Harlan, <a href="#Page_240">240 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Harris, Joel Chandler, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Harvey, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hastings, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hawkins, Sir John, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hayne, Robert Y., <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hayti, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Heine, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Henry, Patrick, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Herculaneum, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hill, Ben, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hill, Mrs. Ben, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hilliard, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hoar, Senator, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Holsey, Bishop, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Homer, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Horace, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Horatius, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Houmas land, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Howard, General, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Howell, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hunter, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Huschke, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Huse, Caleb, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>I.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Iowa contested election, <a href="#Page_240">240 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Ireland, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Iroquois, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Isabel</i> (steamer), <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Italy, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>J.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Jackson, President, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jackson, Stonewall, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jamaica, negroes of, <a href="#Page_367">367 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jamestown, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jefferson, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jesus, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jevons, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Johnson, Andrew, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Johnston, Joseph E., <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>K.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Kansas, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Kent, Chancellor, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Kentucky, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Kimball House fire, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>.<br /> +<br /> +King’s Mountain, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Knight, Landon, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ku-Klux, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>L.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +“Lana Rookh,” <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lamar, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Landon, Miss, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Langdon, John, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lassigeray, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.<br /> +<br /> +“Laus Deo,” <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lear, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lee, R. E., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lee, Stephen D., <a href="#Page_328">328</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Legaré, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lewis, William H., <a href="#Page_425">425</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lexington, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lieber, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Liebknecht, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lincoln, Abraham, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>.<br /> +<br /> +“Little Giffen,” <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Livy, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lloyd, H. D., <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lodge, Henry Cabot, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Logan, General, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lower class of negroes, <a href="#Page_24">24-26</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Lucanian ox, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lucifer, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lucretius, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lumpkin, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>M.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Madison, <a href="#Page_56">56-58</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mallory, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mann, Horace, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mansfield, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Maoris, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>.<br /> +<br /> +March, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Marshall, C. J., <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Martial, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Marx Carl, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Maryland, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mason, Jeremiah, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Maximilian, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br /> +<br /> +McClellan, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br /> +<br /> +McClung, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>.<br /> +<br /> +McDonald, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.<br /> +<br /> +McDuffie, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.<br /> +<br /> +McKinley, President, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>.<br /> +<br /> +McMaster, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Megareans, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mell, Dr., <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Memorial Day, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mexico, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Michaelangelo, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mill, John Stuart, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Miller, Kelley, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Milton, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Missouri question, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mitchell, John, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mommsen, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Monitor, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Monterey, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Morgan, Joshua, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Morgan, Lewis H., <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Murphy, Edgar Gardner, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>N.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Napoleon, <a href="#Page_297">297 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Nationalization, American, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61-83</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Nationalization, southern, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6-14</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51-61</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436-438</a>.<br /> +<br /> +National Negro Business League, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Nations, law of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Natural increase of slave property, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.<br /> +<br /> +New England, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">environment of Webster therein, <a href="#Page_147">147-152</a>.</span><br /> +<br /> +New Jersey, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.<br /> +<br /> +New York, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Niagara, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Noah’s curse, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.<br /> +<br /> +North Carolina, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>O.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Œdipus, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Oregon, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>P.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Pace, J. M., <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Page, Thomas Nelson, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Parker, Theodore, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Parsons, Prof. Frank, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pennsylvania ladies, two, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Peonage decision, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pericles, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Philippine, the, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span><br /> +Phillips, Wendell, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pickett, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pierce, Bishop, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pierce, President, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Pilgrim, The</i>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>.<br /> +<br /> +“Pilgrim’s Progress,” <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pingree, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pinkney, Gustavus M., <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pinkney, William, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Plato, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Plautus, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pliny, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Poe, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Polk, President, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pompeii, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pompey, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pope, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Post, Louis F., <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Prentiss, S. S., <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Primary, Georgia, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Primary, South Carolina, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Princeton, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Propontic, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Prynne, Hester, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pugh, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>Q.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Quintilian, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>R.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Race question, <a href="#Page_23">23-26</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Randolph, John, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ransy Sniffles, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rebellion, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Reed, of South Carolina, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Renascence, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.<br /> +<br /> +“Republic of Republics,” <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rhode Island, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rhodes, James Ford, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ricardo, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Roman law as to slavery, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Roosevelt, President, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ruskin, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>S.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Saint Pierre, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Savage, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sawyer, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Schurz, Carl, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scipio, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scott, General, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scribner, Anne, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sellers, Mulberry, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Seneca, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Seward, William H., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shakspeare, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sharpsburg, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sherman, General, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shiloh, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shirley, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Simmons, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Simonides, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Slavery. (See chaps. <a href="#CHAPTER_II">ii.</a>, <a href="#CHAPTER_III">iii.</a>, <a href="#CHAPTER_X">x.</a>, <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">xiv.</a>)<br /> +<br /> +Slavery, ancient contrasted with southern, <a href="#Page_155">155 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Slave-trade, African, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Smith, Adam, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Smith, James M., <a href="#Page_391">391</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Smith, W. B., <a href="#Page_365">365</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Socrates, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.<br /> +<br /> +South Carolina, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Southerners and northerners contrasted, <a href="#Page_59">59-61</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Southern Mutual Fire Insurance Co., <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Spaight, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Spencer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Starke, W. Pinkney, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.<br /> +<br /> +State, for the negroes, <a href="#Page_413">413 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Staunton, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stephens, A. H., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_430">430</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Story, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stovall, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stowe, Mrs., <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stuart, J. E. B., <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sulla, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sullivan, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Summer, Charles, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Summer, Colonel, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Surratt, Mrs., <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Switzerland, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>T.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Taylor, Dick, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Taylor, Edward B., <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span><br /> +Territories, intersectional strife over, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46-49</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Texas, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.<br /> +<br /> +“The Fork,” <a href="#Page_397">397</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Thomas, Thomas W., <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Thomas, William Hannibal, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Thucydides, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Thurston, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ticknor, Dr., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tillinghast, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Timrod, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Titania, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tobacco, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Togoland, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Toombs, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130-135</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Toucey, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Toussaint, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Town-meeting, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Trent, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Troup, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Troy, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Turner, Bishop, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tuskegee, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tyrtæus, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>U.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Upper class of negroes, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Upson, Frank L., <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>V.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Van Buren, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vanderslice, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vergil, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vicksburg, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Virginia, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Von Holst, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="large"><strong>W.</strong></span><br /> +<br /> +Waddell, James, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Waddell, Moses, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wade, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Walker, J. B. A., <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Washington, Booker, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Washington, Mrs. Booker, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Washington, George, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Waterloo, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Watson, Tom, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Webster, Daniel, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wendell, Prof. Barrett, <a href="#Page_28">28-30</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.<br /> +<br /> +West Territory, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +White labor class, <a href="#Page_336">336 <i>sq.</i></a><br /> +<br /> +Whittier, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wilfer, Reginald, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Willcox, Professor, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wilmot proviso, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wilson, General, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Winthrop, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wirt, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wirz, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wright, Richard R., <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wright, Silas, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wyeth, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wynne, John, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br /> +</p> + + +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/printer.jpg" alt="" /></div> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<div class="verts"> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE INDIAN<br />DISPOSSESSED</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">By SETH K. HUMPHREY</span></p> +<p class="center">With sixteen full-page illustrations from photographs</p> +<p class="center">300 pages.<span class="spacer"> </span>12mo.<span class="spacer"> </span>Cloth, $1.50 net.<span class="spacer"> </span>Postpaid, $1.64.</p> + +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">A plain,</span> connected, carefully prepared narrative of the actual and proved +dealings of the United States government with the subdued Indian—the +Reservation Indian. The author’s account of governmental oppression and +ill-faith, and of successive removals of the Indians from their homes to +regions unattractive to white settlers, and of the confiscation of Indian +property, are supported by extracts from official records. After chapters +describing the experience of the Umatillas (with whom the government held +to its treaty), the Flathead Indians of the Bitter Root, the Nez Perces, +the Poncas, and the Mission Indians, comes an important chapter on +“Dividing the Spoils,” with a graphic and moving description of the scenes +at the opening of the Cherokee Strip, drawn from the author’s personal +experiences. A chapter is devoted to an exposure of the Rosebud +Reservation bill,—the latest example of governmental confiscation,—while +the final chapter gives an original and convincing explanation of the +remarkable persistence of vicious influences in our Indian system, in the +face of the equally persistent desire of the American people to grant the +Indian fair play. Helen Jackson’s “A Century of Dishonor” has received a +valuable companion work in the present book.</p> + +<p class="center">LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., <i>Publishers</i><br /> +254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON</p></div> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p> + +<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> “Where Black Rules White,” article by Hugo Erichsen, in <i>The Pilgrim</i> +for July, 1905.</p> + +<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> De Officiis, 1, § 89.</p> + +<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 579-583.</p> + +<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> Gettysburg, 164, 165.</p> + +<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a> Quoted by himself in his Charleston speech, mentioned later on.</p> + +<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> Speech at the banquet of the New England Society of Charleston, S. C.</p> + +<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> A Literary History of America, 345.</p> + +<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> <i>Id.</i> 346.</p> + +<p><a name='f_9' id='f_9' href='#fna_9'>[9]</a> <i>Id.</i> 489.</p> + +<p><a name='f_10' id='f_10' href='#fna_10'>[10]</a> A Literary History of America, 494, 495.</p> + +<p><a name='f_11' id='f_11' href='#fna_11'>[11]</a> Major Joseph B. Cumming, speaking to the toast, “New Ideas, New +Departures, New South,” at fourteenth annual dinner of New England Society +of Charleston, S. C., December 22, 1893.</p> + +<p><a name='f_12' id='f_12' href='#fna_12'>[12]</a> See Cobb, Slavery, xcvii, xcviii, for relevant citations. Chaps. V. +and VI. of the Historical Sketch, the former entitled “Slavery in Greece,” +and the latter, “Slavery among the Romans” (pp. lix-xcviii), are very +readable, learned, and adequate treatments of their respective subjects.</p> + +<p><a name='f_13' id='f_13' href='#fna_13'>[13]</a> Cobb, Slavery, cxii.</p> + +<p><a name='f_14' id='f_14' href='#fna_14'>[14]</a> <i>Id.</i></p> + +<p><a name='f_15' id='f_15' href='#fna_15'>[15]</a> Aristotle maintained the justice of wars undertaken to procure +slaves. See Cobb, Slavery, xii, foot-note 3, for references.</p> + +<p><a name='f_16' id='f_16' href='#fna_16'>[16]</a> “Pliny compares them to the drones among the bees, to be forced to +labor, even as the drones are compelled.” <i>Id.</i> xcviii.</p> + +<p><a name='f_17' id='f_17' href='#fna_17'>[17]</a> In his chapter entitled “Slavery among the Jews” Mr. Cobb cites most +of the important passages. <i>Id.</i> xxxviii <i>sq.</i></p> + +<p><a name='f_18' id='f_18' href='#fna_18'>[18]</a> Twenty Years in Congress, vol. i. I.</p> + +<p><a name='f_19' id='f_19' href='#fna_19'>[19]</a> 1, 2, 2.</p> + +<p><a name='f_20' id='f_20' href='#fna_20'>[20]</a> <i>Id.</i> 1, 3, 1-2.</p> + +<p><a name='f_21' id='f_21' href='#fna_21'>[21]</a> Dig. 1, 1, 4, where, in an excerpt from Ulpian, it is said that all +human beings are <i>jure naturali</i> (that is, by the law of nature) born +free.</p> + +<p>We of to-day must not regard the last three passages cited from the Corpus +Juris Civilis as particularly reprehending the property of the master in +his slave. Cicero asserts that there is no private property whatever +according to the law of nature; that according to that law all things are +common property. He details some of the ways by which private +appropriation is made, such as long holding, entry into vacant lands, +capture in war, acquisition by contract, etc. According to this, a +prisoner of war stood on the same footing as a horse captured from the +enemy. By the law of nature there could be private property in neither. +But this law of nature was really repealed by the <i>jus gentium</i>, under +which both horse and prisoner alike became private property. If another +took either the horse or slave away from the owner, he would—to use +Cicero’s language—violate the law of human society. De Officiis Lib. 1. +cap. 7, §§ 20, 21.</p> + +<p><a name='f_22' id='f_22' href='#fna_22'>[22]</a> Inst. 1, 8, 1. When Mr. Cobb says that there is “but one voice in the +Digest and Code,” book cited, xcviii, meaning that they give no +countenance to slavery, the statement is misleading.</p> + +<p><a name='f_23' id='f_23' href='#fna_23'>[23]</a> In the first chapter of his History of England Macaulay ascribes this +result to moral causes, and to religion as chief agent. He is only one of +many acute historians who overlook the play of economical forces.</p> + +<p><a name='f_24' id='f_24' href='#fna_24'>[24]</a> Cobb, Slavery, ccxviii (foot-note).</p> + +<p><a name='f_25' id='f_25' href='#fna_25'>[25]</a> See p. 437 <i>infra</i>, where I have compared the struggle of Ireland for +autonomy during the last half of the eighteenth century with that of the +south narrated in this book.</p> + +<p><a name='f_26' id='f_26' href='#fna_26'>[26]</a> Charleston Address mentioned above, 15.</p> + +<p><a name='f_27' id='f_27' href='#fna_27'>[27]</a> Hist. of Fed. Gov., 2d ed., 59.</p> + +<p><a name='f_28' id='f_28' href='#fna_28'>[28]</a> <i>Id.</i> 2.</p> + +<p><a name='f_29' id='f_29' href='#fna_29'>[29]</a> See the Republic of Republics, 4th ed. The references in the copious +index, under the names Dane, Henry, Story, Webster (Daniel, not Noah), +will suffice to put the student in the way to finding ample support of the +statements in the text.</p> + +<p><a name='f_30' id='f_30' href='#fna_30'>[30]</a> See Republic of Republics, 204-212 (chap. viii. of Part III.) +entitled “Daniel Webster’s Masterpiece of Criticism,” for copious proofs +of the statements made in the text. Hamilton, Madison, John Jay, and +Franklin are cited, and some eight or nine quotations from Washington are +made. The chapter is also instructive in showing State-rights utterances +of Webster made before and after the speech.</p> + +<p><a name='f_31' id='f_31' href='#fna_31'>[31]</a> See Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 388, 389-392, 397-8; +and Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 207-211.</p> + +<p><a name='f_32' id='f_32' href='#fna_32'>[32]</a> War between the States, two volumes.</p> + +<p><a name='f_33' id='f_33' href='#fna_33'>[33]</a> The Republic of Republics; or, American Federal Liberty. By P. C. +Centz, Barrister, 4th ed., Boston, 1881. See what I said of it in 1882, +Am. Law Studies, §§ 943, 944. Subsequent examination and comparison have +given me a still higher opinion of this book; which in its well-digested +presentation of evidence exhaustively collected, and complete +demonstration of its main proposition, to wit, that in the opinion of the +draftsmen, also of all the advocates of the constitution, and of the +people ratifying, the States were sovereign before adoption and would so +remain afterwards, is unique, and far foremost, in the literature of the +subject. Compare this strong statement of Henry Cabot Lodge, uttered in +1883:</p> + +<p>“When the constitution was adopted by the votes of States at Philadelphia, +and accepted by the votes of States in popular conventions, it is safe to +say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton +on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who +regarded the new system as anything but an experiment by the States and +from which each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw, a +right which was very likely to be exercised.” Daniel Webster, 176.</p> + +<p><a name='f_34' id='f_34' href='#fna_34'>[34]</a> Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 23. The entire chapter entitled +“Secession and Coercion,” <i>id.</i> 22-27, will repay consideration, setting +forth as it does what according to the author the brothers on each side +ought to have done under the law of nations.</p> + +<p><a name='f_35' id='f_35' href='#fna_35'>[35]</a> Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, 103.</p> + +<p><a name='f_36' id='f_36' href='#fna_36'>[36]</a> Morgan, Ancient Society, 132.</p> + +<p><a name='f_37' id='f_37' href='#fna_37'>[37]</a> “It used to be a remark often made by Chief Justice Lumpkin, who was +a man himself of wonderful genius, profound learning, and the first of his +State, that Webster was always foremost amongst those with whom he acted +on any question, and that even in books of selected pieces, whenever +selections were made from Webster, these were the best in the book.” A. H. +Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 336.</p> + +<p><a name='f_38' id='f_38' href='#fna_38'>[38]</a> Ransy Sniffles is a character in Georgia Scenes, who has long been a +proverb in the south for one who habitually provokes personal encounters +among his neighbors.</p> + +<p><a name='f_39' id='f_39' href='#fna_39'>[39]</a> See <i>infra</i>, p. 436.</p> + +<p><a name='f_40' id='f_40' href='#fna_40'>[40]</a> See what he said February 20, 1860, in the United States senate, to +Clark, repeating the charge, as reported in the “Globe.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_41' id='f_41' href='#fna_41'>[41]</a> W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun’s Early Life, Calhoun +Correspondence, 69.</p> + +<p><a name='f_42' id='f_42' href='#fna_42'>[42]</a> The inscription on her tombstone states—so I have been +informed—that she died in May, 1802. In a short while afterwards he put +the mother of his future wife in her place and bestowed on her the highest +filial love.</p> + +<p><a name='f_43' id='f_43' href='#fna_43'>[43]</a> W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun’s Early Life, Calhoun +Correspondence, 78.</p> + +<p><a name='f_44' id='f_44' href='#fna_44'>[44]</a> Starke’s Account of Calhoun’s Early Life, Calhoun Correspondence, 87.</p> + +<p><a name='f_45' id='f_45' href='#fna_45'>[45]</a> Life of John C. Calhoun. By Gutasvus M. Pinkney, of the Charleston, +S. C., Bar, Charleston, S. C., 1903.</p> + +<p><a name='f_46' id='f_46' href='#fna_46'>[46]</a> Calhoun Correspondence, 88.</p> + +<p><a name='f_47' id='f_47' href='#fna_47'>[47]</a> Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 41.</p> + +<p><a name='f_48' id='f_48' href='#fna_48'>[48]</a> War between the States, vol. i. 341.</p> + +<p><a name='f_49' id='f_49' href='#fna_49'>[49]</a> A Disquisition on Government, and A Discourse on the Constitution and +Government of the United States, Works, vol. i.</p> + +<p><a name='f_50' id='f_50' href='#fna_50'>[50]</a> Works, vol. i. (A Disquisition on Government) 72.</p> + +<p><a name='f_51' id='f_51' href='#fna_51'>[51]</a> They were made in the United States Senate, one, September 19, 1837, +on the bill authorizing issue of treasury notes; the other, October 3, +1837, on his amendment of the bill just mentioned.</p> + +<p><a name='f_52' id='f_52' href='#fna_52'>[52]</a> His “Barbara Villiers” and his “History of Money in America” are very +important. But his most valuable addition to the few books which have +taught true monetary doctrine is his “Science of Money.” While in this he +does not state the fundamental principle of good money as clearly as +Calhoun does, yet he assumes it most accurately and builds upon it +everywhere.</p> + +<p><a name='f_53' id='f_53' href='#fna_53'>[53]</a> “Rational Money,” published by C. F. Taylor, 1520 Chestnut Street, +Philadelphia. The author does not show the deep insight and genial +originality of Calhoun and Del Mar; but he has presented the entire +subject with a judgment so sane in accepting the true and rejecting the +false in the belonging theory, that the book is the very best of existing +compilations.</p> + +<p><a name='f_54' id='f_54' href='#fna_54'>[54]</a> To be nominated in the South Carolina primary, a candidate for +governor or any other State place must receive a majority in the whole +State, one for congress a majority in the district, one for a county place +a majority in the county. Where no candidate receives a majority a new +primary is held only to decide between the two who got the largest vote. +The primary first mentioned is a State primary, held on the last Tuesday +of August. At this date, the crop—to use planting parlance—having been +laid by for some six weeks, the voters have had ample opportunity from +reading the papers, talks with one another, and hearing speeches to inform +themselves fully. Just across the Savannah in Georgia, the State +democratic executive committee, so called, being the faithful organ of the +railroads, has since 1898 put the primary in the early days of June, in +busiest crop-time. This precludes any real canvass. It also keeps +thousands from voting; and so the always full turnout of railroad regulars +and workers—which is but a relatively small portion of the body of +electors—wins a plurality. The committee allows a plurality to nominate, +as of course a plurality can be had more easily than a majority. To be +sure of the State senate, nominations to it are made by a convention +instead of a primary. And conventions in the congressional districts +nominate candidates for the lower house.</p> + +<p>Contrasting the results—in South Carolina nomination is really the voice +of the people; in Georgia the people seem to get, while the railroads +really get, the governor, and, as everybody now expects, the railroads and +liquor men always have at least twenty-three of the forty-four senators.</p> + +<p>I believe that the Swiss-like grip of the people of South Carolina upon +their liberties, shaming Georgia so greatly as it does, is mainly due to +the influence of Calhoun. That influence is still benignly powerful, even +where unrecognized.</p> + +<p>I think that if the dispensary law were so altered as to give each county +the purchase of its liquor by, say, its supervisor, nominated by this +primary, the opportunity of graft, now discrediting the administration of +the law with many, would be effectually closed. There would then be +everywhere a trustworthy official, of their own election, to keep the +people advised as to proper prices and cost. It would be to lose all +chance of re-election for the official to cheat the public by colluding +with the liquor sellers.</p> + +<p><a name='f_55' id='f_55' href='#fna_55'>[55]</a> Life of John C. Calhoun, 225-229.</p> + +<p><a name='f_56' id='f_56' href='#fna_56'>[56]</a> <i>Id.</i></p> + +<p><a name='f_57' id='f_57' href='#fna_57'>[57]</a> Heyward thus translates: “Reason and good sense express themselves +with little art. And when you are seriously intent on saying something, is +it necessary to hunt for words?”</p> + +<p><a name='f_58' id='f_58' href='#fna_58'>[58]</a> Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 133.</p> + +<p><a name='f_59' id='f_59' href='#fna_59'>[59]</a> <i>Id.</i> 141.</p> + +<p><a name='f_60' id='f_60' href='#fna_60'>[60]</a> Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 148.</p> + +<p><a name='f_61' id='f_61' href='#fna_61'>[61]</a> As illustrating his anti-tariff progress, see what he says in his +letter of July, 1828, to James Monroe, Correspondence, 266; what in that +to his relative, Noble, of January, 1829, <i>id.</i> 269, 270; in that to +Samuel L. Gouvernour, of February, 1832, <i>id.</i> 310, 311; and what as to +benefit from having concentrated opinions in south, in that to his +brother-in-law, <i>id.</i> 313, 314.</p> + +<p><a name='f_62' id='f_62' href='#fna_62'>[62]</a> Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, +Works, vol. i. 392.</p> + +<p><a name='f_63' id='f_63' href='#fna_63'>[63]</a> Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, +Works, vol. i. 393.</p> + +<p><a name='f_64' id='f_64' href='#fna_64'>[64]</a> Ancient Society, 147, 148.</p> + +<p><a name='f_65' id='f_65' href='#fna_65'>[65]</a> A Disquisition on Government, Works, vol. i. 92-96. Compare for +Calhoun’s treatment Benton’s report of his conversations, and the +pertinent excerpts he gives from Calhoun’s speech in the United States +Senate of February 15 and 16, 1833, Thirty Years’ View, vol. i. 335 <i>sq.</i></p> + +<p><a name='f_66' id='f_66' href='#fna_66'>[66]</a> Daniel Webster, 50.</p> + +<p><a name='f_67' id='f_67' href='#fna_67'>[67]</a> <i>Id.</i> 45, 46.</p> + +<p><a name='f_68' id='f_68' href='#fna_68'>[68]</a> <i>Id.</i> 46.</p> + +<p><a name='f_69' id='f_69' href='#fna_69'>[69]</a> <i>Id.</i> 48.</p> + +<p><a name='f_70' id='f_70' href='#fna_70'>[70]</a> In his <i>Encyclopedia Americana</i> article Mr. Carl Schurz strains as +hard as Mr. Lodge does in his biography to conceal the real position of +Webster. I commend the homespun reasoning of this paragraph to all such.</p> + +<p><a name='f_71' id='f_71' href='#fna_71'>[71]</a> Daniel Webster, 59.</p> + +<p><a name='f_72' id='f_72' href='#fna_72'>[72]</a> McMaster, Daniel Webster, 88.</p> + +<p><a name='f_73' id='f_73' href='#fna_73'>[73]</a> Daniel Webster, 52.</p> + +<p><a name='f_74' id='f_74' href='#fna_74'>[74]</a> Dartmouth College Causes.—Mr. Lodge’s narrative, Daniel Webster, +74-98—is a very helpful introduction to the book just mentioned.</p> + +<p><a name='f_75' id='f_75' href='#fna_75'>[75]</a> Lodge, Daniel Webster, 22.</p> + +<p><a name='f_76' id='f_76' href='#fna_76'>[76]</a> <i>Id.</i> 22.</p> + +<p><a name='f_77' id='f_77' href='#fna_77'>[77]</a> The twelve words meant are, “The congress shall have power to +regulate commerce among the several States.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_78' id='f_78' href='#fna_78'>[78]</a> Huschke ought to have stated this fact at page 19 of his edition of +Gaius, in order to give the latter his full posthumous glory.</p> + +<p><a name='f_79' id='f_79' href='#fna_79'>[79]</a> We support our statement in this sentence by quoting below in this +footnote two passages which stand a page or two apart in the Plymouth +oration, italicizing one word in the former, and one word and a clause in +the other, which, if Webster had taken accurate note of the intellectual +ferment then active throughout all New England, he would have made much +stronger:</p> + +<p>“We may flatter ourselves that the means of education at present enjoyed +in New England are not only adequate to the diffusion of the elements of +knowledge among all classes, but sufficient also for <i>respectable</i> +attainments in literature and the sciences.”</p> + +<p>“With nothing in our past history to discourage us, and with <i>something</i> +in our present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, that, +as it is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonderful +advancement of the country in all its other great interests, <i>we may see +also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters</i>.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_80' id='f_80' href='#fna_80'>[80]</a> Daniel Webster, 318-321.</p> + +<p><a name='f_81' id='f_81' href='#fna_81'>[81]</a> <i>Ante</i>, 28-30.</p> + +<p><a name='f_82' id='f_82' href='#fna_82'>[82]</a> Literary History of America, 354.</p> + +<p><a name='f_83' id='f_83' href='#fna_83'>[83]</a> <i>Id.</i></p> + +<p><a name='f_84' id='f_84' href='#fna_84'>[84]</a> Consider his virtual confession when Mrs. Davis good humoredly taxes +him with saying in his speeches hard things of slavery which he knew from +actual observation to be fictions. Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 581.</p> + +<p><a name='f_85' id='f_85' href='#fna_85'>[85]</a> Lecture in Tremont Temple, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. +637, 638 (Appendix G).</p> + +<p><a name='f_86' id='f_86' href='#fna_86'>[86]</a> The Negro in Africa and America, by Alexander Tillinghast, M. A., N. +Y., 1902.</p> + +<p>This really scientific work, very complete though very brief, is as +indispensable to whomsoever would enlighten the country upon the race +question, as is the latest and best text-book to the lawyer considering a +case under the law treated therein.</p> + +<p>Mr. Page’s “The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem,” N. Y., 1904, has not the +scientific merit of the last. But it most ably advocates the side +generally taken by the south.</p> + +<p>Both books are free from blinding passion and prejudice.</p> + +<p><a name='f_87' id='f_87' href='#fna_87'>[87]</a> Book cited, 88. The italics are mine.</p> + +<p><a name='f_88' id='f_88' href='#fna_88'>[88]</a> <i>Id.</i> 88.</p> + +<p><a name='f_89' id='f_89' href='#fna_89'>[89]</a> The Negro in Africa and America, 88, 89. Italics mine, again.</p> + +<p><a name='f_90' id='f_90' href='#fna_90'>[90]</a> Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. xviii.</p> + +<p><a name='f_91' id='f_91' href='#fna_91'>[91]</a> These quotations from The Author’s Introduction, Riverside ed., +lviii, lix. The last sentence italicized by me.</p> + +<p><a name='f_92' id='f_92' href='#fna_92'>[92]</a> Tremont Temple Lecture, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. +641. The italics are mine.</p> + +<p><a name='f_93' id='f_93' href='#fna_93'>[93]</a> Professor DuBois, born in 1868, in New England, whose writings show +that his mind has been soaked to saturation in abolition misstatement and +bitterness, and that consequently he is utterly unfamiliar with either the +average negro slave of the south and the conditions and effects of slavery +in the section, attributes the present unchastity of the negroes to the +frequent separation of man and wife by the master. Here is what he says:</p> + +<p>“The plague-spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. +This is no sudden development, nor the fruit of emancipation. It is the +plain heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his master’s consent, +took up with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in the busy life of the +great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually dispensed with. If now +the master needed Sam’s work in another part of the same plantation, or if +he took a notion to sell the slave, Sam’s married life with Mary was +usually unceremoniously broken, and then it was clearly to the master’s +interest to have both of them take new mates. This widespread custom of +two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty years.” The Souls of Black +Folk, 142.</p> + +<p>This statement is utterly untrue, as Professor DuBois can easily find out +from thousands of most credible witnesses. I never knew of a single such +separation. Of course, I will not say that there were none at all. But I +do say, in contradiction of his assertion, as flat as contradiction can +be, that the separations which he describes were not common. Every +impartial investigator who has formed his opinion from the actual evidence +knows that the unchastity of the negro slave of America was an inheritance +from Africa. I do not dispute the assertion often made that there were and +are still chaste negro tribes of that continent. But our negroes did not +come from them. They came from the West Africans, accurately described +above in citations from Mr. Tillinghast.</p> + +<p><a name='f_94' id='f_94' href='#fna_94'>[94]</a> Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. lxxxix <i>sq.</i></p> + +<p><a name='f_95' id='f_95' href='#fna_95'>[95]</a> Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. ii. 273.</p> + +<p><a name='f_96' id='f_96' href='#fna_96'>[96]</a> Georgians, 128.</p> + +<p><a name='f_97' id='f_97' href='#fna_97'>[97]</a> The Life of Robert Toombs, 29-49 (New York, Cassell Pub. Co.).</p> + +<p><a name='f_98' id='f_98' href='#fna_98'>[98]</a> Bethany, A Story of the Old South, 10 <i>sq.</i></p> + +<p><a name='f_99' id='f_99' href='#fna_99'>[99]</a> Johnston and Browne’s Life of A. H. Stephens, 218.</p> + +<p><a name='f_100' id='f_100' href='#fna_100'>[100]</a> Toombs thus anticipates the trenchant but kindly criticism by +Woodrow Wilson of congressional ways of governing. Congressional Gov. +58-192, and in other places.</p> + +<p><a name='f_101' id='f_101' href='#fna_101'>[101]</a> What he says July 29, 1857, on death of Preston S. Brooks is a good +example of the forced and labored style of his set speeches. Stephens +often said that his set speeches were failures. And unless they were made, +as that on the invasion of States, that on the duty of congress to protect +slavery in the Territories, and his justification of secession, January 7, +1861, under the excitement of a great cause, working the same effect upon +him as the ardor of extemporaneous effort, his set speeches are below the +mark. And I wish he had more carefully revised the three just mentioned, +following the example of Cicero, Erskine and Webster, who habitually +corrected and improved their words after they had been spoken. He does not +seem to have given his good speeches—the extemporaneous ones—any +systematic correction. Of all speakers and orators I ever knew or heard +of, he has used the file the least. It is my belief that he did not know +how to use it. Had he but polished just some of his best unpremeditated +efforts; as for instances his first speech for the retired naval officers; +his most important utterances under various heads of internal +improvements; his humorous anti-pension harangues; and his titanic +struggle in vain with his own party to keep Harlan seated—what a find +they would be for the school speech books of the future! His lecture on +slavery, delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24, 1859,—a good +copy of which is given by Stephens (The War between the States, vol. i. +625-647)—is the best specimen extant, within my knowledge, of his +deliberate style. If I may make such a distinction, it was carefully +revised, but never corrected. The reader will find it, I believe, the very +ablest of all the many defences of slavery in the south.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Davis states that during the times of excitement concerning the +compromise of 1850, “He [Toombs] would sit with one hand full of the +reporter’s notes of his speeches, for correction,” with a French play in +the other, over which he was roaring with laughter. (Memoir of Jefferson +Davis, vol. i. 411.) As his speech of December 13, 1849, and the Hamilcar +speech of June next following, need very little correction, I incline to +believe that he did at least try to revise them. Naturally leading such a +novel movement as he then was—it will be fully explained a little later +on—he would desire to send forth his views in only carefully considered +words, and probably he corrected the proofs of the two speeches just +mentioned with something like diligence. In his pleadings, law-briefs, +sketches of proposed statutes, letters, etc., of which I saw much in his +last years, he was so palpably indifferent towards improving his first +draft that one might know it came from lifelong habit.</p> + +<p><a name='f_102' id='f_102' href='#fna_102'>[102]</a> Third Session, 240-244.</p> + +<p><a name='f_103' id='f_103' href='#fna_103'>[103]</a> <i>Globe</i>, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 360 (I am thus particular +in giving this reference, from a sense of justice to the memory of George +W. Crawford, which is now and then ignorantly aspersed because of the +Galphin claim).</p> + +<p><a name='f_104' id='f_104' href='#fna_104'>[104]</a> See his argument, May 25, 1858, for putting duties on the home +valuation of imports; note also how familiar he is with trade, the motive +of smuggling, the relation of exchange; also what he says of the tariff of +1857, <i>Globe</i>, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 466, 467, 470. For his mastery of +trade and commerce, see what he says June 9, 1858, especially pp. +2832-2834.</p> + +<p><a name='f_105' id='f_105' href='#fna_105'>[105]</a> Stephens, War between the States, vol. ii. 338.</p> + +<p><a name='f_106' id='f_106' href='#fna_106'>[106]</a> War between the States, vol. ii. 186.</p> + +<p><a name='f_107' id='f_107' href='#fna_107'>[107]</a> Address in the Supreme Court of Georgia, March 9, 1886.</p> + +<p><a name='f_108' id='f_108' href='#fna_108'>[108]</a> War between the States, vol. ii. 217.</p> + +<p><a name='f_109' id='f_109' href='#fna_109'>[109]</a> Waddell, Life of Linton Stephens, 237.</p> + +<p><a name='f_110' id='f_110' href='#fna_110'>[110]</a> The rare perfection of Catullus’s spontaneous poetic expression is +something like adequately represented in two quotations made by Baehrens, +one from Niebuhr, and the other from Macaulay, especially in the former. +Catulli Veronensis, Liber II. 42.</p> + +<p><a name='f_111' id='f_111' href='#fna_111'>[111]</a> War Between the States, vol. ii. 329-333.</p> + +<p><a name='f_112' id='f_112' href='#fna_112'>[112]</a> Pleasant A. Stovall, The Life of Robert Toombs, 218.</p> + +<p><a name='f_113' id='f_113' href='#fna_113'>[113]</a> The War between the States, vol. ii. 781 (Appendix).</p> + +<p><a name='f_114' id='f_114' href='#fna_114'>[114]</a> The supplies for the Confederate Army, How they were obtained in +Europe and How paid for.—Personal Reminiscences and Unpublished history. +By Caleb Huse, Major and Purchasing Agent, C. S. A. Boston, Press of T. R. +Marvin & Son, 1904.</p> + +<p>I commend this narrative to Professor Brown. Should he study it he will +have cause to retract what he has written (The Lower South in American +History, 164) in disparagement of this resource. Had Toombs, or Stephens, +or Cobb been president and represented by such an extraordinarily able +agent, the Confederate States would have got ironclads, broken the +blockade, kept out invaders, and had a money that would have held its own +much better than the greenbacks unsustained by cotton or anything like it. +From what I know of these men I am sure the right agent would have been +found.</p> + +<p><a name='f_115' id='f_115' href='#fna_115'>[115]</a> Book cited, 164, 165.</p> + +<p><a name='f_116' id='f_116' href='#fna_116'>[116]</a> Stovall, Life of Robert Toombs, 226.</p> + +<p><a name='f_117' id='f_117' href='#fna_117'>[117]</a> Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 268, 269.</p> + +<p><a name='f_118' id='f_118' href='#fna_118'>[118]</a> <i>Id.</i> 271.</p> + +<p><a name='f_119' id='f_119' href='#fna_119'>[119]</a> See his 14th chapter.</p> + +<p><a name='f_120' id='f_120' href='#fna_120'>[120]</a> “I see a vision of awful shapes—mighty presences of gods arrayed +against Troy.” <i>Æneid</i>, II. 622-23, Transl. by <span class="smcap">John Conington</span>, <i>Writings</i>, +II., Longmans, Green & Co. (1872).</p> + +<p><a name='f_121' id='f_121' href='#fna_121'>[121]</a> In six consecutive numbers of the <i>Pilgrim</i>, beginning with that of +October, 1903. This is a monthly, edited by Willis J. Abbot, and published +by the Pilgrim Magazine Co., <i>Ltd.</i>, Battle Creek, Mich.</p> + +<p><a name='f_122' id='f_122' href='#fna_122'>[122]</a> Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 59.</p> + +<p><a name='f_123' id='f_123' href='#fna_123'>[123]</a> Memoir, vol. i. 86.</p> + +<p><a name='f_124' id='f_124' href='#fna_124'>[124]</a> <i>Id.</i> 52, 53.</p> + +<p><a name='f_125' id='f_125' href='#fna_125'>[125]</a> Memoir, <i>Id.</i> vol. i. 59, 60.</p> + +<p><a name='f_126' id='f_126' href='#fna_126'>[126]</a> Mrs. Davis tells all the details most delightfully; Memoir, vol. i. +207-212.</p> + +<p><a name='f_127' id='f_127' href='#fna_127'>[127]</a> Memoir, vol. i. 214, 215. Compare what Stephens says of the speech +made by President Davis at the African church in Richmond in February, +1865, just after the return of our Commissioners who had sought in vain +for terms of peace which the south could consider. We give the part of the +passage pertinent here.</p> + +<p>“The newspaper sketches of that speech were meagre, as well as inaccurate +... and ... came far short of so presenting its substance even, as to give +those who did not hear it anything like an adequate conception of its full +force and power. It was not only bold, undaunted, and confident in tone, +but had that loftiness of sentiment and rare form of expression, as well +as magnetic influence in its delivery, by which the passions of the people +are moved to their profoundest depths, and roused to the highest pitch of +excitement. Many who had heard this Master of Oratory in his most +brilliant displays in the senate and on the hustings, said they never +before saw him so really majestic. The occasion, and the effects of the +speech, as well as all the circumstances under which it was made, caused +the minds of not a few to revert to like appeals by Rienzi and +Demosthenes.” War between the States, vol. ii. 623, 824.</p> + +<p><a name='f_128' id='f_128' href='#fna_128'>[128]</a> Memoir, vol. i. 146, 147.</p> + +<p><a name='f_129' id='f_129' href='#fna_129'>[129]</a> Landon Knight, “The Real Jefferson Davis,” already cited.</p> + +<p><a name='f_130' id='f_130' href='#fna_130'>[130]</a> Landon Knight, “The Real Jefferson Davis.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_131' id='f_131' href='#fna_131'>[131]</a> Mrs. Davis’s Memoir, vol. i. 392.</p> + +<p><a name='f_132' id='f_132' href='#fna_132'>[132]</a> In his fourth chapter.</p> + +<p><a name='f_133' id='f_133' href='#fna_133'>[133]</a> Memoir, vol. ii. 18.</p> + +<p><a name='f_134' id='f_134' href='#fna_134'>[134]</a> <i>Id.</i> 32, 33.</p> + +<p><a name='f_135' id='f_135' href='#fna_135'>[135]</a> Memoir, vol. ii. 180-183.</p> + +<p><a name='f_136' id='f_136' href='#fna_136'>[136]</a> Mr. Landon Knight is happy in showing the fidelity, diligence, +courage, and unsurpassed conscientiousness, of Mr. Davis in his +presidency, and especially how he bore himself amid the multiplying +disasters of the last two years.</p> + +<p><a name='f_137' id='f_137' href='#fna_137'>[137]</a> “We embraced the cause [i. e., of the Confederate States] in the +spirit of lovers. True lovers all were we—and what true lover ever loved +less because the grave had closed over the dear and radiant form?—And so +we—we, at least, who as men and women inhaled the true spirit of that +momentous time—come together on these occasions not only with the fresh +new flowers in our hands, but with the old memories in our thoughts and +the old, but ever fresh, lover spirit in our hearts, and seek to make +these occasions not unworthy of the cause we loved unselfishly and of +these its sleeping defenders.” Major Joseph B. Cumming, in introducing +General Butler, orator of the day, when the Confederate soldiers’ graves +were decorated at the Augusta (Ga.) cemetery in 1895.</p> + +<p><a name='f_138' id='f_138' href='#fna_138'>[138]</a> The celebration at Covington, Georgia, April 26, 1866, was complete. +My friend Hon. J. M. Pace has just shown me a copy of the local newspaper +issued the next day, containing an account of the ceremony and the rarely +appropriate address which he made as part thereof. The fact is that the +observance of Memorial Day commenced everywhere in the south at the time +just mentioned.</p> + +<p><a name='f_139' id='f_139' href='#fna_139'>[139]</a> Encyc. Americana, article “Ant.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_140' id='f_140' href='#fna_140'>[140]</a> Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key, vol. i. 206 (Riverside ed.).</p> + +<p><a name='f_141' id='f_141' href='#fna_141'>[141]</a> Says John Mitchell: “The Southern States, which have made rapid +progress, especially in cotton manufacturing, have, as a general rule, not +responded to the demand for a shorter working-day—the south lacking +effective labor organizations to compel such legislation.” (Organized +Labor, 122.) He might have said the same as to the desired prohibition of +child labor.</p> + +<p><a name='f_142' id='f_142' href='#fna_142'>[142]</a> <i>Infra</i>, pp. 431-438.</p> + +<p><a name='f_143' id='f_143' href='#fna_143'>[143]</a> The Souls of Black Folk, 254.</p> + +<p><a name='f_144' id='f_144' href='#fna_144'>[144]</a> In an address mentioned in the next footnote Major Joseph B. Cumming +rightly insists that this is the proper name for what is called “the +American Civil War” with some show of justification, and “the war of +rebellion” without any justification whatever.</p> + +<p><a name='f_145' id='f_145' href='#fna_145'>[145]</a> Address of Major Joseph B. Cumming, entitled “The Great War,” before +Camp 435 of United Confederate Veterans, Augusta, Ga., Memorial Day, 1902.</p> + +<p><a name='f_146' id='f_146' href='#fna_146'>[146]</a> I Timothy vi. 1-4. I have quoted the Twentieth Century Testament +because of its extremely faithful version. Of course the italics are mine.</p> + +<p><a name='f_147' id='f_147' href='#fna_147'>[147]</a> “Where Black Rules White,” by Hugo Erichsen, in the <i>Pilgrim</i> for +July, 1905, deserves the title “Hayti As It Is.” The Americana article +ought to be conspicuously labelled “Hayti Whitewashed.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_148' id='f_148' href='#fna_148'>[148]</a> Bureau of Labor Bulletin, No. 48, September, 1903, pp. 1006, 1013, +1019.</p> + +<p><a name='f_149' id='f_149' href='#fna_149'>[149]</a> <i>Id.</i> 1020.</p> + +<p><a name='f_150' id='f_150' href='#fna_150'>[150]</a> Bishop Lucius H. Holsey, D.D., of the colored M. E. Church, is much +more in touch and sympathy with the negro masses than Professor DuBois. +Here is something recently said by him:</p> + +<p>“<i>As long as the two races live in the same territory in immediate +contact, their relations will be such as to intermingle in that degree +that half-bloods, quarter-bloods and a mongrel progeny will result.</i> This +is not only going on now, but is destined to annihilate the true typical +ante-bellum negro type, and put in his place a stronger, a longer lived, +and a more Anglo-Saxon-like homogeneous race. In other words, the negro to +come will not be the negro of the emancipation proclamation, but he will +be the Anglo-Saxonized Afro-American. It seems true, as has been said, ‘No +race can look the Anglo-Saxon in the face and live.’ Certainly no other +race can hold its own in his immediate presence. Being in immediate +contact and underrating the mental and moral virtues of others and +exercising a sovereignty over them, his opportunities are enlarged to make +other races his own in consanguinity. This he never fails to do.” Address +before the National Sociological Society at the Lincoln Temple +Congregational Church, The Possibilities of the Negro in Symposium, 107 +(Atlanta, Ga.).</p> + +<p>In the same address, just a little above the quotation just made, this +occurs: “Legal intermarriage in the south, although not wrong in its +consummation, is a matter as yet undebatable, and belongs only to the +future.” <i>Id.</i> 107.</p> + +<p>These words of Bishop Holsey are weighty proof that the negroes strongly +desire and expect amalgamation.</p> + +<p><a name='f_151' id='f_151' href='#fna_151'>[151]</a> Edward B. Taylor, <i>The Outlook</i>, July 16, 1904, p. 670.</p> + +<p><a name='f_152' id='f_152' href='#fna_152'>[152]</a> The Souls of Black Folk, 106.</p> + +<p><a name='f_153' id='f_153' href='#fna_153'>[153]</a> See Exodus xxii. 16.</p> + +<p><a name='f_154' id='f_154' href='#fna_154'>[154]</a> The Souls of Black Folk, 106.</p> + +<p><a name='f_155' id='f_155' href='#fna_155'>[155]</a> May 6, 1905. Having finished my work I read two days ago, “The Color +Line. A Brief in behalf of the Unborn.” By William Benjamin Smith, N. Y., +1905. It ably and vividly explains the transcendent importance of keeping +the blood of Caucasians in America uncontaminated with that of the +African, and demonstrates that to do this the color line must be rigidly +maintained between negroid as well as coal-black, on one side, and white +on the other. The utter impossibility of making the man of a particular +race like the man of another extremely remote one by even the most careful +education is shown with startling effect. The inability of the black to +hold his own against white competition, and his gradual and sure expulsion +is proved by overwhelming evidence. The book is useful as an introduction +to all the literature of the subject. The only fault that I note is its +excessive warmth and combativeness—especially in the first half. With the +dispassionate serenity of Mr. Tillinghast, it would have been perfect.</p> + +<p><a name='f_156' id='f_156' href='#fna_156'>[156]</a> The quotations which immediately follow are from a letter of J. B. +A. Walker, dated Tuskegee, Ala., July 27, 1904, written to S. H. Comings, +who has kindly permitted me to make use of it.</p> + +<p><a name='f_157' id='f_157' href='#fna_157'>[157]</a> Lower South in Am. Hist. 223. When Professor Brown read “The +Clansman” doubtless his hesitation ended.</p> + +<p><a name='f_158' id='f_158' href='#fna_158'>[158]</a> Clyatt <i>v.</i> United States, March 13, 1905.</p> + +<p><a name='f_159' id='f_159' href='#fna_159'>[159]</a> Possibly this is the village of Boley, mentioned in the next +chapter.</p> + +<p><a name='f_160' id='f_160' href='#fna_160'>[160]</a> They are Stephen, a slave, <i>v.</i> State, 2 Ga. 225; Jesse, a slave, +<i>v.</i> State, 20 Ga. 161.</p> + +<p><a name='f_161' id='f_161' href='#fna_161'>[161]</a> See Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, 10-14.</p> + +<p><a name='f_162' id='f_162' href='#fna_162'>[162]</a> New Encyc. Britan., Article, “Jamaica.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_163' id='f_163' href='#fna_163'>[163]</a> Working with the Hands, 40.</p> + +<p><a name='f_164' id='f_164' href='#fna_164'>[164]</a> Tillinghast, book cited above, 180, 181. Consider the quotation +there made from Thurston, the negro manager, in which he asserts that it +is only by this means that negro operatives can be made to do good work.</p> + +<p><a name='f_165' id='f_165' href='#fna_165'>[165]</a> Souls of Black Folk, 9.</p> + +<p><a name='f_166' id='f_166' href='#fna_166'>[166]</a> During the years after the war until the end of 1881, when I came to +Atlanta, I kept my eye upon the negro preachers in the country. Whenever I +could closely observe one and had opportunity of sifting members of his +congregation, I generally found him to be <i>vir gregis</i>. My acquaintances +tell me that there has been no perceptible change. Compare what Mr. Edward +B. Taylor, a northern man, now residing in Columbia, S. C., says of “the +immoral negro preacher” in <i>The Outlook</i> of July 16, 1904.</p> + +<p><a name='f_167' id='f_167' href='#fna_167'>[167]</a> William Hannibal Thomas, a negro of Massachusetts, says the same as +to the early corruption of children and “marital immoralities” both of the +poor, the ignorant, and the degraded among the freed people, and also of +those who assume to be educated and refined. Quoted by Mr. Page, The +Negro; The Southerner’s Problem, 82-84.</p> + +<p><a name='f_168' id='f_168' href='#fna_168'>[168]</a> Encyc. Am. Article, “Negro in America.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_169' id='f_169' href='#fna_169'>[169]</a> Noticing Mr. Page’s book just mentioned, Professor DuBois treats +William Hannibal Thomas as utterly unworthy of credit. All of us in the +south familiar with negroes know that Thomas’s statement quoted by Mr. +Page is unqualifiedly true.</p> + +<p><a name='f_170' id='f_170' href='#fna_170'>[170]</a> That part of Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau Census, +Bulletin 8, called “The Negro Farmer,” is by him. Consider the extravagant +claims made therein for the magnitude of negro farming in the United +States in the comment on Table xxxv. p. 92. Professor DuBois is also +author of the “Negro Landholder of Georgia,” Bulletin of Department of +Labor, No. 35, July, 1901.</p> + +<p><a name='f_171' id='f_171' href='#fna_171'>[171]</a> Bulletin 8, before cited, 75.</p> + +<p><a name='f_172' id='f_172' href='#fna_172'>[172]</a> Article, “Negro Education,” Encyclopedia Americana.</p> + +<p><a name='f_173' id='f_173' href='#fna_173'>[173]</a> Professor DuBois, Bulletin 8, cited above, 73.</p> + +<p><a name='f_174' id='f_174' href='#fna_174'>[174]</a> <i>Id.</i> 77.</p> + +<p><a name='f_175' id='f_175' href='#fna_175'>[175]</a> Book cited, 183-185.</p> + +<p><a name='f_176' id='f_176' href='#fna_176'>[176]</a> <i>Id.</i> 184.</p> + +<p><a name='f_177' id='f_177' href='#fna_177'>[177]</a> Book cited, 184.</p> + +<p><a name='f_178' id='f_178' href='#fna_178'>[178]</a> <i>Id.</i> 184.</p> + +<p><a name='f_179' id='f_179' href='#fna_179'>[179]</a> Bureau of Statistics—Bulletin No. 28, p. 71.</p> + +<p><a name='f_180' id='f_180' href='#fna_180'>[180]</a> <i>Id.</i> 72.</p> + +<p><a name='f_181' id='f_181' href='#fna_181'>[181]</a> Extract from a letter of Hon. James M. Smith to the author. He is, I +believe, the largest planter in Georgia. His lands lie in the adjoining +edges of Oglethorpe county, which is in the Black Belt, and of Madison +county, which is outside. From his experience, and because of the great +accuracy of his observation, which I have noted for nearly forty years, I +regard him as better qualified than any one else who can be suggested, to +give a correct opinion on the subjects he deals with in the quotation. +Especially do I emphasize his exceptional advantages for comparing whites +and negroes as farmers, tenants, croppers, and laborers for standing +wages, in making cotton.</p> + +<p><a name='f_182' id='f_182' href='#fna_182'>[182]</a> Book cited above, 121, 122.</p> + +<p><a name='f_183' id='f_183' href='#fna_183'>[183]</a> The Voice of the Negro, September, 1904 (Atlanta, Ga.)—Consider +picture of “Board of Directors of the True Reformers’ Bank, Richmond, +Va.,” in number of same magazine for November, 1904. These directors are +nine in all, and there is but one who is decidedly black. Six of them look +to be more than three-quarters white. The number for March, 1905, contains +a sketch of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Ph.D., stating that the +Professor’s ancestry is largely white and his color a rich brown. The +picture of his mother shows her hair to be straight and her complexion +bright.</p> + +<p><a name='f_184' id='f_184' href='#fna_184'>[184]</a> Book cited above, 213-215.</p> + +<p><a name='f_185' id='f_185' href='#fna_185'>[185]</a> The Voice of the Negro, October, 1904, p. 435.</p> + +<p><a name='f_186' id='f_186' href='#fna_186'>[186]</a> Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau of the Census, Bulletin 8, +Negroes in the United States, p. 13.</p> + +<p><a name='f_187' id='f_187' href='#fna_187'>[187]</a> I have in mind his late articles in the <i>Outlook</i>.</p> + +<p><a name='f_188' id='f_188' href='#fna_188'>[188]</a> See his “Problems of the Present South.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_189' id='f_189' href='#fna_189'>[189]</a> Autobiography of Seventy Years, vol. ii. 60-62.</p> + +<p><a name='f_190' id='f_190' href='#fna_190'>[190]</a> By Anne Scribner, and copied in the <i>Public</i> of September 17, 1904, +from the Chicago <i>Evening Post</i>.</p> + +<p><a name='f_191' id='f_191' href='#fna_191'>[191]</a> The passage with the context quoted by Dr. Booker Washington, +“Working with the Hands,” 238.</p> + +<p><a name='f_192' id='f_192' href='#fna_192'>[192]</a> Issue of October 15, 1904.</p> + +<p><a name='f_193' id='f_193' href='#fna_193'>[193]</a> Encyclopedia Americana, Article “Negro Education.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_194' id='f_194' href='#fna_194'>[194]</a> But the most drastic provisions to keep the greedy whites from +preying upon the negroes as they did upon the Indians most be adopted, +such as permitting the negro State to tax without limit whites owning +property or doing business therein. This will prevent the result +anticipated by Booker Washington.</p> + +<p><a name='f_195' id='f_195' href='#fna_195'>[195]</a> The best thing upon the joint education of hand and brain known to +me is “Pagan <i>vs.</i> Christian Civilization,” by S. H. Comings (Charles H. +Kerr & Co., Chicago). The title does not indicate, as it ought to do, the +special purpose of the book to show that to give the scholar expertness +with his hands at the first and thus develop his self-supporting ability +is far better than to cram his memory. What the author says in maintenance +of his proposition, that our industrial schools should be operated upon a +plan that will make the scholar pay as he goes, out of his own work, for +his subsistence and expense of education during the entire course, +deserves respectful and thoughtful consideration. In its brevity, and at +the same time variety and fulness, coming as it does at the beginning of a +new era, it reminds me of Sullivan’s tract which some years ago started +the American agitation for direct legislation, with store of examples and +exposition almost sufficient for its entire needs.</p> + +<p>The above had been written when Booker Washington’s “Working with the +Hands” came along. The well-chosen title informs accurately as to the +subject of the book. Its scope covers working with the hands from its +beginning in childhood to the close of life. As illustration of his +principles Dr. Washington circumstantially tells of the beneficent +industrial and moral training given at Tuskegee, in all its many +departments, to children, youth, and adults, in everything which it is +important that a negro of either sex should know how to do. Besides its +wisdom, its attention-commanding and interest-exciting style deserves high +commendation. Any reader longing for the day of real education to dawn who +opens the book will go to the end, without skipping, in a delightful +gallop. It is my conviction that it will be of far more advantage to the +white industrial and technological schools than to those for which it is +specially intended by the author.</p> + +<p><a name='f_196' id='f_196' href='#fna_196'>[196]</a> Book cited, 119.</p> + +<p><a name='f_197' id='f_197' href='#fna_197'>[197]</a> See Collier’s Weekly for November 26, 1904.</p> + +<p><a name='f_198' id='f_198' href='#fna_198'>[198]</a> The English translation of the first volume of Von Holst’s +“Constitutional and Political History of the United States” has just been +published. The titles of the ninth and tenth chapters, to wit, “The +Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States,” and “Development of +the Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States,” are very apt and +striking, and the contents of the chapters are profoundly original and +instructive. Having ample space, the author has, among other merits, well +handled the following incidents and consequences of slavery:</p> + +<p>1. Implacable hostility of slave and non-slave labor.</p> + +<p>2. Self-protecting necessity to slavery of continuous expansion, and, to +insure this expansion, necessity that the south keep political mastery of +the country.</p> + +<p>3. Economic importance to south of invention of cotton-gin in 1793.</p> + +<p>4. Exclusive possession by north of wholesale trade.</p> + +<p>5. Greater immigration to north.</p> + +<p>6. Missouri Compromise, and rise therefrom of geographical parties.</p> + +<p>7. Internal improvements and tariff passing inter-geographical question.</p> + +<p>8. Economic decay of south due to slavery, and not to tariff.</p> + +<p>9. Opposition of slavery to the spirit of the age.</p> + +<p>The following is a brief statement of the chief demerits of the two +chapters:</p> + +<p>1. Misstatement that there were different circles of slaveholders; +overstatement of inhumanity of masters; and unjust disparagement of +character of smaller slaveholders.</p> + +<p>2. Failure to note the great absorbing energy of slave property.</p> + +<p>3. Failure to note the lack of a population of free workers.</p> + +<p>But the work, considering the short time the clouds of battle have had to +clear away, recollecting, too, that the author is a foreigner, is, +excepting a little heated partisanship here and there, a most valuable +contribution to the history of our country.</p> + +<p><a name='f_199' id='f_199' href='#fna_199'>[199]</a> I see now—in 1905—that the statement in the text was a great +mistake; and that nadir was not reached until some fifteen or twenty years +later.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brothers' War, by John Calvin Reed + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROTHERS' WAR *** + +***** This file should be named 37890-h.htm or 37890-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/9/37890/ + +Produced by Jana Srna, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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 Brothers' War + +Author: John Calvin Reed + +Release Date: October 31, 2011 [EBook #37890] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROTHERS' WAR *** + + + + +Produced by Jana Srna, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive.) + + + + + + + + + +THE BROTHERS' WAR + + + + + THE BROTHERS' WAR + + + BY JOHN C. REED + OF GEORGIA + AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN LAW STUDIES," "CONDUCT OF LAWSUITS" + "THE OLD AND NEW SOUTH" + + + BOSTON + LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY + 1905 + + + + + _Copyright, 1905_, + BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. + + + _All rights reserved_ + + + Published October, 1905 + + + THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. + + + + +PREFACE + + +I would explain the real causes and greater consequences of the bloody +brothers' war. I pray that all of us be delivered, as far as may be, from +bias and prejudice. The return of old affection between the sections +showed gracious beginning in the centennial year. In the war with Spain +southerners rallied to the stars and stripes as enthusiastically as +northerners. Reconcilement has accelerated its pace every hour since. But +it is not yet complete. The south has these things to learn: + +1. A providence, protecting the American union, hallucinated Garrison, +Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Stowe, Sumner, and other radical abolitionists, as +to the negro and the effect of southern slavery upon him, its purpose +being to destroy slavery because it was the _sine qua non_ of southern +nationalization, the only serious menace ever made to that union. This +nationalization was stirring strongly before the federal constitution was +adopted. The abolitionists, as is the case with all forerunners of great +occurrences, were trained and educated by the powers directing evolution, +and they were constrained to do not their own will but that of these +mighty powers. + +2. The cruel cotton tax; the constitution amended to prevent repentance of +uncompensated emancipation, which is the greatest confiscation on record; +the resolute effort to put the southern whites under the negroes; and +other such measures; were but natural outcome of the frenzied +intersectional struggle of twenty-five years and the resulting terrible +war. Had there been another event, who can be sure that the south would +not have committed misdeeds of vengeance against citizens of the north? + +3. We of the south ought to tolerate the freest discussion of every phase +of the race question. We should ungrudgingly recognize that the difference +of the northern masses from us in opinion is natural and honest. Let us +hear their expressions with civility, and then without warmth and show of +disrespect give the reasons for our contrary faith. This is the only way +for us to get what we need so much, that is, audience from our brothers +across the line. Consider some great southerners who have handled most +exciting sectional themes without giving offence. There is no invective in +Calhoun's speech, of March 4, 1850, though he clearly discerned that +abolition was forcing the south into revolution. Stephens, who had been +vice-president of the Confederate States, reviewed in detail soon after +the brothers' war the conflict of opinion which caused it, and yet in his +two large volumes he spoke not a word of rancor. When congress was doing +memorial honor to Charles Sumner, it was Lamar, a southerner of +southerners, that made the most touching panegyric of the dead. And the +other day was Dixon's masterly effort to prove that the real, even if +unconscious, purpose of the training at Tuskegee is ultimately to promote +fusion, which the southern whites deem the greatest of evils. His language +is entirely free from passion or asperity. He wonders in admiration at the +marvellous rise of Booker Washington from lowest estate to unique +greatness. And he gives genuine sympathy to Professor DuBois, in whose +book, "The Souls of Black Folk," as he says, "for the first time we see +the naked soul of a negro beating itself to death against the bars in +which Aryan society has caged him." + +These examples of Calhoun, Stephens, Lamar, and Dixon should be the +emulation of every southerner speaking to the nation upon any subject that +divides north and south. This done, we will get the audience we seek. It +was this which not long ago gave Clark Howell's strong paper opposing +negro appointments to office in the south prominent place in _Collier's_, +and which last month obtained for Dixon's article just mentioned the first +pages of the _Saturday Evening Post_. When we get full audience, other +such discussions as those of Howell and Dixon, and that in which Tom +Watson, in the June number of his magazine, showed Dr. Booker Washington a +thing or two, will be digested by the northern public, to the great +advantage of the whole country. + +The last I have to say here is as to differing opinions upon social +recognition of prominent negroes. We of the south give them great honor +and respect. Could not Mr. Roosevelt have said to us of Georgia protesting +against his entertainment of Booker Washington, "Have I done worse than +you did when you had him to make that address at the opening of your +Exposition in 1895, and applauded it to the echo?" Suppose, as is true, +that hardly a man in the south would eat at the same table with Dr. +Washington or Professor DuBois, how can that justify us in heaping +opprobrium upon a northern man who does otherwise because he has been +taught to believe it right? What has been said in denunciation of the +president and Mr. Wanamaker for their conduct towards Booker Washington +seems to me rather a hullabaloo of antediluvian moss-backs than the voice +of the best and wisest southerners. + +Amid all her gettings let the south get complete calmness upon everything +connected with the race question--complete deliverance from morbid +sensitiveness and intemperate speech in its discussion. + +Now here is what the north should learn: + +1. Slavery in America was the greatest benefit that any large part of the +negro race ever received; and sudden and unqualified emancipation was woe +inexpressible to nearly all the freedmen. The counter doctrine of the +abolitionists who taught that the negro is equal to the Caucasian worked +beneficently to save the union, but it ought now to be rejected by all who +would understand him well enough to give him the best possible +development. The fifteenth amendment was a stupendous blunder. It took for +granted that the southern negroes were as ready for the ballot as the +whites. The fact is that they were as a race in a far lower stage of +evolution. Consider the collective achievement of this race, not in savage +West Africa, but where it has been long in contact with civilization, in +Hayti, and the south. Hayti has been independent for more than a hundred +years. "Sir Spencer St. John ... formerly British Minister Resident in +Hayti, after personally knowing the country for over twenty years, claims +that it is ... in rapid decadence, and regards the political future of the +Haytians as utterly hopeless. At the termination of his service on the +island, he said: 'I now quite agree with those who deny that the negro can +ever originate a civilization, and who assert that with the best of +educations he remains an inferior type of man.' + +"According to Sir Spencer, Hayti is sunk in misery, bloodshed, +cannibalism, and superstition of the most sensual and degrading character. +Ever since the republic has been established Haytians have been opposed to +progress, but of recent years retrogression has been particularly +rapid."[1] + +In the south, where reversion to West African society has been checked by +white government, this is a full catalogue of the main institutions +evolved by the freedmen. They have provided themselves with cheaply built +churches, in which their frequent and long worship is mainly sound and +fury. In the pinch of crop cultivation or gathering they flock away from +the fields to excursion trains and "protracted meetings." Perhaps their +most noticeable institutions are "societies," some prohibiting hiring as +domestic servants, except where subsistence cannot otherwise be had, and +others providing the means of decent burial. Compare these feeble negro +race performances with such white institutions, made in the same territory +and at the same time, as Memorial Day, which the north has adopted; the Ku +Klux Klan; enactment of stock laws when the freedmen's refusal to split +rails made much fencing impossible; and the white primary. + +Institutions--what I have just called the collective achievement of a +race--mark in their character its capacity for improvement, and also its +plane of development. When the negro, with his self-evolved institutions, +is compared with the race which has furnished itself with fit organs of +self-government all the way up from town-meeting to federal constitution, +and is now about to crown its grand work with direct legislation, it is +like comparing the camel dressed to counterfeit an elephant, of which dear +old Peter Parley told us in his school history, with a real elephant, or +trying to make a confederate dollar in an administrator's return of 1864 +count as a gold one. + +And yet the negro, Professor Kelly Miller, replying to Tom Watson, assumes +that Franks, Britons, Germans, Russians, and Aztecs have severally been in +historical times as incapable as West Africans of rising from savagery and +crossing barbarism into civilization. He outdoes even this--he would have +it believed that Hayti is now a close second behind Japan in striding +progress. + +Surely the good people of the north ought to learn the difference between +the negro race and the white. There is a small class of exceptional +negroes which is assumed by a great many at the north to be most fair +samples of the average negro of the south. Dr. Washington and Professor +DuBois severally lead the opposing sections of this class. It consists of +authors, editors, preachers, speakers, some who with small capital in +banking, farming, and other business, have each by Booker Washington's +blazon been exalted into a national celebrity, and others. Its +never-sleeping resolve, fondly cherished by the greater part, is to "break +into" white society and some day fuse with it. Its members are nearly all +at least half white, and many are more than half white. But when a Bourbon +snub to one of them is received, as it often is, with dignity and proper +behavior, Mr. Louis F. Post, and a few more, exclaim to the country, "See +how this coal-black and pure negro excels his would-be superiors!" This +man, almost white, is to them a coal-black, genuine, unmixed negro. Ought +not attention to facts incontrovertibly cardinal to rule here as +everywhere else? To what is due the great accomplishment of Dumas, +Douglass, and Booker Washington--to their negro blood or to their white +blood? If half negro blood can do so well, why is it that pure negro blood +does not do far better? + +I have seen it asserted that Professor Kelly Miller is pure negro. His +head has the shape of a white man's. The greyhound crossed once with the +bull-dog, as Youatt tells, and each succeeding generation of offspring +recrossed with pure greyhound until not a suggestion of bull-dog was +visible, occurs to me. Thus there was bred a greyhound, possessing the +desired trait of the bull-dog. Who can say that there is not among the +professor's American ancestors one of half white blood? If there is in +fact no such, he is, in his high attainment, almost a _lusus naturae_. + +The north, by due attention, will discern that the small number +constituting what I provisionally name the upper class of negroes, is +hardly involved in the race question. + +The negroes in the south outside of the upper class--the latter not +amounting to more than five percent of the entire black population--are +slowly falling away from the benign elevation above West Africa wrought by +slavery. That they are here, is felt every year to be more injurious. They +greatly retard the evolution of a white-labor class, which has become the +head-spring of all social amelioration in enlightened communities. There +appears to be but one salvation for them if they stay, which is fusion +with the whites. Though Herbert Foster, and a few others, confidently +assume that our weakening Caucasian strain would be bettered by infusion +of African blood, we see that while amalgamation would bless the negro it +would incalculably injure us. It would be stagnation and blight for +centuries, not only to the south but to the north also. Northerners are +more and more attracted to the south by climate and other advantages, and +intermarriage between the natives of each section increases all the while. +The powers, protecting America, inscrutably to contemporaries kept busy +certain agencies that saved the union. It seems to me that these same +powers are now in both sections increasing white hostility to the blacks, +of purpose to prevent their getting firm foothold and becoming desirable +in marriage to poorer whites. One will think at once of the frequent +lynchings in the south. But let him also think of how the strikers in +Chicago were moved to far greater passion by the few black than the many +white strike-breakers, the late inexplicable anti-negro riot in New York +City, and the negro church dynamited the other day in Carlisle, Indiana. +These powers, who have protected our country from the first settlement of +the English upon the Atlantic coast down to the present time, appear to +speak more plainly every day the fiat, "If Black and White are not +separated, Black shall perish utterly." I am convinced that at the close +of the century, if this separation has not been made long before, +Professor Willcox's apparently conservative estimate of what will then be +their numbers will prove to be gross exaggeration. In my judgment he comes +far short of allowing the anti-fusion forces their full destructiveness. + +Let the north purge itself from all delusion as to the negro, and help the +south do him justice and loving kindness, by transplanting him into +favorable environment. + +2. It is high time that the Ku Klux be understood. When in 1867 it was +strenuously attempted to give rule to scalawags and negroes, the very best +of the south led the unanimous revolt. Their first taste of political +power incited the negroes to license and riot imperilling every condition +of decent life. In the twinkling of an eye the Ku Klux organized. It +mustered, not assassins, thugs, and cutthroats, as has been often alleged, +but the choicest southern manhood. Every good woman knew that the order +was now the solitary defence of her purity, and she consecrated it with +all-availing prayers. In Georgia we won the election of December, 1870, in +the teeth of gigantic odds. This decisive deliverance from the most +monstrous and horrible misrule recorded among Anglo-Saxons was the +achievement of the Ku Klux. Its high mission performed, the Klan, burning +its disguises, ritual, and other belongings, disbanded two or three months +later. Its reputation is not to be sullied by what masked men--bogus Ku +Klux, as we, the genuine, called them--did afterwards. The exalted +glorification of Dixon is not all of the Klan's desert. It becomes dearer +in memory every year. I shall always remember with pride my service in the +famous 8th Georgia Volunteers. I was with it in the bloody pine thicket at +First Manassas, where it outfought four times its own number; at +Gettysburg, where, although thirty-two out of its thirty-six officers were +killed or wounded, there was no wavering; and in many other perilous +places, the last being Farmville, two days before Appomattox, where this +regiment and its sworn brother, the 7th Georgia, of Anderson's brigade, +coming up on the run, grappled hand-to-hand with a superior force pushing +back Mahone, and won the field. But I am prouder of my career in the Ku +Klux Klan. The part of it under my command rescued Oglethorpe county, in +which the negroes had some thousand majority, at the presidential election +of 1868,--the very first opportunity,--and held what had been the home of +William H. Crawford, George R. Gilmer, and Joseph H. Lumpkin, until +permanent victory perched upon the banners of the white race in Georgia. + +3. I observe that the north begins in some sort the learning of the two +lessons above mentioned. But now comes one which seems hard indeed. +Calhoun, Toombs, Davis, and the other pro-slavery leaders, ought to be +thoroughly studied and impartially estimated. They were not agitators, nor +factionists, nor conspirators. They were the extreme of conservatism. +Their conscientious faithfulness to country has never been surpassed. +Their country was the south, whose meat and bread depended upon slavery. +The man whose sight can pierce the heavy mists of the slavery struggle +still so dense cannot find in the world record of glorious stands for +countries doomed by fate superiors in moral worth and great exploit. In +their careers are all the comfort, dignity, and beauty of life, supreme +virtue, and happiness of that old south, inexpressibly fair, sweet and +dear to us who lived in it; and in these careers are also all the varied +details of its inexpressibly pathetic ruin. What is higher humanity than +to grieve with those who grieve? Brothers and sisters of the north, you +will never find your higher selves until you fitly admire the titanic +fight which these champions made for their sacred cause, and drop genuine +tears over their heart-breaking failure. + +The foregoing summarizes the larger obstacles which bar true sight of the +south and the north. The devastation attending Sherman's march beyond +Atlanta, the alleged inhumanity at Andersonville, and many other things +that were bitterly complained of during the brothers' war, and afterwards, +by one side or the other, seem to me almost forgotten and forgiven. +Brothers who wore the gray with me, brothers who wore the blue against me, +I would have all of you freed from the delusions which still keep you from +that perfect love which Webster, Lincoln, and Stephens gave south and +north alike. I am sure that you must make the corrections indicated above +before you can rightly begin the all-important subject of this book. With +this admonition I commit you to the opening chapter, which I hope you will +find to be a fit introduction. + +JOHN C. REED. + + ATLANTA, GA., + September, 1905. + + + + +Contents + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I. INTRODUCTORY 1 + + II. A BEGINNING MADE WITH SLAVERY 35 + + III. UNAPPEASABLE ANTAGONISM OF FREE AND SLAVE LABOR 45 + + IV. GENESIS, COURSE, AND GOAL OF SOUTHERN NATIONALIZATION 51 + + V. AMERICAN NATIONALIZATION, AND HOW IT MADE THE BOND OF + UNION STRONGER AND STRONGER 62 + + VI. ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS 84 + + VII. CALHOUN 93 + + VIII. WEBSTER 130 + + IX. "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" 161 + + X. SLAVERY IMPELLED INTO A DEFENSIVE AGGRESSIVE 208 + + XI. TOOMBS 212 + + XII. HELP TO THE UNION CAUSE BY POWERS IN THE UNSEEN 282 + + XIII. JEFFERSON DAVIS 296 + + XIV. THE CURSE AND BLESSING OF SLAVERY 330 + + XV. THE BROTHERS ON EACH SIDE WERE TRUE PATRIOTS AND + MORALLY RIGHT--BOTH THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR THE UNION + AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR THE CONFEDERACY 346 + + XVI. THE RACE QUESTION: GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY 359 + + XVII. THE RACE QUESTION: THE SITUATION IN DETAIL 378 + + APPENDIX 429 + + INDEX 451 + + + + +THE BROTHERS' WAR + + + + +CHAPTER I + +INTRODUCTORY + + +The inhabitants of the English colonies in Canada, Australia, and New +Zealand are all of the same race, language, religion, and institutions of +government. Such homogeneousness, as has long been recognized, works +powerfully for the political coalescence of separate communities. With the +adjacent ones of the colonies just mentioned there has always been trend +to such coalescence, as is impressively illustrated by the recent +establishment of the Australian Federation. The thirteen colonies out of +which the United States developed were likewise English, and there was the +same homogeneousness in their population, which made in due time, and also +maintained for a few generations, a union of them all--a continental +union. But there had crept in a heterogeneity, overlooked for many years, +during which time it acquired such force that it at last overcame the +homogeneousness just emphasized and carried a part of the inhabitants of +the United States out of the continental union. African slavery dying out +in the north, but prospering in the south, was this heterogeneity. By a +most natural course the south grew into a nation--the Confederate +States--whose end and purpose was to protect slavery, which had become +its fundamental economical interest, against the north standing by the +original union, and which having gained control of the federal government +was about to use its powers to extirpate slavery. The continental or +Pan-American nation--the American union, as we most generally think of +it--could not brook dismemberment, nor tolerate a continental rival, and +consequently it warred upon and denationalized the Confederate States. The +last two sentences tell how the brothers' war was caused, what was its +stake on each side, and the true result. This compendious summary is to +serve as a proposition, the proof of which we now purpose to outline. + +Our first step is to emphasize how the free-labor system which prevailed +in the north, and the slave-labor system which prevailed in the south, +were utterly incompatible. Free labor is far cheaper and more efficient +than slave labor. It had consequently superseded slavery in the entire +enlightened world. But certain exceptional peculiarities of climate, soil, +and products planted made slavery profitable in the south. + +To maintain the market value of the slaves two things were needed: (1) the +competition of free labor and the import of cheap slaves must be +rigorously prevented; (2) a vast reserve of virgin soil, both to replace +the plantations rapidly wearing out and to afford more land for the +multiplying slaves. The fact last mentioned made it vital to the south to +appropriate such parts of the soil of the Territories as suited her cotton +and other staples. Therefore whenever she made such an appropriation she +turned it into a slave State; for thus the competition of free labor would +be effectually excluded therefrom. The much more rapid increase of her +population made appropriation of lands in the Territories likewise vital +to the north. Hers were all free-labor interests, as the south's were all +slave-labor interests; and whenever the former appropriated any of the +Territories, she made a State prohibiting slavery in order to protect her +free-labor interests. The north was not excluded by nature from any part +of the public domain as the other section was. Her free labor could be +made productive everywhere in it, and she really needed the whole. + +Thus the brothers of the north and the brothers of the south commenced to +strive with one another over dividing their great inheritance. The former +wanted lands for themselves, their sons, and daughters in all the +Territories possible made into States protecting their free-labor system; +the latter wanted all of the Territories suiting them made into States +protecting their slave-labor system. What ought especially to be +recognized by us now is that this contention was between good, honest, +industrious, plain, free-labor people on one side, and good, honest, +industrious, plain, slave-labor people on the other, those on each side +doing their best, as is the most common thing in the world, to gain and +keep the advantage of those of the other. It was natural, it was right, it +was most laudable that every householder, whether northerner or +southerner, should do his utmost to get free land for himself and family. +This fact--which is really the central, foundation, and cardinal one of +all the facts which brought the brothers' war--must be thoroughly +understood, otherwise the longer one contemplates this exciting theme the +further astray from fact and reasonableness he gets. + +The foregoing shows in brief how there came an eager contention for the +public lands between parents, capitalists, workers, employers, +manufacturers, and so forth, bred to free labor and hostile to slavery on +the one side--that is, in the northern States; and the same classes bred +to slavery and hostile to free labor on the other side--that is, in the +southern States. The contention grew to a grapple. As this waxed hotter +the combating brothers became more and more angry, called one another +names more and more opprobrious; and at last each side, in the height of +righteous indignation, denounced their opponents as enemies of country, +morality, and religion. Here the root-and-branch abolitionist and the +fire-eater begin their several careers, and get more and more excited +audience, the former in the north and the other in the south. Both were +emissaries of the fates who had decreed that there must be a brothers' +war, to the end that slavery, the only peril to the American union, be +cast out. + +Under the necessity of defending slavery against free labor there came +early an involuntary concretion of the southern States. This was very +plainly discernible when the epoch-making convention was in session. It +was the beginning of a process which has been well-named nation-making. +After a while--say just before Toombs takes the southern lead from +Calhoun--it had developed, as we can now see, from concretion into +nationalization--not nationality, yet--of the south. It was bound, if +slavery was denied expansion over the suitable soil of the Territories and +the restoration of its runaways, to cause in the ripeness of time +secession and the founding of the Confederate States. But there was +another nationalization, older, of much deeper root and wider scope--what +we have already mentioned as the continental or Pan-American. Its origin +was in an involuntary concretion of all the colonies--both the northern +and the southern--antedating the commencement of the southern concretion +mentioned a moment ago. While southern nationalization was the guardian of +the social fabric, the property, the occupations, the means of subsistence +of the southern people, the greater nationalization was not only the +guardian of the same interests of the northern people, but it had a higher +office. This was in due time to give the whole continent everlasting +immunity from war and all its prospective, direct, and consequential +evils, by federating its different States under one democratic +government--this higher office was to perpetuate the American union. This +continental nationalization had probably ripened into at least the +inchoate American nation by 1776. It was this nation, as I am confident +the historical evidence rightly read shows, that made the declaration of +independence and the articles of confederation, carried the Revolutionary +war on to the grandest success ever achieved for real democracy, and then +drafted and adopted the federal constitution. The constitution was not the +creator of this nation, as lawyers and lawyer-bred statesmen hold, but the +union and the constitution are both its creatures. This nation is +constantly evolving, and as it does it modifies and unmakes the +constitution and system of government of the United States, and the same +of each State, as best suits itself. Why do we not trace our history from +the first colonial settlements down to the present, and learn that the +nation develops in both substance and form, in territory, in aims and +purposes, not under the leading hand of conventions, congress, president, +State authority, of even the fully decisive conquest of seceding States by +the armies of the rest, but by the guidance of powers in the unseen, which +we generally think of as the laws of evolution? To illustrate: For some +time after I had got home from Appomattox I was disheartened, as many +others were, at the menace of centralization. A vision of Caleb Cushing's +man on horseback--the coming American Caesar--seared my eyeballs for a few +years. But after the south had been actually reconstructed I was cheered +to note that the evolutionary forces maintaining and developing local +self-government were holding their own with those maintaining and +developing union. To-day, you see the people of different localities all +over the north--in many cities, in a few States--driven forward by a power +which they do not understand, in a struggle which will never end till they +have rescued their liberties from the party machine wielded everywhere by +the public-service corporations. + +To resume what we were saying just before this short excursion. Of course +when the drifting of the south toward secession became decided and strong, +Pan-American nationalization set all of its forces in opposing array. As +soon as the southern confederacy was a fact, the brothers' war began. I +emphasize it specially here that this war was mortal rencounter between +two different nations. + +The successive stages by which her nationalization impelled the south to +secession are roughly these: + +1. The concretion mentioned above probably passes into the beginning of +nationalization when the south was aroused by the resistance of the +free-labor States to the admission of Missouri as a slave State. With a +most rude shock of surprise she was made to contemplate secession. +Although there was much angry discussion and the crisis was grave, you +ought to note that the root-and-branch abolitionist and fire-eater had not +come. That crisis over, which ended the first stage, there was apparently +profound peace between the free-labor communities and the slave-labor +communities for some while. + +2. The south rises against the tariff which taxes, as she believes, her +slave-grown staples for the profit of free-labor manufacturers. Here the +next stage begins. Perhaps the advent of nullification, proposed and +advocated by Calhoun as a union weapon with which a State might defend +itself against federal aggression, signalizes this stage more than +anything else. + +3. The second gives place to the third stage, when the congressional +debate over anti-slavery petitions opens. It is in this stage that the +root-and-branch abolitionist and the fire-eater begin their really +effective careers. Opposition to the restoration of fugitive slaves was +spreading through the north and steadily strengthening. It ought to be +realized by one who would understand these times that this actual +encouragement of the slaves to escape was a direct attack upon slavery in +the southern States, becoming stronger and more formidable as the +root-and-branch abolitionists became more zealous and influential, and +increased in numbers, and the slaveholder was bound to recognize what it +all portended to him. It was natural that when he had these +root-and-branch abolitionists before himself in mind, he should say of +them: + + "The lands of the Territories suiting slave labor are much less in + area than the due of the south therein. She will soon need all these + lands, as the slaves are multiplying rapidly, and the virgin soil of + her older States is going fast. With an excess of slaves and a lack of + fit land soon to come, if we are barred from the Territories our + property must depreciate until it is utterly worthless. But these + abolitionists attempt a further injury. They instigate our slaves to + fly into the north, and then encourage the north not to give them up + when we reclaim them. They deny our property the expansion into what + is really our part of the Territories which it ought to have in order + to maintain its value; and further they try to steal as many of our + slaves from us in the States as they can." + +This was the double peril, as it were, which gathered in full view against +the south. + +I cannot emphasize it enough that the hot indignation of such as Garrison +against slavery as a hideous wrong was not excited before the competition +between north and south over the public lands had become eager and +all-absorbing. It is nearly always the case that such excitement does not +appear until long after an actual menace by a rival to the personal or +selfish interest of another has shown itself. It is not until the menace +becomes serious that the latter wakes up to discover that the former is +violating some capital article of the decalogue. This was true of the +root-and-branch abolitionist. And his high-flown morality was made still +more Quixotic by his conscientiously assuming that the negro slave was in +all respects just such a human being as his white master. + +This third stage extends from about January, 1836, until the country was +alarmed as never before by the controversy of 1849-50 over the admission +of California, in southern latitude, with an anti-slavery constitution. At +its end the southern leadership of Calhoun standing upon nullification, a +remedy that contemplated remaining in the union, is displaced by that of +Toombs, who begins to feel strongly, if not to see clearly, that the south +cannot preserve slavery in the union. + +4. The fourth stage begins with the compromise of 1850. Afterwards during +the same year was an occurrence which cannot be overrated in importance by +the student of these times. That was the consideration of the pending +question in Georgia, and action upon it by a convention of delegates +elected for that special purpose. The Georgia Platform, promulgated by +that convention, is as follows: + + "To the end that the position of this State may be clearly apprehended + by her confederates of the south and of the north, and that she may be + blameless of all future consequences, _Be it resolved by the people + of Georgia in convention assembled_, _First_, that we hold the + American union secondary in importance only to the rights and + principles it was designed to perpetuate. That past associations, + present fruition, and future prospects, will bind us to it so long as + it continues to be the safeguard of these rights and principles. + + _Second._ That if the thirteen original parties to the compact, + bordering the Atlantic in a narrow belt, while their separate + interests were in embryo, their peculiar tendencies scarcely + developed, their Revolutionary trials and triumphs still green in + memory, found union impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of + this day may well yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion and + policy, to preserve that union which has extended the sway of + republican government over a vast wilderness to another ocean, and + proportionally advanced their civilization and national greatness. + + _Third._ That in this spirit the State of Georgia has considered the + action of congress, embracing a series of measures for the admission + of California into the union, the organization of territorial + governments for Utah and New Mexico, the establishment of a boundary + between the latter and the State of Texas, the suppression of the + slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the extradition of + fugitive slaves, and (connected with them) the rejection of + propositions to exclude slavery from the Mexican Territories, and to + abolish it in the District of Columbia; and, whilst she does not + wholly approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this + sectional controversy. + + _Fourth._ That the State of Georgia, in the judgment of this + convention, will and ought to resist, even--as a last resort--to a + disruption of every tie which binds her to the union, any future act + of congress abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, without + the consent and petition of the slaveholders thereof, or any act + abolishing slavery in places within the slaveholding States, purchased + by the United States for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, + dockyards, and other like purposes; or any act suppressing the + slave-trade between slaveholding States; or any refusal to admit as a + State any Territory applying, because of the existence of slavery + therein; or any act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the + Territories of Utah and New Mexico; or any act repealing or materially + modifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves. + + _Fifth._ That it is the deliberate opinion of this convention, that + upon the faithful execution of the fugitive slave bill by the proper + authorities depends the preservation of our much loved union." + +This platform was the work of statesmen who had added to the wisdom of the +fathers, making the declaration of independence, articles of +confederation, and the great constitution, worthy wisdom of their own from +a far more varied experience and better training in government. These +statesmen came indiscriminately from all parties. The people in the State, +from the highest in authority through every intermediate circle down to +the humblest citizen, deliberately, without excitement or passion, +endorsed this platform with practical unanimity. And all parties stood +upon it to the end. This was not an ignorant, debased, corrupt, +unrighteous people; but it was even better in everything that makes a +people great and good than the former generation which had given the +country Washington and Jefferson. + +Especially should the student meditate what this solemn declaration shows +was the sentiment of the people of the State at that time towards the +American union. Every one of the five planks contains its own most +convincing proof of deepest devotion. Think of the child who at last +resolves to fly from the home which had been inexpressibly sweet until the +stepmother came; of the father whose conscience commands him to save the +mother's life by killing the assailing son; of what the true Othello felt +when he had to execute the precious Desdemona for what he believed to be +her falseness--think of these examples, if you would realize the agony of +the better classes of the southern people when they at last discovered +that the union had changed from being their best friend into their most +fell enemy. + +The Georgia Platform was actually drafted, I believe, by A. H. Stephens, +then a whig. It was probably moulded in its substance--especially in the +fourth and fifth planks--more by Toombs, also a whig, than any other. +Howell Cobb, a democrat, approved, and was elected governor upon it the +next year, receiving the ardent support of Toombs and Stephens. Toombs was +just forty, Stephens a year or two, and Cobb some six or seven years, less +than forty. These three were the leading authors. Note how much younger +they were than Calhoun, who had a few months before died in his +sixty-ninth year. The platform indicates the new sentiment, not only of +Georgia but of the entire south. When its contents are compared with the +doctrine of nullification, it clearly shows as the production of a new era +in the history of southern nationalization; for it marks what we may +somewhat metaphorically distinguish as the close of the pro-union and +opening of the anti-union defence of slavery. The proclivity to secession +uninterruptedly increases from this point on. + +I would have it noted that the tactics of this fourth stage are +unaggressive. The Georgia Platform was no more than most grave and serious +warning against being driven to the wall. It did not bully nor hector. The +threat of what must be done in case certain menaced blows to slavery were +struck was so calmly, deprecatingly, and decorously made, that one wonders +it was not heeded. He ceases to wonder only when history reveals to him +that fate had become adverse to the good cause of this noble people. + +5. A change of tactics characterizes the fifth stage. The faster growing +population of the north, furnishing settlers in far greater number than +that of the south, was sweeping away all chance of new slave States. The +situation commanded that the defence of the south change to the +aggressive, just as Stoessel was constrained the other day to take the +offensive against 203 Meter Hill. In the first sortie the south got the +Missouri compromise repealed. Then she tried to make a slave State of +Kansas. She failed. When she had lost Kansas--like California in southern +latitude--she could not help recognizing that the outlook for slavery in +the union had become desperate. My northern countrymen, if you were as +free from the surviving influence of the old intersectional quarrel as we +all ought to be, you would applaud the ability and valor with which the +south had fought this losing fight for the welfare and comfort of her +people; and especially would you admire her supreme effort in behalf both +of that people, and also of the union which she loved next to the cause of +her people. Not quailing before odds incalculable, she was as brave and +self-sustained as Miltiades, coming forth with his little ten thousand to +fight the host of Mardonius hand-to-hand. The only thing for her now was +new aggression, to make a demand never seriously urged before. That was +that congress protect the master's property in every Territory until it +became a State. If this were done, she could, perhaps, keep slavery in +some of the Territories long enough for it to strike root permanently. If +it could not be done she must choose between her own cause and the union. +Her persistence in the demand mentioned--and she was obliged to +persist--split the democratic party, which had until this time been her +main upholder in the union. The north refused her demand by electing +Lincoln. This was the end of the fifth stage. Her nationality had become +fully ripe. She seceded into the Confederate States, her only opportunity +of conserving the property and occupation interests of her people. Of +course she expected to get her part of the public domain, and to enforce +extradition of her fugitive slaves. + +The foregoing is the barest outline of the rise and conflict between the +two nationalizations. The subject has been neglected too long. There +begins to be some faint understanding of the greater nationalization, but +that understanding is far short of completeness. There is hardly a +suspicion of the other. And yet as to our own special subject it is really +the more important, for in it is the initiative of the brothers' war. +There has been made by nobody any investigation at all of the main parts +of that train of events which I designate as southern nationalization. Not +Wilson's "The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in the United States," nor +any book by a partisan of either side in the struggle, gives any help +towards this investigation. The historical sources have never been studied +at all; such as the colonial records now publishing, the records and +papers of the probate court in some of the older and more important +counties of the south--especially the returns of administrators, +executors, and guardians, and files of newspapers advertising their +citations. Here can be found the prevailing prices of slaves, their rate +of multiplication, all details of their management, from the very +beginning. The trial and equity courts contain records of litigation about +slaves; of advice of chancellors to trustees seeking to make or change +investment; of wills manumitting slaves; and a thousand other relevant +matters. The course of legislation as to slaves from the first to the end +is also important. From these, from local literature such as "Georgia +Scenes," "Simon Suggs," biography, and various pamphlets, and other +original sources,--far better historical evidence than any which is now +generally invoked,--can be learned the real facts as to the growth of +slavery; and especially how in its economic potency consequent upon the +invention of the gin it supplanted or made dependent upon itself all other +property, and became the solitary foundation of every kind of production +and mode of making a living; so that even by 1820 to abolish slavery would +have been almost to beggar the southern people for two or three +generations. It is to be hoped that Professor Brown, finding the +opportunity which he desires, may yet exhaust not only the sources I have +mentioned, but also important ones that I have not even thought of, and +give the true ante-bellum history of the lower south. Some such work is +necessary to explain the active principle, the _raison d'etre_ of southern +nationalization. + +How north and south were sundered by the different nationalizations is yet +to be told in full detail without any censure of the people of either. +Practically every American was born into an occupation or way of life +connected with or founded upon either slave or free labor interests, and +so was born into one or the other of these two nationalizations, and his +conscience coerced him to stay with it. These nationalizations made two +different publics and two different countries in the United States. After +the slavery agitation had become active the masses in either public knew +but little of the other, and cared for it less; and when war broke out +between the two countries every man, woman, and child was ready to die, if +there was need, for his own. When the history of the times has been +impartially and adequately written the world will recognize that the +patriotism and moral worth of neither side excels that of the other, and +it will crown both. + +The evolution indicated above produced not only the two hostile peoples, +but also their leaders and representatives of every class. I have taken +pains in a relevant chapter to show how the fire-eaters and the +root-and-branch abolitionists were at last brought upon the stage. Every +fierce controversy in history has had their like on each side. Their +coming is late. The antagonists have become excited. The intelligence +guiding evolution deceives them as to the parts they must play. They +believe that their mission is to arouse the public conscience in order to +right some alleged moral wrong. Their real mission is to excite to angry +action. Cicero condemns the Peripatetics for asserting that proneness to +anger has been usefully given by nature.[2] He overlooked the fact that +the outbreak of the passion is intended to spur us into doing something +important for our own protection; and that it is therefore an +indispensable weapon in our self-defensive armory. These fanatics, as we +often call them, instigated north and south to quarrel more and more +fiercely, and finally to fight. The purpose of the powers in the unseen in +causing the fight has already been stated. + +What especially concerns us here is that we avoid adhering to the mistakes +of these partisans which still have injurious effect upon opinion. Thus +the fire-eater could see no good whatever in the yankees, as he called +them, denying them honesty, trustworthiness, and other elementary virtues; +accusing them of robbing us by the tariff and other measures, and hating +us for the prosperity and comfort which the slavery system had blessed us +with. Other of his false charges are still lodged in the memory of some +influential southerners. But the fire-eater's predictions were all +completely falsified by the result of the war; and he has become so much +discredited as an authority, there is no very great need for consuming +much time and effort in correcting his misstatements. On the other hand +the decisive success of their side has kept thousands at the north fully +believing the wildest fabrications of the root-and-branch abolitionists. +The latter believed that the African slave of the south was just such a +human being, ready for liberty and self-government in all particulars, as +civilized and enlightened whites. They believed that the condition of his +immediate ancestors in West Africa was one of high physical, mental, +moral, and social development, and that if there was in him now any +inferiority to his master it was entirely due to the sinister influence of +American slavery. They also believed that the system was fraught with such +cruelties as frequent separation of man and wife and of mother and young +children, under- feeding and clothing, and grinding overwork,--that, in +short, the average slave was daily exposed to something like the torture +of the Inquisition. All this was invention. American slavery found the +negro gabbling inarticulately and gave him English; it found him a +cannibal and fetishist and gave him the Christian religion; it found him a +slave to whom his savage master allowed no rights at all, and it gave him +an enlightened master bound by law to accord him the most precious human +rights; it found him an inveterate idler and gave him the work habit; it +found him promiscuous in the horde and gave him the benign beginning of +the monogamic family,--in short, as now appears very strongly probable, +American slavery gave him his sole opportunity to rise above the barbarism +of West Africa. + +These tremendous mistakes of fact, after knitting the north in solid +phalanx against dividing the Territories with the south and restoring +fugitive slaves and thus hasting forward the war, prompted that folly of +follies the fifteenth amendment, and have ever since kept the north from +understanding the race question. + +I am sure that it is high time that we of each section should school +ourselves into impartially appreciating the civil leaders of the other +side. The south has made more progress towards this than the north. +Certain causes have operated to help her onward. One of these is that +practically all of us recognize it is far better for the section that the +union side won. Another is that the great mass have learned that slavery +both effeminated and paralyzed the whites and was a smothering incubus +upon our due social and material development. It is natural that although +we give our pro-slavery political leaders and the confederate soldiers +increasing love, we should more and more commend the pro-union and +anti-slavery activity of the northern statesmen. Nothing like this has led +the north to revise the reprobation which in the heat and passion of the +conflict it bestowed upon the public men of the south. If I ever read a +good word from a northern writer as to them, it is for something in their +careers disconnected with the southern cause. Even Mr. Rhodes, the ablest +and most impartial of northern historians of the times, finds in Calhoun +only a closet spinner of utterly impractical theories. Further, I could +hardly believe it when I read it--and it is hard for me to believe it +yet--that, citing some flippant words of Parton in which a slander of +contemporary politics is toothsomely repeated as his voucher, he flatly +charges the lion-hearted knight of the south with playing the coward in +the most heroic episode of his grand career. My faith is strong that this +mode of treating the good and great southern leaders will soon go out of +fashion. + +I am greatly in earnest to vindicate these leaders--especially Calhoun, +Toombs, and Davis. Much of the public life of each one was concerned with +matters of national interest. To this I give special attention, for I want +my northern readers to know what true Americans they all were. Without +this they cannot have their full glory. And their justification is that of +their people. Such effective leaders are always representative. It is a +misnomer to call them leaders. They were really followers of their +constituents who were struggling for the subsistence of themselves and +their dear ones. During this time Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis, had they not +labored in every way to protect this great cause--the cause of their own +country--as they did, would have been as recreant as the confederate +soldier, skulking away from the line defending home and fireside. When our +country is in peril the unseen lords of its destiny do not take any one of +us, from the greatest to the humblest, into their confidence as to the +event. Every man of us must support in politics and on the field the cause +of our people. If that must go down it will make defeat glorious to go +down with it, as contentedly and bravely as did Demosthenes, Cicero, and +Davis. + +Whoever diligently studies the facts will be convinced that southern +nationalization, with a power superior to human resistance, carried the +southern people into secession, and that their so-called leaders were +carried with them. He will discern that the parts of the latter were +merely to serve as floats to mark the course of the current beneath. +Therefore be just to these leaders for justice' sake. Further, you +brothers and sisters of the north ought to bethink yourselves and keep in +mind how we regard them. The reputation of these our civil champions and +their graves are as dear to us as those of our mothers. If you adopted an +orphan, you would feel it to be unpardonable to speak slightingly to him +of his parents. Cleopatra, her conqueror sending her word to study on what +fair demands she would have, answered: + + "That majesty to keep decorum, must + No less beg than a kingdom." + +Let those who wore the blue and their descendants think over it long +enough to realize how unspeakably low and treacherous it would be in us to +abet any condemnation whatever of these men for their anti-union +acts--these men whom we or our fathers voted for and supported because of +these acts. If you deny justification to them, how can we keep decorum in +accepting it ourselves? + +I would say one more word, where perhaps I am a little over-earnest. These +southern leaders have contributed richly to the treasures of American +history. Their moral worth,--nay, moral grandeur,--their great natural +parts, their statesmanly ability, their eloquence, their heroic fidelity +to their people,--by these each has won indefeasible title to the best of +renown. Whenever the north has made real study of them, she will give them +as generous admiration as she now does to the charge of Pickett. I have +done my utmost to present Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis faithfully, using, as +I believe, all the main facts which are relevant and incontrovertible. I +am sure that every northerner who reads them, after he has laid aside all +prejudice, will admit that I did not claim too much when I was recounting +their merits a moment ago. + +I invite close consideration of all that I say of Webster. The purpose of +providence, bestowing birthplace, early environment, training, and career +as preparation for a paramount mission, shows more conspicuously in him +than in any other of America's great, with the solitary exception of +Washington. How the names of detracting agitators and mere politicians +written over his in the temple of fame are now fading off, and how the +invincible and lovable champion of the brother's union looms larger upon +us every year! + +I am painfully conscious of how certain omissions, unavoidable in my +limited space, mar the symmetry of my ground-plan. The average reader will +probably think that I ought to have sketched Lincoln, Grant, and Lee. I +was convinced that the public had already become reasonably instructed as +to them. + +John Q. Adams is one of the most conspicuous men of his day. Standing +aloof from parties, completely self-reliant, opulently endowed with every +high power of moderation, insight, and effective presentation, his good +genius gave him the championship in congress of the free-labor cause +during the critical years that it was preparing for the decisive meeting +with the slave-labor cause. In this time it seems to me that single-handed +he achieved more for the latter than all its other champions. A pleasant +parallel between him and Lee occurs to me. Each had filled the proudest +place in the chosen avocation of his life. Adams had been the chief +magistrate of the great republic, elected by the votes of a continent. Lee +had been the foremost general of the bravest and most puissant nation that +ever lost its existence by war. Each one of the two passed from power down +into what is usually a condition of inaction and accumulating rust till +the end of life, and to each was most kindly granted the achievement of +new fame and glory. In the national house of representatives, Adams, +during the last twelve years of his life,--1836-48,--did the great deeds +which we have just lauded. In the last years of his life Lee, as the head +of an humble institution of learning, showed not only the youth in his +charge, but all of his stricken people, how to conquer direst adversity +with such grand success in an example of unmurmuring endurance that every +future generation of men will give it more loving appreciation. + +John Q. Adams, as I have tried to explain, is almost an American epoch of +himself; but I could not give him the chapter that is his due. + +I felt that it would have been well to pair Stephen A. Douglas of the +north with Alexander H. Stephens of the south. They are in nearly exact +antithetical contrast. The former clung to the south, the other to the +union, until the clock struck the dread hour of separation. How they loved +each other and each other's people! They most strikingly exemplify the +adamantine grip which each one of the two nationalizations kept upon its +greatest and best. + +Wendell Phillips and William L. Yancey should be contrasted. Each one was +the very prince of sectional agitators, helping with great efficiency to +make the public opinion that carried forward Seward and Lincoln, the +actual leaders of the north, and Toombs, the actual leader of the south. +It is my strong conviction that Phillips and Yancey were the most gifted, +eloquent, and influential stump speakers in America since Patrick Henry. + +Chase steadily rises in my estimate. His solid parts, his consistent, +conscientious, and able anti-slavery career, and especially that decisive +speech in the Peace Congress,--these, and other relevancies that can be +mentioned, drew me powerfully. The firm candor with which he avowed in +that memorable speech that the north had decided against the expansion of +slavery, demonstrates the clearness of his vision. The part of it which +recurs to me most frequently is that in which he impressively recounts the +intersectional dissension over the fugitive slave law,--the south +believing slavery right, the north believing it wrong,--and proposes that +in place of the remedy given by that law the master be paid the value of +his slave. "Instead of judgment for rendition," he said, "let there be +judgment for compensation determined by the true value of the services, +and let the same judgment assure freedom to the fugitive. The cost to the +national treasury would be as nothing in comparison with the evils of +discord and strife. All parties would be gainers." + +Calhoun devised to restrain the sections from mutual aggression by +endowing each with an absolute veto against the other. Webster fondly +believed that if he could be president he would bring back the wrangling +brothers to love one another again as much as he loved them all. Chase +also had his pet impracticable project. Each one of the three recoiled and +racked all of his invention to save his country from the huge fraternal +slaughter that his divining soul whispered to him was near. + +The south will cherish the memory of Chase more and more fondly as she +learns better how he firmly stood for civil law against military rule, and +that he was heart and soul for universal amnesty. + +It was all I could do to deny a chapter to William H. Seward. He seems to +me to have been the only northern man whose foresight of the coming +convulsion equalled that of Calhoun. He did not become a Jeremiah as the +other did, for his section was not, after it had just emerged from a gulf +of blood, to be plunged and held for years in a gulf of poverty and +disorder. He was far less serious and much more optimistic in his nature +than Calhoun. Affectionate, sympathetic, rarely agreeable in his +manners--how well Mrs. Davis depicts him in what is to me one of the +pleasantest passages of her book.[3] He was spoils politician, able +popular leader, and great statesman in rare combination. While his heart +was extremely warm, his head was never turned by his feelings. Lincoln +ardently believed in his soul what Choate calls "the glittering +generalities" of the declaration of independence. But to Seward current +illusions were the same as they were to Napoleon Bonaparte--he was to lead +the masses with them just as far as possible, but not to deceive himself. +Read in your closet his two epochal speeches, the "higher law" one of +March 11, 1850, and that proclaiming the irrepressible conflict at +Rochester, October 25, 1858, then read that of Chase at the Peace +Congress, and you cannot avoid feeling that while Chase opposes slavery +mainly because he conceives it to be a gross moral wrong, the other +opposes because it is the belonging of an inferior civilization. In my +opinion no man of that time had such a clear conception as Seward of the +utter economical incompatibility of the free-labor system and the +slave-labor system, and of the doom of the latter in their conflict then +on. While he had this superior insight and wisdom it was the better way +for him to follow the tide of morbid moral sentiment and unreasoning zeal +carrying the country on to his goal. Following thus he proved a leader +unsurpassed. The longer I contemplate Seward the stronger becomes my +conviction that he is the most entertaining subject and the most +delightful in variety of parts and traits of all American statesmen for +the essayist portrait painter. To give a picture true to life demands the +very best and highest art. + +In my last two chapters I do all I can to clear up the race question, +which is now densely beclouded with northern misunderstanding and southern +prejudice. The negro has a nature that in some material particulars +differs so widely from that of the Caucasian that it ought to be duly +allowed for; and yet as people are so prone to think all others just like +themselves, this is hardly ever done. Now, forty years after emancipation, +we see that the promptings and consequences of his nature just emphasized +in combination with the social forces operating upon him have caused +changes in the situation, of the gravest import to him. His native +idleness, coming back stronger and stronger the further he gets in time +from the steady work of slavery, his lack of forecast, his vice, +inveterate pauperism, increasing disease and insanity, on one side; the +hostility excited against him by the inexpressibly unwise grant to him of +equal political rights, and the rapid invasion by white labor since the +early nineties of the province which he appropriated during the years when +the whites had not recovered from the paralyzing shock and surprise of +emancipation, on the other side, example these changes. There has evolved +a division of the southern negroes into two classes. One class, which I +most roughly distinguish as the upper, contains all those who are not +compelled by their circumstances to be unskilled laborers in country and +town. It hardly amounts to one-twentieth of the whole. The millions are +all in the other class, which I again most roughly distinguish as the +lower. Ponder what I tell you of them, their helplessness, their +accelerating degradation, their mounting death rate, their gloomy +prospects. I try hard also to have the upper class well understood. To a +southerner it is amazing how many outside people of education, +intelligence, and fair-mindedness assume that the multitude in the lower +class are the same in every material detail of character and ability as +those few who by various favors of fortune have found place in the upper +class. To stress here, in the beginning, a fact as its very great +importance demands, nearly all the negroes who get high station are part +white. Dumas, the father, was at least half white. The son Dumas was +probably three-quarters white. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Anglo-African +composer, is half white. Such as these are the samples by which nearly all +the continent and England, and many northerners, estimate the capacity of +the pure negroes of the south, grovelling in depths out of which one +climbs only now and then by a miracle. The men just mentioned are not real +negroes. It is the same with nearly all the so-called negroes of America, +from Douglass to Dr. Washington, who have become famous. They are but +examples of what whites can do against adversity. The coal-black equalling +these in achievement would be as rare among his fellows as Hans, the +Berlin thinker, is among horses. This palpable distinction between men who +are largely, if not nearly all, Caucasian, and men who are purely West +African in descent, is utterly overlooked by many most conscientious and +earnest ones of the north, like Mr. Louis F. Post, who is always telling +us of the south what the negro is--not, and how we should treat him, +magisterially reading us lessons in A B C democracy. + +There will be fewer and fewer part-white negroes in the south by reason of +the steadily increasing hostility of each race to mixed procreation. This +upper class has long shown a drift northward. Under the expulsion of many +of its members from certain occupations by white competition, lately +commenced and fast increasing, this drift now gathers strength. From what +I see every day it seems to me that the destiny of much the greater part +of this upper class is disappearance partly by absorption and partly by +euthanasy. + +It is the millions of the lower class that should be our deepest concern. +If they be left where their utopian emancipators and enfranchisers have +placed them, it is almost certain that nearly the whole will go into the +jaws of destruction, now opening wide before them and sucking them in. +Such a result of the three amendments--that is, to have annihilated hosts +upon hosts of pure negroes in order to make just a few part-whites +all-white--would be a fit monument to the statesmanship of the maddest +visionaries in all history. We must come resolutely and lovingly to the +help of these wretched creatures. I tell you at large how it is our duty +to give the black man his own State in our union, and supervise him in it +even better than we are now doing for the Philippine. + +I believe that the foregoing, re-enforced by a glance over the +chapter-titles, will give a reader the preconception which he ought to get +from an introduction to a book which he is about to begin. In dealing with +the causes and some of the more important consequences of the brothers' +war my method is rationale rather than narrative. My first purpose is to +indicate how everything happened according to laws that with cosmic force +reared two great economic powers, divided the whole land into a vast host +standing up for one of the two in the south, and a still larger host +standing up for the other in the north, and how these same laws were most +faithfully served by all the actors on each side. I try to set out and +explain what are the principles of evolution and the ways of human action, +and especially the commanding view-points, which must be rightly attended +to in their supreme importance before the greater one of the two critical +American eras can have its fit history. The man who writes it will be +entirely free from the monomania and orgiastic fury of both fire-eater and +root-and-branch abolitionist, from their excessively emotional +assumptions, their explosive and exclamatory argumentation; he will have +the industry, the undisturbed vision, and the perfect fairness of the +foremost sociologists of our time; he will show how each side was right +from first to last in upholding its own separate country,--all belonging +to it, statesmen, agitators, demagogues, fanatical fire-eaters and +abolitionists, generals and soldiers. He will show that such things which +in expedience ought not to have been done were unavoidable, and therefore +to be excused. He will show what erroneous judgments of each section +should now be challenged and kept from working injury. Especially do I +emphasize it, he will convince every average reader that north and south +were equally conscientious, honest, heroic, and lovable from beginning to +end. Such a history will be even greater than that by which Thucydides +realized his soaring ambition to give the world an everlasting possession; +and it will become the bible of America, treasured and loved alike by the +people both north and south. + +This bible is coming, as many signs show. I will illustrate by examples +from three northern authors, given not exactly in the order of time, but +in that of their approximation to full attainment. After a circumstantial +description of each one of the three days' fighting at Gettysburg, fair +and impartial in the extreme, Mr. Vanderslice eulogizes both sides, +without invidious distinction, for "their fidelity and gallantry, their +fortitude and valor," and because there was nothing done by either "to +tarnish their record as soldiers," and most becomingly emphasizes the +"martial fame and glory" thereby won "for the American soldier." But just +here he sounds a most unpleasantly discordant note by saying, "One was +right and the other wrong."[4] He forgot that brothers who fight as those +did at Gettysburg are all right, and that whenever one falls on either +side flights of angels sing him to his rest. + +In June, 1902, Mr. Charles F. Adams, making an academic address at +Chicago, startled many of his auditors with this outspoken vindication of +the south: + + "Legally and technically,--_not morally_,-- ... and wholly + irrespective of humanitarian considerations,--to which side did the + weight of argument incline during the great debate which culminated in + our civil war?... If we accept the judgment of some of the more modern + students and investigators of history,--either wholly unprejudiced or + with a distinct union bias,--it would seem as if the weight of + argument falls into what I will term the confederate scale."[5] + +Mr. Adams, having made further inquiry of his own, December 22 of the same +year, announced a still more advanced conclusion. He had said at Chicago +that the confederate scale preponderated; but now his vision having become +more certain he said the scales hung even.[6] Note that in the passage +just quoted from him I have italicized the two words "not morally." I do +not understand that in the Charleston speech he meant to revoke the +italicized words, and to say anything more than that each side was right +in its own view of the nature of the government. Even with this +reservation, the utterances of Mr. Adams evince a grateful improvement +upon the dogmatism which characterizes nearly every other northerner or +southerner who has treated the subject. + +Professor Wendell sees clearly that both sides were morally right, and he +is impartially just and equally loving to both. I feel that the quotations +from a late work of his which I now make are the chief merits of this +chapter. Considering the controversy between the sections, he says, with +the truest insight, "The constitution of the United States was presenting +itself more and more in the light of an agreement between two incompatible +sets of economic institutions, assuming to each the right freely to exist +within its own limits."[7] + +In this next passage as to the same subject, rising above Mr. Adams to the +high frankness which the facts demand, he says, "The truth is that an +irrepressible social conflict was at hand, and that both sides were as +honorable as were both sides during the American Revolution, or during the +civil wars of England."[8] + +How just to north and south each, and how fraternally compassionate +towards the south is this: "Solemn enough to the uninvaded north, the war +meant more than northern imagination has yet realized to those southern +States into whose heart its horrors were slowly, surely carried. Such a +time was too intense for much expression; it was a moment rather for +heroic action; and in south and north alike it found armies of heroes. Of +these there are few more stirring records than a simple ballad made by Dr. +Ticknor, of Georgia, concerning a confederate soldier."[9] And then he +quotes "Little Giffen" in full. + +Professor Wendell reaches a still greater height when he decorates the +Tyrtaeus of the Confederate States and the supereminent anti-slavery +lyricist of the north with equal homage and admiration. He says: + + "The civil war brought forth no lines more fervent [than the + concluding thirty-six of Timrod's 'The Cotton Boll,' which are set + out], and few whose fervor rises to such lyric height. In the days of + conflict, north regarded south, and south north, as the incarnation of + evil. Time, however, has begun its healing work; at last our country + begins to understand itself better than ever before; and as our new + patriotism strengthens, we cannot prize too highly such verses as + Whittier's, honestly phrasing noble northern sentiment, or as + Timrod's, who with equal honesty phrased the noble sentiment of the + south. A literature which in the same years could produce work so + utterly antagonistic in superficial sentiment, and yet so harmonious + in their common sincerity and loftiness of feeling, is a literature + from which riches may come."[10] + +These words are more golden than I can tell. They parallel the elevation +of Webster, showing the same love for South Carolina and Massachusetts, in +the pertinent parts of the reply to Hayne, which since my boyhood I have +cherished as a nonpareil. It is cheering to a faithful southerner to +receive such sure proof that the day must soon come when all obloquy will +be lifted from the fame of Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis. What a grand +triumph of contrast, almost surpassing the best achievement of Shakspeare, +it will be when some honest Griffith, having shown Webster, Lincoln, and +Grant in all the worth which merited their unspeakably happy lot, each +radiant with the victor's glory, places opposite the great civic heroes of +the southern nation, their due renown at last fitly blazoned. That renown +will be that they devoted the very greatest human powers and virtues all +their lives, with never remitted effort and spotless fidelity, to save a +doomed country,--the imperishable renown of grand failure in a cause which +adverse fate cannot keep from being ever dear to all humanity. + +My last word as to what I have just quoted from the three northern authors +is that all of us--and especially the fast widening public of +readers--ought to be forever in earnest to applaud such sentiments and +chide every manifestation of excessive sectional bias or prejudice from +either northerner or southerner. This has been my incessantly kept faith +for years. As proof I refer to my article, "The Old and New South," nearly +all of it written in the early part of 1875--thirty years ago--and which I +published the next year. I give an exact copy of it in the Appendix. As +you go through it remember these things of the author: The election of +Lincoln made me believe, as it did thousands of other southerners, that +secession was the only patriotic course. I therefore voted for secession +delegates to the State convention. I served in the confederate army all +the war, taking part in the First Manassas and many other battles; and +when I had been surrendered and paroled at Appomattox I walked back to my +home in Georgia. Ten years after this I had found full solace and comfort +for the direful event to the south of the brothers' war; and I had learned +that the brothers on each side had complete justification in conscience +for their contrary parts as statesmen, public leaders, voters, and at the +end as soldiers. I want my readers of each section to see that I have long +practised what I am now preaching. + +I beg attention to the article on another score. It shows that the +opinions expressed in this book have not been formed in haste. Nearly all +of the more important will be found therein, in embryo, at least; and the +present book will show, I hope, that they have prosperously grown. There +are passages in the article, such as those touching the relations of the +races, the future of the negro, the maintenance by the decentralizing +forces of the union of their balance with the counter ones, and also +others, which I might now justly claim to have proved prophetic; and I do +not believe that a serious misprediction can be found in the entire +article. This is, I hope, such corroboration by after occurrences as +indicates that even my early studies of the transcendently important +theme were not unfruitful. + +Further, the article serves in some sort to mark a definite stage in +evolution. To give but one illustration: Although my close attention to +planting interests at the time and for the seven or eight preceding years +had kept me closely watching the negro, I had not then discovered even the +beginning of that division of the race into two classes which is now so +plain to me. + +Possibly some readers may shy away from my book, deeming that its subject +is hackneyed and worn out. They will exclaim, What can this author say +that has not been said in the vast library of books already written upon +the civil war? This will be asked, I am sure, only by the unobservant and +unreflecting. If one but turn away from the assumptions, dogmas, and +philippics, with which north and south cannonaded each other's morality +with increasing fury from 1831 to 1861, to the _rerum causae_, the play of +resistless social forces, and the other actualities and great things +indicated above, their huge stores of varied novelty, interest, romance, +and wisdom will greatly embarass him--as has been my painful +experience--both in making the best selection and in his felt inability to +give what he does at last select its fit presentation. + +As illustration I will say that every thoroughly impartial northern reader +who meditates what I narrate as to Toombs will, I believe, be astonished +to learn that one so prodigally gifted with supreme virtue and supreme +genius, and who was of unexampled success in doing all the common and all +the extraordinary duties of high place, has become worse than forgotten in +almost his own day; and such a reader will suspect, as I do myself, that +there is much more of value in his career that I have overlooked. + +Perhaps this chapter is too long already. But I pray my reader to allow me +to say a little more. We are upon the threshold of a new American era. +Evidently because of our western coast we are to dominate the Pacific +ocean commerce and to develop it into proportions so enormous as to be now +almost inconceivable. That coast will soon outstrip the Atlantic in +population and great cities. Our people, safe against wars on the +continent, maintaining armies only of workers, taught better methods every +year by practice and science, will soon be far in advance of their present +enviable prosperity and comfort. Cheering as is the promise of their +material progress, that of their progress in virtue and good government is +still more cheering. Everywhere in the north--which was not impoverished, +deprived of familiar modes of production, and paralyzed with a race +question by the event of the brothers' war--the State electorates are +rebelling successfully against the party machine, cashiering the boss, and +subverting the corporation oligarchy. That in the last election the voters +most intelligently split their tickets assures the early expulsion of +spoilsmen, grafters, and public-service franchise-grabbers from the +control of our politics, legislation, and administration of government, +and the real and permanent elevation of the people to being their own +absolute governors. In several States--one of these a southern--the vote +was for the most democratic and anti-plutocratic president since Lincoln, +while at the same time the anti-plutocratic State candidates, either of +the other party or independent, were elected. Our population will soon +outstrip all the world in average riches, comfort, virtue, and education. +The special note to be made of this new American era now beginning is that +we are to lead the nations into a war-abolishing United States of the +world, which in the end will make and keep them our equals in solid +welfare and happiness. With this prospect in view, the brighter and more +enrapturing as I cannot keep from contrasting it with the black and +hopeless future which settled around me at Appomattox, I would do all that +I can to bring about that better understanding between north and south +which befits the good time near at hand. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A BEGINNING MADE WITH SLAVERY + + +As a distinguished southerner, familiar with the subject, says, slavery in +the United States was "a stupendous anachronism."[11] It is almost +incredible to the average northerner of to-day that the enlightened people +of the south sank backwards in social development a thousand years or +more, and hugged to their bosoms for several generations such a monstrous +evil and peril. + +The co-operation of two facts fully explains the wonder just noted. Now +let us try to understand this. + +The first fact is the part played by tobacco and cotton before the +anti-slavery sentiment became influential. At a time when there was +practically no industry but agriculture these two staples became the most +lucrative of all common American crops. Tobacco found its true soil in +Virginia, and cotton farther south. It developed in time that both could +be made far more profitably with African slaves than by free white labor, +the only other labor to be had. Of course you are to remember that slave +cultivation of tobacco did not become general in Virginia until near the +end of the seventeenth century, and that it was the invention of the gin +soon after the adoption of the federal constitution in 1789 that started +cotton production on a large scale. What you are especially to grasp here +is the economic conditions which naturally spread slavery from its +beginning at Jamestown, first over Virginia, and then throughout the +entire south, either settled in large measure from Virginia, or looking +thither for example. The Virginian who could not replace his exhausted +fields with virgin soil at home went with his slaves either west or south, +and hacked down enough of the primeval forest to give his working force +its quantum of arable land. We need not stop here to tell of rice and +cane, nor of other crops and industries which for a while engaged slave +labor in northern regions of the south where the soil did not suit +tobacco. The foregoing suggests adequately for this place how slavery +became general in the south. + +The second fact is that the prevalent opinion of that time was far +different from that of to-day, for certain reasons, to which I would now +have you attend. + +Long before the discovery of America personal slavery had fallen under the +ban of the christian church and become in Europe a thing of the past. The +Divine Comedy catalogues in detail the religious, political, moral, and +social events of its age. It is utterly silent throughout as to slavery. +Dante died in 1321, soon after he had finished the Divine Comedy. That was +nearly three hundred years before the appearance of African slavery in +Virginia. + +Now for something of very great importance to us here, which occurred soon +afterwards, and before the introduction of African slavery into America. +It is that by the Renascence the literature of slaveholding Greece and +Rome suddenly acquired and long held commanding influence upon almost +every educator of the public in the enlightened world. It was in the last +quarter of the fourteenth century--some fifty years after Dante had +died--that the classics revived in Italy. Spreading thence over Europe, +they are found dominating the great Elizabethan divines, philosophers, +poets, and other opinion-forming writers at the end of the fifteenth +century. And during all of the time from the landing of the twenty +Africans at Jamestown by the Dutch man-of-war in 1619 until slavery had +become the solitary prop of southern industry and property, the Greek and +Latin ancient writers were in our mother country almost the sole subjects +of school or university education, and the main reading of all those that +read at all. And every page of this literature, studied with enthusiastic +worship and resorted to day in and day out for instruction and +inspiration, disclosed that in Greece and Rome the average family was +dependent for its maintenance upon slaves; and that so far from slavery +being a relic of barbarism, as the American root-and-branch abolitionists +afterwards fulminated in a platform, it was the very foundation of the +state in those two great nations whose philosophy, learning, science, +jurisprudence, poetry, art, and eloquence are still the models in every +enlightened land. Naturally the educated classes, now that it had been +several hundred years since slavery was a burning question, had forgotten +or had never heard of the old disinclination of the church, and could not +see any evil in that which their most admired and dearest ones had all +practised. The classics did not stop with giving slavery the negative +support just mentioned. Although such authors as Quintilian and Seneca, +and the later jurists--all of the discredited silver, and not of the +glorified Ciceronian and Augustan ages--do express, theatrically and +academically, anti-slavery opinions, yet what they say was merely dust in +the balance when weighed against the commendations of the institution to +be found in the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero, who had now +become the great idols of intellectual society.[12] + +The church would not stay out in the cold and dark, whither it had been +suddenly and rudely cast by the Renascence. It woke up to discover that as +the African was a heathen barbarian it was God's mercy to kidnap him for a +christian master, and thus give him his only opportunity of saving his +soul. And although it is not right to enslave other races, the descendants +of Ham are an exception, who by reason of Noah's curse are to be the +servants of servants to the end of time--that is what Holy Church taught +by precept and example. + +"Sir John Hawkins has the unenviable distinction of being the first +English captain of a slave-ship, about the year 1552."[13] His venture +proved a great success. Good Queen Bess reproached him for his +mistreatment of human beings. He answered that it was far better for the +African thus to become a slave in a christian community, than to live the +rest of his life in his native home of idolatry; and this was so +convincing that "in the subsequent expeditions of this most heartless +man-stealer, she was a partner and protector."[14] Until the end of the +seventeenth century the masses regarded the negro as being rather wild +beast than man, showing no more scruples in catching and making a drudge +of him than later generations did in lassoing wild horses and working them +under curb-bit, spur, and whip. And the more understanding ones, who +recognized that the negro belonged to humanity, re-enforced Aristotle[15] +and Pliny[16] with much that they found both in the Old and New +Testaments.[17] The many who preached liberty or the true religion posed +as humanitarians, pharisaically comparing themselves with the best +characters of Greece and Rome. The citizens of those great republics, they +said, in spite of their advanced democracy, tore men and women of their +own race and blood away from home and country and forced them with the +scourge to toil in chains, while we do that only with savages and +heathens, who cannot be civilized or christianized in any other way. We +eschew slavery in the abstract. We tolerate it only in the concrete, which +is the slavery of those destined for it by God and nature. Slave-catcher, +slaveholder, and the public seriously and conscientiously held this creed. + +You must now add to the list of influences planting and stimulating +slavery in America the protection it got in the constitution under which +the federal government started in 1789. As Mr. Blaine says: + + "The compromises on the slavery question, inserted in the + constitution, were among the essential conditions upon which the + federal government was organized. If the African slave-trade had not + been permitted to continue for twenty years, if it had not been + conceded that three-fifths of the slaves should be counted in the + apportionment of representatives in congress, if it had not been + agreed that fugitives from service should be returned to their owners, + the thirteen States would not have been able in 1787 'to form a more + perfect union.'"[18] + +Think over it until you can fully take in the prodigious favor to slavery +which this countenance of it by the American bible of bibles naturally +created in the north and south. + +The forces rapidly sketched in the foregoing were so powerful in their +co-operation to bring in slavery that its establishment and a long era of +vigorous growth were inevitable. Note the years during which they met no +sensible or only a fitful opposition. The first anti-slavery agitation +that shook the entire country was that over the Missouri question, which +having lasted a little more than two years ended in 1821, thirty-two years +after the adoption of the constitution. This agitation was only against +the extension of slavery. It was not until 1835 that the presentation to +Congress of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of +Columbia disclosed to the far-seeing Calhoun alone that serious and mighty +aggression upon slavery in the States was commencing. Here we may date the +beginning of the abolition movement. But that movement did not become +respectable with the great mass of northern people until the application +of California in 1850 for admission into the union as a free State widened +the chasm between the sections so that it commenced to show to the dullest +eye, and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which came out in 1852, stirred the north to +its depths. The growth of slavery was then and had been for a quarter of a +century complete. The soil, climate, and best agricultural interests of +the south, at a time when she was to be wholly agricultural or +economically nothing at all, the practice and precepts of the sages of +Greece and Rome, of the patriarchs of Israel, of Jesus and his disciples +and apostles, of the great and good of modern times,--all these had, with +oracular consensus, led her understanding and conscience into adopting, +nurturing, and on into extending slavery over her territory. Thus when +abolition first emerged into open day, slavery had become the very +economical life of the south. It had so permeated and informed the +combined property, social, and political structure, that abolition would +subvert the community fabric and beggar the population of the southern +States now living in content and comfort. + +I trust that the foregoing shows you that it is not so strange after all +that slavery ran the career just described. + +But some one says, how could the southerners as Americans, the especial +champions of liberty, stultify themselves by slaveholding? how could they +forget the world-arousing words of the declaration of independence that +all men are created equal, and endowed with unalienable rights to life, +liberty, and pursuit of happiness? + +This has already been answered. The slaveholding republics of Greece and +Rome had advanced in democracy so far beyond anything to be found in +Europe at the revival of learning, that from that time on for many years +the political doctrine in the recovered classics was the very greatest of +all the intellectual influences that made for mere democracy. The +celebrated passage in which Burke eulogizes the stubborn maintenance of +their freedom by free slaveholders has been the text of speakers from +Pinkney, addressing the United States senate on the Missouri question, to +Toombs, lecturing in Tremont Temple, Boston, and it has never been +confuted. History shows no instance where such men ever reproached +themselves for slaveholding, and while it was profitable put it aside +because it is undemocratic. + +As to the words which you quote from the declaration of independence, +Jefferson, the draftsman, doubtless, meant them to include the African; +but the majority of the congress making it, and the American people +actually ratifying it, almost unanimously held that the African was not +enough of man to come within the words. + +A Roman law parallel aptly illustrates. In the Institutes it is said that +slavery is contrary to the law of nature, for under this every one is born +free;[19] and again, that slavery was established by the _jus gentium_ +under which a man is made subject to the dominion of another _contra +naturam_, that is, against nature, against _jus naturale_, or the law of +nature.[20] And in the Pandects this is weakly echoed.[21] But the actual +enactment of the _corpus juris civilis_ fortifies slavery as it had been +established all over the world by the _jus gentium_ with these plain +words: "The master has power of life and death over his slave; and +whatever property the slave acquires, he acquires for the master."[22] + +Our forefathers making the declaration of independence, and the Romans of +Justinian's time, sentimentalized in the same words over the natural right +to equality and liberty of all human beings, and also resolutely held on +to their slaves. The solemn assertion that all men are created equal and +of inalienable liberty made by American slaveholders was but a repetition +of what Roman slaveholders had already said; and it is curious that the +fact has not attracted due attention. + +I fancy that my objector now shoots his last bolt. He exclaims that +southerners were incredibly dull and obtuse not to discern that +resistlessly puissant economical, political, moral, and intellectual +forces, not of America only but of the entire world, were leaguing +together against slavery, and therefore they ought to have fled in time +from the coming wrath and evil day. + +A satisfactory reply need not postulate any other than ordinary +intelligence and alertness for the south. Note how people dwell near +overflowing rivers, or a sea of tidal waves, or live volcanoes, or in +earthquake districts, or near a tribe of scalping redskins, where they, +their wives and children, keep merry as the day is long until calamity +comes. The warning of the abolitionists was too late. Suppose we had given +the inhabitants of Herculaneum or Pompeii or St. Pierre timely counsel to +abandon their homes and settle beyond the reach of eruption. How many +would have done it? I knew hundreds of people, and among all of them there +was but one who showed by his actions that he foresaw the early fall of +slavery. That was Mr. Frank L. Upson of Lexington, Georgia, a highly +accomplished and well-informed man. In 1856, I think it was, he sold all +of his slaves, declaring as his reason that he believed if he kept them he +would see them freed without compensation. He was so serious that he +declared this even to his purchasers. They merely laughed, and everybody +else laughed too, to think how green he was to give them the good bargain +that he did. But after the war he enjoyed comfort from the money those +slaves had brought him, when all his neighbors had been plunged into hard +times by emancipation. There may have been others that did like him. There +could not have been many such, for I have never been able to hear of a +single one. + +We did like the rest of mankind do or would have done. We stuck to our +homes and business until the tidal wave washed them away. Yet there are +wise ones who are positive that had we not been far more dull and +unforeseeing than the average we would have understood many years before +the final convulsion that the forces arrayed against slavery were +irresistible, and surrendered it in time to get compensated emancipation. +Look at the monopolists now preying upon the public in every corner of the +land. They are confident that their holdings are impregnable against +democracy coming invincibly against them. Look at the great mass of our +population, shutting the fresh air out of their houses in order to be +comfortably warm, and thereby rearing parents--especially mothers--who +unawares are incessantly developing tuberculosis to destroy themselves and +their children. Some years hence when resumption by government of its +functions now granted to private persons has dispossessed all the +monopolists, and when every dwelling-house is kept perfectly ventilated +and free from infected air, there will be other wise ones to believe that +hindsight is just the same as foresight, and to inveigh against the +monopolists and parents just mentioned for their unwonted stupidity and +improvidence. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +UNAPPEASABLE ANTAGONISM OF FREE LABOR AND SLAVE LABOR, AND THEIR MORTAL +COMBAT OVER THE PUBLIC LANDS + + +Now a brief explanation of the antagonism between free and slave labor. +The expense of his slaves to the farmer is the same whether they are +resting or at work. Sundays, days and even seasons of unfavorable weather, +in long do-nothing intervals succeeding the making and also the gathering +of the crop, they cost him just as much as when he can work them from sun +to sun. But this is not all of his load. The year round he must subsist +the numerous non-workers in the families of his laborers, whether young, +superannuated, or afflicted. Suppose another farmer to be on adjoining +land who can employ laborers just as he wants them, and discharge them as +soon as he has no further use for them. Do you not perceive that this +free-labor farmer can produce far more cheaply than the slave farmer? And +do you not also perceive that if there is a supply of free labor to be had +in a slave country, and it can be got by every farmer _ad libitum_, slaves +must lose their value as property and be driven to the wall? Free labor +was kept out of the south by the repugnance of the white laborer to the +negro. Note also that when the number of slaves had become considerable +their owners would naturally combine to protect the market value of their +property by preventing the coming in of cheaper labor. This was the real +reason why Virginia and Delaware opposed the extension of the African +slave-trade from 1800 to 1808, and the Confederate States' constitution +refused to reopen it. Slavery made some headway in the north. But not +finding there the stimulus of such products as tobacco and cotton, it +could not become so widespread and deep-seated as to sweep out free labor. +The latter under favorable conditions commenced the competition in which +it could not fail to win; and in due time slavery died out in the north. +We especially desire to emphasize the attitude towards extension of +slavery that free labor was bound to take. That it had already ejected +slavery from every other enlightened community will occur to the reader at +once as weighty proof that the two cannot live together.[23] Think of the +free worker's suffrage, and you cannot believe that he could long be +induced to vote for the protection and further spread of a system taking +the bread out of his own mouth, and degrading him by engendering profound +disrespect for his class; and then think of the vast and rapidly growing +numbers of the free laborers of the north, receiving every day great +accessions of foreign immigrants avoiding the south as they would the +plague; think of all these, and you begin to discern what a mighty power +was rising against slavery. + +This has brought us to the place where we can properly treat the +contention for the Territories. Consider their vast area. Remember that +our people have settled thereon in such numbers that thirty-two new States +have been added to the old thirteen, and others still are to be added. +Here for some generations was land for the landless; the full meaning of +which Henry George has made us plainly see. The adventurous and +enterprising of the old States of each section set their faces +thitherward in a constantly swelling stream. Attend to the only material +difference for us between the northerner and the southerner going west. +Each settler wanted a community like his native one. The northerner had +not been trained to manage slave labor and property; he did not like it; +he thought it out of date and vastly inferior to free labor; and he could +not endure to have himself and family live among negroes, repulsive to him +because of unfamiliarity. He had learned from its history in the south +that wherever slavery established itself it superseded all other labor. +Therefore he would none of it in his new home; and he settled in a +non-slave community. Of course the southerner, knowing nothing of free +labor and bred into a love of the slave system, settled among +slaveholders. And so for a generation or two free and slave States were +steadily added to the union in pairs. + +But the unsettled lands were diminishing in area. Its population +multiplying so marvellously, the north felt urgent need for the whole of +these lands. The great majority of settlers going thence into the +Territories were farmers. Note some of the more influential classes left +behind them. The parents, relatives, and friends who wanted them suited in +the west--this was the largest class of all, and it was of prodigious +intellectual, political, and moral potency. Then the manufacturers of +agricultural implements, and of many articles, all of which the +southerners either had their mechanic slaves to make by hand, and of +oldtime fashion, or did without; the millers, and many sorts of wholesale +merchants who had found slave owners poor and the employers of free labor +good customers; and these manufacturers and merchants were greedy for the +new markets which they could get only in free States. + +These are but the merest hints, but they serve somewhat to suggest the +all-powerful motives which at last united the great majority of northern +people, east and west, in intelligent and inveterate opposition to the +further spread of slavery. + +Now look at the southern situation. At the outset, note that his slaves +were the southerner's only laborers, and practically his only property. +And note especially that this property was not only self-supporting, but +it was also the most rapidly self-reproducing that Tom, Dick, and Harry +ever had in all history. A reliable witness tells this: "On my father's +plantation an aged negro woman could call together more than one hundred +of her lineal descendants. I saw this old negro dance at the wedding of +her great-granddaughter."[24] + +Let me repeat that slaves were not only money-making laborers, but also +things of valuable property, which of themselves multiplied as dollars do +at compound interest. Let the northern man unfamiliar with slavery try to +understand this one of its phases by supposing that he has orchards +abundantly yielding a fruit which is in good demand, and that the trees +plant and tend themselves, gather and store the fruit, set out other +orchards, and do all things else necessary to care for the property and +keep it steadily growing. Such trees with their yearly produce and +prodigious increase--each by an easy organic or natural, and not by a +difficult artificial, process, relieving the owner from all but the +slightest attention and labor of superintendence--would soon be the only +ones in their entire zone of production; bringing it about that all other +occupations and property therein would be dependent upon this main and +really only industry. Such orchards would be somewhat like the slaves in +their automatic production and accumulation, but they would be much +inferior as marketable property in many particulars. + +Although the profits of slave-planting were considerable, the greatest +profit of all was what the master thought of and talked of all the day +long,--the natural increase of his slaves, as he called it. His negroes +were far more to him than his land. His planting was the furthest removed +of all from a proper restorative agriculture. Quickly exhausting his new +cleared fields, he looked elsewhere for other virgin soil to wear out. The +number of the slaves in the south was growing fast, and the new lands in +the older slave States were nearly gone. To keep the hens laying the +golden eggs of natural increase, nests must be found for them on the +cotton, sugar, and rice lands of the Territories. In other words, the area +of slave culture must be extended; for whenever there is no land for a +considerable number of our workers, it is evident that we have a surplus +of slaves; and the effect of that will be at the first to lower the market +value of our only property, and then gradually to destroy it. So the +instincts of the southerners whispered in their ears. + +We hope that we now have helped you to an understanding of the active +principles each of free labor and of slave labor; how by reason of them +the interests of north and south in dividing the public domain were in +irreconcilable conflict; and how it was natural that the free States +should band together against, and the slave States band together for, +slavery. Thus the country split into two geographical though not political +sections, the political division which ripened later being as yet only +imminent and inchoate. That these sections had been made by deadly war +between free labor and slave labor is all that we have to say here. The +development went further, as we shall explain in the next chapter--all of +it under the propulsion of the two active principles. They were always the +ultimate and supreme motors. Often they are not to be seen at all. Still +more often what they did was disguised. To read the facts of that time +aright you must always and everywhere look for their work. Do that +patiently, and you will detect every one of the many controversies over +matters affecting an interest of either section as such--whether questions +apparently of national politics, of morals, or religion, in newspapers, +pamphlets, reviews, books, and all the vast contemporary literature, in +the pulpit, on the platform, and in every place and corner of the entire +land where policy and impolicy or right and wrong were mooted--to be but a +part of one or the other of two great complexes of machinery, each geared +to its particular motor and kept going by its mighty push. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +GENESIS, COURSE, AND GOAL OF SOUTHERN NATIONALIZATION + + +Nationalization is the process by which a nation makes itself. The process +may be active for a long while without completion, as we see in the case +of Ireland; it may form a nation, but to be overturned and wiped out, as +the southern confederacy was; or it may find its consummation in such a +powerful one as the United States. The most conspicuous effect of the +process we now have in hand is to make one of many communities. But +sometimes a part breaks off from a nation and sets up and maintains its +independence as a country. Thus a portion of the territory of Mexico was +settled over from our States, and after a while these settlers tore +themselves loose from Mexico and became the nation of Texas. We shall tell +you more fully in another chapter how the separate colonies became +nationalized into the United States, and what we say here of southern +nationalization will illustrate to the reader that important +transformation, to understand which is of especial moment to us in +examining the brothers' war. But we must emphasize the characteristic +feature of the nationalization of the south. I have searched the pages of +history in vain for an example like it. The idiosyncrasy is that the south +was homogeneous in origin, race, language, religion, institutions, and +customs with the north, and yet she developed away from the north into a +separate nation. I have long been accustomed to parallel the case of +Ireland's repulsion from Great Britain, but I always had to admit that +there was dissimilarity in everything except the strong drift towards +independence and the struggle to win it;[25] for the Irish are largely +different from the English in origin, race, language, religion, +institutions, and customs. The more you consider it the more striking +becomes this uniqueness of southern nationalization. Think of it for a +moment. Thirteen adjacent colonies; each a dependency of the same nation; +all settled promiscuously from every part and parcel of one mother +country, and therefore the settlers rapidly becoming in time more like one +another everywhere than the English were who at home were clinging to +their several localities and dialects; governed alike; standing together +against Indians, French, and Spanish, and after a while against the mother +country;--where can you find another instance of so many common ties and +tendencies, all prompting incessantly and mightily to union in a political +whole, which is ever the goal of the nationalizing process. That the +colonies did grow into a political whole is not at all wonderful to the +historical student. The wonder is that after they had done this a number +of them just like the others in the particulars above pointed out, which +fuse adjacent communities into a nation, turn away from the old union and +seek to form one of their own. The southern States all did the same thing +with such practical unanimity that even the foreigner may know that the +same cause was at work in every one of them. Manifestly there was a +nationalizing element in them which was not in the others, and which made +the former homogeneous with one another and heterogeneous to the rest. +And that element which differenced the south from the rest of the union so +greatly that it was, from a time long before either she or the north had +become conscious of it, impelling her irresistibly towards an independent +nationality of her own, all of us natives know was the constructive and +plastic principle of her slave industrial and property system. + +It is not the purpose of the foregoing expatiation to prove to you such a +familiar and well-known fact as that slavery parted north and south and +caused the brothers' war. Its purpose is to arouse you to consider +nationalization, and have you see how it acts according to a will of its +own and not of man, and now and then works out most stupendous results +contrary to all that mortals deem probabilities. You ought to recognize +that the forces which produced the Confederate States were just as +all-powerful and opposeless as those which produced the United States; +that in fact they were exactly the same in kind, that is, the forces of +nationalization. + +To have you see that even at the time of making the federal constitution +the south had grown into a pro-slavery section and was far on the road +towards independence, it is necessary to correct the prevalent opinion +that there was then below Mason and Dixon's line a very widespread and +influential hostility to slavery. The manumission of his slaves by +Washington, the fearless and outspoken opposition to the institution by +Jefferson and some other prominent persons, and certain facts indicating +unfavorable sentiment, have been too hastily accepted by even historians +as demonstrations that the opinion is true. Here are the facts which prove +it to be utterly untrue. In 1784, three years before our epochal +convention assembled, Jefferson, as chairman of an appropriate committee +consisting besides himself of Chase of Maryland and Howell of Rhode +Island, reported to congress a plan for the temporary government of the +West Territory. This region contained not only all the territory that was +subsequently covered by the famous ordinance of 1787, but such a vast deal +more that it was proposed to make seventeen States out of the whole. +Consider this provision of the report, the suggestion and work of +Jefferson: + + "That after the year 1800 of the christian era there shall be neither + slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of said States, otherwise + than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been + convicted to have been personally guilty." + +When the report was taken up by congress, Spaight of North Carolina made a +motion to strike out the provision just quoted, and it was seconded by +Reed of South Carolina. On the vote North Carolina was divided; but all +the other southern States represented, to wit, Maryland, Virginia, and +South Carolina, voted for the motion, the colleagues of Jefferson of +Virginia and those of Chase of Maryland out-voting these two southerners +standing by the provision. All the northern States represented, which were +the then four New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania, voted for +the provision. But as it failed to get the necessary seven States it was +not retained. + +Thus it appears that at the close of the Revolutionary war the interest of +the south in and her attachment to slavery were so great that by her +representatives in congress she appears to be almost unanimous against the +proposal to keep the institution from extending. + +This action of the south shows that both Virginia in ceding that part of +the West Territory which was three years afterwards by the ordinance of +1787 put under Jefferson's provision which had been rejected when it had +been proposed for all the territory, and the south in voting unanimously +for the ordinance, were not actuated by hostility to slavery. The soil of +the territory north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi to which the +ordinance applied probably may have been thought by Virginians unsuited to +tobacco, the then sole crop upon which slave labor could be lucratively +used. Be that as it may, that the southern States in subsequent cessions +made not long afterwards guarded against slavery prohibition must be kept +in mind. When they are, it is proved that always from the time that +Jefferson's provision failed to carry in 1784, as has been told above, the +prevalent sentiment of the southern people overwhelmingly favored slavery. + +Let us illustrate from later times. Writers who claim that the south, +meditating secession, purposed to reopen the African slave-trade, adduce +some relevant evidence which at first flush appears to be very weighty, if +not convincing. They show that A. H. Stephens of Georgia, who afterwards +became vice-president of the confederacy, in 1859 used language indicating +that he thought it vital to the south, in her struggle to extend the area +of slavery, to get more Africans; and they further show similar utterances +made at the time by certain papers and other prominent men of the south. + +But the constitution of the Confederate States, adopted in 1861, contains +this provision: + + "The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign + country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the + United States of America is hereby forbidden, and congress is required + to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same." + +Of course this solemn act unanimously voted for by the members of the +congress, Stephens being one of them, counts incalculably more in weight +to prove that predominant southern sentiment was against reopening the +African slave-trade, than the counter evidence just stated. Likewise all +that Washington, Jefferson, and other of their contemporaries may have +done or said against slavery is outweighed by the contemporary pro-slavery +legislation and measures dictated by the south. It is very probable that +during the time we are now contemplating anti-slavery men were really as +few in the south as union men were after the first blood spilled in the +brothers' war. + +Recall the three compromises between north and south, mentioned above, by +which the union was formed, and you will understand that the fathers were +preaching but to stones when they impugned slavery. And at this point +meditate the language of Madison in the historic convention, which shows +that he saw accurately even then the permanence of slavery, and the +unequivocal geographical division it had made. He was discussing the +apprehension of the small States, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island, +that under the union proposed they would be absorbed by the larger +adjacent States. He affirmed there was no such danger; and that the only +danger arose from the antagonism between the slave and the non-slave +sections. To avert this danger he proposed to arm north and south each +with defensive power against the other by conceding to the former the +superiority it would get in one branch of the federal legislature by +reason of its greater population if the members thereof came in equal +numbers from every State, large or small, and at the same time giving the +south superiority in the other branch by allowing it increased +representation therein for all its slaves counted as free inhabitants. +This prepares you for the language which we now give from the report, and +which we would have you meditate: + + "He [Madison] admitted that every peculiar interest, whether in any + class of citizens, or any description of States, ought to be secured + as far as possible. Wherever there is danger of attack, there ought to + be given a constitutional power of defence. But he contended that the + States were divided into different interests, not by their difference + of size, but by other circumstances; the most material of which + resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of + their having or not having slaves. These causes concurred in forming + the great division of interests in the United States. It did not lie + between the large and small States. It lay between the northern and + southern; and if any defensive power were necessary, it ought to be + mutually given to these two interests. He was so strongly impressed + with this important truth, that he had been casting about in his mind + for some expedient that would answer the purpose. The one which had + occurred was that, instead of proportioning the votes of the States in + both branches to their respective number of inhabitants, computing the + slaves in the ratio of 5 to 3, they should be represented in one + branch according to the number of free inhabitants only; and in the + other according to their whole number, counting the slaves as free. By + this arrangement the southern scale would have the advantage in one + house and the northern in the other." + +Madison meant to say that the great danger of disunion was that--we +emphasize his statement by repeating and italicizing the essential +part--"_the States were divided into different interests ... principally +from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These causes +concurred in forming the great division of interests in the United +States_." + +How truly he expresses the economical antagonism of the southern and +northern States, although he hints nothing of the nationalizing tendency +of the former which was bound in time to show itself as one of "the +effects of their having slaves." + +It seems to me that Mr. Adams overeulogizes the political instinct and +prophecy evinced by Madison at this tune. I cannot see that the latter +does anything more than merely recognize the fact then plain to all. Note +as proof this other passage quoted by Mr. Adams from Madison in the +convention, in which the material words are given by me in italics: "_It +seems now well understood_ that the real difference of interests lies, not +between the large and small, but between the northern and southern +States." + +If the historical expert but duly consider the important facts marshalled +in the foregoing he must find them to be incontrovertible proofs that in +1787, when our fathers were making the federal constitution, and for some +years before, southern nationalization was not simply inchoate, but that +it was growing so rapidly its course could be stopped in but one way; that +is, by the extirpation of slavery, which was both its germ and active +principle. This was before the invention of the gin. After that the lower +south and west quickly added a vast territory to the empire of slavery, +and southern nationalization received throughout its whole domain a new, a +lasting, and a far more powerful impetus. And when the cotton States, as +we call them, had really developed their industry, the southern +confederacy was inevitable. + +The fact of this nationalization is indisputable. When the confederates +organized their government at Montgomery, everybody looking on felt and +said that a new nation was born. Why ignore what is so plain and so +important? Thus Mr. Adams most graphically contrasts the two widely +different northern and southern civilizations which were flourishing side +by side,[26] and with a momentary inadvertence he ascribes national +development only to the civilization north of the Potomac and Ohio, and +treats State sovereignty as anti-national. The fact is that a +nationalization, the end of which was southern independence, had been long +active, as we have perhaps too copiously shown, and the doctrine of State +sovereignty was really nothing but its instrument, nurse, and organ. Every +southern State that invoked State sovereignty and seceded was shortly +afterwards found in the new southern nation. Had that nation prospered, +the doctrine would soon have died a natural death even in the confederacy. +Nationalization is the cardinal fact, the _vis major_, on each side. The +free-labor nationalization of the north, purposing to appropriate and hold +the continent, fashioned a self-preserving weapon of the assumption that +the fathers made by the constitution an indissoluble union; the slave +nationalization of the south, purposing to appropriate and hold that part +of the continent suiting its special staples, assumed that the fathers +preserved State sovereignty intact in the federal union. + +The closer you look the plainer you will see that the United States held +within itself two nationalities so inveterately hostile to each other that +gemination was long imminent before it actually occurred. The hostility +between the statesmen of Virginia and her daughter States and those of the +north, and especially New England,--Jefferson on one side and Hamilton and +Adams on the other,--the party following the former calling itself +republican and that following the latter calling itself federalist, was +really rooted in the hostility of the two nationalities; and a survival of +this hostility is now unpleasantly vigorous between many northern and +southern writers and lecturers, each class claiming too much of the good +in our past history for its own section and ascribing too much of the bad +to the other. As a lady friend, a native of Michigan who has lived in the +south some years, remarked to me not long since, as soon as one going +north crosses the Ohio he feels that he has entered another country; +behind him is a land of corn-pone, biscuit, three cooked meals a day, and +houses tended untidily by darkey servants; before him is a land of bakers' +bread of wheat, where there is hardly more than one warm meal a day, and +the houses are kept as neat as a pin by the mothers and daughters of the +family. Greater public activity of the county while there is hardly any at +all of its subdivisions, the representative system almost everywhere in +the municipalities, no government by town-meeting and no direct +legislation except occasionally, a most crude and feeble rural common +school system, distinguish and characterize the south; buoyant energy of +the township in public affairs, government by town-meeting instead of by +representatives, a common-school system energetically improving, +distinguish and characterize the north. The manners and customs of +southerners are peculiar. To use an expressive cant word, they "gush" more +than northeners. In cars and public meetings they give their seats to +ladies, while northerners do not. Southerners are quick to return a blow +for insulting words, and in the consequent rencounter they are prone to +use deadly weapons; while northerners are generally as averse to personal +violence as were the Greeks and Romans in their palmiest time. The +battle-cry of the confederates was a wild cheering--a fox-hunt yell, as we +called it; that of the union soldiers was huzza! huzza! huzza! From the +beginning to the end, even at Franklin and Bentonville, and at Farmville, +just two days before I was surrendered at Appomattox, the confederates +always, if possible, took the offensive; the union soldiers were like the +sturdy Englishmen, whose tactics from Hastings to Waterloo have generally +been defensive. + +This battle yell, this impetuous charge after charge until the field is +won, marks the fighting of the Americans at King's Mountain--all of them +southerners; and it is another weighty proof of the early coalescence of +the south as a community on its way to independence. + +Many other contrasts could be suggested. Think over the foregoing. They +are the respective effects of two different causes,--a free-labor +nationalization above, and a slave-labor nationalization below, Mason and +Dixon's line. The latter--its origin and course--is the especial subject +of this chapter. I believe that the proofs marshalled above demonstrate to +the fair and unprejudiced reader that southern nationalization commenced +before the making of the federal constitution, and afterwards went +directly on, gathering force and power all the while, until it culminated +in + + "A storm-cradled nation that fell." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AMERICAN NATIONALIZATION, AND HOW IT MADE THE BOND OF UNION STRONGER AND +STRONGER + + +Greece was going down in her contest with Macedon when she gave the world +to come the Achaean league, the first historical example of full-grown +federation. As Freeman says of such a federal government: "Its perfect +form is a late growth of a very high state of political culture."[27] This +historian thus summarizes its essentials: + + "Two requisites seem necessary to constitute federal government in + this its most perfect form. On the one hand, each of the members of + the union must be wholly independent in those matters which concern + each member only. On the other hand, all must be subject to a common + power in those matters which concern the whole body of members + collectively."[28] + +No author has yet shown a better-considered and more accurate appreciation +of the benefits to different communities of federal union. But the +islander could not conceive--even at the centre of the British empire +spread over the world--the advanced phase of Anglo-Saxon federation in +America and Australia, which for want of a better name we may call, using +a grand word of our fathers, continental federation. + +And Americans of every generation have misunderstood the true nature of +our union, and especially how it was made and how it could be unmade. The +fathers were as much mistaken as to the real authorship of the +declaration of independence, the articles of confederation, and the +federal constitution, as Burke and many people of his time were as to the +true causes of the French revolution, or as the brothers were as to those +of their war. In all that the fathers did they were sure that they acted +as agents solely of their respective colonies or States, which they +believed to be independent and sovereign. Therefore they maintained that +the authorship of the three great documents just mentioned was that of the +separate States, when in truth it was that of the union. When the latter, +which had been long forming its rudiments, came into something like +consciousness, it at once spurred our fathers to make the declaration of +independence. The declaration corresponds to the later ordinances of +secession. And this union, gathering strength, led our fathers to make the +old confederation; and its articles and the belonging government are +closely paralleled by the constitution of the Confederate States and its +belonging government. As southern nationalization brought forth the +southern confederacy, so it was American nationalization that caused +secession from England, the declaration of independence, and the +confederation which won the Revolutionary war. To summarize the foregoing: +Southern nationalization evolved the southern union, and American +nationalization evolved the American union. The fathers, with the usual +undiscernment of contemporaries, by a most natural _hysteron proteron_ +conceived the latter union to be the work, product, and result of the +constitution. In the intersectional contention, the south accepted the +mistakes of the fathers and rested her cause upon them, and the north, +instead of correcting them, substituted a huge and glaring mistake of her +own. Advocating the maintenance of the constitution over all the States, +she sought to refute the doctrine of State sovereignty urged by the south +with the arguments of those who had opposed the adoption of the federal +constitution. Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane--we omit the others--argued +that the constitution, if ratified, would really wipe out State lines and +make the central government supreme in authority over the States, and +actually sovereign. Could the people of the thirteen States have been made +to believe this, they would have unanimously rejected the instrument. +Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and many others competent to advise, stood +in solid phalanx on the other side, and the people were convinced by them +that adoption would have no such effect. They decided that the arguments +were not good, and the constitution was ratified. But the discredited +arguments were afterwards, by a very queer psychological process, taken up +by Story, Webster, and a great host, and paraded as unanswerable +refutation of the doctrine of State sovereignty, and demonstration that by +the constitution the United States had acquired absolute supremacy over +the different States.[29] At a later place we will try to show you how +Webster's glory outshines that of every other actor, except Lincoln, in +the great struggle between north and south. But here we must emphasize +how, when supporting the fallacies of Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane, he +met the one real and signal defeat of his life, to which the drubbing he +received from Binney in the Girard College case was a small affair--a +defeat none the less signal because at the time, and long afterwards, it +was and still is crowned as a glorious victory by thousands upon +thousands. + +The force-bill had just been introduced into the senate of the United +States. It provided for the collection of the revenue in defiance of the +nullification ordinance of South Carolina. The next day, January 22, 1833, +Calhoun offered in that body his famous resolutions, embodying his +doctrine of nullification, under which he justified the ordinance just +mentioned. The 16th of the next month, Webster discussed the two cardinal +ones of these resolutions at length. As he summarized them, they affirmed: + + "1. That the political system under which we live, and under which + congress is now assembled, is a compact, to which the people of the + several States, as separate and sovereign communities, are the + parties. + + 2. That these sovereign parties have a right to judge, each for + itself, of any alleged violation of the constitution by congress; and + in case of such violation, to choose, each for itself, its own mode + and measure of redress." + +He had not long before contemplated making an address to the public in +answer to Calhoun's pro-nullification letter to Governor Hamilton in the +form of a letter from himself to Kent; and it cannot be doubted that he +had got himself ready for this; nor can it be doubted that in the +twenty-five days' interim he had not only worked over and adapted the +unused materials of the address mentioned, but he had most diligently made +special preparation for his speech--in short, it may be assumed that he +had bestowed upon the subject of the resolutions the most searching +examination and profound meditation of which, with his superhuman powers, +he was capable. In spite of all his conscientious labors, as I am now +especially concerned to impress upon you, he injured and set back the +cause of the union by defending it with answerable arguments--nay, rather, +with arguments helping the other side. + +At the outset he severely and sternly rebukes two terms of Calhoun's, one +being the use of _constitutional compact_ for _constitution_, and the +other being _the accession of a State to the constitution_. These terms +are utterly impermissible, and are to be scouted. If we accept them, _we +must acquiesce in the monstrous conclusions which the author of the +resolutions draws from them_. That is really what Webster says. Note the +confident positiveness of his pertinent language, some of which we +subjoin: + + "It is easy, quite easy, to see why the honorable gentleman has used + it [constitutional compact] in these resolutions. He cannot open the + book, and look upon our written frame of government, without seeing + that it is called a _constitution_. This may well be appalling to him. + It threatens his whole doctrine of compact, and its darling + derivatives, nullification and secession, with instant confutation. + Because, if he admits our instrument of government to be a + _constitution_, then, for that very reason, it is not a compact + between sovereigns; a constitution of government and a compact between + sovereign powers being things essentially unlike in their very + natures, and incapable of ever being the same. + + We know no more of a constitutional compact between sovereign powers + than we know of a _constitutional_ indenture of copartnership, a + _constitutional_ bill of exchange. But we know what the _constitution_ + is; we know what the bond of our union and the security of our + liberties is; and we mean to maintain and to defend it, in its plain + sense and unsophisticated meaning." + +This is enough of the exorcism of that malignant spirit, constitutional +compact. Now as to the other malignant spirit. Webster says: + + "The first resolution declares that the people of the several States + '_acceded_' to the constitution, or to the constitutional compact, as + it is called. This word 'accede,' not found either in the constitution + itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of the States, has + been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without a well-considered + purpose. + + The natural converse of _accession_ is _secession_; and, therefore, + when it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the union, + it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. _If in + adopting the constitution, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, + nothing would seem necessary to break it up, but to secede from the + same compact._ But the term is wholly out of place.... The people of + the United States have used no such form of expression in establishing + the present government. They do not say that they _accede_ to a + league, but they declare that they _ordain and establish_ a + constitution. Such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in + all the States, without exception, the language used by their + conventions was, that they '_ratified_ the constitution;' some of them + employing the additional words 'assented to' and 'adopted,' but all of + them 'ratifying.'" + +Note that I have italicized in the quotation certain admissions of +Webster, which, in case his premises should be disproved, concede the +cause to his adversary. And we will now tell you how Calhoun did disprove +those premises. + +He showed that Webster himself had in a senate speech called the +constitution a _constitutional compact_; and that President Washington, in +his official announcement to congress, described North Carolina as +_acceding_ to the union by the ratification she had at last made of the +constitution. + +As to these two points Calhoun further sustained himself with +unquestionable authority and also argument inconfutable by one who, like +Webster, did not find the true _ratio decidendi_, that is, the effect of +evolution to bring forth the nation. + +The rest of Calhoun's answer will be considered a little later. But what +of it has already been given covers the essentials of the controversy. In +supporting his proposition that the States were sovereign when they made +the constitution, and kept their entire sovereignty intact afterwards, he +was too strong for his antagonist. And yet had his knowledge of the facts +been fuller, how much better he could have done. He could have quoted from +all the great men who made the constitution and secured its ratification +language, in which _accede_ is used again and again in the same sense as +it is in his resolutions. + +Likewise, he could have quoted language in which they designated the +constitution as a compact or something synonymous. Madison--to mention +only one of many instances--advocating ratification in the Virginia +convention, called the constitution "a government of _a federal nature_, +consisting of _many coequal sovereignties_." What an effective _argumentum +ad hominem_ could Calhoun have found in the provision of the constitution +of the State of Webster, to wit: that Massachusetts is free, sovereign, +and independent, retaining every power which she has not expressly +delegated to the United States.[30] + +Webster also made blunders in construing the context of the constitution, +as well as the clauses specially involved, in contrasting the constitution +with the articles of confederation, and in his reading of our +constitutional history. These blunders were exhaustively, ably, +relentlessly exposed. + +We who are trained either in forensic or parliamentary debate well know +the conquering and demolishing reply. Although, as we have just shown, +Calhoun's reply could have been far more effective than it really was, +still its success and triumph were so evident that when he closed, John +Randolph, who had heard it, wanted a hat obstructing his sight removed, so +that, as he said, he might see "Webster die, muscle by muscle." + +Master the question at issue, and read the two speeches as impartially as +you strive to read the discussion of AEschines and Demosthenes, and if you +are qualified to judge of debate between intellectual giants you must +admit that Webster was driven from every inch of ground chosen by him as +his very strongest, and which he confidently believed that he could hold +against the world. + +Yet the union men, who were hosts in the north and numerous even in the +south at that time, accepted Webster's speech as the bible of their +political faith, and as its reward ennobled him with the pre-eminent title +of Expounder of the Constitution. They ignored, or they never learned of, +the pulverizing refutation. But the State-rights men and the south +generally understood. Webster also understood. He did not make any real +rejoinder. And his subsequent utterances are in harmony with the +State-rights doctrine to which Calhoun seems to have converted him.[31] I +fancy that with that rare humor which was one of his shining gifts, he +dubbed himself in his secret meditations, "Expounder because not +expounding." Later I shall tell you how Webster builded better than he +knew, and that there was, after all, in the speech that which fully +justifies the worship it received from the union men. + +But there is something else pertinent to be learned here. That the north +generally found out only what Webster said in the debate for his side, and +never even heard of what was said on the other, and that the south became +at once familiar with both speeches, proves that each section had already +formed its own belonging and independent public, and that the southern +public kept attentive watch upon all affairs of fact or opinion +interesting the other, while the northern public knew hardly anything at +all of the south. A large percentage of the southern leaders had studied +in northern schools and colleges. In this and many other ways they had +been instructed as to the north. Such instruction contributed very greatly +to southern supremacy in the federal government until the election of +Lincoln. We can now see that the powers in charge, as a part of their +work, made the great northern public, which, as Lincoln observed, was to +be the savior of the union, stop its ears to all anti-union sentiments or +arguments. How else can you understand it that the ante-bellum notices of +Webster, the memoir by Everett, the different utterances of Choate, and +many, many other sketches, are so utterly dumb as to Calhoun's great +reply? And is not the same dumbness of Curtis, Von Holst, and McMaster, +writing after the war, due to the survival in the north of the old +constraint? a constraint so powerful that, while Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in +1883, did concede just a little to Calhoun, he stopped far short of the +full justice that I believe he would now render were he to traverse the +ground again. + +We must now go beyond what we have already hinted, and show you plainly +how both the union men and the State-rights men assumed untenable +premises, and how the south, maintaining a cause foredoomed, vanquished in +the forum of discussion her adversary, maintaining the side which fate had +decreed must win. In no other way can the reader be better made to +understand the incalculable potency of the forces which preserved the +American union after its orators and advocates had all been discomfited; +and in no other way can he better learn what principles are to be invoked +if he would grasp the real essence of the union. + +We emphasize the material and cardinal mistake of the union men, thus +phrased by Webster in the speech we have discussed: "Whether the +constitution be a compact between States in their sovereign capacities, is +a question which must be mainly argued from what is contained in the +instrument itself." + +This was to abandon inexpugnable ground. That ground was the great body of +pertinent facts, known to all, which begun the making of the union before +the declaration of independence, and which, from that time on to the very +hour that Webster was speaking, had been making the union stronger and +more perfect. He ought to have contended that a nation grows; that it +cannot be made, or be at all modified, even by a constitution. Any +constitution is its creature, not its creator. + +How weak he was when he invoked construction of the federal constitution +as the main umpire. That constitution had been always construed against +him. The three departments of the federal government had each uniformly +treated it as a compact between sovereign States; and they kept this up +until the brothers' war broke out. Mr. Stephens, in his great +compilation,[32] demonstrates this unanswerably. But the State-rights men +had a still greater strength than even this, if the question be conceded +to be one of construction. As the author of the Republic of Republics +shows by a mountain of proofs, the illustrious draftsmen of the +constitution and their contemporaries who finally got the constitution +adopted--all the people, high and low, who favored the cause--declared at +the time that the sovereignty of the States would remain unimpaired after +adoption.[33] + +To sum up, the generation that drafted and adopted the constitution, and +all the succeeding ones who had lived under it, agreed that the States +were sovereign. + +How could even Webster talk these facts out of existence? At every stage +of the intersectional debate the cause of the south supporting State +sovereignty became stronger. And there were great hosts at the north who +understood the record as the south did; and, while they hoped and prayed +that separation would never come, they conscientiously conceded State +sovereignty to the full. It seems to me to be the fact that, although the +federal soldiers cherished deep love for the union, a very great majority +of the more intelligent among them did not long keep at its height the +emotion excited by the attack on Fort Sumter, and soon settled back into +their former creed, holding, because of the reasons summarized above, the +States to be sovereign; and while they thought it supreme folly in the +south to set up the confederacy, they still believed that to do so was +but the exercise of an indubitable right of the States creating it. From +what I saw at the time, and the many proofs that appeared to accumulate +upon me afterwards, this explains the unprecedented panic with which the +federal army abandoned the field at the First Manassas. Consider just a +moment. The federal army, giving the confederates a complete surprise, +turns their position and drives them back in rout. The confederates make +an unexpected stand, fight for some hours, and at last, assuming the +offensive, win the field. The troops on each side practically all raw +volunteers, very much alike in race and character. But the federals had +much more than two to one engaged, as is demonstrated by the fact that the +confederates had only twenty-five regiments of infantry in action, and +they took prisoners from fifty-five. The more one who, like me, observed +much of the war, thinks it over, the more clearly he sees that the flight +from Manassas is not to be explained because of the superior courage and +stamina of the southern soldiers. I believe that the union men, observing +how brave and death-defying their brothers on the other side were in +facing disaster that seemed irretrievable and odds irresistible, at last +became convinced that these brothers, defending home and firesides, were +right, and that they themselves, invading an inviolably sovereign State, +were heinously wrong; and thus awakened conscience made cowards of all +these gallant men. And it is thoroughly established, I believe, that +everywhere in the first engagements of the war, the southern volunteers, +if they were commanded by a fighter, showed far more spirit and stomach +than their adversaries. In the amicable meetings, often occurring upon the +picket line, when we confederates would with good humor ask the union men +how it was that we won so many fights, it was a stereotyped reply of the +latter, "Why, you are fighting for your country and we only for $13 a +month." It was but natural that, by reason of what has been told in the +foregoing, the south unanimously, and a very large number at the north, +should believe any State could under its reserved powers rightfully secede +from the union whenever and for whatever cause it pleased. + +We see now what the angry brothers did not see. The absolute sovereignty +of the States, and the right of secession both _de facto_ and _de jure_ +could have been conceded, and at the same time the war for the union +justified. The unionists could well have said to the south: + + "Your independence is too great a menace to our interests to be + tolerated, and the high duty of self-defence commands that we resist + to the death. The _status quo_ is better for us all. Now that you have + set up for yourself, we must tell you, sadly but firmly, that if you + do not come back voluntarily, we must resort to coercion,--not under + the constitution, for you have thrown that off, but under the law of + nations to which you have just subjected yourself." + +The man who of all southerners has given State sovereignty its most +learned and able defence--Sage, the author of "The Republic of +Republics"--says: "To coerce a state is unconstitutional; but it is +equally true that the precedent of coercing states is established, and +that it is defensible under the law of nations."[34] + +To have received the confederate commissioners as representing an +independent nation, and made demand that the seceding States return to the +union, would have been a far stronger theory than that on which the war +was avowedly waged; for it would have taken from the south that +superiority in the argument which had given her great prestige in Europe, +and even in the north. And lastly, under the law of nations, the federal +government, after coercing the seceding States back, would have had--even +according to the theory of State rights as maintained in the +south--perfectly legitimate power to abolish slavery. The statement that +emancipation was "sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by +the constitution, upon military necessity," protests so much that one sees +that the highly conscientious man hesitated and doubted. And well may he +have doubted; for what warrant can be found in the constitution for +destroying that property which it solemnly engaged to defend and protect +as a condition precedent of its adoption?--that is, if the southern States +were still in the union and under the constitution, as was claimed by all +who justified the proclamation? But if the southern States had gone out of +the union, they had revoked their ratification and had thrown away all the +protection of slavery given by the constitution; and while the +constitution did not direct how the federal government should act in the +matter, the law of nations gave full and ample directions. Its authority +was not stinted nor hampered by any rights recognized in the constitution +as reserved to the States under it. The subsequent amendment, imposed as a +condition of reconstruction, shows that the people of the north seriously +questioned if slavery had been abolished by the proclamation and its +enforcement by the union armies. + +But this, strong as it was, would not have been the true theory. The true +theory--the real fact--is that at the outbreak of the brothers' war, and +long before, the States had become more closely connected than the +Siamese Twins,--indissolubly united as integral parts of the same +organism, like the different trunks of the Banyan tree; and while the +southern nationalization was opposing the union forces with might and +main, it was really but an excrescence, with roots far more shallow than +those of the American union--a parasite like the mistletoe, growing upon +the American body politic, fated to die of itself if not destroyed by its +fell foe. For, as we have explained, the sole motor of this southern +nationalization--slavery--could no more maintain itself permanently +against free labor than the handloom could stand against the steam-loom, +or the draft-horse can much longer compete with artificial traction power. + +Now let us rapidly set in array the stronger supports of this true theory. +We should start with the impulse to combine which adjacency always gives +to communities of the same origin; and external compression and joint +interest to those of diverse origin, as we see in the case of the Swiss. +How clearly does our great American sociologist trace the effect of this +impulse in ancient society. First a body of consanguinei grows into a +gens; after a while, neighboring gentes of the same stock-language form a +tribe; then neighboring tribes, as some of the Iroquois and Aztecs, form a +confederacy. At this point the development of the American Indians was +arrested by the coming of the whites. "A coalescence of tribes into a +nation had not occurred in any case in any part of America," says the +great authority.[35] But we can easily understand what would have occurred +had the Indians been left to themselves. They would have passed out of the +nomadic state into settlements of fixed abodes, local and geographical +political divisions evolving from the old gentes and tribes, the +contiguous ones often uniting. History furnishes many examples of +neighboring communities coalescing into nations. One of the most +remarkable of all is the environment which has constrained peoples of four +different languages to coalesce into the little Swiss nation. Turning away +from prehistoric times and also ancient history, let the student +re-enforce the case of the Swiss, just alluded to, with the modern +nation-making in Italy and Germany. These few of the many instances which +can be given show how and what sorts of adjacent communities are prone to +co-operate or combine for a common purpose, and how such combination +develops at last an irresistible proneness to national union. Drops of +liquid in proximity to one another on a plane may long maintain each their +independent forms; but bring them into actual contact, and presto! all the +globules have coalesced into a single mass. After the belonging part of +the evolutionary science of sociology has been fully developed--which time +does not seem very far off--the subject will receive adequate +illustration. Then all of us will understand that, many years before +Alamance and Lexington, the colonies, in their defence of themselves +against the Indians and the French, in their intercommunication over +innumerable matters of joint interest, in the beneficent example of the +Iroquois confederacy and the advice of our fathers by the Iroquois, as +early as 1755, to form one of the colonies similar to their own,[36] and +in many other things that can be suggested, were steadily becoming one +people, and more and more predisposed to political union. We shall also +see, much more clearly than we do yet, that the Revolutionary war, by +keeping them some years under a general government, imparted new and +powerful impetus to the nationalizing forces, which were working none the +less surely because unobserved. Our lesson will be completely learned +when we recognize that about the time the war with the mother country +commenced the globules, that is, the separate colonies, had become +actually a quasi-political whole,--a stage of evolution so near to that of +full nationality that it is hard to distinguish the two. It seems to me +that the nation had come at least into rudimentary existence when the +declaration of independence was made. Surely from that time on something +wondrously like a _de facto_ national union of the old colonies grew +rapidly, and became stronger and stronger; and this to me is the +sufficient and only explanation of the seismic popular upheaval that +displaced the weaker government under the articles of confederation with +one endowed by the federal constitution with ample powers to administer +the affairs of the nation now beginning to stir with consciousness. And +yet so blind was everybody that in 1787 the delegates and their +constituents all believed the convention to be the organ of the States, +when in truth it was the organ of the new American nation. Prompted by a +self-preserving instinct, this nationality deftly kept itself hid. Had it +been disclosed, the federal constitution could not have been adopted; and +had a suspicion of it come a few years later, there would have been +successful secession. And so each State dreamed on its sweet dream of +dominion until the call to the stars and stripes rang through the north. +Then its people began darkly and dimly to discern the nationalization +which had united the States and become a hoop of adamant to hold the union +forever stanch. Of course to the south nothing appeared but the State +sovereignty of the fathers. Her illuded sight was far clearer and more +confident than the true vision of the north, and she magnified State +sovereignty which she thought she saw, and damned the American +nationality preached by the north as anti-State-rights, when at that very +time a nationality of her own had really put all the southern States at +its feet. It mattered not for the thick perception of the north and the +optical illusion of the south, the American nation was now full grown; and +by the result of the brothers' war it made good its claim to sovereignty. + +The historian must accurately gauge the effect wrought by the wonderfully +successful career of the United States under the federal constitution in +its first years. War with France imminent, Pinckney's winged word, +"Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute," the sword buckled on +again by the father of his country--and peace; the extension of our domain +from the Mississippi to the Pacific by the Louisiana purchase; the +victories won against the men who used to say scornfully that our fathers +could not stand the bayonet, and the still more surprising victories won +with an improvised navy against the mistress of the seas, in the war of +1812; the brilliant operations of Decatur against Algiers; the military +power of the Indians decisively and permanently outclassed, until soon our +women and children on the border were practically secure against the +tomahawk and scalping knife; and perhaps above all the world-wide +spaciousness, as it were, and the inexpressibly greater dignity and +splendor of the public arena, as compared with that of any single colony +or State, which was opened at once to every ambitious spirit--these are +some, only, of the feats and achievements which gave the United States +unquestioned authority at home and incomparable prestige around the world. +And on and on the American nation rushed, from one stage of growth into +and through another, until the result was that for some years before +secession State sovereignty, for all of the high airs it gave itself and +the imposing show of respect it extorted, had become merely a survival. + +Thus did the American nation form, from a number of different neighboring, +cognate, and very closely-akin communities, under that complex of the +forces of growth and those of combination which imperceptibly and +resistlessly steers the social organism along the entire track of its +evolution. The nationalizing leaven was hidden by the powers in charge of +our national destiny in the colonial meal, and it had in time so +completely leavened the whole lump that Rhode Island, and North Carolina, +trying hard to stay out, and Texas desporting joyfully and proudly under +the lone star in her golden independence, could not break the invisible +leading strings, which pulled all three into the United States. Note how +Oregon and California, though largely settled from the south yet being +without slavery, in their extreme remoteness from the brothers' war +adhered to the union cause. And had the southern confederacy triumphed in +the war, the States in it would have staid out of the federal union only +the few years necessary for slavery to run its course. When there was no +more virgin soil for cotton, the southern nation, which was merely a +growth upon the American nation, would have collapsed of itself, as did +the State of Frankland; and that continental brotherhood which brought in +Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Texas, would have commandingly +reasserted itself. The more you contemplate the facts, the more it is seen +that this continental brotherhood was and is the most vigorous tap-root +and stock of nationality in all history. The providence which at first +gradually and surely mixed the colonies into one people, then into a +feeble and infirm political whole, rapidly hardening in consistency, and +lastly into an indissoluble union, and which was from the beginning more +and more developing us into a nation--this overruling evolution, and not +constitution or lawmaking organs, has been, is, and always will be the +ultimate and supreme authority, the opposeless lawgiver, the resistlessly +self-executing higher law in America, creating, altering, modifying or +abolishing man-made constitutions, laws, ordinances, and statutes, as +suits its own true democratic purpose, often inscrutable to +contemporaries. + +The foregoing is the substance of the argument that must now take the +place of that made by Webster and the unionists after him, which was +convincingly confuted by the south. It proves the complete and immaculate +justice of the war for the union. + +This view differs from the other, which we admitted above to be very +strong, mainly in refusing to concede that a State is sovereign and can +legitimately secede at will. But under it, it ought to be conceded that +the States in the southern confederacy were for the time actually out of +the American union by revolution. It is not possible to say they were in +rebellion; that is an offence of individuals standing by an authority +hastily improvised and manifestly sham. It was not by the action of +individuals, but it was by the action of States, veritable political +entities and quasi sovereigns, that the confederacy was organized. When +these States were coerced back, they could not invoke the protection to +their slaves given in a constitution which they had solemnly repudiated. +The United States could therefore deal with them as it had with the +Territories from which it excluded slavery. While of course adequate +protection of the freedmen against their former masters ought to have been +provided, it should at the same time have been made clear to the world +that slavery was abolished solely because events had demonstrated it to be +the only root and cause of dismemberment of the union. Such a familiar +example as the often-exercised power of a municipality to blow up a house, +without compensation therefor, to stop the progress of conflagration, and +many other seemingly arbitrary acts done by society in its +self-preservation, would have occurred to conscientious people +contemplating. And it would have been a long flight in morals above the +proclamation, merely to have justified emancipation on the ground that the +existence of slavery was a serious menace to the life of the nation. + +One's logic may be often wrong, and yet his proposition has been rightly +given him by an instinct, as we so often see in the case of good women. O +this subliminal self of ours, how it bends us hither and thither, as the +solid hemisphere does the little human figure upon it, posing with a +seeming will of his own! Hence, and not from our argument-making faculty, +come not only our own most important principles of action, but also our +very strongest persuasive influence. And it is the subconscious mental +forces moving great masses of men and women all the same way--that is, the +national instincts--which are the all-conquering powers that the apostle +of a good cause arouses and sets in array. And while it is true that the +mere logic of Webster's anti-nullification speech is puerile, the after +world will more and more couple that speech with the reply to Hayne, and +keep the two at the top--above every effort of all other orators. In the +reply to Hayne, in 1830, he had magnified the union in a passage which +ever since has deservedly led all selections for American speech books. +And now, in 1833, when dismemberment actually makes menace of its ugly +self, the great wizard of speech that takes consciences and hearts +captive,[37] proclaimed to his countrymen that there could be no such +thing as lawful secession or nullification. The earnestness and the +emphasis with which he said this were supreme merits of the speech. And +thenceforth it was enough to the hosts of the north to remember that the +American, towering like a mountain above them all, had in his high place +solemnly declared that secession is necessarily revolution. And, to one +who is familiar with the hypnotizing effect of subconscious national +suggestion it is not strange that they scouted Calhoun's demolishing +reply, and treasured Webster's false logic as supreme and perfect +exposition of the constitution. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS + + +For a long while opposition to slavery was moderate and not unreasoning. +The first actual quarrel over it between the sections was when Missouri +applied for admission to the union in 1818. That was settled by the famous +compromise of 1820. The most of the anti-slavery men of that day stood +only against the extension of slavery. While many a one of them believed +his conviction was dictated, independently and entirely, by his +conscience, it was in fact given him because of his relation to the +free-labor nationalization claiming the public lands for itself. That was +also true of the great mass of northerners opposed to slavery down to the +very beginning of the war. They wanted the Territories for themselves. The +contest between the United States and England for Oregon is a parallel +case. The American felt, if this territory falls to the United States, I +and my children and children's children can get cheap land somewhere in +it; but if it falls to England, I and they are forever shut out. In the +intersectional contest over the public lands northerners felt that they +would be practically excluded from any part of them into which slavery was +carried; for infinitely preferring, as they did, the free-labor system, to +which they had been bred, to the slavery system, of which they had no +experience, and against which they were prejudiced, they would never +voluntarily settle where it obtained. This, the prevalent view, brought +about the compromise of 1820, by which all the territory north of 36 deg. 30' +was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the north, not because its +inhabitants were burning with zeal to repress the spread of what they +thought to be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they purposed +thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their own children. + +So much for what we have called the first quarrel between the sections +over slavery. Let us now glance at the stages following until the +root-and-branch abolitionist shows himself. + +For some twenty years after the Missouri compromise was made there was +hardly any public agitation at all as to slavery. In 1840 an abolition +ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much +smaller than had been currently predicted. It is not until January, 1836, +when, upon Calhoun's motion in the senate of the United States to reject +two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, +there ensued a prolonged and passionate discussion, that we can say that +the old free-soil practically begins to pass into an abolition movement. +Here moral attack upon slavery seriously begins. If we think but a moment +we will understand it too well to explain it as an arousal of conscience, +which ought to have been aroused many years before if slavery was indeed +the terrible sin the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. The +agitation of 1830, the year that Webster replied to Hayne, and that of +1833, when he and Calhoun crossed swords over nullification, mark a great +advance of intersectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the +Missouri compromise. We can see now as we look back what contemporaries +could not see, that is, that the two were _avant couriers_ of the southern +confederacy. But some of the contemporaries did discern the fact--not +consciously, but instinctively. With these there was, in subliminal +ratiocination, a process somewhat as follows: The southern confederacy, if +it does come, will disrupt the union, which assures, while it lasts, +immunity of our country from frequent wars upon its own soil, and from the +heavy load of great armies kept up even in the intervals of peace. This +disruption will establish in America all the evil conditions of Europe +from which our fathers fled hither. Slavery is the _vis matrix_, the sole +developing force, the life of this menaced confederacy. Let us abolish +slavery, and preserve the union. + +How accurately the common instincts--especially those protecting our +private interests--discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes +more of a marvel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally right, +the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter threatens great injury, they +excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. How else +can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ and +worshipping the same God, were at last divided, the northern churches +impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. Dwell upon this +fact until you interpret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and +the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the +other the most conscientious and best of the south unanimous that it is +morally right. Then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists, +and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire +people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that +of the other did the same things against it. When you do this, you must +admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are +members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions. + +The economic interest of the north was against slavery. It was her +interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free +workers. It was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there +be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put +thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army. +On the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so +great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to +preserve slavery, if that should be necessary. Each side feels deeply and +more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of +production and subsistence--the property to which of all it believes its +title most indefeasible. It required some years to bring affairs to this +point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the +root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course +all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of +the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to +masquerade as characters widely different from the true. When these +servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not +that of their masters, how the directors must smile. They have guaranteed +animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a +supreme momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically recognizes +in his _dux vitae dia voluptas_. The passion of anger is the converse of +that of love. When consent cannot settle some great controversy that must +be settled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation +of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. In +the ripeness of time the Ransy Sniffleses[38] come forth. They say and do +everything possible to bring on the impending mortal combat. They never +grasp the essence of the contention, for it is their mission to arouse +feeling, passion, anger. They are resistlessly--most conscientiously and +honestly--impelled to make the other side appear detestable and +insultingly offensive in heinous wrong-doing. The most zealous and the +most influential of the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they +vaulted into the arena. Garrison was twenty-six when he started the +"Liberator" in 1831, Wendell Phillips was some six years younger than +Garrison, and he was about twenty-six when he made his debut with a +powerful impromptu in Boston, in 1837. Whittier was two years younger than +Garrison, and he was early a co-worker in the "Liberator." It is +demonstrated by everything they said that they were entirely ignorant of +the south and its people, of the average condition of the slave in the +south, and especially of the negro's grade of humanity. They never studied +and investigated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to +ascertain the truth. They assumed the facts to be as it suited their +purposes, given them by the directors, of exciting hatred of their +opponents,--and it added greatly to their efficiency that they fully +believed their assumptions. Knowing really nothing of the negro except +that he was a man, it was natural for them to believe, as they did, that +the typical, average negro slave of the south was in all the essentials of +good citizenship just such a human being as the typical, average white. If +they did not go quite so far, they surely claimed for him something so +near to it that it is practically the same. We shall, as suggested above, +treat this pernicious error more fully in later chapters. + +The root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever since the +emancipation proclamation became effective that the overthrow of slavery +was brought about by them; and thousands upon thousands believing it sing +them hosannas. But it is an undeniable fact that the superior power of +free labor in its irreconcilable conflict with slavery was bound to do in +America what it had done everywhere else. And without the abolitionist at +all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were few even if there had +been no secession, and very few if secession had triumphed. For free +labor--its fell and implacable foe--was on the outside steadily and surely +encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the extension that was a +condition of its life; and within its ring fence necessarily it was +rapidly exhausting all of its resources. It was the mighty counteraction +of free labor that crushed slavery. The root-and-branch abolitionist +thrown up by this movement which had set forward irresistibly, long before +he was ever heard of, and who believed that he started it and was guiding +it, strikingly examples the proverb + + "Er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben." + +I believe that future history will give him credit only for having a +little hastened forward the inevitable. + +Another abolition misstatement ought to be corrected. Sumner fulminated +against what he called the oligarchs of slavery. And it was common at the +north to speak of southern aristocracy and southern aristocratic +institutions. Of course the slaves had no political privileges, no more +than they had in Athens, which has always been deemed the most genuine +republic ever known. There was in the old south no oligarch, or anything +like him, unless you choose to call such a man as Calhoun an oligarch, +whose influence over his State was entirely from the good opinion and +unexampled confidence of the free citizens of all classes, which he had +won. There was no aristocracy, except such a natural one as can be found +in every one of our States, as is illustrated by the Adamses in +Massachusetts, the Lees in Virginia, and the Cobbs in Georgia. In those +days property was much more equally distributed than now; and it was easy +for the energetic and saving poor young man, of the humblest origin, to +make his way up. In all my day there was universal suffrage, and it was +political death to propose any modification. I explained nearly thirty +years ago how southern conditions prevented the development of anything +like the beneficent New England town-meeting system.[39] But for all of +that the entire spirit of southern society was democratic in the extreme, +far more so than it is now with the nominating machinery everywhere in the +south except South Carolina, controlled by corporation oligarchs. When the +root-and-branch abolitionist inveighed against oligarchy and aristocracy, +and aristocratic institutions in the south, he was just as mistaken as he +was in denouncing what he asserted to be the guilt in morals of +slaveholding. + +The more I study the abolitionists whom I distinguish as root-and-branch, +the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and more +emotional I find them to be. I have just mentioned some of their +misrepresentations; and in later chapters I shall dwell upon their +cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the human scale. I have +not sufficient space for more of these things. I will give just one +example of their wildness. They put in circulation that Toombs had said he +expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker +Hill monument,--a slander which they persisted in renewing after he had +solemnly and publicly denied it.[40] In their excited imaginations they +were sure that the south was cherishing a scheme by which, under the help +of the court that made the Dred Scott decision, slavery was to be +established and protected by law everywhere in the north. The only +parallel I can think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some +poor souls in the Confederate ranks in front of Richmond in 1862, who, +when they learned that Jackson had got in the enemy's rear, expressed +lively fears that he was going to drive McClellan's army over them. + +And the fire-eaters,--how they got important facts wrong! They habitually +said that the northern masses were too untruthful and dishonest for us of +the south to stay in the partnership without disgrace and loss of +self-respect. I heard of one who was wont gravely to assert that +prostitutes and ice were all that the south was dependent upon the north +for; and these were only luxuries which it was better to do without. +Perhaps the height of falsification by the hotspurs was the assertion, +made everywhere again and again, that northerners were such cowards that, +even if they were spurred into a war in defence of the union, any one +average southerner would prove an overmatch for any five of them. + +It is now high time that each section turn resolutely away from these +fanatics, and the literature which they have made or informed, to seek +right instruction as to slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of +the masses on each side and of their leaders, and all other belonging +details, in the real facts. Especially must we understand the internecine +duel between free labor and slavery, and what was the purpose of the +directors of evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the +fire-eater upon the stage. When we grasp that purpose clearly, how +pretentious do we understand their claims and self-laudation to be, and +how clearly we see that they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that +became so vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the little +fice egging on the big dogs to do their fighting. I have still vivid +recollections of hearing in amicable interviews of hostile pickets these +characters denounced for keeping out of the war which, as was then said, +they had caused,--the fanatical abolitionists denounced by the federals, +the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the blue cockade wearers, by the +confederates. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +CALHOUN + + +After John Caldwell Calhoun, who was born March 18, 1782, the birth-year +of Webster, had become large enough to go to the field, the most of his +time until he was eighteen was spent in work on the plantation. His father +had never had but six months' schooling. There were no schools in that +region except a few "old field" ones, where the three R's only were +taught. To one of these John went for a few months. The boy learned to +read, and manifestly he had acquired some habit of reading. In his +thirteenth year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, Moses +Waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. He found a circulating library +in the house. This was his first access to books. He read old Rollin, and +he probably moused about in Robertson's History of America and Life of +Charles V, and Voltaire's Charles XII. Having laid Rollin aside, he +assailed Locke's famous Essay; but when he got to the chapter on Infinity +his health had become bad, doubtless due to his change from active to +sedentary habits and from physical to mental activity. So he was taken +back to his work at home. His father had died in the meanwhile, and his +mother, who had great business talent, taught him, as we are told, "how to +administer the affairs of a plantation."[41] It will appear in the sequel +that he was superbly trained.[42] When he attained the age of eighteen the +family had become convinced that he ought to be got ready for a +profession. John, knowing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and +having resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this. But the +family persisted. This doubtless influenced him to turn the subject +carefully over in his mind; and the decision which he made showed an +understanding of his own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience +of his future which, when his youth, small opportunity of observation, and +want of schooling are remembered, are very wonderful. He gave this family, +who were not well-to-do, to understand he would not accept a limited and +makeshift education. Naturally they asked what sort did he mean, and he +answered, "The best school, college, and legal education to be had in the +United States."[43] Then they asked, How long did he think all this would +take, and he promptly answered seven years. To the average reader it seems +that the time necessary to carry this unschooled lad through the course he +proposed had been egregiously underestimated by him; but to the family, as +they thought of the appertaining annual expenses, it must have looked very +long. They had to give in. That irrefragable influence over his people +which showed itself as soon as he came upon the public stage begins here. +Some one long afterwards said of him, that if he could but talk with every +man he would always have the whole United States on his side. It is more +than probable that in the five years after he had left Waddell's school he +had, in plantation management and other interests of the family, +convinced them that he always acted or advised wisely. Another comment is +in place here. Study of the record of his early life convinces you that +very soon after, if not before, the commencement of his legal studies, he +decided to make law only a stepping-stone by which to enter public life +and also acquire the means to plant. I cannot help inferring that this +was--somewhat vaguely it may be--his intention already formed when he +dictated terms to the family as just told. It is not at all impossible +that to him who afterwards astonished the world by the sureness of his +prophecy there had even then been revealed the career awaiting; and so he +resolved to get ready for college in two years, and pass the rest of the +seven where, besides competent instructors, he would have cultivated +society, libraries, and the best of opportunities to qualify himself for +public life. Be our conjecture true or not, in two years after he had +opened his Latin grammar he entered the junior class at Yale, and two +years later he graduated with credit. After reading law in an office he +took a year's course at the Litchfield law school in Connecticut, and then +he went into an office again for a while. Some time in June, 1807, he hung +out his shingle at Abbeville Court-house, as it was called up to the time +of reconstruction. A few days afterwards in that month occurred the attack +on the Chesapeake, and when the news came it caused a public meeting in +the town. Some good report of him must have been bruited about in the +community in advance of his coming. It is almost certain that his +education had greatly developed those powers of conversation mentioned +above, and that many listeners had greatly approved his views of the +outrage, and the patriotic indignation he uttered over it. It is not +stretching probability too far to assert that, young as he was, he was by +far the ablest man that could be found in the locality to advise upon the +burning question which had arisen so suddenly. He was selected to draft +appropriate resolutions and present them. There is no record of these or +of his speech. But as we know that the resolutions carried, and that +tradition still reports admiringly of the speech, we may be sure that his +performance in both was extraordinarily good. Although there had been a +strong popular prejudice in the county--or district, as it was then +called--against lawyer representatives, October 13, 1807, less than four +months after the meeting just described, he was elected to the legislature +at the head of the ticket. + +In that day presidential electors were appointed by the State +legislatures. Shortly after the session of this legislature to which +Calhoun had been elected opened, there was an informal meeting of the +republican members to make nominations for president and vice-president. +The first was unanimously given to Madison. When the other was up, Calhoun +declared his conviction that there was soon to be war with England. At +such a time there should be no dissension in the party. He gave strong +reasons why George Clinton should not be nominated, as had been proposed; +and he suggested John Langdon of New Hampshire as the proper man. The +thorough acquaintance with the grave situation which he manifested, the +due respect he showed Clinton while opposing his nomination, and the +ability with which he discussed the question, advanced him at once to a +place among the most distinguished members of the legislature. + +"Several important measures were originated by Mr. Calhoun while in the +legislature which have become a permanent portion of the legislation of +the State, and he soon acquired an extensive practice at the bar."[44] He +kept in the very midst of the political swim. His reputation as an honest, +true, and able adviser had become so great and influential that the +people, in their warm approval of the strong measures he advocated as +preparation for the threatened war, pushed him out as their candidate for +congress and elected him most triumphantly in October, 1810. The first +session of this, the twelfth congress, commenced November 4, 1811. Clay, +then speaker of the house, evidently expecting much of him, gave him the +second place in the committee on foreign relations. There came before the +house a measure contemplating an increase of the army in view of the war +which appeared to many to be nearer than ever. John Randolph was against +it. In March, 1799, a year before Calhoun started to school, Randolph, +then not twenty-six years old, had fearlessly met the great Patrick Henry +in stump discussion, and had, in the opinion of his auditors, got the +better of it. He was elected to congress in this year. Steadily since then +he had developed, until he was now one of the most prominent figures upon +the national stage. While his powers of discussion of a subject were +great, the power that especially characterized him was that of nonplussing +his antagonist with a snub or a sarcasm. Randolph made an earnest speech. +Calhoun replied. It is not enough to say of this speech that it evinces +full mastery of the subject. It presents every important view most +effectively, satisfactorily answering everything which had been said on +the other side. And it is especially happy in the wise use made at each +proper place of the commands of morality and patriotism. + +Mr. Pinkney has instructively and entertainingly illustrated this speech +by his excerpts.[45] To them I here add another, which I would have you +consider,--Randolph had strenuously insisted that the cause of this war, +said by the other side to be impending, should first be defined; and until +this plain duty was done there should be no preparation. To this Calhoun +said: + + "The single instance alluded to, the endeavor of Mr. Fox to compel Mr. + Pitt to define the object of the war against France, will not support + the gentleman from Virginia in his position. That was an extraordinary + war for an extraordinary purpose. It was not for conquest, or for + redress of injury, but to impose a government on France which she + refused to receive--an object so detestable that an avowal dared not + be made." + +This is a thrust which Randolph especially could appreciate. + +The more I examine this first speech of a very young member of congress +upon a question of such transcendent importance to the people of the +United States, the more sound, able, complete,--to sum up in one +word,--the more statesmanly it appears. I am confident that whoever will +weigh it carefully will agree with me. He will not be surprised to learn +that it carried the house decisively. Even in Randolph's own State it drew +great praise. But its fame went abroad everywhere, and it was revealed to +America that she had found among her public men another giant. + +In the year 1800 Calhoun was a lad of eighteen, without even a complete +common school education. Represent to yourself clearly what he had +accomplished in the interval from the year last mentioned to December 12, +1811, when, not yet thirty, he made the speech we have just considered. If +any public man of America, burdened with such disadvantages, has +surpassed, or even equalled, this meteoric stride, I do not now recall +him. I am not emphasizing especially that he got to congress in such a +short while. What I do especially emphasize is that he so early won place +as an eminent statesman. In these eleven years he lost no time at all in +idleness, or probation, or waiting. + +January 8, 1811, some three months after his election to congress, he +married his cousin, Floride Calhoun--not a first cousin, but a daughter of +a first cousin. His letters of courtship, not to her, but, in the old +style, to her mother; his only letter to her, written shortly before the +marriage; and other letters from and to him afterwards, all of which you +can read in the Correspondence,--show him to be such a lover, father, +brother, son-in-law, brother-in-law, grandfather, etc., as everybody +wants. Some South Carolinian, adequately gifted, ought to tell befittingly +the tale of Calhoun's beautiful domestic life. + +I must now mention some other facts which will further enlighten you as to +the man. + +I was fourteen when Calhoun died. For four or five years before, and +afterwards until I went to the brothers' war, I heard much of Calhoun from +relatives in Abbeville county and the Court House. I still recall most +vividly what a paternal uncle habitually said of the brightness and +unexampled impressiveness of Calhoun's eyes, and the charm and +instructiveness of his conversation. In Georgia there was not a public man +whose course in politics commended itself to all of my acquaintances. I +had become accustomed to hearing much disparagement of Toombs and of +Stephens, with whom I was most familiar. But my South Carolina relatives, +and every man or woman of that State whose talk I listened to; every boy +or girl with whom I talked myself, yea, all of the negroes,--always warmly +maintained the rightfulness of Calhoun's politics, national or State. I +thought it a good hit when a Georgia aunt of mine dubbed the Palmetto +State "The Kingdom of Calhoun," and Abbeville Court House "its capital." +This universal political worship was a great surprise to me. But there was +a still greater one to come. That was, that according to all accounts, and +without any contradiction, in spite of his living away from home the most +of his time, he yet gave his planting interests and all else appertaining +the very best management, and with such unvarying financial success it +would be unkind to compare Webster's money-wasting and amateur farming at +Marshfield. In this community, where he seemed to be known as well as he +was before he removed to Fort Hill, some sixty miles distant, in 1825, he +had become a far greater authority in business than he had even attained +in politics. His acquaintances all sought his advice, which they followed +when they got it; thus making this busiest of public servants their +agricultural oracle. + +The reader will find in Starke's memoir and the Correspondence ample +proofs of that diligent attention of Calhoun to his home affairs which +made him the exceptionally successful planter that he was. Starke happily +calls him "the great farmer-statesman of our country."[46] + +Now let us see where he made his mark as an able business man in another +place. He was Monroe's secretary of war from 1817 to 1825. When he entered +the office he found something like $50,000,000 of unsettled accounts +outstanding, and jumble in every branch of the service. He soon brought +down the accounts to a few millions. And he reduced the annual expenditure +of four to two and a half millions, "without subtracting a single comfort +from either officer or soldier," as he says with becoming pride. He +established it, that the head of every subordinate department be +responsible for its disbursements. His economy was not parsimonious. He +was especially popular at West Point, for which he did great things, and +with the officers and men of the army. + +And if one chose to look through the belonging parts of the Correspondence +and the other accessible pertinent records, he will find ample proofs that +he was ever alert to all the duties of his office, performing each one, +whether important or trivial, with the height of skill and diligence. + +Consider, as to his career in the war department, this language of one of +the most inveterate of his disparagers: + + "Many of his friends and admirers had with regret seen him abandon his + seat in the legislative hall for a place in the president's council. + They apprehended that he would, to a great extent, lose the renown + which he had gained as a member of congress, for they thought that the + didactic turn of his mind rendered him unfit to become a successful + administrator. He undeceived them in a manner which astonished even + those who had not shared these apprehensions. The department of war + was in a state of really astounding confusion when he assumed charge + of it. Into this chaos he soon brought order, and the whole service of + the department received an organization so simple and at the same time + so efficient that it has, in the main, been adhered to by all his + successors, and proved itself capable of standing even the test of the + civil war."[47] + +Now let us glance at his magnificent success in winning for the United +States the vast territory of Texas and Oregon. The latter had long been in +dispute between us and England. Ever since 1818 it had been jointly +occupied under agreement. We wanted all of it; and of course as our +settlements in the west approached nearer and nearer, our desire for it +mounted. And England wanted all of it too. Soon after Texas achieved her +independence she applied for admission into our union, but as the settlers +had carried slavery with them free-soil opposition kept her out. Texas got +in debt, and the only thing for her to do was to tie to some great power +willing to receive her. England, seeing her opportunity, was trying to +propitiate Mexico in order, with the favor of the latter, to get Texas for +herself. Of course the south wanted Texas to come in, but the free-soilers +did not. And the north wanted Oregon; and although its soil and climate +did not admit of slavery, the south was against its acquisition unless the +concession be made that it be permitted to slavery to occupy all the +suitable soil of the Territories. As early as 1843 Calhoun, with his +piercing vision, saw the situation clearly. If the dispute as to Oregon +provoked war, England could throw troops thither from China by a much +shorter route than ours, the latter going as it did from the States on the +Atlantic coast around Cape Horn. That would be bad enough for us. But +suppose England gets Texas. A hostile power, with a vast empire of land, +will spring up under the very nose of the States, where our adversary will +acquire a base of operations in the highest degree unfavorable to us. Then +England will rise in her demands as to Oregon, and perhaps win all of it +from us. In an affair of inter-dependent contingencies it is of the first +importance to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing first. Texas +was ripe, Oregon was not. Calhoun saw the first thing to do was to annex +Texas. For when England cannot secure that base of operations in Texas she +will shrink from making Oregon a cause of war, and while she is +hesitating, Oregon--which is near to us and far from her--is steadily +filling with population in which settlers from the United States more and +more preponderate; and at the same time the populous States are fast +approaching. After a while the inhabitants will all practically be on our +side, and they will have hosts of allies to the eastward in supporting +distance, which would give us an invincible advantage in case war for +Oregon does come. This is what Calhoun styled "masterly inactivity" on our +part, and which, had it been fully carried out as he advised, Oregon would +now extend much further north than it does. To sum up in a line, he saw +that activity as to Texas and inactivity as to Oregon was each masterly. + +But the hotheads of the south and the fanatical wing of the anti-slavery +men at the north rose up, obstructing his way like mountains. At the same +time there was lack of vision in even the leaders of each section who +could rise to patriotism above prejudice. Polk blundered in not continuing +Calhoun as secretary of State, in which place he had made so good a +beginning that it soon accomplished the annexation of Texas. In his +inaugural Polk asserted that our title to Oregon was good, and to be +maintained by arms if need be; and he went further away from "masterly +inactivity" in his first annual message. He evoked great popular +excitement, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" and "All of Oregon or none!" +came forth in passionate ejaculations in every corner of the land. Calhoun +had been called from retirement to take Texas and Oregon in hand, and when +Polk made a new secretary he went back into the retirement for which he +greatly longed. The record shows that the best men of all parties, north +and south, felt that as Tyler's secretary he was the man of all to manage +the two matters so vitally important to the United States, and they deeply +regretted that the place was not continued to him by Polk. And now +instead of the happy settlement they had been sure the master would +effect, the country was face to face with a war that portended direful +disaster to each section. The eyes of patriots turned to Calhoun again; +and as he cannot be secretary, he must be in the senate. And a way being +made, he was seated in due time. It needs not to go into much detail. The +situation had changed greatly. The especial thing to do now was to avoid +war. And as a resolution to terminate the joint occupation had been passed +by congress, and as the ire of Great Britain had been greatly aroused, +there must at once be a settlement of the Oregon controversy. And so the +controversy was compromised and averted, this good result being mainly due +to the efforts of Calhoun. Even Von Holst calls his speech of March 16, +1846, great. It will live forever. It is paying it gross disrespect to +treat it as mere oratory, even if one concede to it the highest eloquence. +It voices the ripest wisdom of the ablest practical statesman dealing with +a most momentous public affair, in a crisis delicate and perilous in the +extreme. The vindication of the true course of action is majestic. But to +my mind the great achievement of the speech is his sublime philanthropic +deprecation of war between England and America. When the papers told us at +the outbreak of our war with Spain that all the British subjects on the +warships of the latter had thrown up their places, it seemed to me that +nothing else could so fairly omen co-operation of England and America in +the near future to democratize and make happy the world. And I believe +that that inexpressibly sweet token of Anglo-American brotherhood would +have been postponed at least a half-century, if not much longer, had it +not been for that speech. + +This speech likewise discomfited pro-slavery and anti-slavery fanatics +alike, and won the hearty approval of the wisest and best of every part of +the country. + +Calhoun's self-education merits the closest attention. Railroaded through +school and college, as he was, his tuition was necessarily defective in +some important particulars. In the main he spelled accurately, but the +Correspondence shows that he wrote "sylable," "indisoluably," "weat" for +wet, "merical" for miracle, "sperit," "disappinted," "abeated," etc. It is +doubtless to be regretted that he did not have larger familiarity with +polite literature. Admitting these faults, still we must know he had been +uncommonly studious and thoughtful to win his degree in four years after +his start to school; but his systematic study, careful observation, and +hard thinking really commenced with his entrance of public life, and were +kept up to his very death. Note this pertinent excerpt from Webster's +memorial speech, in which I italicize a passage happily describing his +studies: + + "I have not, in public nor private life, known a more assiduous person + in the discharge of his appropriate duties. I have known no man who + wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of + it in any pursuits not connected with the immediate discharge of his + duty. He seemed to have no recreation but the pleasure of conversation + with his friends. _Out of the chambers of congress, he was either + devoting himself to the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to the + immediate subject of the duty before him_, or else he was indulging in + those social interviews in which he so much delighted." + +From his first speech in congress to the end of his life you note that he +has always mastered the pertinent facts, literature, and guiding +principles of whatever he has to do with, whether in speech or action. +This indicates continuous, most industrious, and most wise +self-instruction. I believe it was Mr. Parton who said that Jefferson was +the best educated man of his time. His full equipment from all belonging +learning and science was surpassed only by the versatility with which he +instantly solved all new questions. But Calhoun's was more of a special +training than Jefferson's. Having for some years learned by doing,--doing +after the best study and reflection, consistent with due promptness, that +he could give each thing he had to do,--his capital of knowledge and +developed faculty had become all-sufficient. Stephens, a profound student +of both Jefferson and Calhoun, makes this comparison: + + "Amongst the many great men with whom he associated, Mr. Calhoun was + by far the most philosophical statesman of them all. Indeed, with the + exception of Mr. Jefferson, it may be questioned if in this respect + the United States has ever produced his superior."[48] + +Government--that is, good democratic government--he studied all his life +with rare devotion. His two special works,[49] and the parallel parts of +his speeches, warmly commended by such a thinker and friend of democracy +as John Stuart Mill, are sufficing proof. In all the long tract from Plato +and Aristotle down to the popularization of direct legislation, which +commences with the publication of Mr. Sullivan's pamphlet a few years ago, +there is to be found nobody who has penetrated so deeply into the secrets +of those principles by which alone true democracy must be maintained. With +what clear vision does he read us lessons from the unanimous veto of the +Roman tribunes; the political history of the twelve tribes of Israel; the +balance of interests in the English constitution and our own, intended to +guarantee what he calls government of the concurrent majority. His +illustration from the confederacy of Indian Tribes is to be especially +emphasized as demonstration of his industry in collecting his materials +and of his great insight.[50] + +I must give still another example, which I am sure will yet benignly +enlighten America. + +Ever since Adam Smith fell into my hands in early manhood I have had a +strong predilection for political economy. My conviction during the +brothers' war that proper management of the currency of the confederacy +was indispensable to the success of our cause initiated me into an earnest +study of the science of money. And later intense interest in the greenback +question, and afterwards the silver question, added to the impetus. The +longer I observed the more plainly I saw a few private persons controlling +the coinage, the greenbacks, and the national bank currency of purpose to +monopolize government credit, and also fix the interest rate and the price +level, at any particular time, as suited their selfish interests. The +remedy became clear,--government must retake and fulfil all its money +functions. Especially must it keep the country supplied with a volume of +money which never becomes either redundant or contracted. How to do this +properly brought up the question, What is money? What is it that makes a +sheep, or cow, or coin, or piece of paper, money? For the true answer to +this question is the very beginning and foundation of all monetary +science. I took up Ricardo again, who, with a solitary exception mentioned +a little farther on, had, from the time I turned into him during my study +of the confederate currency, of all the economists by profession, showed +to me the best understanding of the real nature of money; and of course +John Stuart Mill, Jevons, Carl Marx, and others of less note, were +examined. The result confirmed Ricardo in his primacy; although I felt +that the true nature of money was assumed--rather vaguely--by him, and not +clearly expressed as it ought to be. I believed myself familiar with all +the important work of Calhoun. Somehow I had overlooked his contributions +to this subject. A few brief quotations from the more unimportant of these +I found in certain American books, which made me read the pertinent +speeches.[51] It was a most inexpressible surprise to me to find that he +had perfected Ricardo. Briefly stated, this is the true doctrine according +to Calhoun. It is not legal-tender laws, nor is it intrinsic value, which +makes even gold go as money. Well, what is it? Calhoun was not the first +to answer it, for others had given the true answer; but they ran away from +it as soon as they made it. He divined the full satisfactoriness of the +true answer, which he demonstrated to be true by a method as nearly +mathematical as the case admits of. And he lightens up what was dark +before by showing that that is money, and good money, whatever it may +be,--gold, silver, paper, property, what not,--which the government +receives in payment of its dues. The practice of the government,--not +laws, nor the market value of different materials of money,--this is the +great thing. If the United States should refuse to receive gold for its +dues, that would so greatly lessen the demand for gold as money that the +coin would depreciate and drop out of circulation. Nothing--not the +precious metals, not diamonds of the first water, not radium, not the +bills of the best bank, not greenbacks, not treasury notes can maintain +themselves as money if the government will not receive it. This is the +first half of the subject. Calhoun adds the other by showing that whatever +the government makes money, its volume can always be kept of the proper +quantity,--which proper quantity varies with the needs of commerce,--so as +to avoid the too much or too little. His illustration from the treasury +notes of North Carolina, which could not be a legal tender under the +federal constitution, but which circulated briskly and buoyantly and +stayed at par for many years, because they were received without discount +by the State, and also because their volume was kept within bounds, will +yet greatly help the cause of honest money. + +In the achievement just told Calhoun not only excelled the economists of +his day, but he is yet in advance of all of the present except Del +Mar,[52]--the only economist who has excelled Ricardo in divining the +essence of money. These two alone explain clearly and fully why it is that +bankers keep such tenacious grip upon the money function of +government--they thereby so shape its practice that their wares shall be +money, with all the incidents of profit therefrom, and no others shall. +Del Mar never quotes him; and I almost know he has never studied his views +upon this subject. + +America will yet have a "rational money," a term which Prof. Frank Parsons +has happily chosen as the name of his invaluable book.[53] To win it she +must fight many battles with the money power. When this war of the people +is waging by the people for the people, the doctrine of Calhoun will be +the banner of the right. After the sordid money oligarchy is overthrown +and the United States is blessed with a people's money, that benign +deliverance will add prodigiously to the fame of Calhoun. + +My space does not admit of telling you how deeply Calhoun loathed the +spoils system. That must be borne in mind, and taken into account in any +true estimate of him as a statesman. + +I deem it especially important to have you consider his standing with the +people of his State. Literally his word was law in South Carolina. Hayne +in 1832, and Huger in 1845, resigned their seats in the national senate to +give place to him. Everybody in his State always wanted him to lead, and +everybody always wanted him to lead according to his own will. This +unwonted influence, utterly without precedent, was due to the accurate +measure which the masses had taken of him. As he lived and aged among them +they knew him better and better to be irreproachable in private and public +life, the ablest of the able, the most diligent of the diligent, and the +truest of the true as a representative or official, and of that severe and +lofty virtue which scorns all popularity that is not the reward of +righteousness. And so he became example, model, worship, to all classes. +The forty years political ascendency of Pericles in the Athenian democracy +is the only befitting historical parallel which I can think of. Familiar +with the State from boyhood, I have long thought its people the most +advanced of the south. In spite of the revenge wreaked upon her in war, +and in spite of the direr devastation of the twelve years of negro rule +following the fall of the Confederate States, that little community, with +her dispensary and her system of really direct nomination,[54] to say +nothing of her wise management of all her material resources, is teaching +the nation lessons of the highest wisdom. These are the people from whom +Calhoun won a crown more resplendent than any other of our States has ever +bestowed upon a loved son. How eloquent were her last offices. Read Mr. +Pinkney's extracts from the "Carolina Tribute," narrating the reception of +his mortal remains in Charleston:[55] the novel procession of vessels, +displaying emblems of mourning, the solemn landing at noon, an imposing +train moving amid houses hung with black, "a Sabbath-like stillness" +resting on the city, "The solemn minute gun, the wail of the distant bell, +the far-off spires shrouded in the display of grief, the hearse and its +attendant mourners waiting on the spot, alone bore witness that the pulse +of life still beat within the city, that a whole people in voiceless woe +were about to receive and consign to earth all that was mortal of a great +and good citizen." + +Appropriately and impressively Mr. Pinkney closes his description of this +forever memorable demonstration by quoting Carlyle's "How touching is the +loyalty of men to their sovereign man."[56] + +Some men reserve out of the pillage of their fellows a great fund to +signalize their graves. Stronger cars must be made, bridges strengthened, +and too narrow passages avoided by long circuits in order that their huge +piles be transported to the conspicuous spot selected in a fashionable +cemetery. How the funerals which a weeping people give a Calhoun, +Liebknecht, Pingree, Altgeld, and other true ones dwindle such monuments +into smallness and contempt! + +I must add something here to what has been said in the foregoing of +Calhoun's speeches. Somebody must after a while do for him what the +compilation called "The Great Speeches and Orations" has done so well for +Webster. His very greatest effort is that against the force bill, +delivered in the United States senate February 15 and 16, 1833. As an +appeal in behalf of the rights of the minority against the oppressive +majority it is unequalled. All through it, from its most befitting +exordium to the righteous indignation of the closing sentence, there are +passages which "the world will not willingly let die." No one who has ever +given it attention can forget the paragraph defending Carolina against the +charge of passion and delusion; that demolishing as by a tornado the +assertion of a senator that the bill was a measure of peace; the far-famed +one as to metaphysical reasoning; what is said as to the nature of the +contest between Persia and Greece; the rupture in the tribes of Israel +graphically expounded; the first mention of the government of "the +concurring majority" as distinct from and far better than that of the +absolute majority; the lesson to us of the Roman tribunes. To read this +speech becomingly, purge yourself of all prejudice; by an adequate effort +of the historical imagination see all the main things of the then +situation, and put yourself fully in Calhoun's place; so that you cannot +fail to feel all of his deep earnestness. You will have succeeded when you +can rightly appreciate this outburst: + + "Will you collect money when it is acknowledged that it is not wanted? + He who earns the money, who digs it from the earth with the sweat of + his brow, has a just title to it against the universe. No one has a + right to touch it without his consent except his government, and this + only to the extent of its legitimate wants. To take more is robbery; + and you propose by this bill to enforce robbery by murder." + +When I pronounced that against the force bill, the greatest of his +speeches, I was not unmindful of his last, that of March 4, 1850, not +four weeks before his death. I can hardly class it as a speech. It was a +revelation of the woe in store for America if the abolition movement was +not checked. Its analysis and demonstration of the preponderant power of +the north, and its retrospection over the progressive stages by which the +former equilibrium of the sections had been destroyed, are as +clear-sighted as its prediction. Never in all history has an actor in a +revolution described its course behind him so understandingly, nor its +future course with such true prophecy. + +Let us give you the fewest possible selected brief passages that will do +something towards possessing you of the core of Calhoun's valedictory to +the United States and the South. + +This is first in order: "How can the union be saved? There is but one way +by which it can with any certainty; and that is by a full and final +settlement, on the principles of justice, of all the questions at issue +between the two sections. The south asks for justice, simple justice, and +less she ought not to take. She has no compromise to offer but the +constitution, and no concession or surrender to make." + +The vital concern of his section against abolition, and what it must do to +avoid it, he tells in these passages: + + "[The South] regards the relation [of master and slave] as one which + cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two races to the greatest + calamity, and the section to poverty, desolation, and wretchedness, + and accordingly she feels bound, by every consideration of interest + and safety, to defend it." + + "Is it not certain that if something is not done to arrest it [the + abolition movement], the south will be forced to choose between + abolition and secession?" + +If the south must choose secession, he justifies her by the example of +Washington, with a calm and repose that prove his deepest conviction of +its rightfulness, and with a power that cannot be confuted. He says: + + ["The Union cannot] be saved by invoking the name of the illustrious + southerner whose mortal remains repose on the western bank of the + Potomac. He was one of us--a slaveholder and a planter. We have + studied his history, and find nothing in it to justify submission to + wrong. On the contrary, his great fame rests on the solid foundation + that, while he was careful to avoid doing wrong to others, he was + prompt and decided in repelling wrong. I trust that, in this respect, + we have profited by his example. + + Nor can we find anything in his history to deter us from seceding from + the union should it fail to fulfil the objects for which it was + instituted, by being permanently and hopelessly converted into a means + of oppressing instead of protecting us. On the contrary, we find much + in his example to encourage us should we be forced to the extremity of + deciding between submission and disunion. + + There existed then as well as now a union,--that between the parent + country and her then colonies. It was a union that had much to endear + it to the people of the colonies. Under its protecting and + superintending care the colonies were planted, and grew up and + prospered, through a long course of years, until they became populous + and wealthy. Its benefits were not limited to them. Their extensive + agricultural and other productions gave birth to a flourishing + commerce which richly rewarded the parent country for the trouble and + expense of establishing and protecting them. Washington was born and + grew up to manhood under that union. He acquired his early distinction + in its service; and there is every reason to believe that he was + devotedly attached to it. But his devotion was a rational one. He was + attached to it, not as an end, but as a means to an end. When it + failed to fulfil its end, and, instead of affording protection, was + converted into the means of oppressing the colonies, he did not + hesitate to draw his sword and head the great movement by which that + union was forever severed, and the independence of these States + established. This was the great and crowning glory of his life, which + has spread his fame over the whole globe, and will transmit it to the + latest posterity." + +With what moving entreaty does he thus adjure the victorious north: + + The north "has only to wish it to accomplish it--to do justice by + conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired territory, and + to do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves + to be faithfully fulfilled, to cease the agitation of the slavery + question, and to provide for the insertion of a provision in the + constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the south, in + substance, the power she possessed of protecting herself before the + equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of the + government. There will be no difficulty in devising such a + provision--one that will protect the south and which at the same time + will improve and strengthen the government instead of impairing and + weakening it." + + "The responsibility of saving the union rests on the north, and not on + the south. The south cannot save it by any act of hers, and the north + may save it without any sacrifice whatever, unless to do justice and + to perform her duties under the constitution should be regarded by her + as a sacrifice." + +This sleepless watchman since 1835 had again and again blown the trumpet +as the sword of disunion was coming upon the land. Now, the grave yawning +before him, he sees that sword nearer and sharper, and conscious that it +is his last public duty he sends forth to all his country a blast of +warning more earnest and more solemn than ever. Warning that the bloodiest +of all wars is coming, and that between brothers. Warning--it is the whole +of this dread deliverance. Here is the first paragraph: + + "I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the + subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and + effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this opinion, I have + on all proper occasions endeavored to call the attention of both the + two great parties which divide the country to adopt some measure to + prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has + been permitted to proceed, with almost no attempt to resist it, until + it has reached a point where it can no longer be disguised or denied + that the union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the + greatest and the gravest question that can ever come under your + consideration,--How can the union be preserved?" + +And this is the last paragraph: + + "I have now, senators, done my duty in expressing my opinions fully + and candidly on this solemn occasion. In doing so, I have been + governed by the motives which have governed me in all stages of the + agitation of the slavery question since its commencement. I have + exerted myself during the whole period to arrest it with the intention + of saving the union, if it could be done, and if it could not, to save + the section where it has pleased providence to cast my lot, and which + I sincerely believe has justice and the constitution on its side. + Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability both to the + union and my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have the + consolation, let what will come, that I am free from all + responsibility." + +Had abolition been in charge of men, Calhoun, claiming, as appeared to +them, the most palpable rights under current views of justice, under the +constitution, under the law, and under patriotic duty, would have +prevailed. He never understood, no more than the abolitionists themselves +did, that providence was making an instrument of abolition to remove the +only danger to the American union, and that providence was not under human +constitutions, laws, and convictions of duty. As you meditate this +superhuman achievement of the true citizen in his last stand for his +doomed section, does it not help you to appreciate better the high saying +of the Greeks, that the struggle of a good man against fate is the most +elevating of all spectacles? + +The speeches that will find place in the selection suggested above will +not enrapture the reader with the proud diction, learning, ornateness, and +exquisite finish of Webster, but he will find them everywhere to be proofs +of the dictum of Faust: + + "Es traegt Verstand and rechter Sinn + Mit wenig Kunst sich selber vor; + Und wenn's euch Ernst ist, was zu sagen, + Ist's noethig, Worten nachzujagen?"[57] + +He will also note that many of the wisest and most eloquent passages are +almost the extreme of choice, but chaste and severe, expression. Here read +aloud the passage as to Washington quoted above from the speech of March +4, 1850, and you will hardly dissent. + +America owes it to Calhoun to publish a cheap edition of his best +speeches, and also of his "Dissertation on Government." + +A word as to the "Dissertation" and the "Discourse on the Constitution of +the United States." The project of these two books lay close to his heart +for many years. He intended them as his last admonitions to the people of +the great republic. Doubtless the special object of his retirement was to +finish them, but he had to return to the senate. What we have of the books +was written in the little leisure which he snatched from the pressure of +public duties, domestic affairs, and ill-health. The resoluteness with +which, in the midst of these difficulties, he worked at the self-imposed +task proves a lofty and unselfish love. He did not finish them to his +satisfaction. Darwin did not do that with his epoch-making "Origin of +Species," for he found there was no need to do so. I believe that, as the +essentials of the belonging part of evolution are all to be found in the +"Origin of Species," so all the essentials of Calhoun's great doctrine of +government are fully set forth in his two books. To me the "Dissertation" +seems complete. I note with pleasure that, though slowly, it is steadily +climbing to the lofty height which is its due place in the world's +estimation. And the "Discourse"--of which he did not live to finish the +final draft--surely leads all the productions of the State sovereignty +school. The providence which opposed his wishes was kind to his country, +to the world, and to himself in calling him from his desk; for it allowed +him to get Texas and Oregon for us, to give mankind his Oregon speech, and +his last, and thus to finish his good work and make his fame full. + +The foregoing is intended to influence my readers to turn away from Von +Holst, who wrote Calhoun's life, with the smoke and dust of the brothers' +war still in his eyes, and from Trent, who merely says ditto to Mr. Burke, +to Stephens, to the great Webster, to the touching "Carolina Tribute," to +the happy and appreciative sketch of Pinkney, to the man himself and his +grand career, in order to find the facts and principles by which one of +America's very greatest ought to be judged. And I do hope that they now +begin to discern that Calhoun was nothing at all of a doctrinaire, nor +chop-logic, nor fanatic, nor professional politician, nor ignorant and +over-zealous partisan, but was the very height of practical talent and an +extraordinarily successful man of affairs, of more than Roman integrity, +conscientious and diligent beyond almost all others in the duties of his +place, and a foremost statesman of wide and profound culture. Whether I +have accomplished my design or not, let me beg you to read for yourself +with careful attention what Webster said of him in the United States +senate just after his death. Remember two things as you read: (1) The +speaker and the dead had been opposed to one another in politics for more +than twenty years, the former being the great exponent of free-labor +nationalization and the other the great exponent of slave-labor +nationalization; (2) nobody ever weighed his public utterances more +carefully than did Webster, and that he would not say anything which he +did not believe, even as a politeness. + +Let us now try to follow with proper discernment this man whom we hope we +have proved to be good and wise through his titanic defence of the cause +which fate had decreed must fail. As our explanation of how evolution, and +not the north on one side nor the south on the other, brought forward the +crisis in which slavery, the sole menace of American dismemberment, was to +perish, is so nearly complete, we can be much briefer in the rest of the +chapter. + +The true beginning here is with the proposition that everything which +Calhoun did as the southern leader was prompted by a righteous conscience +and the highest and most unselfish patriotism. He was the very first to +discern the full menace of abolition to the welfare of the people he +represented. And when years afterwards the situation became darker and +more serious, and more and more importunately put to him the question, If +abolition can be avoided only by leaving the union, what ought the south +to do? he answered to himself, with the fullest approval of his +conscience, she must go out; for manifestly it is her paramount duty to +protect her citizens against any such invasion of their rights as +abolition. But he had no illusion as to peaceable secession; and he +likewise worshipped the union, believing with deepest conviction that it +is far better for neighboring communities to be federated than +independent. And the memories of the great American history were as sweet +to him as they were to Webster. To sum up, only one thing in his opinion +could justify secession. That was control of the federal government by the +abolitionists. If that comes, the south must seek her independence, even +if it is beyond a sea of blood. + +Abolition was on its way then to overturn the supports of comfort and +domestic peace in the south, as it afterwards did. Suppose Webster had +seen the imminence of such a dreadful evil to New England, would he not +have felt that his duty to his section was now the great thing? My brother +who wore the blue, ought he not to have so felt? If the union had been +turned into a course which would not only impoverish and beggar the people +of New England, but would for long years actually deprive the masses of +those modes of business and labor by which they were subsisting themselves +and their families, can it be thought that Webster, with his exalted +admiration of the fathers, who endured all privations to win liberty from +their oppressors, would not have been heart and soul for secession? + +The only actual difference between the two great patriots was that to +Calhoun the dread alternative of looking outside the union for defence and +protection of home and fireside was commended by a cruel fate, while a +kind fate withheld it from Webster. + +I shall corroborate the foregoing by some pertinent excerpts from +Calhoun's speeches in the United States senate. And as my purpose is to +build everywhere in this book, as far as possible, upon only the most +obvious facts and to vouch therefor the most accessible authorities, I +take the excerpts from quotations made by Von Holst: + + "It is to us a vital question. It involves not only our liberty, but, + what is greater (if to freeman anything can be), existence itself. The + relation which now exists between the two races in the slaveholding + States has existed for two centuries. It has grown with our growth, + and strengthened with our strength. It has entered into and modified + all our institutions, civil and political. None other can be + substituted. We will not, cannot, permit it to be destroyed.... Come + what will, should it cost every drop of blood and every cent of + property, we must defend ourselves; and if compelled, we should stand + justified by all laws, human and divine; ... we would act under an + imperious necessity. There would be to us but one alternative,--to + triumph or perish as a people."[58] + + * * * * * + + "To destroy the existing relations would be to destroy this prosperity + [of the southern States] and to place the two races in a state of + conflict, which must end in the expulsion or extirpation of one or the + other. No other can be substituted compatible with their peace or + security. The difficulty is in the diversity of the races.... Social + and political equality between them is impossible. The causes lie too + deep in the principles of our nature to be surmounted. But, without + such equality, to change the present condition of the African race, + were it possible, would be but to change the form of slavery."[59] + + "He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive that the subversion + of a relation which must be followed with such disastrous consequences + can be effected only by convulsions that would devastate the country, + burst asunder the bonds of union, and engulf in a sea of blood the + institutions of the country. It is madness to suppose that the + slaveholding States would quietly submit to be sacrificed. Every + consideration--interest, duty, and humanity, the love of country, the + sense of wrong, hatred of oppressors and treacherous and faithless + confederates, and, finally, despair--would impel them to the most + daring and desperate resistance in defence of property, family, + country, liberty, and existence."[60] + +The student unfamiliar with the confederate side of the brothers' war can +find the whole of it clearly stated in these short passages re-enforced by +the cognate ones quoted above from the speech of March 4, 1850. The +maintenance of the then existing relations between white and black was +vital both to liberty and existence. Because of the world-wide diversity +of the two races they cannot be socially or politically equal (a subject +which we will deal with specially after a while). And it was the duty of +the south to fight to the bitter end "in defence of property, family, +country, liberty, and existence." This is the marrow of the quotations. +They convincingly show not only the grasp of the statesman, but the +prescience of the prophet, as has been plainly proved by the brothers' war +and what followed in its track. + +Opposition to the tariff, which in his judgment favored the manufacturing +at the expense of the staple States, seems to have been the first thing +that led Calhoun to take a pro-Southern stand in politics.[61] It finally +produced the famous nullification episode, which we have already somewhat +discussed. In this his platform was simply anti-tariff. But the current, +without his being aware of it, was carrying him resistlessly and rapidly +on into the anti-abolition career in which his life ended. It was the +petition presented in 1835 to congress against slavery in the District of +Columbia which, it seems, was the first thing that opened his eyes to the +menace of abolition. Note his wonderful foresight. Compare him with Cicero +just before the outbreak of the war between Pompey and Caesar; or with +Demosthenes before Philip discloses his purpose towards Greece; or with +Carl Marx, predicting the future of co-operative enterprise. Cicero almost +foresees nothing--he mostly fears; Marx is utterly mistaken. The +divination of Demosthenes is far superior, and it is clear; yet it is +belated when it comes. But Calhoun sees with "appalling clearness," as Von +Holst says, all the storm-cloud from which tempest and tornado will ravage +the entire land, just as its first speck shows on the horizon; and nobody +else will see that. If this abolition movement is not stopped in its +incipiency, it will soon get beyond all control. This he says over and +over in his public place. What a horrible spectre of the future haunted +him for the rest of his life! The south in her self-defence forced out of +the union, and then perhaps overcome in war. After her braves have +perished, and their dear ones at home have been plunged in the depths of +want, the triumphant abolitionists will have the former slaves to lord it +over them. + +His conscience commanded him to stand by slavery as the fundamental +condition of his people's well-being; it also at the same time commanded +him to strain all his energies to save the union by making it the +protector instead of the assailant of slavery. This was the insuperable +task which the powers in the unseen put him in the treadmill to do. From +the time he commenced the discussion of the anti-slavery petitions until +his exclamation over the "poor south," on his death-bed, life was to him +but a deepening agony of solicitude and utmost effort,--solicitude for his +country and section, effort to avert the danger that became greater and +more awful to him every day. He strove after remedies under the +constitution. The more he recalled the success of the single stand of +South Carolina against the tariff, the prouder he became of being the +author of nullification. Its dearness to him was that it was peaceable as +well as efficient. The better opinion of the State-rights school is that +nullification is an absurdity, and that South Carolina's only true remedy +against the tariff was to secede if it were not repealed. But he knew +better than everybody else that secession meant internecine war between +the sections, and this influenced him to exalt peaceable nullification +above bloody secession. + +It needs not to consider each barrier, whether party combinations, +admission of new slave States, legislation, etc., that he tried to erect +against the incoming oceanic wave. But we must briefly consider the +amendment of the constitution which he proposed. He wanted the north and +the south each to have a president, as he said, "to be so elected, as that +the two should be constituted the special organs and representatives of +the respective sections in the executive department of the government; and +requiring each to approve all the acts of congress before they shall +become laws."[62] Do this, he urged, and neither section can use the +powers of government to injure the other, for whatever proposed law +menaces a section will be vetoed by its president. It profits the student +of the science of government to consider the historical examples which +Calhoun adduced here. They are indeed so apt that the hearing which has +ever been denied him should be granted him at least academically. He says: +"The two most distinguished constitutional governments of antiquity both +in respect to permanence and power had a dual executive. I refer to those +of Sparta and Rome."[63] + +It is interesting to be informed that those same wise Iroquois from whom +our fathers probably got the precedent of the old confederation, put in +practice something very like what Calhoun advises. We append both the +account and instructive comment of Morgan: + + "When the Iroquois confederacy was formed, or soon after that event, + two permanent war-chiefships were created and named.... As general + commanders they had charge of the military affairs of the confederacy, + and the command of its joint forces when united in a general + expedition.... The creation of two principal war-chiefs instead of + one, and with equal power, argues a subtle and calculating policy to + prevent the domination of a single man even in their military affairs. + They did without experience precisely as the Romans did in creating + two consuls instead of one, after they had abolished the office of + _rex_. Two consuls would balance the military power between them, and + prevent either from becoming supreme. Among the Iroquois this office + never became influential."[64] + +But Calhoun lays much more stress upon another example,--that of the +protection which the Roman plebeians got in tribunes elected from their +own order alone, which tribunes could veto any act of the lawmaking +organs, all of which were then actually in the hands of their oppressors, +that is, the order of patricians; the result being that in course of time +the plebeians achieved equality.[65] + +Of course the inevitable could not be put off. And yet ought we not to +admire the inventive genius of the statesman who of all proposed the +remedy that promised the best? And ought we not also to cherish in +affectionate memory this last and high effort of Calhoun to avert a +dreadful brothers' war at hand, the end and consequences of which nobody +could then forecast? + +The situation of Rome granting tribunes to the plebs was widely different +from ours. That was a case of giving a veto to one class only, and to a +class which belonged to the entire body politic. Calhoun proposed not a +single veto, but two; neither one to be given such a class as we have just +mentioned, but a veto to each one of two geographical divisions, in one of +which there was a developed, and in the other a nascent and almost +complete, nationality, these two nationalities already closed with each +other in a life and death grapple. His hope must have been to confine the +combatants to an arena which could be effectually policed by the civil +power, and in which all fighting except with buttoned foils be prevented. +We may be almost sure that his heart broke when that presentiment which +often comes to the dying as clear as sunlight revealed the bloody war that +was quickening its approach. + +O the unutterable pathos of his life from 1835 to 1850! During this time +he was like the mother of a boy whom consumption has marked for its own. +In advance of all others she reads the first symptom, nay, she anticipates +it. All those who believe that they know him as well as she does, laugh at +her fears with unsympathetic incredulity. But her eyes never fail to see +grim death at the door, although bravely she hopes against hope, and +fights, fights, fights. Inexorably, relentlessly the end, which others now +begin to discern, comes on, but until the last breath of her darling she +has ever some suggestion of change of place or climate, of a new remedy, +of something else to be done. It is the supreme tragedy of her trial that +while outwardly she is all self-gratifying love, inwardly she is all +self-consuming misery. We say the love of a mother is greater than all +other. But we know that she loves her country better than she does her +child. Patriotism is as yet the strongest love of all. Realize that our +exalted patriot was tending and nursing the cause of his country. Think of +the noble Lee, his career of victory over, wearing away the winter at +Petersburg, hourly expecting his line, so tensely stretched in order to +face overwhelming odds, to break; think of him after it does break, on the +retreat, when he has discovered that his supplies have gone wrong; and +think of him when he must yield the sword as ever memorable as Hannibal's. +The world has given Lee, and will long give him, rains of gracious tears. +But he was never plagued with Calhoun's sharpened eyes to future disaster, +and he was confident that he would reach the mountains almost until the +very moment of surrender. Think rather of the great sufferers for high +causes,--Bonnivard, wearing a pathway over the stone floor of his prison; +Lear, of all of Shakspeare's heroes, in the deepest gulf of misfortune; +and especially of Calvary and the crucifixion, for Jesus travailed for his +brothers and sisters. It is here you must look for the like of Calhoun. +For fifteen years that "mass of moan" which was coming to his dear ones +pierced his ears plainer and plainer and made his heart sicker and sicker, +and during this long bloody sweat he gave the rarest devotion and +self-sacrifice to his country which he feared more and more was to plunge +over the precipice. As we recall the scene of his death it makes us +rejoice to know that the cross he had borne so long has at last been cast +off and he has entered into the rest of the martyr-patriot. Then it +occurs to us that he carried with him his affections,--too lofty not to be +immortal,--and we cannot believe that the sad spirit ever smiled until +Wade Hampton, twenty-six years afterwards, re-erected white domination in +South Carolina. + +Dixie will never forget that one who of all her sons loved her best and +suffered for her the most. And it is my conviction that each noblest soul +of the north will after a while revere in Calhoun the American parallel to +the moral grandeur of Dante, of whom Michaelangelo said he would +cheerfully endure his exile and all his misfortunes for his glory. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +WEBSTER + + +Calhoun was the pre-eminent champion of the southern cause in the union, +while Toombs was that of southern nationalization seeking independence. +Webster was the pre-eminent champion of American nationalization seeking +continental union. Toombs and Webster are therefore in antithesis; and it +will be well for me to begin the chapter by anticipating some of the +characteristics of the former, who will be treated at large later on, and +briefly contrasting the two. + +By nature Toombs was so prone to action that even in his daily +recreation--talk with the nearest to him was by far the most of it--his +immense and tireless outpouring of fine phrase, wisdom, and wit was the +increasing wonder of all who knew him. Webster's proneness was to repose, +almost indolence. He often seemed lethargic. His activity could be excited +only by the pressure of necessity. This difference between the two showed +itself very markedly in their several careers. Toombs, coming to the bar +in the last year of his nonage, took the profession at once to his heart, +settled in his native county, in a lucrative field of practice, overcame +all hindrances of natural defects and insufficient training seemingly by a +mere act of will, and in four or five years his collecting a +thousand-dollar fee in an adjoining county was no very uncommon thing. +When he was twenty-eight he was a fully developed lawyer and advocate on +every side--law, equity, and criminal--of the courts of that prosperous +planting community, then overrunning with cases of importance, and his +annual income from practice was $15,000. Webster went up much more slowly. +He read long and industriously; was not called until he was twenty-three; +for the next two and a half years was content with an income of $600 or +$700; and then for nine years at Portsmouth his average income was $2,000 +yearly. Even when Webster at thirty-four removed to Boston he was hardly +as a lawyer the equal of Toombs at twenty-eight; and I believe that the +latter was always the superior lawyer. The greater reputation of Webster +is due to the greater reputation of his cases, and of the tribunal wherein +he long held the lead. + +We see a like difference between the two in congress. Webster shirks the +routine duties of his place to gain opportunity for practice in the United +States supreme court. Toombs stays away from all courts during the +session, and gives every measure before the body to which he belongs its +proper attention, study, and labor. But the performance by him of all the +many duties of representative or senator, whether little or great, with +unparalleled diligence, ability, and splendor, has been so completely +obscured by the few of Webster's great congressional exploits, that it is +not now cared for by anybody. + +The greater lawyer and the greater congressman has been accorded the +lesser renown. This is because of the relation which each one bore to the +two publics which I have tried to make you understand,--the southern +public and the northern public. Toombs's legal career was mainly in the +courts of his own State. It was not much heard of outside, in even the +southern public, until his extraordinarily meritorious discharge of +congressional duties involving a mastery of law was observed. Although +some of Webster's cases in State courts were celebrated, his greatest +ones, to be considered in a moment, were won in the United States supreme +court, in the eyes of both publics watching intently. The highest +accomplishments of Toombs in the non-sectional parts of his congressional +career were almost matters of indifference at the time to both publics, +becoming steadily more absorbed in pro- and anti-slavery politics; and +what he did in the other part of it excited the hostility of the northern +public, and brought him obloquy instead of good name. The few memorable +deeds of Webster in congress were victorious vindications of the cause +clearest of all to the northern, that is, the free-labor, public. That +public has at last not only conquered, but it has annexed the other as a +part of itself. And so Toombs's fame as a lawyer and statesman has been +left so far behind that it can hardly hope ever to have impartial and fair +comparison with that of Webster. + +Just one more parallel, and I shall proceed with my sketch. Each one of +the two, in order to accept his mission of leadership, was plainly made by +his destiny to abandon a previously cherished doctrine for a new and +contrary one. Toombs was once an ardent union man, Webster was once almost +a secessionist. In his Taylor speech, made in the United States house of +representatives July 1, 1848, speaking of the then expected acquisition of +territory, Toombs said: + + "All the rest of this continent is not worth our glorious union, much + less these contemptible provinces which now threaten us with such + evils. It were better that we should throw back the worthless boon, + and let the inhabitants work out their own destiny, than that we + should endanger our peace, our safety, and our nationality by their + incorporation in our union." + +The silly embargo measures, making war upon our own citizens instead of +our enemies, had deeply injured New England interests. On their heel came +the second war with England, into which the government of France had, as +Mr. Lodge says, "tricked us ... by most profligate lying."[66] This war +paralyzed the production and occupations of Webster's people. + +A speech made by him July 4, 1812, is "a strong, calm statement of the +grounds of opposition to the war."[67] Mr. Lodge quotes and emphasizes a +passage as proof that Webster, although a federalist, and the majority of +his party in New England were--to use the words of the same +author--"prepared to go to the very edge of the narrow legal line which +divides constitutional opposition from treasonable resistance,"[68] was +then standing by the union with might and main. This quotation, separated +from its circumstances and the immediate sequel, strongly supports the +contention. The speech being printed, circulated widely among those +federalists who were gravitating so strongly towards "treasonable +resistance." By reason of it Webster was chosen as a delegate to a +convention, held the next month. This man, whom Mr. Lodge would have us +believe to be so fixedly counter to the then uppermost revolutionary +sentiment of his party, was chosen to be their mouthpiece. He wrote their +report--the "Rockingham Memorial" in the form of a letter to President +Madison. Mr. Lodge thus contrasts the report and the speech. "In one point +the memorial differed curiously from the oration of the month before. The +latter pointed to the suffrage as the mode of redress; the former +distinctly hinted at and almost threatened secession, even while it +deplored a dissolution of the union as a possible result of the +administration's policy."[69] Then the biographer most confidently states +that in the speech Webster was declaring his own views, but in the other +document he was declaring those of members of his party. + +But the average American will be sure that those familiar with the speech +at the time did not strain its counsels as far away from their own as Mr. +Lodge does, otherwise they would not have elected him as delegate; and +further, he never would have made their report for them unless he had been +known to entertain their own sentiments.[70] + +The popular wave that he had thus mounted carried the draftsman of the +"Rockingham Memorial" into congress, where, while British armies were +actually treading our soil, he voted against the taxes proposed for +national defence. Mr. Lodge does not go the full length of sustaining this +conduct.[71] The severe comment of another biographer will be cordially +approved by average readers, northern and southern.[72] + +The facts properly considered show that from the speech of July 4, 1812, +on, Webster, although he stood aloof from the Hartford convention +movement, was in full sympathy with the federalists of New England, whom +the national government by its unrighteous oppressions had driven to +contemplate disunion as a possible measure of self-protection. + +This attitude of Webster towards the union was entirely contrary to that +which afterwards became his power and glory among his countrymen. We wish +it noted that as he changed with the people of New England from +anti-tariff to pro-tariff politics, he likewise changed with them in their +principles as to the union; and that Toombs went with the south, in an +opposite direction, that is, from embrace to rejection of the union. + +Having in the foregoing brought out the prominent characteristics of +Webster's nature and career, and having also impressed you that he, like +all other great statesmen, could lead only by following his people, I will +cursorily trace him from stage to stage through his development. He was +selected in infancy, if not before by providence, to be made not the +expounder of the constitution, but the invincible defender of the union. +When his activity begins, he is at first to consolidate the union by the +management of some great law cases, and delivery of occasional addresses +to popular assemblies; and afterwards in his high place as United States +senator he is to demonstrate to the northern public its complete guaranty +of their highest material interests, and set it in their hearts above all +things else. Thus did providence assign to him the preservation of the +greatest of all democracies, to the end that there be no break in the +future course of human improvement. + +Before his activity begins the powers train him. They gave him a long +education, and a slow growth as a statesman. He could never remember when +he had been unable to read. His feeble physique while a child shielded him +from the labor required of the other children, and permitted him to enjoy +books. Early he soaked his mind in the King James version of the bible and +other good English standards. As he grew apace his opportunities of +reading were far better than those of Calhoun, who never saw even a +circulating library until he was in his thirteenth year, and soon was +taken away from that. These opportunities he used in his leisurely way. +His mind was strong and his memory good, and he digested and kept under +command what he read. His schooling and college course were in the main +continuous. He got to Dartmouth at fifteen, where he spent four years. +Here he made the reputation of being the best speaker and writer of all +the students. In his study for the law he took ample time. And in his +first years of practice he had much leisure. Besides revelling in the +Latin classics, Shakspeare, Milton, Pope, and Cowper, and much history, he +was keenly observant of what was going on about him. We know how Jeremiah +Mason gave him lessons both in law, rhetoric, and elocution to his great +advancement. We know too that his interest in current political questions +was vigilant. He took his seat in congress May, 1813, being then a little +over thirty-one. His speech against a bill to encourage enlistments made +January 14, the next year, shows, as Mr. Lodge says, that "he was now +master of the style at which he aimed."[73] Of this peculiar style I shall +say something after a while. Mention of his greatest exploits in +consolidating the union is now in order. + +The first of these is his conduct of the Dartmouth college case in the +United States supreme court. It is entirely out of place for me to give +even the briefest notice of the details which fill Mr. Shirley's unique +book.[74] Little more than emphasis of the effect of the decision to knit +more closely the bonds of union between the States is required. This +effect will be considered more carefully when we comment on Gibbons _v._ +Ogden, which finishes the important work commenced in the other. It needs +only to remind the reader now that the protection of contracts against +impairing State legislation has contributed probably more than anything +else to the prosperous development of American internal trade and +commerce,--a most potent factor in consolidating the union,--and that this +protection originates in the Dartmouth college decision. But there is +something special to be said of Webster as to the case. He did not stress +the constitutional point--that upon which the judgment was finally +placed--either in his law-brief or argument. The victory is all due to his +consummate management of the court, especially of the chief-justice. The +latter really found the true ground of the decision. But the powers had +Webster in hand, and it suited their purposes to crown their _Liebling_ +with the credit of the decision. When he found out the reasons given for +the ruling he had won, I fancy that a good angel of his destiny whispered +in his ear he ought to have discerned that the weal of all classes of his +entire country, and not merely that of its colleges, was at stake in his +case, and he must never in the future overlook such an opportunity again. +In his Hanover fourth of July speech, made when he was only eighteen years +old, to quote from the authority we make so much use of, "the boy Webster +preached love of country, the grandeur of American nationality, fidelity +to the constitution as the bulwark of nationality, and the necessity and +the nobility of the union of the States."[75] Mr. Lodge impressively adds, +"and that was the message which the man Webster delivered to his fellow +men."[76] His Fryeburg fourth of July speech, made not long afterwards, +was in the same strain. After the powers had thus started him in the way +they wanted him to go, we have noted above how he was carried by the +federalists of New England into a movement hostile to the union. This +brief wandering from his destiny, as it were, is to be compared with his +neglect to grasp the point in the Dartmouth college case which was in the +exact line of that high destiny. This shows how even the greatest genius +must stumble and grope before it has found the right road. I think the +Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, First Part of Henry VI, and the Sonnets of +Shakspeare are like examples. + +The Plymouth oration, delivered in 1820, begins a new and very important +stage of Webster's career. As Virginia was the mother of the southern +States, so New England was in large measure the mother of the northern. +The latter was the very fountain of the free-labor nationalization. And as +she was known to be exceptionally advanced in intellectual as well as +material development, she was to all the free States both their great +example and highest authority. Hardly anybody has even yet fully taken in +all the permanent good which New England has done for herself at home and +for her children and scholars outside. Of course still less of it was +understood in 1820. But in the Plymouth oration Webster set forth so much +of it, the effect upon New England was magical. It was as if he had raised +a curtain concealing great riches and treasures of her merit and glory, +the existence of which had not been suspected. New Englanders all fell in +love with him, and accorded him the foremost place among their +counsellors. + +The anti-slavery spirit of the speech deserves special notice. I do not +mean to emphasize the oft-quoted passage denouncing the African +slave-trade; for everybody in the south--even the smuggler and the few +purchasers who encouraged him--had been against legalizing it, for reasons +mentioned above, from a time long before the southern States showed a +desire in the constitutional convention to stop the trade at once. I mean +his mention of slavery in the West Indies. I do not think that he had the +south in mind, stressing as he does the absenteeism of the masters and the +mortgages of their lands for capital borrowed in England. But much else +that he says of the evil effects of slavery could be easily applied, at +least in some measure, to the system as it then existed in the south, such +as, for instance, the backwardness to make permanent improvements or endow +colleges. His contrast of New England with the West Indies is intended to +show that a free-labor community is far superior to a slave-labor +community in the most important elements of a good and progressive +civilization. His conviction of this truth is serious and undoubting. And +those few words, "the unmitigated toil of slavery," which show that he +erroneously believed that the slave toiled as hard as the wage-earning +laborer, evince a strong moral revulsion on his part. + +We summarize as to the Plymouth oration. It made Webster really the +political leader of New England, which--the animosity excited by the +embargo and the late war having become a forgotten thing of the past--is +now both in command of and also in the van of the free-labor and +anti-slavery nationalization, destined by the powers to perpetuate the +union. + +We have told you how Webster--being at the time the very antipodes of what +he was afterwards when he talked with Bosworth as to the Rhode Island +case--missed the true and cardinal point in the Dartmouth college case, +and how the powers, after having Marshall to establish it, gave all the +glory of the great accomplishment to Webster. We come now to Gibbons _v._ +Ogden, argued in 1824, in which the latter made far more than ample amends +for his shortcoming, and taught even the great Marshall how to decide. + +New York State had given Fulton and Livingston for a term exclusive steam +navigation of all its waters, and Webster was to maintain that the grant +impugned the federal constitution and was therefore invalid. The question +was _res integra_, without analogies which often help us forlorn advocates +who cannot find a precedent and are utterly without any literature +suggesting the _ratio decidendi_. I know I cannot explain to a layman how +such cases as these bewilder and paralyze the typical Anglo-American +judge, who has walked all his life by precedent and not by sight. Further, +Webster's side antagonized prevailing sentiment and, it would be hardly +too much to say, the public conscience; either one of which generally +sways courts more powerfully than the law-brief, argument, and appeal of +complete advocates. The only thing which Webster could oppose to these +formidable odds was just a clause of a sentence of the constitution, this +clause being only of twelve words when even the belonging context is read +into it,[77] and appearing to be, we cannot say surplusage, but neither +well-considered nor of any particular force. Out of this he constructed +such a perfect and wise doctrine of the immunity of our interstate +commerce from local attack and restraint that every succeeding generation +has admired its wisdom more, and subsequent additions and extensions of +importance are all manifest conclusions from the promises which he made +good. + +Reading and reflecting for writing my "American Law Studies" familiarized +me with a few instances in which a man has left a lasting impress upon the +development of the law (some of which instances will be mentioned in a +moment). Thus I was led to meditate Webster's work in this case; and it +becomes an increasing wonder to me. Read what his biographer tells of the +unfavorable circumstances of the preparation for the argument and how he +overcame them by superhuman effort. Read also his own account as given by +Harvey, how Wirt, his associate, older and of much more experience in that +court, disparaged the ground upon which he said he should stand, and +proposed another; and how Marshall drank in every word of Webster's +argument, and afterwards virtually reproduced it in the opinion. + +But the great thing is what he did for the law. The current distribution +of the common law under its larger heads was made by Hale and Blackstone +after that of the contemporary civilians, which is founded upon that of +the Institutes of Justinian. This book is but a reproduction of that of +Gaius. So we may assert of this last mentioned author that it is his +systematization which still obtains both in the English and Roman law, +that is to say, the entire law of the enlightened world.[78] A few English +chancellors perceptibly moulded equity; Mansfield almost created English +commercial law; in our country, Hamilton, in one argument overturned the +doctrine of tacking securities, and in another remade the essentials of +libel; our great text-author Bishop, with his treatise often worked over +in new editions, is really the enacter of the American law of divorce; and +Marshall's additions to our federal law will never be forgotten. By what +he did in Gibbons _v._ Ogden, Webster has won a proud place in the small +company of great law-givers. + +And he is entitled to a liberal share of the glory which the Dartmouth +college decision has won, for without him Marshall would have had no +opportunity. + +To estimate the prodigious effect of the rulings in these two cases, try +to realize to yourself what would be the consequences to American trade +and commerce if the States were not effectually kept from infringing +contracts or granting monopolies of transportation. Try to realize the +loss, the inconvenience, the trouble, the vexation, all the evil that +would have unavoidably befallen us if these two companion decisions and +the subsequent ones following them as precedents or extending them as +analogies, had not made practically the whole of American inland business +a unit--to use Webster's word--under the protection everywhere of the same +impartial law. The longer you think it over the more confirmed will be +your opinion that from no other cause has the evolution away from the old +independence of States towards a permanent union and a single organism of +perpetually federated communities been more furthered. The unification of +production and distribution thus given resistless impulse has almost of +itself alone worked the unification of all our States. So looking back +from the standpoint of to-day we may be sure that the powers had Webster +by his accomplishment in the cases now in mind, to build for perpetual +union far better than he knew. + +It needs not to dwell upon the Bunker Hill oration, made June 17, 1825. It +is, as I believe, the most familiar as a whole of all speeches to +Americans. It did not stop with adding greatly to the influence he had won +over New England by the Plymouth oration; it revealed him to the whole +country as its supreme orator. Bear in mind its theme, remembering how +large a part the battle of Bunker Hill was in founding our union. + +The plainest manifestation that providence ever made of its favoritism to +Webster was its having Adams and Jefferson both to die on the same day of +all the year the most commemorative of each. By the eulogy of the two +patriots which Webster made the next month he attained the height of his +popular celebrity. His subject was no longer one that principally +concerned New England and the north, but it was the co-operation of both +sections in making the United States. Slowly, but surely, he has climbed +to the top of authority, whence he ever draws audience and attention from +north and south, both in the present and for ages after the brothers' war. + +These three popular speeches just noticed are unique in oratory, not in +their general character, but in the nobility of the subjects, the ripeness +of the occasion, the profound wisdom of treatment, and the extraordinary +elevation and perfection of style. + +Another stage begins in 1830 with the reply to Hayne. What Webster says +therein, recommending brotherly love between the sections, and commending +the union, he reproduced with grateful variation in many memorable +passages of later speeches. The original and reproductions are the most +precious gems of our literature, ranking in excellence even above Poe's +poetry, America's best. + +The speech of 1833 against Calhoun's nullification resolutions, that which +won for Webster the cognomen, The Expounder of the Constitution, belongs +to the next succeeding stage, wherein he rose from supreme panegyric to +invincible defence of the union. As we have already given in a former +chapter this performance its due praise, we need not say more of it. + +This chapter would not be complete if we failed to glance at the +essentials of Webster's greatness as an orator, and to point out the means +used by the powers to give him his extraordinary excellence. He did not +stale himself by discussing trivial matters. When he rose, people knew +that he had an important message, and they ought to attend. In harmony +with this was his uniform seriousness, gravity, and becoming dignity of +manner; and even in his merry-making humor, as instanced in describing +Hayne leading the South Carolina militia, he never stooped. He spoke to +the sound common sense and the regnant conscience of the masses. His +propositions, his illustrations, his argument went home without effort to +every one who thought at all and who cared for moral virtue. The entire +country has heard with great acceptance that Davy Crockett said to him, +"Mr. Webster, you are not the great orator people say you are; for I heard +your speech, and I understood every word of it." Whether this be an +invention or not, it well characterizes his easy intelligibility. Herbert +Spencer could have exampled the main proposition of his able essay on +style by Webster's best efforts, and every part and parcel of +them--statement of proposition, necessary explanation and narrative, +distinctions, illustrations, reasoning, invocation of feeling--appeal to +the sense of justice. I often feel that he is not more majestic in any +particular than the always manifest meaning of what he says. In this he +reminds of Bacon. + +He chose only the most important subjects; he befittingly addressed always +the higher nature of his hearers; and he always spoke with a transparent +clearness. But all this does not indicate more than the mere beginning of +true eloquence. The greatest teachers--those who win and keep the +admiration of the world--have, as their worshippers teach us, gifts of +expression commensurate with the desert of their communications. Remember +Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Vergil, Cicero, Dante, Bacon, Goethe, and above +all Shakspeare. As the reader hangs over them he becomes more and more +unconscious of what we call, rather vaguely, their style. Their diction, +in unhackneyed use of hackneyed words, in metaphors that flash like +electric sparks, in appropriateness of varied rhythm, and all appertaining +jewels, becomes to him but a belonging of the much more precious sense. As +it must impart that without impediment it is unconsciously made as like it +as the protecting coloring of animals is made like that of the objects +amidst which they lurk. There has been but one other which admits of +comparison in world-wide secular importance with Webster's theme--that +which inspired + + "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento." + +We have learned how the AEneid was prized above all other poetry, not only +by the Romans themselves, but, long after they had become a mere name and +memory, by the different nations of Europe. Plainly it was because Vergil, +in that "stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man," had fitly +celebrated the greatest factor delivering from barbarism, and spreading +civilization abroad, that had yet appeared in history,--the Roman empire. +The American union, immeasurably exceeding that empire in immediate good +to millions at home, and in fair promise to all the earth, was Webster's +subject. It got from him an appropriate style. The variety of ornament in +his language reaches all the way from the modest violets of the +Anglo-Saxon common to Bunyan and King James's version, up to the most +gorgeous trappings which are part and parcel of the sense in the best +passages of Paradise Lost. There is also a variety of idiom. He uses that +of the field or street, or of the gentleman or of the scholar, as best +suits. He affected short sentences, and also pure English words. He told +Davis to weed the Latin words out of his speech on Adams and Jefferson. +But when occasion calls he can revel in that latinity of our tongue which, +as De Quincey has noted, becomes intense with Shakspeare, when he is +soaring his strongest. If you are inclined to dispute this, look over the +last two sentences of the reply to Hayne. How you would lower this sublime +peroration into the dust, if you replaced the Latin with native +derivatives, or changed the long for short sentences in what is now above +all example in English or American oratory, and can be paralleled in +structure, "ocean-roll of rhythm," and exquisite words only by the most +famous paragraphs of Cicero and Livy. As our last word here, Webster +always imparts the wisest counsel as to the American union in phrase +all-golden, and his eloquence is entitled to praise beyond all other, +because it is always what his high subject demands. + +As I have to do mainly with the permanent and lasting in Webster, I can +merely allude to his physical endowments, described with such rapture by +March, Choate, and many others of his time, and well summarized by Mr. +Lodge. I must remind the reader how it accorded with the purpose of the +powers to bestow upon their favorite majesty of form, mien, and look, a +voice that suggested the music of the spheres, action that would have been +a model to Demosthenes; in short, a physique for the orator superior to +any on record. These things helped him mightily in his day. + +Apparently I finished with Webster's education some pages back of this. +But the more important part of it has not as yet been touched upon; and it +is incumbent upon me to tell it, because of the lesson we ought to learn +from it. + +The largest and most characterizing part of our education--perhaps it +would more accurately express my meaning to say our culture--each one of +us gets from his associations, from his contact with the people of all +sorts around him in his infancy, boyhood, and manhood often as far on as +middle age, if not sometimes farther. We get it by imitation, unconscious +and conscious, and by absorption from what we see, hear, and read, etc., +which absorption is often most active when we are least aware of it. Now +let us consider the community of which Webster was the product. + +In the Plymouth oration, as we have already suggested, he exhibits the +exceptional progress and acquisitions of New England. What other community +ever showed greater courage against danger or greater energy against +obstacles, and such wise building-up of a new country in a strange land? +The Pilgrim Fathers could not have liberty and their own religion at home, +and for these they went into the wilderness. There they kept the savage at +bay. With soil and climate both unfavorable they wrought out general +plenty and comfort. They prospered in industry. They equalized as far as +they could all in property rights. And these liberty-lovers gave the +regulation of local affairs to the town meeting, of which Webster says: +"Nothing can exceed the utility of these little bodies. They are so many +councils or parliaments, in which common interests are discussed, and +useful knowledge acquired and communicated." + +Jefferson, the great apostle of popular self-government, most earnestly +longed to see all America outside of New England divided into such +townships as hers. + +But to return to the Pilgrims. They established schools and churches +everywhere. Free education was maintained by taxation of all property. + +Let us sum up. Here was a country in which everybody had been well trained +in the available ways of self-support and also of saving and +accumulating,--the very first essential to make good citizens. Such +citizens were required to administer their public affairs themselves; and +thus they received the very best political education and training in a +school of genuine democracy,--which is the next essential. The children of +each generation were schooled better than those of the former, the +colleges and universities constantly did better with the students, and +libraries open to the public both multiplied and enlarged,--the third +essential. And education and business were rationally mixed, until in +Webster's time it might be said with truth that the average New Englander +worked with a will, and wisely, every day to maintain himself and family, +and also found leisure to add something of value to his store of +knowledge. Here is another essential. The moral and religious atmosphere +became purer and purer, and more and more on all sides good intention was +conspicuous in the light, and evil intention hid itself deep in the dark. +This is the last essential. + +The foregoing is made up from the Plymouth oration. Webster was too near +to discern all the intellectual and moral advancement and the opulent +future promise of his own community, the proper fruit of the conditions +just summarized.[79] Let us indicate by only such a paucity of examples as +we have room for. Able and fully furnished lawyers everywhere. Think of +Story, a most diligently attending judge and one of the best; also +finding time both to be the first law professor and most fertile and +eminent author of the age, exhausting English and American sources and +authority in his books, and crowding them with a civil law learning to be +surpassed only by that of the Roman jurists of Germany; let Ticknor, whom +we may call the founder of the post classical school of literature in our +country, suggest the students of modern languages who followed in an +illustrious line,--let him suggest also the famous historians, such as +Prescott, Bancroft, Hildreth, Motley, Parkman, really representatives of +the school just mentioned, using methods that got into the American air +first from Ticknor; let Channing suggest the pulpit,--Channing, who raised +religion from the gloom of dogma and orthodoxy into a life of angelic joy; +what can one say to describe Emerson in a breath,--the teacher to us all +of fit aspiration, right thinking, noble expression, the highest virtue +and truest religion, and who lived, as Dr. Heber Newton has lately told, +the most perfect of lives as a man; Hawthorne, showing the world sick with +its yearning for moral redemption that even a disgraced, lone, and +friendless woman can by a subsequent life of unreserved confession, +purity, and love to her neighbors turn a horrible brand of guilt into a +jewel more precious and brilliant than diamond,--how his consummate +achievement rebukes the sixty years' dilatoriness of Goethe over his +unfinished Faust; and divine poets, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, and +Holmes,--the last two conspicuous in letters, Lowell being in my judgment +the greatest American man of letters; I have said nothing of the statesmen +and orators, beginning with Fisher Ames and John Adams,--and there are +others in every high round of the intellectual life known all over the +land whose names I must omit. + +In this enumeration I have intentionally looked somewhat forward; for what +is in one particular generation you cannot find out until its effects are +plain in the next. I want to accentuate it that Webster belonged to a +society which had made some of the extraordinary figures whose names are +given, and was making the rest of them. When the view just suggested has +been taken, and if in comparing New England with any other community--even +with Athens, Florence, England, or Germany, in their best eras--periods of +time be equalized and differences of population be properly allowed for, +it will appear that the conditions moulding Webster were more energetic in +productivity than can be found elsewhere. And if, in this comparison, the +relative general condition of the masses in each community be duly taken +into the account, the result will be far more favorable to New England; +for a high level of the masses is a much better proof of a fecund culture +than merely many striking individual instances. + +Thus we bring out the point that Webster was born, grew up, and lived in a +nursery prolific in men and women of extraordinary powers and virtues. How +insignificant is the muster-roll of any other part of our country! I +compare that of the south because I am familiar with it, and one can with +better manners disparage his own section than another. The ante-bellum +southern treasures of art and literature except speeches, political and +forensic, can be counted on the fingers of one hand without taking them +all. The poetry of Poe, a few essays of Legare, especially that on +Demosthenes, Calhoun's Dissertation on Government, and Toombs's Tremont +Temple lecture, are all that are pre-eminent; and some of the historians +of our literature insist that Poe was southern only in his prejudices, and +not in his making. To turn away from authors, how few can be found to +compare in education, polish, and literary or scientific accomplishments +with average New Englanders of their several professions or occupations. +Toombs, in the diamond-like brilliance of his extempore effusion in talks +or speeches, is as solitary in the south as Catullus, the greatest of the +spontaneous poets of his nation, was in the Rome of his day. + +Webster absorbed and absorbed, assimilated and assimilated, all the better +elements of this marvellous New England culture, which I am painfully +conscious of having most insufficiently described above, until at last he +mounted its eminences in his profession, in the politics of democracy, +aesthetic taste, and especially statesmanly eloquence. So assured was his +stand upon these eminences that all the wisest and most refined of the +section spontaneously and involuntarily did him obeisance, recognizing in +him their ideal of wisdom and counsel befittingly expressed. We can stop +to give only two examples. Edward Everett is the one American master of +grand rhetoric. He heard the reply to Hayne, and, as he says, he could not +but be reminded throughout of Demosthenes' making the unrivalled crown +oration. Choate, profoundly versed in the law, the incomparable forensic +advocate and popular speaker, daily flying higher with inspiration drawn +from Demosthenes and Cicero--he poured out his admiration in many +utterances that have already become classic. Webster was made in and by +New England, and not for herself alone. The toast, "Daniel Webster,--the +gift of New England to his country, his whole country, and nothing but his +country," to which he responded December 22, 1843, tells but the truth. No +American other than a New Englander ever had what one may term such a +greatness breeding environment as he. And passing in review all the famous +children of those famous six States, whether they spent their lives at +home as Choate, or developed elsewhere as Henry Ward Beecher, it is my +decided opinion that Daniel Webster as fruit and example of her culture is +New England's greatest glory. + +There remain now but a few prominences of Webster for me to touch upon. + +His speech of March 7, 1850, was fiercely denounced by the root-and-branch +abolitionists. Horace Mann called him a fallen Lucifer. Sumner charged him +with apostasy. Giddings said he had struck "a blow against freedom and the +constitutional rights of the free States which no southern arm could have +given." Theodore Parker could think of no comparable deed of any other New +Englander except the treachery of Benedict Arnold. Wittier condemned him +to everlasting obloquy in a lofty lyric, which from its very title of one +word throughout was reprobation more stinging than the world-known lampoon +of Catullus against Julius Caesar. The effect of this tempest has not yet +all died out; and in many quarters of the north Webster is still regarded +as a renegade. His defenders, however, multiply and become more earnest +and strong. Let us consider this speech with the serenity and riper +judgment which should mark the historical writer of to-day. + +First and foremost let us grasp the wide difference of the situation from +that at the beginning of 1833. Then, the question was only remotely a +pro-slavery or southern one. A southern president, the most popular +American, of great firmness of purpose and extraordinary courage, had +taken a decided stand against the movement of one southern State hostile +to the general government,--a stand the more decided because he cordially +hated Calhoun, who was leading the movement. The southern leaders outside +of that State did not approve of nullification; most of them believing it +was an absurdity for a State to contend she could stay in the union and +at the same time rightfully refuse to perform a condition of that union. +It seemed that no southern State except Virginia would stand by South +Carolina in the event of a collision between her and the United States. We +can well understand that Webster could then see no danger to the cause he +loved above all others, that is, the union, in uncompromisingly demanding +that the revenue be collected, and with force if necessary. + +Nullification was palpably unjustifiable, even under the doctrine +prevalent in the south. We have explained how Calhoun's extreme desire for +peaceable remedies only, led him to champion this illogical measure. The +theory of State sovereignty demanded that, instead of the nullification +ordinance, South Carolina pass an ordinance of secession, conditioned to +commence its operation at a stated time if the objectionable duties had +not been repealed. The situation in 1833 was that all the north and nearly +all of the south were arrayed under a southern leader against only one +southern State, making a demand which was plainly untenable in either one +of the two differing schools of constitutional construction. + +But the situation, in 1850, was a south solidly united, not upon such an +obvious heresy as nullification, but aroused as one man to protect the +very underpinning of its social structure. It was standing confidently +upon the doctrine of State sovereignty, which, as the historical records +all showed, was the creed of the generation, both north and south, that +made the constitution. As we have already told, Calhoun in 1833 probably +convinced Webster that the States were sovereign. That did not mean that +the force-bill was wrong; it meant only that if South Carolina chose, she +could rightfully secede. And we may say that this great argument of +Calhoun, demolishing as it does the premises of Webster, was really +irrelevant, for it did not support his own proposition. Now in 1850, as +Webster saw it, the south was justified by the constitution, however +foolish might be her policy, and he was too conscientious to oppose what +he believed right and just. In addition to this claim by the south of +State sovereignty as abstractly right, his conscience told him that some +of her practical demands were just. It had been provided not only that all +of Texas south of 36 deg. 30' be admitted with slavery, but further that four +other States be made out of the same territory. Although Webster was a +free-soiler from first to last, his conscience told him peremptorily that +the only honest course of congress as to the provision mentioned, which +was really a solemn contract with Texas, was to perform the contract in +good faith. This advice, of course, aroused the ire of the abolitionists, +who had united upon the position that no other slave State should ever be +admitted into the union. And he boldly said that the south was right in +her complaint that there was disinclination both among individuals and +public authorities at the north to execute the fugitive slave law. +Meditate these serious words: + + "I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men at the north, + of all conscientious men, of all men who are not carried away by some + fanatical idea or some false impression, to their constitutional + obligations. I put it to all the sober and sound minds at the north as + a question of morals and a question of conscience, What right have + they, in their legislative capacity or any other capacity, to endeavor + to get round this constitution, or to embarrass the free exercise of + the rights secured by the constitution to the persons whose slaves + escape from them? None at all; none at all. Neither in the forum of + conscience, nor before the face of the constitution, are they, in my + opinion, justified in such an attempt." + +I must believe that as time rolls on the outcry against this position of +Webster's, so unshakably founded in conscience and reason as the position +is, must not only cease, but turn to words of praise and commendation. The +northern fanatics who tried to abolish slavery by repudiating such solemn +contracts as the resolution of March 1, 1845, respecting the admission of +Texas, and the fugitive slave restoration clause of the federal +constitution, _while purposing to stay in the union_, were just as morally +wrong as were the southern fanatics who proposed to stay in the union and +enjoy its benefits and not pay the taxes necessary for its maintenance. + +One other passage of this speech has been strongly attacked. Webster +opposed applying the Wilmot proviso to California and New Mexico, where, +as he said, "the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the +formation of the earth ... settles forever with a strength beyond all +terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist." To apply the proviso +would be, as he added, to "take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance +of nature," and "to re-enact the will of God;" and its insertion in a +Territorial government bill would be "for the mere purpose of a taunt or +reproach." Mr. Lodge, reprehending most severely, confidently asserts that +though these Territories were not suited to slave agriculture, yet that +their many and rich mines could have been profitably worked by slaves.[80] +He stresses the fact that certain slave owners declared that they would, +if they could, so work these mines. This distinguished author is to be +reminded of how cheaply Seius could replace any one of his slaves that he +worked to death in Ilva's mines. Let him re-read the Captivi of +Plautus,--not to mention many other ancient records just as +instructive,--and realize that in that time it was not only one race that +furnished slaves, but that every free human being was in lifelong danger +of falling to a master. The prisoners taken in the incessant wars kept the +slave markets glutted. A few months' work of one of his slaves would bring +the master enough to pay the purchase money and leave a considerable sum +to his credit with the banker. The Spaniards worked their mines with +Indians to be had for the catching in near-by places. And Mr. Lodge +mentions mining with the labor of criminals and serfs. In all the +instances that he has in mind the worker can be had for his keep or a +little more than that. But to have mined with the slaves of the +south,--that was widely different. There was no way to get such a slave +except to rear or hire or buy him in a protected market. Does Mr. Lodge +really believe that Seius would have permitted his eight hundred slaves to +sicken in the mines of Ilva if each one had been worth at least $1,000 in +the market? Really the leading industry of the south was slave rearing. +The profit was in keeping the slaves healthy and rapidly multiplying. This +could be done at little expense in agriculture, where even the light +workers were made to support themselves. But had a planter gone into a +mining section, where he could get no land, for corn to feed his slaves +and stock, and for cotton to bring him money, he would have found no +margin of profit whatever in mining. I was reared in the gold-bearing +district of Georgia. I can remember old Mr. John Wynne, a wealthy cotton +planter living in Oglethorpe county, some six or seven miles from my +father's, who, when--to use plantation parlance--he had laid by his crop +at the middle or end of July, would work his gold mine until +cotton-picking became brisk about the middle of September. He made money +out of his gold mine, without injuring his other far more valuable mine, +that is, the natural increase of his negroes. And I heard of other such +mine workers. But you could not have tempted one of these shrewd business +men to settle with his slaves outside of a cotton-making district in order +to mine. Had either Mr. Clingman or Mr. Mason--mentioned by Mr. +Lodge--made the trial, he would have soon returned to his old neighborhood +a sadder and wiser man. + +The negro's work as a slave in the coal and iron mines of the south never +commenced until after the thirteenth amendment freed him. Since then he +has done much cruelly hard work as _servus poenae_--a slave of +punishment--in these mines, for convict lessees, having no other interest +in him than to get all the labor possible during his term. + +So it is clear that Webster, in contending that the conditions in these +Territories were prohibitive of slavery was as statesmanly and +perspicacious as he was generally in other matters. + +His detractors charged that the entire speech was a bid for the support of +the south in his eager struggle for the presidency. That he passionately +longed for the chair was manifest. But his was not the sordid ambition of +the professional place-hunter. He had a heaven-reaching aspiration to show +America what a president should be in those angry times. He must have been +conscious that he was the only man of gifts to do the great deed. What an +appropriate climax that would have been for the invincible defender of the +union, who, when replying to Hayne twenty years before, had outsoared +Pindar in eulogizing South Carolina leading the south, and Massachusetts +leading the north, in the same breath; and who, neither from prepossession +in favor of his native community or resentment because of attack upon it +by those of the other section, had ever been removed out of brotherly +love for all his countrymen alike. If you can do an all-important thing +for your fellows which you believe no one else can do, and are without +ambition for opportunity, are you not a poor grovelling creature? Webster, +knowing that secession could not be peaceable, and seeing it become more +and more probable, racked with fears for the union, and aghast at the +menace of fraternal bloodshed, like Calhoun, he cheated himself with a +futile remedy. We have told you of Calhoun's proposal to disarm the +combatants. In his amiability Webster believed with his whole soul that he +could as president make his countrymen love one another as he himself +loved them, and that he could pour upon the waters now beginning to rage +oil enough to safe the ship of union through the tempest soon to be at its +height. It was an aspiration high and holy, deserving of eternal honor +from all America. You cannot read this great speech of March 7 aright if +you do not discern that Webster was seriously alarmed. When you see that a +dear one's malady is fatal, you will not confess it to others,--not even +to yourself. His excited exclamations, "No, sir! no, sir! There will be no +secession! Gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession," cannot +deceive a reader whose wont it has been to look into his own heart. +Webster did not see the future with the superhuman prevision of Calhoun; +but he had observed the course of things in that stormy session. Is it to +be believed that he had overlooked the tremendous significance of Toombs's +speech of December 13, and of the wild plaudits it brought from the +southern members? And try to conceive what must have been the effect upon +him of that most solemn and the saddest great speech in all oratory of +Calhoun just three days before. Read the 7th of March speech by its +circumstances and it is revealed to you, as by a flashlight, that Webster +had peeped behind the curtain which he had prayed should never rise in his +lifetime. Horror-struck as he was, he would not despair of his +country,--he would not believe that the brothers' union was about to turn +into a brothers' war. Oh, let nobody dishonor his better self by seeing in +this glorious speech, which our best and most lovable have placed in their +hearts beside Washington's farewell address, the bid of a turncoat. Rather +let us learn to understand its supreme statesmanly reach; its impartiality +towards and just rebuke of the orator's own section and its merited +castigation of the other courageously given, while affection for both is +kept uppermost; its grand dignity, moral height, and pre-eminent +patriotism. Let us also learn properly to estimate the disfavor with which +he regarded ever afterwards during the rest of his life the active +anti-slavery men of the north, whom he could not understand to be other +than bringers of the unspeakable calamity he would avert. And let us give +him his due commiseration for missing the nomination, and realizing that +the hopes of saving his country which he had cherished so fondly were all, +all shattered. When we do our full duty to him we will, northerners and +southerners alike, agree that Whittier's palinode ought to have gone full +circle before it paused. + +What is Webster's highest and best fame? In answer we think at once of the +reply to Hayne, its loftiness throughout, its eagle ascensions here and +there, and most of all the organ melodies at the grand close, beside which +the famous apostrophe of Longfellow is harsh overstrain. The next moment +we feel he is higher in his profound love for his whole country than in +his unequalled eloquence. He and Lincoln were the supereminent Americans +who could never, never forget that the people of the other section were +their own full-blood brothers and sisters. They are the supreme exponents +of that American brotherhood, more deeply founded and more lasting than +either one of the nationalizations which we have explained, out of which a +continental is first, and then a world-union to come. To save our union +was also to do the better deed of saving that brotherhood. For this each +strove in his own way. I believe that the people of the world-union will +pair them in Walhalla, and set them above all other heroes, crowning +Webster as the monarch of speech which prepared millions with faith and +fortitude for the crisis, and crowning Lincoln the monarch of counsels and +acts in the crisis. It will be understood that neither was called away +before his mission was finished. The greatest work of each was example of +the love with which we should all love one another; and that was +complete. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" + + +The misrepresentations in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of the character of the +negro and his usual treatment in southern slavery have been taken as true +by the best-informed and most unprejudiced everywhere outside of the +south. The quotations which I make above from Prof. Barrett Wendell's +_bahnbrechend_ work on American literature[81] show a rare and exemplary +freedom from sectional bias. But he is a most convincing witness to the +statement with which I begin this chapter, as I shall now show by two +other excerpts from the same book, making it appear that even Professor +Wendell has accepted without question the misrepresentations mentioned. In +these excerpts I italicize the important statements, and I follow each +with a contradictory one of my own. I invite close attention to what +Professor Wendell says on one side and I on the other, for they make up +issues of fact that must be rightly settled before the historical merit of +the work which is the subject of this chapter can be accurately judged. + +This is the first excerpt: + + "Written carelessly, and full of crudities, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' even + after forty-eight years, remains a remarkable piece of fiction. The + truth is that almost unawares Mrs. Stowe had in her the stuff of which + good novelists are made. Her plot, to be sure, is conventional and + rambling; but her characters, even though little studied in detail, + have a pervasive vitality which no study can achieve; _you + unhesitatingly accept them as real. Her descriptive power, meanwhile, + was such as to make equally convincing the backgrounds in which her + action and her characters move. What is more, these backgrounds, most + of which she knew from personal experience, are probably so faithful + to actual nature that the local sentiment aroused as you read them may + generally be accepted as true._"[82] + +I say as to the characters in the novel that the negroes are monstrous +distortions, being drawn in the main with the leading peculiarities of +whites and without those of negroes; and that as to her most +representative southern whites Mrs. Stowe is utterly untrue to fact by +making them all anti-slavery. I say as to the "backgrounds," that she knew +as little of them as she did of the negroes. I expect to demonstrate that +the "personal experience" claimed for her by Professor Wendell was scanty +and inadequate in the extreme. + +I now give the second and last excerpt: "She [Mrs. Stowe] differed from +most abolitionists _in having observed on the spot all the tragic evils of +slavery_."[83] + +I do not dispute that her opportunity of learning southern slavery, small +as it was, was very far superior to that of the other prominent +abolitionists except Seward, who had taught school in the black belt of +Georgia.[84] I maintain that she knew but little of southern slavery, and +they less; that what both they and she conscientiously and most +confidently believed to be their knowledge of this slavery, the slave, and +of the slaveholder, was but a prodigious mass of delusion and prejudice. + +I shall show, I think, that, instead of observing, she merely fancied and +imagined, and that, to say the least, it is very misleading to allege +that this fancying and imagining of hers was done "on the spot." + +By the words, "all the tragic evils of slavery," Professor Wendell +evidently means that the evils of southern slavery to the slave were both +very many and very great. I shall show, I believe, that the condition of +the average negro in southern slavery was far better than it was in Africa +whence he came, and far better than it is now since he has been freed. +There are occasionally incident to every human condition--even to the +relation of parent and child--some tragic evils of its own. In the native +home of the negro in West Africa all the women and nearly all the men are +slaves of brutally cruel savages, without any protection of law whatever. +The social organism is in the very lowest stage; and there is complete +inability to evolve into a better one as the stationariness of ages +proves. In the new south, certain causes which I have described at length +in the last two chapters of this book have, ever since emancipation, been +steadily and with acceleration depressing the average negro; and the rise +of the few who have managed to acquire some property, or to get a good +industrial education, only brings out more conspicuously the misery and +wretchedness of the mass. It is correct to say that there was a vast +multitude of tragic evils to the negroes in West Africa; and it is also +correct to say that there is now the same to them in the south; but it is +not correct to say that the tragic evils of southern slavery to the slave +were frequent or general. The truth as to southern slavery ought to be +known everywhere, which is, that it raised the negro very greatly in +condition, and, now that he has been taken out of it, his progress has +been arrested, and he is relapsing. + +The great proposition of Mrs. Stowe and of the root-and-branch +abolitionists was that slavery in the south was such a flagrant and +atrocious wrong to the negro, that every human being was commanded by +conscience to do everything possible to help him if he should try to +escape from his master. Combating this proposition, without any concession +whatever, I think it well that we try at the outset to ascertain how +southern slavery affected the negro, whether cruelly or beneficially. To +do this, his condition in his native land, his condition while a slave in +America, and, lastly, his condition after his emancipation, must be +compared. I beg my reader to follow me attentively as I now review and +contrast these three conditions. First, as to his condition in Africa. +Here is what Toombs said of him to a Boston audience, January 24, 1856: + + "The monuments of the ancient Egyptians carry him back to the morning + of time--older than the pyramids; they furnish the evidence both of + his national identity and his social degradation before history began. + We first behold him a slave in foreign lands; we then find the great + body of his race slaves in their native land; and after thirty + centuries, illuminated by both ancient and modern civilization, have + passed over him, we still find him a slave of savage masters, as + incapable as himself of even attempting a single step in + civilization--we find him there still, without government or laws of + protection, without letters or arts of industry, without religion, or + even the aspirations which would raise him to the rank of an idolater; + and in his lowest type, his almost only mark of humanity is, that he + walks erect in the image of the Creator. Annihilate his race to-day, + and you will find no trace of his existence within half a score of + years; and he would not leave behind him a single discovery, + invention, or thought worthy of remembrance by the human family."[85] + +If my reader deems Toombs's picture overdrawn let him consult those parts +of the recent work of a most diligent and conscientious investigator +describing the negroes of West Africa, and note what is there told of +heathen practices still surviving,--slavery of women to their polygamic +husbands, pitiless destruction of useless members of the family, robbery, +murder, cannibalism, the utter want of chastity.[86] We quote this as to +slavery, which is especially important here: + + "Slavery, having existed from time immemorial, is bound up with the + whole social and economic organization of West African society. There + are, broadly speaking, three kinds of slaves: those captured in war, + those purchased from outside the tribe,--usually from the + interior,--and the native-born slaves. _All alike_ are mere chattels, + and _by law are absolutely subject to the master's will without + redress_. But in practice a difference is made, for obvious reasons, + between native-born slaves and captives taken from hostile tribes. + _The latter are numerous, and the severest forms of labor fall to + their lot. They are treated with constant neglect, and cruelly + punished on the slightest provocation. Their lives are at no time + secure; they serve as victims for the sacrifice; when sick they are + driven into the jungle; in times of scarcity they starve._"[87] + +The master has the power of life and death over all slaves.[88] + +The same author adds: "_The pawning of persons for debt is exceedingly +common. If the debt is never paid in full, the pawn_ and his descendants +become slaves in perpetuity."[89] + +Surely the reader who has attended to these details which I have given +from Mr. Tillinghast will admit that the southern master transferred the +African into a condition far better than any he could find at home. In the +south two agencies gave him beneficent favor to which he and his fathers +had always been strangers. The law of the land protected his life and +shielded him from cruelty; and his high market value made it the interest +of his American master not to overwork or under- feed and clothe him. And +he was introduced into the first stage of monogamic life, which he +developed steadily and rapidly until he was freed. In this he was +travelling the only true road up from barbarism. If he could have but +stayed in it until, after some generations--perhaps centuries--chaste +wives and mothers had been evolved, he would have stood firmly on the +threshold of permanent civilization and improvement. + +Whatever evil of southern slavery to the negro my readers, prompted by the +root-and-branch abolitionists, may suggest, they will find on reflection +that it would have been far greater to him and more frequent had he +remained in Africa. Separation of members of the family has been +repeatedly emphasized as a most horrible evil of slavery in the south. +Such separation was incalculably more cruel and frequent in West Africa +than it ever was among the negro slaves in America. And how have the +root-and-branch abolitionists mended matters? What do we see in the new +south, now that slavery, the great rupturer of family circles, is no more, +and a master no longer can part parent and child, or husband and wife? +Before the end of the brothers' war there had not been a single +separation of a family among my father's slaves. At much expense and +inconvenience he had bought the husband of one and the wife of another in +order to keep each one of these two pairs united. In 1866, Bob, a boy of +sixteen, who, because of his obedience and merry-making gifts, had always +been a greatly indulged pet, signalized his new-found freedom by stealing +from the house of one of our neighbors some articles of considerable +value. He fled from justice, and, never seeing his parents or his brothers +and sisters again, died among strangers. In 1868, Lewis abandoned his wife +Esther and their young child, and went to a distant town. Some ten years +afterwards, Bill, a brother of Bob, and several years younger, convicted +of an unmentionable crime, received a ten years' chain-gang sentence. Not +long before this the body of one of his two wives who was at the time out +of his favor was found in a well. Reputable whites living near were +convinced that he had murdered her. If that be true, it should count as a +separation. While he was serving out his sentence his remaining wife +married again, and this should be set down also as a separation. Bob, +Lewis, Esther, and Bill were slaves of my father. He did not own twenty in +all. This example shows how, as to the same negroes, southern slavery +operated to prevent separation of families, and how freedom has operated +to encourage and stimulate it. It is not an exceptional example. My +maternal grandfather and a maternal aunt owned each many more slaves than +my father did. Some of my father's near neighbors had slaves in +considerable number. In all of these slaves, while I knew them, there +never was a separation of a family except by death or the voluntary act of +parties to a marriage? But when they were freed in 1865 separation at once +became rife, and it has always been active. What I have just told is +fairly representative of the new south throughout the cotton States. + +There were now and then sales made of slaves which sundered man and wife, +and parent and child; but such were extremely few, and their proportion +was steadily decreasing under two potent influences. Restraint of them by +the law had commenced and was growing. But the stronger influence was +custom and public opinion. Before approaching sales at public outcry by +sheriffs or representatives of a deceased, and also before private sales, +the slaves to be sold were given opportunity to find their new masters. +There was generally a neighbor who owned husband, wife, parents, or +children, or wanted a cook, washerwoman, seamstress, boy to make a +carpenter, striker, or blacksmith of, somebody careful with stock, etc., +and the upshot would be that the man selected by the slave had got him. +The seller had natural feelings. His wife and all of his children would do +their utmost to get such new masters as the negroes preferred. I shall +always cherish in memory the affectionate regard which the mother of the +household and all the family habitually showed to their slaves. As I +write, a sweet reminiscence comes of how the children would always clamor +and mutiny against the most merited punishment of their nurse by father or +overseer. There is no doubt that the slave steadily won larger place in +the domestic affections, and that his treatment by each generation of +masters was more kind and humane. And as a part of this amelioration the +percentage of forced separation of slave families was all the while +becoming less. + +Let us devote a moment to the negro trader, as he was called, and his +slave-pens, which were the subjects of much and heated invective. The +first suggestion in order here is that there were such in West Africa, far +more frequent and far exceeding in cruelty any ever known in the south. +To take the African away from the latter and turn him over to the former +was great kindness to him. I remind my readers, in the next place, that +the factors constantly minimizing separation of slaves from other members +of the family--law, public opinion becoming more sensitive, custom +becoming more merciful, and the sway of the domestic affections +stronger--were _pari passu_ humanizing every incident of the commerce in +slaves as property. Lastly, the negro trader and the pen, by reason of the +small number of the slaves to whom they caused real suffering, were mercy +and prosperous condition itself beside the convict gangs and pens which +emancipation has put in their place, as will come out more clearly in a +short while. + +His use of the lash was a dire accusation of the master. The reader thinks +at once of the relevant words in a famous passage so often quoted from one +of President Lincoln's messages: "If this struggle is to be prolonged till +... every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn +with the sword." This was said March 4, 1865, a month and five days only +before General Lee's surrender, and when all the great battles of the +brothers' war had been fought,--a war by far the most sanguinary in the +world's history. Blood did sometimes follow the blow of the lash, but not +often. The overseer who could not correct without breaking the skin always +lost his place. When the statement of Mr. Lincoln just commented on is +compared with the actual fact, it appears to be one of the most +extravagant hyperboles ever uttered. + +Before I have my readers to look at the actual facts I want to say a +preliminary word. The parent was enjoined by Solomon not to spare the rod. +The rod was permitted to the master of the apprentice, the school-teacher, +the drill officer, and others. It was often used with great severity. As +we see from the Decameron husbands were wont to correct their wives by +beating them with sticks. Whipping on the bare back was a common execution +of the judgment of a criminal court. Our insubordinate convicts are +strapped. The usual punishment of a slave's disobedience was to whip him. +A switch was not generally used, because by reason of his thick and tough +skin and lower nervous development--to use a common expression--it would +not hurt him. It was a familiar thing to me in my childhood to hear some +negro tell of the use of a switch on him by women or feeble men, how the +blows could scarcely be felt, and yet with what outcry and clamor he +pretended that each one gave him great pain. The cowhide, but far more +frequently the whip, took the place of the switch. The former was more and +more discredited, because it could seldom be laid on hard enough without +cutting the skin. The whip had a flat lash at the end, with which, as the +strap or paddle now used on our convicts, a stinging blow could be hit +that would not draw blood. + +An ordinary correction of a negro did not cause him as much pain as your +child, with his far superior sensitiveness, receives when you give him the +rod. Large and heavy as the overseer's whip looked, the negro, with his +high degree of insensibility to physical pain inherited from his African +ancestors, who for a hundred generations or more had bestowed upon one +another all kinds of corporal torture, cared far less for it than the +abolitionist who insisted on making him merely a black white man, could +ever understand. How little of both mental and corporal suffering the lash +causes the average negro is strikingly shown by the fact that ever since +his emancipation, when he is detected in a serious offence, he is prone to +propose that he be whipped instead of being carried to court. If his +offer is accepted he strips off his clothes with alacrity, exclaims the +conventional "O, Lordy!" under every fall of the whip; and when the +contract number of lashes has been given he goes away with the look and +air of one who has just learned that he has drawn a lottery prize of +thousands; and his nearest and dearest, his wife and children, all his +sweethearts, congratulate him cordially, and the entire negro community +rate him as rarely fortunate. This is enough here of the lash; but a word +or two more will be appropriate when we give the chain-gang attention. + + "Run, nigger, run, patroller get you." + +The riotous merriment of this air can be fully appreciated only by one who +has heard Cuffee sing it at the quarters while picking his banjo. It +completely confutes the charge often made that the patrol law was a cruel +one. To the negro, the execution of that law was more of fun and frolic +than punishment. Let this air, and all the others to which the slaves used +to dance, be meditated by those, if there are such, who incline to believe +that Professor DuBois has really detected, as he seriously contends, in +the negro melodies of the old south deep sorrow over slavery. If miserable +conditions give character to musical expression, the songs, if any, that +now come forth spontaneously from the mass of southern negroes--that is, +from those of the lower class, which class will be described later +herein--ought to be sadder than the tears of Simonides. + +My reader who has his memory stored with the raw-head and bloody bones +fiction of abolitionists who had never set foot on an inch of slave +territory, probably thinks of bloodhounds, and wonders if I will be frank +enough to mention them. He has been made to believe that runaway slaves +often had the flesh torn from their bones by these dogs. I witnessed +several chases of runaways, and in every one, when the negro was overtaken +by the dogs, he was in a tree far above their reach. Think about it, and +bring it home to yourself. Put yourself in the runaway's place, you would +surely understand as well as a common house cat does how to avoid pursuing +dogs. Negro dogs, as they were called, were bred to be far more slow than +fox dogs. The tricks of the runaway would put the latter at fault so often +that they could hardly ever catch him. Further, the packs of negro dogs +were usually too small to overpower a stout negro. He was often armed with +a scythe-blade for use if overtaken where he could not find a tree. When +he could keep ahead no longer he preferred taking refuge to fighting with +the dogs. He knew he could kill or disable only the few that would rush in +recklessly, and that the others would stay too far from him to be hurt and +yet keep him at bay. He was now going to be caught, and he would think it +better not to provoke the ire of the owners by killing or injuring their +dogs. + +The negro hunted the 'possum and 'coon by night and the hare--the rabbit, +as everybody called it--on Sundays, half-holidays, and Christmas, either +with his young master or without him, and always with the dogs; which he +thus learned to control. A negro woman cooked the corn-bread and +pot-liquor, with which they were fed by her or some other slave. They were +always waiting near when the slaves ate by day in the fields or at all +hours of night in their cabins, and many a bit was thrown to them. Usually +there was the greatest friendship between the dogs on the plantation, +those intended for chasing runaways included, and the negroes. It was +great entertainment for a negro, at the command of his master, to give the +young negro dogs a race, as it was called. These races were frequent, and +they were the entire training of the dogs for their business. A hunting +dog when lost will track his master. And many a runaway was caught by dogs +which he was in the habit of feeding and hunting with. The average negro +of those days, prowling so much at night as he did, necessarily became a +most expert dog-tamer. How often I have been diverted with this sight! A +strange negro, coming on some errand, intrepidly opens the front gate and +enters the yard of a dwelling. A savage dog dashes forward. Just as the +dog couches near for his spring, the negro, by a very quick movement, +takes off his hat and extends it to the dog. The latter turns his eyes +away from the negro, looks at the old, soiled wool hat, smells it, and +then retires, nonplussed. + +As a general rule a negro was safe from the bite of dogs. Running away was +not frequent. The almost insuperable difficulty of final escape from the +dogs prevented it. And it was in practice a most mild means of prevention. +I suppose that I knew and heard of the catching of some twenty odd slaves +in the contiguous parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene +counties, which constituted the locality with which I was familiar, and in +not a single case was one injured by the bloodhounds. The dogs that are +now turned loose after our convicts are of far more savage temper than +were the negro dogs of the old south; and consequently the human game, +when come up with, is more prompt to go up a tree than was the old slave. + +There was much less lack of food and raiment among the slaves than among +the class known as the white trash. It was considered a business blunder +not to keep them supplied always with more food than they wanted. They +were in better physical condition than the average white laborer now +shows. + +And they were not worked hard. Even in the longest days of the year, when +the battle with the grass was fiercest, at night the quarters were +resonant with mirth, song, and dancing as soon as the mules had been +watered, stabled, and fed. + +The foregoing is a report, from my observation on the spot, of "all the +tragic evils of slavery" to the negro in the south. I have been at pains +to make it as true as can be. I purpose to follow it now with a like +report of all the gladsome blessings to him of his freedom. + +His true and fast friends, the abolitionists, equalized him _per saltum_ +to his master as a voter and office-holder. This single measure was sure +to make deadly enemies of white and black in the south, and to bring a war +of races in which the superior one was bound to conquer and become +absolute. This war did come, and was fought out. Profound peace has +reigned for some years, and the negroes now contentedly stay away from the +polls, and manifest no aspiration whatever for office and place. + +His same friends gave the ex-slave equality with his old master under the +criminal law. He had this in slavery only when charged with a capital +offence; and if he was charged with a graver one of the non-capital +offences, such as breaking and entering a dwelling, stealing something of +considerable value, he was brought before a statutory court of justices of +the peace, and if upon his summary trial he was convicted, his punishment +was usually a short term in jail, the sheriff to give him so many lashes +each day until he had received the full number adjudged in his sentence. I +never heard of one that was seriously injured by this kind of punishment. +It never gave him any permanent mental anguish. His conscience approved +whipping as the most fit punishment for every offence. The crimes of +negroes mentioned above in this paragraph were very infrequent. Their many +peccadillos were in practice wholly ignored by the law, and given over to +private and domestic jurisdiction. Cuffee would sometimes indulge a sudden +craving for fresh meat by appropriating a shoat or grown lamb, or he would +gratify a watering mouth by stealthy invasion of melon patches or sweet +potato patches and banks. And he was prone to other small larcenies. If +caught,--which was very far from always happening,--he was whipped; and +that was the last of it. Now he must replace the bounty of his master +which sheltered, clothed, and fed him comfortably all his life by living +from hand to mouth. His forecast utterly undeveloped, and more and more +losing the work habit, there is often but one way for him to avoid +starving or freezing, and that is to get the necessaries of life by +various acts which are crimes in the law. It is but a scanty supply that +he thus manages to get. His year is nearly always, from beginning to end, +but an alternation of short feasts upon the cheapest fare, and prolonged +fasts. Yet in the eye of the stern and severe law how many gross offences +does he commit by doing only the things which, if he did not do, he could +not keep soul and body together. And so he is brought before every court +of any criminal jurisdiction, and when convicted, as he generally is, for +he is nearly always guilty,--not in conscience, but guilty under the law +which his emancipators have put him under,--often he cannot find a friend +to pay his fine, and he must work it out in the chain-gang. The city has +its chain-gang, the county has its chain-gang, and the State works or +farms out its convicts. The percentage of whites among these convicts is +very small. Often when you encounter a gang at work you cannot find a +single white person in it. These negro convicts are many, many. As fast +as one's time expires his place is filled by another. Disease, decay of +energy from irregular food supply, growing habits of idleness, and other +things in the train, bring forth tramps more plentifully, and from these +the chain-gangs are more and more largely recruited. These slaves of +punishment work under the eyes of guards furnished with the best of +small-arms loaded to kill. The most of them work in shackles. If they do +not work as their superintendents think they ought, they are strapped. I +have seen them working in the rain, as I never saw required of slaves. At +night they are put to sleep in a crowded log-pen, all of them chained +together, the chain being made fast to each bunk. The guards are practised +marksmen, known to be men who will promptly and resolutely "do their +duty." This hell-like life constantly keeps each convict watching for +opportunity to make a dash for liberty. If the guards have anything like +fair shots when he starts, one more unmarked and soon forgotten grave is +dug and filled in the paupers' burial ground, and that is the earthly end +of this poor derelict of the human race. Suppose he gets safely away from +the guard. In a few minutes the unleashed dogs are yelping on his track. +In the old days even the negro dogs were fed and tended by slaves, and +almost every dog in the land seemed to love negroes. But these bloodhounds +in the convict camps have been bred into a deadly hatred of every negro. +Escaping Cuffee is usually caught. Then more of the paddle, heavier +shackles, chains at night stronger and more taut, and the bosses harder to +satisfy as he works under greater hindrances--these make his lot more +hell-like than it was before. + +It is a melancholy proof of the insufficient dietary and bad hygiene of +the common negroes that these convicts fatten in spite of their cruel +hardships. + +The long-term convicts, farmed out to coal and other mine owners and +various manufacturers, and private employers, I know but little of from +observation. But what I hear makes me believe that their condition is +worse than that of those just described. This is to be expected, for two +reasons. First, they are worked for profit by persons whose only interest +is to get the largest possible product out of their labor. The labor +exacted by the owner, bear in mind, would not be severe enough either to +impair the market value or check vigorous reproduction of his slaves. +Second, the places where these convicts are worked are more or less +retired, and thus the employer escapes scrutiny nearly all the year. Think +of a negro who, receiving a twenty years' sentence for burglariously +stealing a ham when he was hungry, is put to work in the coal mine! Who +ever hears of him afterwards? He is soon forgotten by his wife, who takes +another husband, and by his children either skulking here and there to +shun the officer, or toiling in a chain-gang. Here is indeed a bitter +slavery--bitterer by far than any West Africa ever knew. There the slave +does not labor underground and out of the sun so dear to him. His +manumission comes mercifully in many ways, long before the expiration of +twenty years--the sacrifice may need a victim; he may starve; he may fall +sick and be cast out in the bush. But the mine slave--the mine boss will +not whip him hard enough to give him even short rest from his work, work, +work; he shall always have enough of raiment, food, and sleep to keep him +able to work, work, work; when he gets very sick the mine doctor will +patch him up and send him back to his work, work, work; he will work, +work, work out his twenty years in this hell hole. Miss Landon in her +immortal invective against child labor exclaims: + + "Good God! to think upon a child + That has no childish days, + No careless play, no frolics wild, + No words of prayer and praise!" + +This factory child that never knew any of the proper joys of a child is +without either sweet memory or unavailing wish. But the mine slave, the +most of whose former life was passed in the open air, how he pines for the +splendor of his loved sun by day; how in his bunk he recalls his rounds by +night when the Seven Stars, the Ell and Yard and Job's Coffin were his +clock and the North Star his compass. Each part of the revolving year +whispers to him when he is at work or dreaming. Christmas suggests the jug +with the corn-cob stopper, the 'possum cooked brown, the yams exuding +their sugary juice, the banjo picker and his song, the fiddle playing a +dancing tune, and the floor shaking under the thumping footfalls; the cold +weather following suggests the 'possum and 'coon hunt; the early spring +brings what he used to call the corn-planting birds and their lively +calls; and on and on his thoughts go over mocking-bird, woodpecker, early +peaches and apples, full orchards spared by frost, the watermelon, +solitary and incomparable among all things for a negro to eat, his Sunday +fishings and rabbit hunts, his church and society meetings, this and that +dusky love who fooled him into believing that he was dearer to her than +husband or any other man, especially some yellow girl, his nonesuch, +exceeding all other women as the watermelon excels all other produce of +tree or vine,--on and on his thoughts go over what he can never have +again. I need not say a word for the white victims of child labor, for +their race is rousing for their rescue, and I know its power to achieve. +But I do feel that it is my duty to put that friendless, forgotten, +long-term negro convict in the minds of my southern readers. If he must +be a convict, do not farm him out to mine operators or where he will be +worked behind any screen. Put all our convicts, both felony and +misdemeanor, upon the public roads until they need only a little working +now and then, say I. There the convicts will not be worked for profit, nor +in secret. + +The total of the negroes suffering in southern slavery from all causes +falls in amount far below that alone which has come upon him because he +was stupidly subjected to the white man's criminal law, and not given +reformatories and other belongings of the system which we are perfecting +for juvenile offenders. The suffering in slavery was occasional only, and +soon over. The present suffering of the negroes under the criminal law is +constant, and is to be found rife in every locality. The aggregate of the +felony and misdemeanor convicts of Georgia now at hard labor is about +4,500. The convicts sentenced by city and town police courts for short +terms of days I cannot give with any approximate accuracy. I think it +probable that the number of those convicted each year in the municipal +courts is somewhat larger than that of those convicted in the State +courts. By reason of a late wholesale reduction of felonies the number of +long-term convicts does not increase,--it is at a standstill,--but the +number of the misdemeanor and municipal convicts steadily increases. More +than nine-tenths of those in each one of the three classes are negroes. +The stench, filth, and discomfort of their nights and the hardship of +their days, who can describe? How it moves my pity to see, as I often do, +the convict toiling incessantly for long hours, impeded and tortured by +his iron shackles, the paddle at hand, and a double-barrel or Winchester +frowning over him, each to be used on occasion by somebody who cares +nothing for and has no interest in him. Weary as the worker may be, a +word from the boss gives new impetus to his pick or shovel. Here is the +only place I have ever known on American soil where one can find "poor, +oppressed, bleeding Africa." How different it was with the slave offender! +It mattered not what was the charge against him, he had persons related to +him both in interest and affection who would intercede powerfully at his +call. Wherever he might be,--in the sheriff's hands, or locked up by the +overseer in the gin-house,--a messenger-service as secret and more sure +than wireless telegraphy even if not as quick, was at his command; and +some child, white or colored, or favorite servant would carry his +entreaties to the Big House. And the justices, or ole master or the +overseer, would be influenced by a word from ole miss, or the tears of +young miss, or the importunity of young master. In the end Cuffee's +punishment would be made tolerable; and after it was over he would the +next night at the cabin brag joyfully of the many friends he had and what +great things they had done for him--the children of his master present and +showing more gladness than himself. + +Which of the two was the more humane and christian punitive system for the +negro? Which of the two was the better for him? That of slavery, or that +produced by the conditions which his professed friends put in place of +slavery? + +I assert it most solemnly that I never saw a negro slave worked in +shackles and under a loaded firearm, neither by his master nor an +overseer, nor by their command, nor by an officer of the law; and, +further, that I never had information or report that such had been done. + +When their emancipators led the negroes out of their cabins into their new +life it was something like throwing our domestic animals into the forest +and desert, where they, without formed habits of self-maintenance and +without knowledge of the new environment, must live, if they can live, +only in competition with their wild brothers and sisters knowing the +environment and who are self-maintaining experts therein. That comparison +serves somewhat. But this comes nearer: Suppose children between the ages +of eight and twelve, who have never been taught to do anything for +themselves, to be taken away from their parents, and settled among a +people lately made bitterly hostile to the children, as the whites were +made to the negroes by the effort of the emancipators to give political +equality--nay, supremacy--to the latter. Those emancipated children must +subsist themselves. How little they could earn by begging or work. They +would have to steal to live. Those that did not steal, and for whom no +companion would steal, would perish. The philanthropists who founded this +infantile colony would have outdone but by a very little those who thrust +the reluctant negroes into freedom. + +I ask my reader to add here mentally the full description which in my last +two chapters I have given of the lower class of the negroes in the +south--this description showing them to be ninety-five per cent of the +whole, far below their average condition in American slavery, and steadily +becoming worse. + +I believe that in due time the people of the north will make these +admissions: + +1. Any and every evil of southern slavery to the negro was accidental, and +not a necessary incident of the system, just as the occasional evils of +marriage to the parties are not necessarily incidental to that +institution. + +2. As this slavery had improved and was still improving the negroes so +prodigiously in every particular, and as their condition during the forty +years following emancipation has been going uninterruptedly from bad to +worse, until now the extinction of the great body is frightfully probable, +as I shall show in my last two chapters, the sudden and sweeping abolition +of 1865 was an unutterable misfortune to these dependent creatures. +Emancipation ought to have been gradual. Especially ought there to have +been established something like the Roman patronate, under which the +freedman would have been sure of wise advice, beneficial overlooking, and +efficient protection from his former master. + +3. The grant at once of right to vote and hold place and office to the +southern negroes indiscriminately exceeds all blunders of democracy in +madness and stupidity. + +4. Southern slavery, so far from being wrong morally, was righteousness, +justice, and mercy to the slave. The federal constitution was simply +obeying the commands of good conscience in recognizing the slave as the +property of his owner, and protecting that property. Therefore, when the +federal government emancipated the slaves it ought to have given the +masters just compensation. + + * * * * * + +So much for what American slavery was to the negro, and what its abolition +has done for him in the south. This can be told now. But for years the +powers watching over our union kept the subject in the dark. It did not +suit their purpose that the people of the union-preserving section should +see and understand. They had decreed that northern resistance to slavery, +as the solitary root of disunion, should go beyond refusing it extension +into the Territories. They chose to add another provocation of the +secession which they had planned as the means of abolishing slavery. This +new provocation was that the north be induced to make the fugitive slave +law a dead letter. To drive the south into early secession, perhaps it +would not be enough merely to deny her new territory. But unite the north +against the law mentioned, and encourage both running away and the +underground railroad by an active public opinion, then soon all along the +southern border slavery will lose its hold, some of the slaves escaping +and the rest going south. This zone will, after a while, be settled by the +friends and employers of free labor, who from year to year will push the +southern non-slave district further in. The menace of this hostile +occupation will steadily become greater to the slaveholders, and finally +it will convince them that they cannot protect slavery in the union. + +Many northerners who declared it was wrong to interfere with slavery in +the States, at the same time sympathized with the public opposition to +restoring the fugitive to his master. It is clear that they did not regard +this opposition to be what it really was; that is, actual war upon slavery +where it existed. To oppose execution of the law was both to invite and +help runaways. And if such invitation and help was persisted in, from one +end of Mason and Dixon's line to the other, the risk of escape of slaves +and their consequent depreciation in market value would both steadily +increase. The refusal to enforce the fugitive slave law was therefore a +deadly attack upon slavery in the States; and this was so plain that the +union-loving people of Georgia declared in the famous Georgia Platform of +1850 that the union could not be preserved if that law was not faithfully +executed. + +The faithful guardians of the American union had "Uncle Tom's Cabin" +written of purpose to prevent the execution of the fugitive slave law. +They hypnotized the root-and-branch abolitionists and Mrs. Stowe into +believing that to abet in any way the restoration of a flying slave was an +unpardonable crime; and that the obligation of conscience to refrain from +committing such a crime imperatively commanded disregard of all counter +provisions of the constitution and the law of the land. One cannot at all +understand the mighty abolition movement if he stop with the professed +motives of Phillips, Whittier, Garrison, Mrs. Stowe, and the rest. They +believed in their hearts, and declared, its purpose was to wipe out the +great national disgrace of slavery, to lift the slave out of an abyss of +unspeakable outrage and injustice, and to better his condition. As we have +shown you, they were, in their very extreme of conscientiousness, as wide +from the facts and right as wide can be. They were not doing their own +wills, as they thought they were. They but did the will of the fates. The +latter ruthlessly--so it seems to us now--sacrificed both the prosperity +and comfort of the southern people for several generations, and the very +existence, it may be, of nearly all the negroes in America, besides also +making a laughing-stock of the abolitionists--all to the end to kill that +nationalization which threatened the integrity of the American union. + +I believe that I can now take my reader on with me in what I have to say +of Mrs. Stowe's book. Let him bear in mind that the object of the fates +was to have in it not a representation true to fact, but such an untrue +and probable one as would unite the people of the north in moral and +conscientious resolve against any and every attempt to restore a fugitive +slave. What the fates wanted was an author who appeared to have extensive +and accurate acquaintance with slavery, and who, while believing it most +conscientiously to be the extreme of evil to the black, was endowed with +the power to make the north see with _her_ eyes. They found their author +in Mrs. Stowe, whom they had educated and trained from infancy. + +In view of the mighty influence which "Uncle Tom's Cabin" exercised upon +public opinion, it is important to examine what were Mrs. Stowe's +qualifications to speak as an authority on southern slavery. And in this +investigation the same qualifications of all others who arraigned the +system for what they alleged were its heinous moral wrongs to the slave +are likewise involved. The statement of Professor Wendell, quoted above, +that she was the only one of the abolitionists who had observed slavery +"on the spot," can be corroborated by overwhelming proofs. If it be made +to appear, as I think will be the case, that she was from first to last +under a delusion which metamorphosed the negro into a Caucasian, and +further that she had no real opportunities of learning the facts of +slavery, then the case of the root-and-branch abolitionists must fall with +the testimony of the only eye-witness whom they have called. + +Whether she was biased or not we will let her own words decide. Here they +are: + + "I was a child in 1820 [she was then nine years old] when the Missouri + question was agitated; and one of the strongest and deepest + impressions on my mind was that made by my father's sermons and + prayers, and the anguish of his soul for the poor slave at that time. + I remember his preaching drawing tears down the hardest faces of the + old farmers in his congregation. I well remember his prayers morning + and evening in the family for 'poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa,' that + the time of her deliverance might come; prayers offered with strong + crying and tears, and which indelibly impressed my heart, and made me + what I am from my very soul, the enemy of all slavery. Every brother + that I have has been in his sphere a leading anti-slavery man. As for + myself and husband, we have for the last seventeen years lived on the + border of a slave State, and we have never shrunk from the fugitives, + and we have helped them with all we had to give. I have received the + children of liberated slaves into a family school, and taught them + with my own children, and it has been the influence that we found in + the church and by the altar that has made us do all this."[90] + +No comment is needed. The passage shows that her strongly excited feelings +unavoidably shaped all her perceptions and formed all her judgments as to +everything in slavery. + +Now as to the means she had of acquiring the facts. Although she had seen +a little of Kentucky, a border slave State, she had never lived in it, nor +anywhere else in the south. Especially is it to be emphasized that she had +had no experience of the cotton region, the real seat of slavery, and the +only place where it could be fully studied and learned. She passed some +eighteen years in lower Ohio, just across the river from Kentucky, where +she saw much of escaping slaves. Of course, being aflame with zeal as she +was for her subject, she had observed closely the native negroes of the +north. Such of these as she met were widely different from the mass in +slavery; for, born and bred in the north, they had had the beneficent +training of the free-labor system, and also opportunity to absorb +considerable of a higher culture. These negroes were exceptional, even of +the northern natives. And the fugitives were also exceptional; for they +far excelled the companions left behind them in intelligence, spirit, and +every essential of good character. An ordinary Cuffee had liberty the +least of all things in his thoughts. A negro like Hector or Garrison, the +former escaping from Calhoun and the other from Toombs, was as much above +the average as the shepherd dog is above common sheep-worriers and +egg-suckers. Mrs. Stowe, as her book shows, had no conception whatever of +the ordinary plantation negro. And while she had seen much of some +Kentuckians, these were not representative southerners. They lived upon +the border, where slave labor found but little lucrative opportunity, and +they were also affected more or less with the sentiments of their nearby +northern neighbors. Naturally only those Kentuckians of the border who +really were of her opinion would consort with this decided anti-slavery +partisan; the others would stand aloof. Mrs. Stowe never knew either real +negroes or real slaveholders. And she also knew nothing whatever of cotton +plantation management. Some authors show an amazingly full and accurate +knowledge of countries and communities which they never saw. Burke's +knowledge of every detail touching India occurs to me. Lieber had visited +Greece while Niebuhr had not. When the former had minutely described to +the other some famous landscape,--say the battlefield of +Marathon,--Niebuhr would make copious inquiries about remains of old roads +and belongings which the other had forgotten, although he had seen them. +Tom Moore had never been in Persia, but there is so much of that country +drawn to the life in Lalla Rookh that somebody applied to him the saying +that reading D'Herbelot was as good as riding on the back of a camel. Mrs. +Stowe could not collect, sift, and read facts, and see through the most +cunningly devised masks, as Henry D. Lloyd showed his marvellous power to +do in "Wealth against Commonwealth." That was not her gift. Her gift was +to tell the best of stories--to vary it prodigally and artistically +throughout with wonders, with things to make you shudder and also thrill +with pleasure, with things to make you cry and laugh. Her emotional +invention was the great factor. Here is her own account: + + "The first part of the book ever committed to writing was the death of + Uncle Tom. This scene presented itself almost as a tangible vision to + her mind while sitting at the communion-table in the little church in + Brunswick. She was perfectly overcome by it, and could scarcely + restrain the convulsion of tears and sobbings that shook her frame. + She hastened home and wrote it, and her husband being away she read it + to her two sons of ten and twelve years of age. The little fellows + broke out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through his + sobs, 'Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!'" + +The description of Uncle Tom's death is the goal and climax of the novel. +Its scene is laid far down in the south, hundreds of miles below any place +which she or the children had ever seen or studied. It would have been +more in order for her to submit the draft to observant residents of that +locality; but the fates did not intend that her convictions should be +weakened by real information. Evidently she considered that her truth to +fact was fully vindicated by the effect of the narrative upon her +children, who, like herself, were entirely without knowledge of the +subject. They wept and exclaimed over it. Why, of course, like all +children they loved horrible tales, which their weeping and lamentation +proved that they thought were true. Doubtless these same children had made +respectable demonstrations over Bluebeard or Little Red Ridinghood. And +now over Uncle Tom's death, which is more dreadful than anything in +Dante's Inferno, and as pure figment, their feelings were shaken with +storm and tempest as never before. + +The statement just quoted proceeds thus: + + "From that time the story can less be said to have been composed by + her than imposed upon her. Scenes, incidents, conversations rushed + upon her with a vividness and importunity that would not be denied. + The book insisted upon getting itself into being, and would take no + denial." + +I often fancy, as I think over it, that the last quotation describes +suggestions from the fates. + +But we must let Mrs. Stowe finish what we have had her tell in part. +Informing us that, after writing "two or three first chapters," she made +an arrangement for weekly serial publication in the _National Era_, she +says: + + "She was then in the midst of heavy domestic cares, with a young + infant, with a party of pupils in her family to whom she was imparting + daily lessons with her own children, and with untrained servants + requiring constant supervision, but the story was so much more intense + a reality to her than any other earthly thing that the weekly + instalment never failed. It was there in her mind day and night + waiting to be written, and requiring but a few moments to bring it + into veritable characters. _The weekly number was always read to the + family circle before it was sent away, and all the household kept up + an intense interest in the progress of the story._"[91] + +This household had been indoctrinated by the zeal of Dr. Lyman Beecher +into believing unreservedly all the inventions of ignorant assailants of +slavery instead of the widely different facts. + +Before I begin a detailed statement of the material errors and perversions +of fact in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" I want to emphasize it that every one of +them appeared to northern readers, unfamiliar with the negro and the +south, to be true, and most efficiently helped to form and strengthen +sentiment against enforcement of the fugitive slave law. + +Many things that she writes show that Mrs. Stowe was completely ignorant +of the ways of the cotton plantation. I have space to mention but one. Tom +was bred in Kentucky, where no cotton was grown. And Cassy, by reason of +her indulgent rearing, had had as little experience as Tom in +cotton-picking. Yet these two show such expertness that Tom can add to the +sack of a slower picker, and Cassy give Tom some of her cotton, and each +have enough to satisfy the weigher at night. The good cotton-picker is +surely a most skilled laborer. He must be trained from childhood to use +both hands so well that he becomes almost ambidexterous. The training that +the typewriter is now urged to take is a parallel. + +Mrs. Stowe shows that she had no accurate knowledge of the sentiments of +the whites of the south as to slavery. As we have already suggested, there +may have been among the Kentuckians of the border some outspoken opponents +of slavery; but it is very probable that in her womanly ardor for her +great cause she lavishly magnified their numbers. In her novel she has +nearly all of her white southerners--I may add all of the attractive +ones--to declare themselves as abolitionists at heart. Misrepresentation +of fact could not be grosser than this. I was twenty-five years old when +the brothers' war commenced. I had mingled intimately with the people, +high and low, of my part of the south. During all of this time I never +found out there was a single one of my acquaintances, man, woman, boy, or +girl, who did not believe slavery right. The charge implied by Mrs. Stowe +that we southerners were doing violence to our consciences in holding on +to our slaves is utterly without evidence; nay, it is unanimously +contradicted by all the evidence. As we and our parents read the bible, it +told us to hold on to them, but to treat them always with considerate +kindness. + +Mrs. Stowe emphasizes the frequent cruelty of the master to the slave; and +she emphasizes more strongly still that under the law he was helpless. The +slave was not helpless. He was protected by law. Note this example, given +by Toombs: + + "The most authentic statistics of England show that the wages of + agricultural and unskilled labor in that kingdom not only fail to + furnish the laborer with the comforts of our slave, but even with the + necessaries of life, and no slaveholder could escape _a conviction for + cruelty to his slaves_ who gave his slave no more of the necessaries + of life for his labor than the wages paid to their agricultural + laborers by the noblemen and gentlemen of England would buy."[92] + +The witness just called has full knowledge, and is the extreme of frank +honesty and truthfulness. + +The statute-book demonstrates that the law was steadily bettering the +condition of the slave. I have not space to state the progression which +can be found in the different Georgia enactments. But I must mention two +instances. In 1850 the procedure of trying a white person charged with a +capital offence was extended to the slave. The code which came of force +January 1, 1863, and which had been adopted some while before, prevented +any confession made by a slave to his master--it mattered not how +voluntary or free from suspicion it might be--from ever being received in +evidence against him. + +I commenced law practice in 1857. From that time until I went to the front +I observed that public opinion was becoming more decided against +mistreatment of the blacks. The masters of _ashcats_,--as ill-fed negroes +were called in derision of their lean and dingy faces by the great +multitude of sleek and shining ones,--those who punished with unreasonable +severity, those who exacted overwork,--they were few and far +between,--they were all more and more detested; and grand juries became +more and more prone to deal properly with them. I would support this by +cases, if their citation would not be unpleasant to descendants of +parties. + +Mrs. Stowe has his master to brand George Harris in the hand with the +initial letter of the former's surname. She has Legree's slaves to pick +cotton on Sunday. I never heard of any cases of branding human beings +except as a punishment for crime in execution of a judgment of conviction, +and very few of them. Tidying up the house, cooking, serving meals, caring +for the animals on the place, and such other things as are done everywhere +on Sunday, were of course required of the domestic slaves. Leaving these +out, no slave was ever put to work on Sunday except to "fight fire," or at +something commanded by a real emergency. Their employers now exact from +thousands of white persons of both sexes all over the country a great +amount of such hard and grinding Sunday work as was never exacted of the +slaves in the south. Peep into stores, offices of large corporations, and +elsewhere, while others are at Sunday-school or church, and count those +weary ones you find finishing up the work of the last week. + +But all of the mistakes of Mrs. Stowe noticed in the foregoing are mere +matters of bagatelle as compared with the character and nature which she +gives the average negro of the south. + +She represents the women as chaste as white women, and the husbands +faithful to their wives even when separated from them. I shall now tell +the truth as I know it to be--the truth that all observant people who have +had experience with negroes know. + +The moment almost that a married pair of slaves were separated for any +cause, each one secretly, or more often openly, took another partner. Even +when not separated, infidelity of both was the rule. Mrs. Stowe has the +girls and their parents to shrink with horror from the desires of the +master. To the simple-hearted African the master was always great, and +there was among them not a woman to be found who would not dedicate +herself or her daughter to greatness, finding it so inclined,--husband, +father, brothers, and sisters all in their desire for a friend at court +heartily approving. The white whose concubine gave favors behind his back +to her slave friends was the stalest joke of every neighborhood. + +The mass of the negroes are more unchaste now than they were in slavery, a +subject of which I shall say something further in another chapter. But +even where the master's steady requirement from one generation to another +of a stricter observance of family ties, and the natural imitation of the +ways of the dominant race, had lifted the slaves, in appearance at least, +far above their West African ancestors, not even mothers had become +chaste. Boys, girls, men, and women, both married and unmarried, were as +promiscuous by night as houseflies are by day. The horror of horrors in +this abyss of moral impurity to one of a superior race was their utter +unconsciousness of incest.[93] + +Mrs. Stowe has their philoprogenitiveness--as phrenologists call it--as +fully developed as the whites. One bred in the cotton districts well +remembers that it required all the vigilance of master and mistress, +overseer, and the deputies selected from the older slave women, to secure +from the mothers proper attention to their children, and especially to +keep them from punishing too cruelly. But I do not mean to say that this +parental misbehavior was as general as the unchastity mentioned. When the +mothers aged beyond forty-five or fifty, they would begin to think +somewhat less of beaux and somewhat more of their children. + +George Harris and Eliza are next of the slave characters in prominence and +importance to Uncle Tom. With their large admixture of white blood, their +comparatively good education and superb moral training, a southerner would +think that you were merely mocking him if you named these as fairly +representative negroes. As they are drawn, they are really whites--whites +of high refinement--with only a physical negro exterior, and that softened +down to the minimum. + +But Uncle Tom--I pray my northern readers to take counsel of their common +sense and consider what I shall now say of him. Rightly to estimate him, I +must begin with some contrasts. The first that occurs to me is Tyndarus, +the slave hero of the Captivi of Plautus, pronounced by the great critic +Lessing to be the most beautiful play ever brought upon the stage. +Tyndarus and Philocrates, his young master, taken prisoners, are sold to +Hegio. The two captives personate each other, and induce Hegio to send +home Philocrates, who was a wealthy noble, and keep only the born slave. +Hegio was scheming to recover his own son, now a slave in the land of the +captives, by a bargain for Philocrates, this bargain to be negotiated by +the counterfeit Tyndarus. Discovering how he had been duped, the anguished +father tells the real Tyndarus that he shall die a cruel death. This is +the reply of the slave: + + "As I shall not die because of evil deeds, that is a small matter. My + death will keep it ever in remembrance that I delivered my master from + slavery and the enemy, restored him to his country and father, and + chose that I myself should perish rather than he." + +That is exalted. But Tyndarus has not the complete goodness of Uncle Tom. +As soon as he is at last rescued from the horrible mines, to find +Philocrates true and himself a free man, he threatens woe to a slave who +had injured him, and looks approvingly upon the execution of his threat. + +Compare Uncle Tom with the good men of the bible, such as Moses, Peter, +and Paul, to mention no more. Not one of these was able always to keep his +feelings and tongue in that complete subjection that never fail Uncle Tom. + +Uncle Tom, in whom love alone prompts all thoughts and deeds, surpasses +every saint in Dante's Paradise--he surpasses even the incomparably sweet +Beatrice, who now and then chides unpleasantly. + +The climax of my comparison is reached when I suggest that Uncle Tom is +made from first to last a more perfect Christ than the Jesus of the +gospels. The latter, as Matthew Arnold and other reverent christians +remark, was sometimes unamiable. Remember his expulsion of the money +changers and traders from the temple, and the many opprobrious words he +used of and to the Pharisees. Growing recognition of the all-human Jesus +is benignly replacing a religion of superstition, intolerance, and dogma +with one of universal love and brotherhood. I cannot fully express my +appreciation of the liberal divines, from Charming to Savage, who are +preparing us so well for the millennium. But I am sure a new study of +Uncle Tom would give each one of them firmer grasp of christlikeness and +far more power to present it. Think over such instances in that holiest +and most altruistic of lives as these: He has just learned that he has +been sold; that he is to be carried down the river. His wife suggests that +as he has a pass from his master permitting him to go and return as he +pleases, he take advantage of it and run away to the free States. As +firmly as Socrates, unjustly condemned to death, refused to escape from +prison when his friends had provided full opportunity, Tom declared he +would stay, that he would keep faith with his master. He said that, +according to Eliza's report of the conversation she had overheard, his +master was forced to sell him, or sell all the other slaves, and it was +better for himself to suffer in their place. And as he goes away he has +nothing but prayers and blessings for the man who sends him into dread +exile from his wife and children. He falls to a new master, whom, and his +family, he watches over with the fidelity and love of a most kind father, +doing every duty, but above all things trying to save that master's soul. +Then his cruel fortune delivers him to the monster Legree. For the first +time in his life he is treated with disrespect, distrust, and harshness. +Yet he forgets his own misery, and finds pleasure in helping and +comforting his fellow sufferers, striving his utmost to bring them into +eternal life. He will not do wrong even at the command of his cruel +master, who has him in a dungeon, as it were, into which no ray of justice +can ever shine. And here he dies from the cruel lash--almost under it. He +falters some, it is true; but there was no sweat of blood as in +Gethsemane, nor exclamation upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou +forsaken me!" He went more triumphantly through his more fell crucifixion. + +I believe that the character of Uncle Tom is the only part of the book +which future generations will cherish; not for the lesson against slavery +it was intended to teach, but because it excels in ideal and realization +all imitation of Christ in actual life or the loftiest religious fiction. +Consider its marvellous effect upon Heine, as told by a quotation from the +latter in The Author's Introduction to the book.[94] + +The detailed comparison which I have just made puts Uncle Tom upon a +pinnacle, where he is above all the saints in lofty, self-abnegating, and +lovingly religious manhood; and the reader notes how fruitlessly I have +tried to find another like him. But Mrs. Stowe was confident that she had +not exaggerated or overdrawn him, and further that such were common among +the southern slaves. Here is what she deliberately says in her Key: + + "The character of Uncle Tom has been objected to as improbable; and + yet the writer has received more confirmations of that character, and + from a greater variety of sources, than of any other in the book. + + Many people have said to her, 'I knew an Uncle Tom in such and such a + southern State.' All the histories of this kind which have thus been + related to her would of themselves, if collected, make a small + volume."[95] + +Toombs once said to me, "It would have been a matchless eulogy of slavery +if it had produced an Uncle Tom." But, as we see from the last quotation, +she claims far more. She really claims that it was fruitful of Uncle Toms +in every southern State. + +Shall we attribute this firm belief, that there were among the southern +slaves many who were better christians than Christ himself is represented +to have been, to a mere hallucination? That word is not strong enough. To +explain the belief, we must think of visions suggested by the hypnotizing +powers, or something like the spell on Titania, when Bottom with his ass's +head inspired her with the fondest admiration and love. + +Although the foregoing is far from being exhaustive, it is enough; it +shows incontrovertibly that Mrs. Stowe builded throughout upon the +exceptional and imaginary. My father, a Presbyterian clergyman, with the +strictest notions as to the Sabbath, as he generally called Sunday, made +me read, when a boy, a book called, if I recollect aright, "Edwards's +Sabbath Manual." Be the title whatever it may, the entire book was but a +collection of instances of secular work done on Sunday, and always +followed closely by disaster, which appeared to be divine punishment of +sabbath-breaking. The author was confident he had proved his case. He +believed with his whole soul that if one should do on Sunday any week-day +work not permitted in the catechism, it was more than probable that God +would at once deal severely with him for not keeping his day holy. + +This is a somewhat overstrained example of Mrs. Stowe's method. I will +therefore give one which is as close as close can be. Suppose a diligent +worker to cull from newspaper files, law reports, and what he hears in +talk, the cases in which one party to a marriage has cruelly mistreated +the other. If he digested his collection with a view to effect, it would +prove a far more formidable attack upon the most civilizing and improving +of all human institutions than Mrs. Stowe's Key is upon slavery; and if he +had her rare artistic gift he could found upon it a wonderful +anti-marriage romance. The author of such a Key and romance would be +confuted at once by the exclamation, "If these horrors are general, people +would flee marriage as they do the plague." Let it be inquired, "If 'Uncle +Tom's Cabin' and Mrs. Stowe's Key truly represent, why did not more of the +blacks escape into the free States? and why did they not revolt in large +bodies during the war in the many communities whence all the able-bodied +whites had gone to the front far away?" and there can be but one answer, +which is, there was no general or common oppression of the African in +slavery--there were no horrors to him in the condition--but on the +contrary he was contented and happy, merry as the day is long. + +How was it that a book so full of untrue statement and gross exaggeration +as to an American theme found such wide acceptance at the north and +elsewhere out of the south? For years I could not explain. When I read it +at Princeton, I talked it over with the southern students. We pooh-poohed +the negroes, but we admired the principal white characters except Mrs. St. +Claire, whom we all regarded as a libellous caricature. The representation +of slavery was incorrect, and the portrayal of the negro as only a black +and kinky-haired white was so absurd that one of us dreamed that either +would be taken seriously by the north. It was some ten years after the +brothers' war that the true explanation commenced to dawn upon me, and it +has at last become clear. + +It is an important fact that the great body of the people of the north +knew almost next to nothing of the south, and especially of the average +negro. As one calmly looks back now he sees that in the agitation over the +admission of California, the cleavage between the two nationalizations +treated in foregoing chapters was becoming decided, and that the people +belonging to each were losing their tempers and getting ready to fight. +When even a political campaign in which the only question is, who shall be +ins and who outs, is on, each party is prone to believe the hardest things +of the other. But when such a fell resort to force as that of 1850 and the +years immediately following is impending, all history shows that those on +one side will believe any charge reflecting upon the good character of +those on the other side which is not grossly improbable. Such quarrels are +so fierce that we never weigh accusations against our adversaries--we just +embrace and circulate. Thus had the northern public become ripe for an +arraignment of the morality of slavery, which--as was with purblind +instinct felt, not discerned--was the sole active principle of the +southern nationalization. Even without the provocation just mentioned, a +northern man would liken the African in everything but his skin and hair +to a white. We always classify a new under some old and well-known object. +When the Romans first saw the elephant they thought of him as the Lucanian +ox. The automobile which propels itself around our streets is made as much +like the corresponding horse-drawn vehicle familiar to the public for ages +as can be. The northerner knew no man well but the Caucasian, and he had +long been led by a common psychological process to give his characteristic +essentials to the negro. And now when anti-slavery partisans positively +maintained that the latter was a white in all but his outside, adducing +seeming proofs, and the free-labor nationalization was with its leading +strings pulling all the northern people into line, even the calmest and +most dispassionate among them were influenced to believe that the negroes +were so much like our Anglo-Saxon selves it was an unspeakable crime to +keep them in slavery. And all tales of cruelty and horror found easy +credence. + +Thus had the northern public been made ready for "Uncle Tom's Cabin." And +although the book wholly ignored and obscured the really live and burning +issue, and it was packed from beginning to end with the most gigantic +errors of fact, it took the section by storm. + +It is a great book. When something has been as persistently demanded as +long as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been by the northern public and the +"Conquered Banner" by the southern public; when thousands upon thousands +of plain people weep over them and lay them away to weep over them again, +you may know--it matters not what the unruffled and sarcastic critic may +say--that each is a work of the very highest and the very rarest genius. +Tears of sympathy for tales of distress and misery, whoever can set their +fountain flowing is always a nature's king or queen. + +I have read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" four times: first at Princeton in 1852; +the second time amid the gloom of reconstruction, more accurately to +ascertain northern opinion of the negro and forecast therefrom, if I +could, what was in store for the south; the third time as I was meditating +the Old and New South; and just the other day the last time. The more +familiar I become with it the greater seems to me the power with which the +attention is taken and held captive. The very titles to the first twelve +chapters are, in their contents and sequence, gems of genius, and draw +resistlessly. I become more and more impatient with Ruskin's reprehending +the escape of Eliza, when, with her child hugged to her bosom, she leaps +from block to block of floating ice in the Ohio until she is safe on the +other side--a marvel like the ghost's appearance in the first scene of +Hamlet, exciting a high and breathless interest at the outset, which is +never allowed to flag afterwards. Whenever I begin to read the book, I +fall at once into that illusion which Coleridge has so well explained. I +accept all her blunders and mistakes as real facts, and although it is +hard to tolerate her negro travesties and the anti-slavery sentiments of +her southern whites, somehow they do not then offend me, and there is +chapter after chapter in which I follow the action with breathless +interest. "Gulliver's Travels" and "Pilgrim's Progress" are examples to +show how little of reality either entertaining or moving fiction needs. +From a mass of false assumptions, seasoned with the merest sprinkling of +fact; and especially from her taking for granted that the negro is really +on a par of development with the white, she has constructed the Iliad of +our time. The nursery tale out of which Shakspeare fashioned the drama of +Lear did not furnish him with smaller resources. What a wonderful action +he puts in the place of the nursery tale! how natural and probable it all +appears to us as it unfolds! how we hate, or pity, or admire, or love as +we cannot keep from following it! Likewise every reader in the north +accepted Mrs. Stowe's novel as the very height of verity, and afterwards +saw in every fugitive slave a George Harris, or Eliza, or an Uncle Tom. +And the book evoked the same effect out of America. The most curious proof +of this that I can think of is the statue of The Freed Slave, which I saw +on exhibition at the Centennial. It has nearly all the peculiar physical +characteristics of the Caucasian; and it represents not a typical man of +African descent, but a negro albino, that is, a white negro, not a black +one. There are albino negroes, but there are also albino whites. That +statue shows what was European conception of the negroes whose chains were +broken by the emancipation proclamation. Its reception in America shows +also that the same conception prevailed here. Day after day I saw crowds +of northern people contemplating that counterfeit with deep emotion, many +of the women unable to restrain their tears. + +Surely "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in its propagandic potency is unrivalled. It +did more than the anti-slavery statesmen, politicians, preachers, talkers, +and orators combined. To it more than to all other agencies is due that +the people of the north took such a stubborn stand in opposition that the +south at last saw that the fugitive slave law had been practically +nullified. Thus the fates worked to bring about secession. For secession +was to bring the brothers' war; and this war was to do what could not be +done by law or consent,--that is, to get rid of slavery as the informing +principle of southern nationalization. + +The post-bellum propagandic effect of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been very +malign. With the companion literature and theories, it formed the opinion +that devised and executed the reconstruction of the southern States. The +cardinal principle of that reconstruction was to treat the blacks just +emancipated as political equals of the whites. + +Those who did this are to be forgiven. They had been made to believe that +the negroes of the south were as well qualified for full citizenship as +the whites, and it was but meet retributive punishment of the great crime +of slavery and waging war to hold on to it, that the masters be put under +their former slaves. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had made them believe it. + +The only parallel of mass of pernicious error engendered by a book, so far +as I know, is "Burke's Reflections." Constitutional England ought to have +followed Charles Fox as one man, and given countenance to the rise in +France for liberty. But Burke's piece of magnificent rhetoric effectually +turned the nation out of her course, and had her in league with +absolutists to put back the clock of European democracy a hundred years or +more. Even yet intelligent Englishmen magnify that most unEnglish +achievement. The bad effects of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" have not been so +lasting in our country. We Americans get out of ruts much more easily than +the English. The north is now rapidly learning the real truth as to the +utter incapacity of the mass of southern negroes to vote intelligently, +and complacently acquiesces in their practical disfranchisement by the +only class which can give good government. + +We must utterly reject and discard everything that Mrs. Stowe and those +whom I distinguish as the root-and-branch abolitionists have taught, in +their unutterable ideology, as to the nature and character of the negro, +and in its place we must learn to know him as he really is--to tolerate +him, nay, to love him as such. This is the only way in which we can +prepare ourselves for giving the negroes their due from us. + +Further, we owe it to our proud American history, now that the brothers' +war is forty years past, to ascertain the real cause of that mighty +struggle, maintained most laudably and gloriously by each side. Those whom +I am here criticising made many believe that the real stake was whether +the slave should remain the property of his master or not. Note the +emphasized adjuration in the "Battle Hymn of the Republic:" + + "As he [Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free." + +A most beautiful sentiment, fitly expressed; but how it humiliates the +grand issue, which was whether federal government should live or perish! +And that greatest of American odes, Whittier's "Laus Deo," how wide of the +true mark is its sublime rejoicing! Celebrating the abolition of slavery +by constitutional amendment, the occasion demanded that he extol the +really benign achievement. That achievement was that all cause of diverse +nationalization in the States had been forever removed, and thus it was +assured that brotherhood of the nations was to grow without check. But the +rapt bard was blinded, as his utterances show, by what now almost appears +to have been a fit of delusional insanity. He says: + + "Ring! O bells! + Every stroke exulting tells + Of the burial hour of crime." + +What does he mean is the crime? Why, the delivering of certain Africans +and their descendants from lowest human degradation and misery, and +blessing them with opportunity and help to rise far upward? Had he seen, +as we do now, forty years later, instead of pouring out this wild and mad +delight, he would have dropped scalding tears over the "burial hour" of +all that promised anything of welfare to those for whom he had labored so +long and faithfully. And in the last stanza his command that + + "With a sound of broken chains" + +the nations be told + + "that He reigns, + Who alone is Lord and God!" + +The poet misunderstood the "broken chains" as greatly as he did the +"burial hour." Chains were broken, but their breaking was no blessing to +the negro. Golden chains of domestic ties, drawing him gently, kindly, +surely up to higher morality and complete manhood--these were broken; and +far other were forged for him, with which fear he has been made fast to +destruction. His only friends able to help alienated; what a clog! Given +back to African improgressiveness; what a fetter! How he is held to the +body of death by unbreakable chains of want, misery, vice, disease, and +utter helplessness! and how his shackles gall him and his convict chains +clank in every corner of the land which was once an earthly paradise to +him! + +Let us not sully with Whittier the glory of the federal arms by ascribing +to them as their chief triumph the gift of illusory freedom to a few +negroes. Rather let us inform ourselves with the spirit of Webster, and +give praise and thanks without end for the actual blessings and the richer +promise of the restored union to myriads of that race whose mission it is +to spread an inexpressibly fair socialism over all the earth. + +And let me say at the last, the people of the north should learn that all +the tragic evils which Professor Wendell and others outside of the south +have in mind belong only to the slave-ships, and by a strange +psychological metastasis--no stranger, however, than that by which the +fourth commandment, in popular conception, has been abrogated as to the +seventh day, and applied to the first day of the week--they have firmly +attached themselves to the reputation of southern slavery. For long years +we of the south, our mothers and our mothers' mothers, our fathers and our +fathers' fathers, have been charged with cruelties and outrages purely +fancied. These fabrications are the stock comparisons with which almost +every invective against the wrongs of any lower class is sharpened. The +writer or speaker whenever he is taken short says something of the +dreadful condition of the southern slave under the sway of an entirely +absolute master. Variety of the misdeeds invoked as illustration is +limited only by the promptness with which the utterer can think of what he +has read in abolition literature or its sequel. It is all mere parrot +gabble. To hear so much of it as we do is "a little wearing," as Reginald +Wilfer said. Surely if our brothers and sisters of the north but think, +they will acknowledge that these so-called horrors of slavery were all +nothing but the inventions of the angry passions provoked by the powers in +the unseen after they had decided that slavery must be sacrificed in the +interests of the union. And these dear brothers and sisters will no longer +persist in asserting that southern slavery was but robbery and oppression +of and cruelty to the slave; that the system was evil to him of itself. +They will talk no more of the pro-slavery infamy, of the unscrupulousness +and perfidy of the slave power, and all such false twaddle, that can now +serve no purpose whatever except to offend good men and women and their +children without cause. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +SLAVERY AT LAST IMPELLED INTO A DEFENSIVE AGGRESSIVE + + +Until the crisis of 1850, slavery had never changed from purely defensive +tactics. This year made it seem that the north had fully resolved that +slavery should never be allowed another inch of new territory; and also +was very near, and was rapidly coming nearer to, the point of practically +preventing the enforcement of the fugitive slave law. We have explained +how slave property could not live unless it found new virgin soil in the +Territories; and we have also explained what a deadly blow it would +receive, in the refusal to restore fugitives. This refusal would be really +indirect abolition. Read the masterly sketch by Calhoun, in his speech +March 4, 1850, of the conquering advance of the anti-slavery party, until +now--to use his language--"the equilibrium between the two sections ... +had been destroyed;" and he demonstrates that the actual exercise of the +entire national political power must soon be in the hands of the +free-labor section. The south instinctively felt that the time for her old +tactics was over, and that she must do more than merely fend off the blows +of abolition. And, as we will tell in the next chapter, she found her new +leader in Toombs. Nullification as advocated by Calhoun was the extreme +energy of the pure defensive of the south. His proposed dual executive +amendment was merely that nullification be made a right granted to the +federal government instead of remaining one reserved to the States. +Toombs had grown up in the school of William H. Crawford. George R. +Gilmer, a follower of Crawford, tells of the latter: "He was violently +opposed to the nullification movement, considering it but an ebullition +excited by Mr. Calhoun's overleaping, ambition."[96] + +Toombs scouted nullification. Under his lead his State, in 1850, adopted +the Georgia Platform quoted above. This platform was considerate and +resolute preparation for the southern offensive. + +Next the south assumes initiative. Extension of slave-territory is so +great an economical _sine qua non_ that she attacks its barriers. Using +her control of the then dominant democratic party she got the Missouri +compromise repealed. Her main purpose in this was to wrench from the +anti-slavery men the weapon of congressional restriction, then deemed by +them the most powerful of all in their armory. She also contemplated +extorting a concession of all lands in the Territories which could be +profitably cultivated by slaves from the north, alarmed into apprehending +that otherwise slavery might be carried above 36.30'. + +This repeal did more than anything else--more even than "Uncle Tom's +Cabin"--to arouse the north into mortal combat with slavery. The historian +cannot understand why the south procured it, if he ignores that energy of +southern nationalization which we have done our utmost to explain. This +nationalization had got into what we may call the last rapids, and was +bound to go over the precipice into the gulf of secession. + +The bootless struggle by the south against overwhelming odds of northern +settlers to make Kansas a slave State was the sequel to the repeal of the +Missouri compromise. When the South understood that Kansas was really +gone, she advanced her forlorn hope in her endeavor to secure slavery in +the union. The essence of the compromise measures of 1850 was that the +demand of congressional non-interference with slavery in the States and +Territories, made by the south, was declared adopted as future policy. As +the forlorn hope just mentioned she now made the demand that the owner's +property in his slaves, if he should carry them into a Territory, should +be protected by congress until its people had made the constitution under +which the Territory would be admitted into the union. Her adherence to +this demand split the democratic party; and the election of Lincoln +ensued. This election meant that slavery--the property supporting more +than nine-tenths of the southern people, and which was virtually their +entire economic system--was put under a ban. There was nothing for it but +depreciation in the near future; soon more and more depreciation; until +after prolonged stagnation and paralysis the value of all her property +would collapse as did that of the continental currency. That was the way +it looked to her. We believe that the facts show that her conviction was +right. She felt with her whole soul that the time had come to invoke State +sovereignty. So she seceded, with intent to save the property of her +people and maintain their domestic peace. Of course she purposed an +equitable apportionment of the public domain between herself and the north +under which she would get the small part that suited slave agriculture. + +The circumstances constrained the south throughout every part and parcel +of her offensive as powerfully as exhaustion of his supplies constrains +the commander of a garrison to a sortie upon what he has reason to believe +is the weakest point of the circumvallation. She was hypnotized by the +powers. They made her believe that she was always doing the right thing +to protect slavery when they were having her to do that only which assured +its destruction. She was all the while as conscientious as the mother who, +afraid of drafts, keeps the needed fresh air from her consumptive child +and thereby kills him. + +We recognize the resistless play of the cosmic forces upon the sun, moon, +and stars; upon our earth; in the yearly round of the seasons; in the +ocean tides; in storms and heated terms; in vegetation; and in things +innumerable taken note of by the senses. But this is not all of their +empire. They sway individuals, communities, peoples, nations, making the +latter even believe that they are having their own way when in fact they +are most servilely doing the will of the powers. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +TOOMBS + + +Calhoun solidified the south in resolve to leave the union if the +abolition party got control of the federal government. Just before his +death there commenced such serious contemplation of an aggressive defence +of slavery that we may call it an actual aggressive. Although by reason of +his unquestioned primacy he could have assumed the conduct of this +aggressive, he did not. Toombs was its real, though not always apparent, +leader, from its actual commencement until it resulted in secession. Thus +he played an independent part of his own, and deserves a chapter to +himself. While Calhoun was the forerunner, Toombs was both apostle and the +Moses of secession. As nearly all of my readers have never thought of any +one else than Calhoun in this capacity, the statement of Toombs's +prominence just made will probably startle them. But I know if they will +follow me through the record they will all at last agree with me. In view +of Calhoun's conspicuousness in the southern agitation from 1835 until his +death in 1850, this misapprehension of my readers is very natural. +Contemporaries following Sulla, named Pompey, not Julius Caesar, The Great. +Similarly Toombs, as an actor in the intersectional arena, is as yet +dwarfed from comparison with the really great but not greater Calhoun. + +It is much more necessary than I saw such a method was with Calhoun to +deal first with what we may call the non-sectional parts of Toombs's +career. And I wish to assure my readers at the outset that these parts +are exceptionally important and valuable not only to every American, but +to all those anywhere who prize shining examples of private virtue and +exalted teachers of good and honest government. + +I was nearly ten years old when Toombs's congressional career commenced in +December, 1845. Living only eighteen miles from him I heard him often +mentioned. It was the delight of many people to report his phrases and +repartees. By reason of their wisdom or wit and fineness of expression, +the whole of each one lodged in the dullest memory. I never knew another +whose sayings circulated so widely and far without alteration. As they +serve to introduce you to his rare originality, I will tell here a few of +them that I heard admired and laughed at in my boyhood. + +He had not then left off tobacco, but he chewed it incessantly, and a +spray of the juice fell around him when he was speaking. Once while he was +haranguing at the hustings, a drunken man beneath the edge of the platform +on which he was standing, rudely told him in a loud voice not to let his +pot boil over. Toombs, looking down, saw that his interrupter had flaming +red hair: "Take your fire from under it, then," he answered. + +In another stump speech he was earnestly denying that he had ever used +certain words now charged against him. A stalwart, rough fellow--one of +Choate's bulldogs with confused ideas--rose, and asserted he had heard him +say them. When and where was asked. The man gave time and place, and added +tauntingly, "What do you say to that?" Toombs rejoined, "Well, I must have +told a d--d lie." + +A rival candidate, really conspicuous and celebrated for his little +ability, in a stump debate pledged the people that if they would send him +to congress he would never leave his post during a session to attend the +courts, as he unjustifiably charged Toombs with habitually doing. The +latter disposed of this by merely saying, "You should consider which will +hurt the district the more, his constant presence in, or my occasional +absence from, the house." + +In another discussion this same opponent charged him with having voted so +and so. Replying, Toombs denied it. The other interrupted him, and +sustained his charge by producing the _Globe_; and he expressively +exclaimed, "What do you think of that vote?" Toombs answered without any +hesitation--nothing ever confused him--"I think it a d--d bad vote. There +are more than a hundred votes of mine reported in that big book. He has +evidently studied them all, and this is the only bad one he can find. Send +_him_ to congress in my place, the record will be exactly inverted; it +will be as hard to find a good one in his votes as it is now to find a bad +one in mine." + +In the congressional session of 1849-50 Toombs had made his Hamilcar +speech, to be told of fully after a while. In this he avowed his +preference of disunion to exclusion of the south from the Territories so +positively and strongly that the ultra southern rights men hailed him as +their champion. But soon afterwards, with the great majority of the people +of the State, he took his stand upon the compromise of 1850 and the +Georgia Platform quoted above. This was really on his part a recession +from the extreme ground he had taken in the speech. In 1851, a coalition +of the whigs and democrats of Georgia nominated Howell Cobb, a democrat, +for governor, and Toombs, then a whig, canvassed for him with great zeal. +He had an appointment to speak, in Oglethorpe county, at Lexington, the +county seat. There were quite a number of ardent southern rights men in +the county, who held that the admission of California, really in southern +latitude, with its anti-slavery constitution, called for far more decided +action on the part of the south than was counselled in the Compromise and +Georgia Platform. Hating Toombs, whom they regarded as a renegade, they +plotted to humiliate him when he came to Lexington. As he never shrank +from discussion they easily got his consent to divide time with--as the +phrase goes--a canvasser for McDonald, their candidate for governor. +Toombs was to consume a stated time in opening the stump debate; then the +other was to be allowed a stated time; after which Toombs had a reply of +twenty minutes--these were the terms. In opening, Toombs, as was natural, +stressed the compromise measures and set forth the advantages of +preserving the union; and he fiercely inveighed against the men who could +not be satisfied with the Georgia Platform, embraced as it had been by a +great majority of all parties, denouncing them as disunionists. The other +disputant took the Hamilcar speech of Toombs, made just the year before, +as his text. Deliberately, accurately, systematically he unfolded the +doctrine of that speech, and he did the same for the speech just made, and +contrasting the two, he put them into glaring inconsistency. Southern +rights stock rose and union stock sunk rapidly as the comparison went on. +In his peroration the speaker commented upon Toombs's tergiversation with +such effective severity it elicited wild applause from the men of his +side. They had pushed themselves to the front. Toombs rose to reply. In +their riotous rejoicing over the great hit of their speaker, they forgot +the proprieties of the occasion; forgot that it was Toombs's meeting, as +was said in common parlance; and they rapped on the floor with canes, and +even clubs provided for the nonce, howled, and made all kinds of noises +to drown his voice. Unabashed he looked upon them, smiling that grandest +and blandest of smiles. As the foremost of these roysterers told me long +afterwards, his self-possession excited their curiosity. They wanted to +hear if he could say anything to get out of the trap in which they had so +cleverly caught him; and they became still. "It seems to me," he +commenced, "that men like you meditating a great revolution ought first to +learn good manners." At this condign rebuke of behavior which, according +to stump usage, was as uncivil and impolite as if it had been shown Toombs +in his own house by guests accepting his hospitality, spontaneous cheers +from the union men, who were in very large majority, appeared to raise the +roof. In his highest and readiest style--for mob opposition always lifted +him at once into that--he reminded his hearers that their whole duty was +to decide whether they would approve the compromise and the Georgia +Platform or not; and that to discuss whether what he had spoken last year +before these measures were even thought of, was right or wrong, was to +substitute for a transcendently important public question a little +personal one of no concern to them whatever. "If there is anything in my +Hamilcar speech that cannot be reconciled with the measures which I have +supported here to-day with reasons which my opponent confesses by his +silence he cannot answer, I repudiate it. If the gentleman takes up my +abandoned errors, let him defend them." + +How the union men cheered as he broke out of the trap, and caught the +setters in it! + +I heard much of this day, still famous in all the locality, when six years +afterwards I settled in Lexington, to begin law practice. Over and over +again the Union men told how their spirits fell, fell, fell as the +southern rights speaker kept on, until it looked black and dark around; +and then how the sun broke out in full splendor at the first sentence of +Toombs's reply, and the brightness mounted steadily to the end. That +sentence last quoted is a proverb in that region yet. If in a dispute with +anybody there you try to put him down by quoting his former contradictory +utterances, he tells you that if you take up his abandoned errors you must +defend them. + +The interest excited in me by what is told in the foregoing was the +beginning of my study of Toombs, which never at any time entirely ceased, +and which will doubtless continue as long as I live. He has impressed me +far more than any other man whom I ever knew. Soon after his return, in +1867, from his exile I resolved I would try to write his Life under the +title, "Robert Toombs, as a Lawyer, Statesman, and Talker;" and for ten or +fifteen years I had been systematically collecting the data. These had +accumulated under each head--especially reports of his epigrams and winged +phrases--far more considerably than was my expectation at first. I added +to them very largely by copious notes of the record of his congressional +life which I read attentively in course, commencing immediately after his +death. In a few years I had finished my task. As yet I have not found the +times favorable for publication, and the MS. may perplex my literary +executor. Of course my object in the too egotistic narrative just made is +to inform you that I have bestowed very great labor and study upon the +subject, hoping thus to draw your attention. + +Robert Toombs was born July 2, 1810, on his father's plantation in Wilkes +county, Georgia. He went to school at Washington, the county seat; then to +the State university; which having left, he finished his collegiate course +at Union. Next he spent a year at the law school of Virginia university. +He never was a bookworm. His habitual quotations during the last fifteen +years of his life--when I was much with him--betrayed a smattering of the +Roman authors commonly read at school, a much greater knowledge of the +Latin quoted by Blackstone and that of the current law maxims, and +considerable familiarity with "Paradise Lost," "Macbeth," and the Falstaff +parts of "King Henry IV.," and "Merry Wives," Don Quixote, Burns, and the +bible. But this man, whose diction and phrases were the worship of the +street and the despair of the cultured, had no deep acquaintance with any +literature. Erskine got the staple of his English from a long and fond +study of Shakspeare and Milton; but Toombs must have drawn his only from +the fountains whence Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mariah get theirs, and then +purified and refined it by a secret process that nobody else knew of,--not +even himself, as I believe. If he had only corrected after utterance as +assiduously as Erskine did, of the two his diction would be much the +finer. + +The year before he came of age he was admitted to the bar by legislative +act. In the same year he married his true mate and settled at Washington. +For four years the famous William H. Crawford was the judge of the +circuit. Toombs was born into the Crawford faction, and the judge who, as +there was no supreme court then, was law autocrat of his circuit, gave him +favor from the first. The courts were full of lucrative business. The old +dockets show that in five years Toombs was getting his full share in his +own county and the adjoining ones. The diligent attention that he gave +every detail of preparation of his cases, had, in a year or two after his +call, made him first choice of every eminent lawyer for junior. One of +these was Cone, a native of Connecticut, who had received a good education +both literary and professional, before he came south. Toombs, who had +known the great American lawyers of his time, always said after his death +in 1859 that Cone was the best of all. Lumpkin used to tell that during a +visit to England he haunted the courts, but he never found a single +counsel who spoke to a law point as luminously and convincingly as Cone. +Another one of these was Lumpkin. He is, I believe, the most eloquent man +that Georgia ever produced. He had some tincture of letters; but he was +without Choate's pre-eminent self-culture and daily drafts of inspiration +from the immortal fountains. A. H. Stephens admired Choate greatly. He +heard the latter's reply to Buchanan. Often, at Liberty Hall--as Stephens +called his residence--he would repeat with gusto the passage in which +Choate roasts Buchanan for his inculcation of hate to England. Stephens +contended that if all that education and art had done for each--Choate and +Lumpkin--could have been removed, a comparison would, as he believed, show +Lumpkin to be the stronger advocate by nature. + +These three--Cone, Lumpkin, and Toombs--were often on the same side. But +whether Toombs had them as associates or as adversaries, they were always +in these early years of his at the bar, in his eye. With the unremitted +attentiveness of what we may call his subconscious observation, and a +receptivity always active and greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated +all of Cone's law and all of Lumpkin's advocacy--that is, he had, as he +did with the speech and language heard by him every day, transmuted them +into the rare and precious staple peculiar to his own _sui generis_ self. + +In his first forensic arguments his rapid utterance was as indistinct as +if he had mush in his mouth, old men have told me. But after a year or two +of practice he developed both power and attractiveness. In due time when +Cone or Lumpkin were with him, he would be pushed forward, young as he +was, into some important place in court conduct. I myself heard Lumpkin +tell that the greatest forensic eloquence he had ever heard was a rebuke +by Toombs--then some twenty-seven years old--of the zeal with which the +public urged on the prosecution of one of their clients on trial for +murder. The junior--the evidence closed--was making the first speech for +the defence. As he went on in a strong argument, the positiveness with +which he denied all merit to the case for the State, angered the +spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demonstration of dissent +came from some of them, which the presiding judge did not check as he +ought to have done. Toombs strode at once to the edge of the bar, only a +railing some four feet high separating him from these angry men, and +chastised them as they merited. His invective culminated in denouncing +them as bloodhounds eager to slake their accursed thirst in innocent +blood. These misguided ones were brought back to proper behavior, and with +them admiration of the fearless and eloquent advocate displaced their +hostility, and carried upon an invisible wave an influence in favor of the +accused over the entire community, and even into the jury box. And the +narrator, who was one of Toombs's greatest admirers, told with fond +recollection how the popular billows were laid by the speech of his +junior, and how he himself took heart and found the way to an acquittal +which he feared he had lost. + +This affair is illustrative of Toombs in two respects. In the first place +it shows his extempore faculty and presence of mind. I have seen him so +often in sudden emergencies do exactly the thing that subsequent +reflection pronounced the best, that I believe had he been in Napoleon's +place when the Red Sea tide suddenly spread around, he would have escaped +in the same way, or in a better one. I do not believe that this can be +said of any one else of the past or present. In the second place it is one +of the many proofs extant that he could always vanquish the mob. + +He divined what offered cases are unmaintainable more quickly, and +declined them more resolutely than any one I ever knew. So free was he +from illusion that he could not contend against plain infeasibility. It +was impossible for clients, witnesses, or juniors to blind him to the +actual chances. For ten years or more, commencing with 1867, I observed +him in many _nisi prius_ trials, and I noted how unfrequently, as compared +with others, he had either got wrong as to his own side or misanticipated +the other. But now and then it would develop that the merits were +decidedly against him. He would at once, according to circumstances, +propose a compromise, frankly surrender, or, if it appeared very weak, +toss the case away as if it was something unclean. When he had thus +failed, his air of unconcern and majesty reminded of how the lion is said +to stalk back to his place of hiding when the prey has eluded his spring. + +Stephens came to the bar some four years after Toombs did, and settled in +an adjoining county. I need merely allude to their long and beautiful +friendship, full details of which are to be found in the biographies of +the former. I merely emphasize the importance of Stephens's help to +Toombs's development in his early politics. The former got to congress two +years before he did. Toombs evidently relied greatly upon the sagacity +with which the other divined how a new question would take with the +masses. On his return from a brief and bloodless service in the Creek war +as captain of a company of volunteers, Toombs commenced a State +legislative career, which Mr. Stovall has creditably told.[97] I can stop +only to say it was honorable, and contributed greatly to his political +education. + +When Toombs was at the Virginia law school, he heard some of Randolph's +stump speeches; and for a few years afterwards he often vouched passages +from them as authority. Stephens would tell this; and then with +affectionate mischief tell further that his friend, before he had finished +in the Georgia legislature, had ceased entirely to support his contentions +with anything else than his own reasons. + +Before he got to Congress, he had made reputation at the hustings. In 1840 +he crossed the Savannah, and meeting the veteran McDuffie in stump debate +is reported to have come off with the high opinion of all hearers, +including his adversary. + +Let us now take an inventory of him as he is about to enter congress. He +is the best lawyer in the State, except Cone, and fully his equal; while +as a speaker he did not have Lumpkin's marvellous suasion of common men, +yet with them he was almost the next, and he was far greater than Lumpkin +in quelling the mob, convincing the honest judge that his law was right, +and convincing also the better men of the jury and citizens present that +the principles of justice involved in the issue of facts were to be +applied as he claimed; he had acquired enough of property to be considered +rich in that day, although he had always lived liberally; his legislative +and political career had convinced the people that he was incomparably the +best and ablest man of the district for their representative. It is to be +especially emphasized that he had practical talent of the highest order. +His plantation was a model of good management. His investments were always +prudent and lucrative. Practical men of extraordinary ability were bred +by the conditions about him. In the Raytown district of Taliaferro +county--about ten miles distant--my maternal grandfather, Joshua Morgan, +lived on his plantation of more than a thousand acres, which he managed +without an overseer. His father had been killed by the tories. His +education had been so scant that he found reading the simplest English +difficult, and to sign his name was the only writing I ever knew him to +do. But his plantation management was the admiration of all his neighbors. +His land was sandy and thin, but he made it yield more than ample support +for his numerous family, his rapidly increasing force of negroes, his +blooded horses, his unusually large number of hogs, cows, sheep, and +goats; and a fair quantity of cotton besides. The slaves loved sweet +potatoes more than any other food, and they were a favorite food in the +Big House. His supplies never failed, there being some unopened "banks or +hills" when the new potatoes came. His hogs were his special attention. +His fine horses required so much corn, and so much more of it was needed +for bread, that he could not feed it lavishly to his hogs. So he developed +a succession of peach orchards, with which he commenced their fattening in +the summer. These were four in all; the first ripened in July and the last +the fourth week in October. The fruit in any particular one ripened at the +same time, and he cared not how many different varieties there were. +Whenever he tasted peaches away from home that he liked, if they were not +from grafted trees, he would carry away the seed, and there was a +particular drawer labelled with the date, into which they were put. +Whenever he had need to plant a tree whose fruit was desired at that +particular time of the year, the seed was planted where he wanted the +tree. Many of his neighbors planted the seeds in a nursery, whence after +a year or two they transplanted the young trees; but my grandfather, as he +told me, saved a year by his method. He was always replanting in place of +injured trees and those he had found to be inferior. The "fattening" +hogs--that is, those to be next killed for meat--were turned into the July +orchard just as soon as the peaches commenced to fall; and they went on +through the rest of the series. There was running water in each orchard. +After peach-time, these hogs ran upon the peas which were now ripe in the +corn fields, the corn having been gathered. And for some two weeks before +they were to be killed they were penned and given all the corn they would +eat. What pride the good planter of that time took in keeping independent +of the Tennessee hog drover, who was the main resource of his rural +neighbors who did not save their own meat, as the phrase then was! +Observing that his hogs were not safe against roving negroes when away +from the house on Sunday, on that day they were kept up. One of my +earliest recollections is that of Old Lige driving them to the spring +branch twice every Sunday. For a long while he tried in various ways to +protect his sheep against worrying dogs. At last he had them "got up" +every night in some enclosure he wished to enrich near enough to the Big +House for his own dogs to be aware of any invasion by strangers, and he +never had a sheep worried afterwards. The foregoing is enough to suggest +the whole of the system. The management of its different trains and many +separate departments upon an up-to-date railroad was not superior in +punctuality and due discharge of every duty. He lived well, entertained +hospitably, and kept out of debt. Mr. Thomas E. Watson has lately given a +graphic description of good plantation conduct,[98] which ought to be +considered by all those who now believe that every planter was necessarily +slipshod and slovenly in his vocation. It was a good training school for +the born business man. Let me give an example to show how extensive +planting bred experts in affairs. The Southern Mutual fire insurance +company--its principal office being at Athens, some forty miles distant +from Toombs's home--at the beginning of the brothers' war had for some +years almost driven all other insurers out of its territory. It is still +such a favorite therein that it is hardly exaggeration to state that its +competitors must content themselves with its leavings. The plan of this +great company is a novel form of co-operative insurance--indeed, I may +say, it is unique. It was invented, developed, and most skilfully worked +forward into a success which is one of the wonders of the insurance world. +The men who did this were never any of them reputed to be of exceptional +talents. They had merely grown up in the best rural business circles of +the old south. A similar fact explains the mastery of money, banking, and +related matters which Calhoun acquired in a locality of South Carolina, +not forty miles distant from Washington, Georgia. It also explains why +Toombs, bred in the interior and far away from large cities, had perfectly +acquired the commercial law; had complete knowledge of the principles and +practice of banking, and those of all corporate business, and also a +familiarity with the fluctuating values of current securities equalling +that of experts. + +He was also, as I know, almost a lightning calculator, and fully +indoctrinated in the science of accounts. + +Surely this man, now thirty-five, is ripe for congress. + +January 12, 1846, the United States house of representatives having under +consideration a resolution of notice to Great Britain to abrogate the +convention between her and the United States, of August 6, 1827, relative +to the region commonly called Oregon, Toombs made his congressional debut. + +It is an able speech for a new member--especially for one grappling with a +question peculiar to a part of the country so far away from his own. +Convinced that the adoption of the resolution could give no just cause of +offence, he will not yield anything to those who merely cry up the +blessings of peace. The warlike note is deep and earnest. Then comes the +most original part of the speech. Showing great familiarity with the facts +and the applicable international law, he does his utmost to prove that the +title of each country is bad; and it seems to me that he succeeds. He +urges that the time has arrived when American settlers are ready to pour +into Oregon. "Terminate this convention and our settlements will give us +good title." + +Of course I believe that Calhoun's policy, as I have explained it above, +was the true one, and that we should have continued the convention as to +joint occupancy as long as possible. Toombs was bred among the followers +of Crawford, who regarded Calhoun as his rival for the presidency, and I +doubt if he ever did neutralize this early influence enough to enable +himself to do full justice to Calhoun. And as a further palliation, his +combative temperament must be remembered, and also that he had inherited +from a gallant Revolutionary father an extreme readiness to fight England. + +July 1, 1846, he discusses a proposal to reduce import duties in a long +speech, carefully premeditated as is evident. He shows great familiarity +with Adam Smith, economical principles, fluctuations in prices of leading +commodities, and the consequences of affecting legislation. Its main +interest here is the detailed argument in its concluding passages against +the expediency of free trade, of which he afterwards became an advocate. + +January 8, 1847, a speech on the proposed increase of the army is his next +considerable effort. He denounces the Mexican war as unjust in its origin, +but he reprehends its feeble conduct. He is very strong, from the southern +standpoint, in what he says of the Wilmot proviso. Here is a passage +characteristic of Toombs later on: + + "The gentleman from New York [Grover] asked how the south could + complain of the proposed proviso accompanying the admission of new + territory, when the arrangement was so very fair and put the north and + south on a footing of perfect equality. The north could go there + without slaves, and so could the south. Well, I will try it the other + way. Suppose the territory to be open to all; then southerners could + go and carry slaves with them, and so could northerners. Would not + this be just as equal? [Much laughter.] I will not answer for the + strength of the argument, but it is as good as what we of the south + get. [Laughter.]" + +Winthrop, who followed, commences by deprecating the necessity that +exposed him to the disadvantage of contrast with a speech which had +attracted so much attention and admiration. And Stephens praised the +effort greatly.[99] + +December 21, 1847, Toombs offered a resolution in the house, that neither +the honor nor interest of the republic demand the dismemberment of Mexico, +nor the annexation of any of her territory as an indispensable condition +to the restoration of peace. + +His Taylor speech of July 1, 1848, evinces warm whig partisanship. + +In his first years at the bar he loitered a while as a speaker. And one +who studies his record in congress discerns that it is some two years +before he commences to feel easy as a member of the house. The speeches +which I have mentioned above, with the solitary exception of that of +January 8, 1847, are labored communication of cram rather than the +peculiar language of the speaker who, when I commenced to observe him a +few years later on the stump, had become a marvel both of strong thinking +and fit expression extempore. + +I detect a gleam of the coming man, when August 4, 1848, and February 20, +1849, he exhibits his inveterate hostility to maintaining and increasing +an army in time of peace. Next he begins his lifelong war upon high +salaries, and the extravagance and waste of congressional printing. Note +what he says February 29, 1848, advocating reduction of salaries of patent +examiners; and his denouncing the evil of congress's publishing +agricultural works, in two speeches, the one made March 20, 1848, the +other January 18, 1849. These are short, but strong, and their forcible +style gives sure promise that the true Toombs is at hand. He suddenly +found his real self in December, 1849, when his lead towards secession +commenced, as I shall detail later. After that date he soon becomes one of +the strongest and most influential members; and especially one whose +speech greatly attracts audience. I must support this assertion by the +record. With my limited space I must be very brief. My trouble is that the +many examples which I could use are all so good it is hard to decide what +must be left out. While I shall always give dates, so that my statements +can be checked by reference to the _Globe_, I need not confine myself +strictly to the order of time. + +His mastery of parliamentary law is a good subject to begin with. + +January 18, 1850, it was moved that the sergeant-at-arms act as doorkeeper +until one be elected. The chair decided that the question affected the +organization of the house and was therefore one of privilege. On an +appeal there was much discussion. Here is the part played by Toombs: + + "_Mr. Toombs._ I apprehend that the speaker has committed error. This + is not an office known to the law; it was created only by the rules of + the house. The office of speaker and clerk alone are known to the + law.... It is not every officer whom by their rules they may choose to + appoint, that is necessary to the organization of the house. Suppose + that by a rule they provided for the appointment of a bootblack; could + a resolution for his appointment be made a question of privilege to + arrest and override all other business? + + Mr. Bayley inquired of the gentleman from Georgia if a rule was not as + clearly obligatory upon the house as a law. + + _Mr. Toombs._ It is; but its execution is not a question of + organization." + +A reversal was the result. + +The following took place February 20, 1851, and is a good illustration of +his forcible way of putting things: + + "_Mr. Toombs._ (Interrupting Mr. Stanton) called the gentleman to + order. The committee ought not to tolerate this custom of speaking to + matters not immediately before it. + + _The Chairman._ Does the gentleman from Georgia raise the point of + order that the remarks of the gentleman from Tennessee are not in + order because they have no reference to the bill before the committee. + + _Mr. Toombs._ My point is that debate upon steamboats is not in order + upon a pension bill. + + _The Chairman._ I decide the gentleman is in order. It has been + invariable practice to permit such debate in committee of the whole on + the state of the union. + + _Mr. Toombs._ The practice may have been permitted; but it was wrong." + +On appeal by Toombs the chairman was reversed. + +Though Toombs--a whig--had stubbornly opposed the candidacy of Howell +Cobb--a democrat--he soon became to the latter, after his election as +speaker, the leading parliamentary authority. Often there would be +confused clamor and wild disorder, nearly every member proposing +something. At a loss himself, Cobb would look at Toombs and see him +intently conning his Jefferson. Soon he would rise, and being recognized +by the speaker at once, would forthwith suggest the right thing. + +The foregoing was often told by Cobb, as his friends have informed me. + +February 24, 1853, he shows up the bad consequences of overpaid offices, +the duties of which the holders can hire others to do for half of its +compensation; and March 2, the same year, he thus speaks of a cognate +evil: + + "The gentleman seems to go upon the principle that as many clerks with + high salaries should be attached to one office as to any other--the + principle of equalizing the patronage of these different offices + without regard to the species of labor required by each." + +I append here a collection of short extracts from Toombs's speeches in the +lower house, which illustrate his power to tickle the ear by striking +presentation, epigram, and novel expression: + + _Debate always Harmless._ "A little more experience will show the + gentleman that he is mistaken, and that the absence of discussion here + does not accelerate adjournment. The most harmless time which is spent + by the house, he will find, is that spent in discussion." February 17, + 1852. + + _Nominees of National Conventions._ "What are the fruits of your + national conventions?... They have brought you a Van Buren, a + Harrison, a Polk, and a General Taylor.... I mean no disparagement to + any one of these. All of them but one [Van Buren] have paid the last + debt of nature, and the one who survives, unfortunately for himself, + has survived his reputation." July 3, 1852. + + _Two Classes of Economists._ "There is a class of economists who will + favor any measure by which they can cut off wrong or extravagant + expenditures. But there is another class who are always preaching + economy--who are always ready to apply the rule of economy and get + economical in every case except that before the house." February 17, + 1852. + + _Principles of Banking._ "If we intend to regulate the business of + banking in this District, the bill does too little; if we do not, it + does too much, As it does not seek to control generally the business + of banking, but permits the issue of notes greater than five dollars, + it violates the principles of unrestrained banking, but does not go to + the extent of regulation by law. I think the public are more likely to + suffer, and to a greater extent, from bank issues above five dollars + than those under that amount." January 11, 1853. + + _The Dahlonega Mint, in his own State._ "I believe the mints at + Dahlonega, Charlotte, and New York are each unnecessary.... I do not + desire to continue abuses in Georgia any more than in New York. I am + willing to pull up all abuses by the root.... I think the existing + mint is adequate to the wants of the country." February 17, 1853. + + _Personal Explanations in Debate of Appropriations._ "I believe that + with all the abuses we have had in the discussion of appropriation + bills, we have never had personal explanations." February 21, 1850. + +Toombs is now about to leave the lower for the upper house. He has grown +in all directions in the qualifications and powers marking the good +representative. There is no other man in the house, from either section, +whose ability is superior or whose promise greater. Three days before his +career in the United States senate begins, he made the following appeal, +protesting against hasty and reckless expenditure, which seems to me a +model of matter and extemporaneous expression: + + "In this bill the fortification bill is introduced; and provision made + for private wagon ways for Oregon and California. There is in it an + appropriation of $100,000 to pay somebody for the discovery of ether. + You have a provision for a Pacific railroad; and you have job upon job + to plunder the government in the military bill;--and the + representatives of the people are called upon to vote on all these + grave questions under five minutes' speeches. You do gross injustice + to yourselves; you betray great interests of the people when you act + upon such important measures in this manner. Let the house reject the + amendments; let the senate devote its time to maturing bills, and send + them to us to be acted upon deliberately; and then whichever way + congress determines for itself, it will have a right so to do. But to + act upon them in this way, is not only to abdicate our powers, but to + abdicate our duties. Put your hands upon these amendments and strike + them out." March 1, 1853. + +Manifestly all that he had learned of the pending bill was from having +heard it read. The instant apprehension and accurate statement, and the +exhaustion of the subject in far shorter time than his small +allowance--these recall what I often heard Stephens say, "No one else has +ever made such perfect and telling impromptus as Toombs." + +His famous Hamilcar outburst did not consume all of his five minutes. + +Toombs was United States senator from March 4, 1853, until the spring of +1861. His peculiarities must be suggested. Although he was perhaps the +ablest lawyer in the senate, loved the profession with all the ardor of +first love, and had great cases with large fees offered him every day, he +resolutely subordinated law practice to his congressional duties. He did +much practice, but it was all in the vacations of congress. He did not +seek office. There is not to be found, so far as I know, a trace of any +aspiration of his during his congressional career for other than the place +of senator. If on a special committee, he worked energetically; but he +avoided the standing committees. He says: + + "It is only occasionally that I go to the committee meetings to make a + quorum to act on important business. I do not attend them one day more + than I am obliged to, for I am quite sure it is not my duty unless + charged with a certain subject. This whole machinery is a means of + transferring the legislation of the country from those to whose hands + the constitution commits it to irresponsible juntas.... I say general + standing committees, without any exception, are great nuisances, and + they ought to be abolished.... They are not proper bodies to exercise + legislative powers. They are not known in the country from which we + derive our institutions. The English have no standing committees. They + raise special committees on special objects."[100] February 18, 1859. + +"The general business of the country," as he expressed it, January 10, +1859, that was his concern. Each subject requiring the action of the +senate, whether important or trivial, received his industrious attention, +as his course and language on the floor always show; and he evidently +feels it his duty to furnish the body on all questions the utmost +instruction and aid that he can possibly give. He had no ambition to be +the author of novel measures--he was strenuous only to bestow upon every +subject of current legislation the proper consideration. His premeditated +efforts are but few. He never shows any distrust of his offhand faculty. +He takes part in nearly all the discussions, often being up several times +the same day on the same subject. He is seldom lengthy, hardly ever away +from the point needing explanation, and never, never dull. Generally he +comes with correcting fact or enlightening principle, and it is seldom +that his matter and words are not both impressive. I found it well in +writing the Life mentioned above to present the most of his senatorial +course by assorting his utterances under their proper heads, with the +briefest possible comment, rather than to narrate chronologically in the +common way of biographers. In his speeches it is only now and then that he +is steadily progressive as he was in the Iowa contested election case. His +advocacy or opposition is generally founded upon a principle, and from +this principle--usually central and self-evident--the different passages +radiate in aphorisms, self-supporting paragraphs, and detached +arguments,--this common radiation being their only connection. Accordingly +if you know what is the particular subject that is under discussion, a +part taken at random anywhere from any of his extempore speeches is nearly +always complete in itself and fully intelligible. Therefore we can have +him to give in his own words, in a comparatively small space, an +approximately full collection of the rich and varied teachings of his +senatorial career, although our chrestomathy would appear to one putting +it beside the unmutilated report of the _Globe_ as a beggarly and jejune +abstract. I know of no other public man with whom this can be as +satisfactorily done. Of course the compilation made by me, as just told, +cannot be given here. He challenged every bad and defended every good +measure. He is on record both by speech, nearly always hitting the nail on +the head, and by vote, nearly always right, upon every one. What he did in +the house deserves close attention; but his actings and doings in the +senate, to which he belonged from March 4, 1853, until shortly after his +famous speech of January 7, 1861, when he left to go with his seceding +State, are such that I challenge all students of history to produce a +single example of such earnest grappling with and able handling of so many +matters of importance in so short a time--not eight full years--by any +member of ancient or modern parliaments. + +Having now, I hope, aroused my readers to some faint conception of +Toombs's greatness as a senator in non-sectional matters, I must bring +that greatness into fuller view, if I can. I therefore add to the +foregoing catalogue the rough character sketch next following. + +We begin with his devotion to his duties. One examining the _Globe_ will +hardly find any other member who calls as often for the reading of the +reports accompanying bills to pay private claims, and such other small +matters; and he will always observe that his immediate comment shows that +he has fully taken in what has been read. He said once, "I have been +reproached half a dozen times within the last two days as being rather +fractious because I desired to understand the business on which I was +called to vote." August 3, 1854. + +The alert and intelligent vigilance which he gives every measure proposed +seems superior to that of all his colleagues. They acknowledge this by the +many inquiries they make of him for information as to pending bills. Thus +June 20, 1860, Green asks him where is the amendment? when was it adopted? +has the house disagreed to it? has it been before a committee? etc., and +every query is answered without hesitation. This but examples how the +other senators very often made a convenience of Toombs's accurate note of +what was passing. + +He shows a like readiness upon facts of history--especially English and +American--on clauses of the constitution, or statutes, or treaties, +provisions of the law of nations, principles of political economy, +institutions, commercial systems, customs of particular nations, and all +such topics as may illustrate the pending question, however suddenly it +may have risen. And so he discusses every matter, grave or trivial, with +perfect grasp of the proposition submitted, and with fullness of +knowledge and understanding. He avoids strained and over-ingenious +reasoning. Plain and safe men never disparaged his arguments by calling +them hair-splitting or metaphysical. But though he took his stand upon the +palpable meaning of undisputed facts and the most plainly applicable +doctrines of reason and justice, he displayed an unparalleled power of +formulating in intelligible and striking words the key principles of +common affairs. This gift always found instant appreciation with practical +men, and they admired it as genius. Though he has his eye ever open to +principle, he is the very opposite of the mere doctrinaire. He is +practical, and always pushing business on, except when the bills depleting +the treasury--to use his favorite name for them--are up and likely to pass +because of the coalition between the opposition and the fishy democrats +which he is always exposing with exhaustless variety of language. Only +then he prefers to do nothing. + +As to his own measures, he changes words, accepts amendments--in short +makes every concession which will gain him the substance of his desire. + +We will here say a little of him as a speaker. He thus describes himself: + + "I speak rapidly; but the idea which I intend to utter generally comes + out, sometimes perhaps with too much plainness of speech. What I say, + I mean; and the whole of what I mean generally gets out." July 30, + 1856. + +He shows in the following a contemptuous opinion of written speeches: + + "As a general rule a speech that is fit to be spoken is not fit to be + printed, and one fit to be printed is not fit to be spoken.... The + senator from New York [Seward] comes in with his already in type; + other gentlemen around me, on both sides of the house, from all + sections of the union, who think proper to write essays, bring them + here and read them to the senate.... I am not objecting to their + character, but I would rather read them in my room. Of course nobody + pays any attention to them here." April 22, 1858. + +He did not habitually correct the report of his speeches, as he says May +13, 1858; at the same time entering a general disclaimer as to all that he +does not report himself. This disclaimer must not be pressed too far. If +you are familiar with the man you need not fear being led astray by the +inaccuracies, the number of which he greatly exaggerates. His stamp is so +unmistakable that you always know what is his. Extempore discussion was +his forte. Therefore nearly all the quotations I use in the Life which I +have written I intentionally take from his shorter, impromptu, and +evidently unrevised speeches. These unlabored effusions, it matters not +how dry or small the particular theme may be, have generally the double +merit of showing the true solution and refreshing with figure, apt +illustration, or wit.[101] + +In important debate he is conspicuously the strongest man in the senate. +We will run over the leading ones: + +July 28, 1854, a bill containing appropriations for places in nearly every +one of the States came up. Through the long debate he evinces uncommon +power and readiness. He is too tart in rejoinder, and too much gives the +rein to invective. + +In the two days' debate of the mail steamer appropriation--February 27, +28, 1855,--he distinguishes himself. + +February 6, 1856, Toombs, with Hunter and Toucey, supports a resolution +proposing the origination of appropriation bills in the Senate. Sumner and +Seward take the other side. The argument of Seward is very elaborate, +notwithstanding his declaration at the outset that he is wholly +unprepared. It is demolished by Toombs in his most crushing style. Note, +too, how accurate the latter is as to the proceedings of the +constitutional convention, how familiar he is with the abuses of wild +appropriations which he is trying to correct, and how graphically he +depicts them. + +July 28, 1856, the Black Lake harbor appropriation is the subject. All +that he says is noticeable for power; especially his replies to +interruptions by Pugh, Wade, and Cass. Though the bill was passed over his +head, as you read the report you feel that his was the actual triumph. + +July 30, 1856, another debate of river and harbor improvements. It is +begun by Hunter. Benjamin takes the lead in support of the bill; Toombs +joins discussion with the latter, who by his coolness and adroitness for a +while foils his adversary; but soon Toombs gets his feet firmly on the +constitution, and still more firmly upon the injustice of extorting the +support of commerce from other interests, and he is resistless. The +disputants often put questions to one another. Toombs's promptness to +answer every adverse position is a taking exhibition. It is to be noted +that many sparkling sentences are struck out of him by the incessant +hammering of the others. At the close, he seems either to have wearied or +silenced his opponents. One cannot but feel that this is no arena for a +man who can make only written speeches. + +August 4, 1856, the subject being the improvement of the Mississippi, +Toombs urges that the valley is prosperous, and it should improve its +river. The examination he gives the question is profoundly searching. +Towards the conclusion of the debate, Cass reads the counter doctrine of +Calhoun, in the report of latter to the Memphis convention, his reason +being, as he says: "I will confess frankly my object in reading it. The +senator from Georgia has treated the question with great ability; and I +want the same vehicle that carries his remarks to the public to carry +also the opinions and views of Mr. Calhoun, whose authority is vastly +better than mine." + +Through the whole of this debate the faculty and force exhibited by Toombs +are wonderful even for him. + +Consider all that he says of the proper management of the post-office, +February 28, 1859. + +January 30, 1860, there was an animated debate, which occupied the morning +and was renewed in the evening. The vigorous blows which he deals the +coalition passing the appropriations--ever the theme of his severest +reprehension--and the review he makes of each item in the appropriation +bill, taken all in all, are high feats. + +His conduct, January 6, 1857, in the Iowa contested election manifests +such rare courage against party and section for the right that it must be +told at some length. We think it belongs with the more important matters +just noticed rather than to its chronological place. + +Harlan, a republican, had been sitting for some time as a senator from +Iowa. There was no contestant. The adverse report was grounded upon a +protest of the Iowa senate, stating that that body did not participate in +the so-called joint convention which had affected to elect Harlan. It +appeared that both houses of the Iowa legislature had met in joint +convention, had balloted without result, and the convention had adjourned +to meet at 10 A. M. the next day. On this day the senate--the majority of +its members manifestly being democrats and opposed to the sense of the +joint majority--met in their own chamber and adjourned before the hour +appointed for the assembling of the convention. But a majority of the +senate were present in the convention when it made the election--several +of them having been brought in by the sergeant-at-arms, and who protested +that they did not act in the proceedings. In the United States senate the +democrats were in a majority, but Toombs, who was always above mere party +considerations, supported the cause of Harlan, saying afterwards, "I +maintained his title, black Republican though he was, because I believed +it stood on right." February 15, 1858. The decision was against Harlan; +but I do not think that an unbiased man who regards mere technical rules +as no more than the instruments of justice, will fail to concur with +Toombs. His treatment of the subject is extremely good and entertaining. +Every material fact is given prominence; every important distinction +taken, as, for instance, that the convention, as it could do no +legislative act and did not require the concurrence of the executive, was +not really the legislature, but only the persons constituting the +legislature acting in a body of their own as electors; and further, his +position that after the convention had organized it could proceed with the +election as long as it had a quorum. Having completed a most lawyer-like +and concatenated argument, which is a wonderful exhibition of concise and +exhaustive extemporaneous reasoning, he rises to the higher plane of +statesmanship and justice, in which he shows in a vivid light what a +monstrous evil it would be to approve the factious withdrawal of the +majority of the Iowa senate from the convention. Note especially the many +questions asked him by different members, and the readiness and +satisfactoriness of his answers.[102] It is all in all one of the best +samples of Toombs's dispassionate debate to which I can refer. Very +probably the democrats would have done right by Harlan had it not been for +Bayard's argument, the special effectiveness of which was the use he made +of the case of his own election, in 1839, to the United States senate by +the Delaware legislature. As he stated it, it was this: There being a +majority of one in the Delaware house of representatives in favor of the +opposite party, a majority of that house refused to go into the joint +balloting. Bayard was elected, and it was maintained by his party, the +democrats, that a majority of the members of the two houses had authority +to proceed; but he hesitated, and at last consulted Silas Wright, of New +York. The latter gave a decided opinion that such an election was invalid. +Whereupon Bayard succumbed, and his State was without a senator for two +years. I cannot help feeling that if Wright had considered the subject and +bottomed it on true principle, as Toombs afterwards did, Bayard would have +settled down in the opposite conclusion, and he and Toombs in concert +would have forced their fellow-democrats of the United States senate into +doing justice to an opponent. + +Many have been superior to Toombs in making perfect orations, but it is +hard to find in any deliberative body a match for him as a debater. +Charles Fox was a giant; but he did not have the strength, the grip, the +never remitted activity, the infinite thrust, the parry, illustration, +wit, epigram, and invincible appeal to conscience, feeling, and reason--in +short, the complete supply and command of all resources that marked Toombs +as foremost in the pancratium of parliamentary discussion. It ought to add +inexpressible brightness to his fame that he sought for no triumphs except +those of justice and good policy. He was far more than a mere logician in +debate. His brilliant snatches, his sudden uprisings, his thawing humor, +and flashing wit--all these did their part as effectively in winning favor +and working suasion as his array of facts and his ratiocination did theirs +in convincing. He was too prone to use harsh language towards the other +side. There are many places in his speeches where I wish he had used soft +instead of bitter words. That he could observe perfect parliamentary +propriety there are proofs in the _Globe_. Especially would I refer to his +behavior in the Harlan debate, spoken of a moment ago, and his discussion +of the Indiana senatorial election, June 11, 1858. Note the last +especially (belonging volume, 2943-2947) for his moderation, courtesy, and +invitation of question while he is most ably supporting the central +proposition he had before urged in the Iowa case. + +Yet, in spite of his occasional vehemence and acrimonious language, he +seems to have the respect and regard of even his most decided political +opponents. Wade and he recognize each the great merit of the other. Once +after applauding his honesty and frankness, Toombs says of him: "He and I +can agree about everything on earth until we get to our sable population, +I do believe." March 22, 1858. + +Wade had already said this of Toombs: "I commend the bold and direct +manner in which the senator from Georgia always attacks his opponents." +February 28, 1857. + +February 8, 1858, Fessenden said, "I am very happy to get that admission +from the senator from Georgia. It is made with his customary frankness and +clearness." + +Hale also respects him. January 23, 1857, he says that Toombs ought to +have been on the bench, complimenting his desire for justice and fairness +as well as his legal ability. + +The northern democrat Simmons loves to praise him, as is evidenced by what +he says June 2, 1858, February 9, 1859, and June 23, 1860. + +Such unsought and spontaneous commendations of the great southern partisan +by northern men during the heat of sectional agitation are extraordinarily +strong proofs of his high character as well as great genius. + +Of course the southern members showed their appreciation. Especially note +what Bayard says March 21, 1860, and what Butler says January 6, 1857. I +could give many more such; but I shall only add here how, February 14, +1860, by reason of the importunate urgency of some of these, evidently +regarding him as the special southern champion, he is pushed into making +an able rejoinder to Hale, who had just concluded a reply to Toombs's +speech on the Invasion of States. + +Toombs's inflexible keeping to what he deemed the right course parallels +the absolute fearlessness with which Julius Caesar, when a young man, clung +to the wife whom the all-powerful and bloody-minded Sulla commanded him to +put away. The Sulla of America are the people in their unconscientious +moments, and unpopularity the proscription threatened which disquiets +almost all public men with torturing apprehension. And so there is in +nearly every one some admixture of the trimmer. But Toombs never showed +fear either of the people at large or of those of his own State and +locality. He thus scourges juries assessing the value of land condemned +for the government: + + "It has come to such a pass that in getting places for the army, it + seems to be considered better to be cheated by the owners of a site + out of a few hundred thousand for $10,000 worth of property rather + than trust a jury." June 12, 1860. + +When he uttered the following he knew it was extremely unpalatable to his +section: + + "The southern States from their sparseness of population do not pay + all their postal expenses. The whole mail service of the south ought + to pay its whole expenses, and I am ready to put it on that ground.... + I say the point to retrench is in the south." February 28, 1859. + +The following distasteful lesson he read his own State: + + "I know that some of the mail routes in my own neighborhood were taken + away, and I never was consulted about them, and I never thought it was + the duty or business of the postmaster-general to consult me. I have + not been to his office during this winter in regard to a single one; + and I have been very much complained of, even in my own county and + town, on account of it.... I have a word to say about the _Isabel_. + She touches at Savannah; and I have received memorials from people, + letters from interested people, from the Savannah chamber of commerce, + and others, saying, 'By all means keep up the _Isabel_; we want it.' + It is a very popular thing; it is a good ship, and has done its duty + well. What have I to do but follow my uniform line of policy, and give + them the same rules as everybody else? Sixteen years' experience + here--and I was here in 1847, when this steamship system + commenced--have satisfied me that congressional contracts are always + unwise, and are the fruitful sources of boundless legislative + corruption. Therefore, I will never sustain one under any necessity + whatever." May 28, 1860. + +February 22, 1859, though Iverson, his companion from Georgia, was the +other way, he advocated abolishing the mint at Dahlonega in that State, +and the mint also in North Carolina. + +The last instance we cite is his declaration, April 25, 1856, that he had +always voted against a claim of the daughter of Governor Irvin of Georgia. + +And to this proud independence he was without spot of corruption. This was +never questioned but once. May 13, 1858, he was taunted for having +supported the Galphin claim. When at last he sees that the charge is +seriously urged, in a becoming glow he demands an explanation. A +disclaimer of reflection upon his character being made, he gives a +detailed account of the claim, his steady support of it, and a complete +justification of George W. Crawford in the affair. At its close, Hammond +of South Carolina, who was familiar with all the details, bestowed upon it +his unqualified voucher. The lofty spirit and just indignation informing +this statement of Toombs from beginning to end distinguish it as that of +one who has kept out of dark places and walked so purely in the light that +accusation is far more of a surprise than insult.[103] + +He never showed any symptom of the presidential fever, which, to say +nothing of its many other victims, enfeebled each one of the great +trio,--Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Fully content with his place in the +senate, he did not look elsewhere. Taking popularity at its exact worth; +candid and frank to the extreme; contented in the course dictated by his +judgment and conscience though opposed by his people or party and his own +private interest; in no bargains with men nor smirching connections with +women, doing nothing in secret which, if published, would bring a blush; +elevated above the amiable weaknesses of unwise benevolence, ever +championing with all his powers the righteous cause of the weak and +unpopular,--as exampled in his maintaining the claims of certain persons +in Louisiana to the Houmas land against the formidable opposition of the +two senators from that State, in his extraordinarily eloquent appeal for +the naval officers retired without a hearing, in his heroic endeavor to +have his party seat the republican Harlan; incorruptible and really +consistent forever and always,--when he is scrutinized as a public man his +character rises into a grandeur of unselfishness, firmness of high +purpose, honesty, and power to show and do the right almost superhuman. It +stands by itself awe-striking and imposing. + +But let us particularize the special lesson of his senatorial career. We +must begin by suggesting his peculiar bent. It is clear that he chose as +his province commerce and industry, with the related themes of political +economy, finance, the currency, taxation, the tariff, the principles of +exchange and distribution, and so on.[104] He probably had the best +business insight of all our prominent statesmen, Calhoun even not +excepted. Though Hamilton and Webster--the former especially--evince +titanic comprehension of financial theory, yet we see from their lives and +poor money-saving success that commercial and business affairs were not to +them both practice and theory as they were to Toombs. Of all his peers he +was most at home in the ways and principles which dictate proper +legislation as to trade and business. To judge by his words, uttered year +in and year out, nobody else ever saw more clearly that there ought to be +no tariff, improvement, job, or any other pets of government. The latter +should not foster such a class, yearly increasing in number, as it always +will, living idly and luxuriously upon the public income, that is, upon +the labor and property of others. This class supplants the vigorous +products of natural selection by pampered fatlings of bounty, always +raising their demands for support, and ever more and more clamorously +calling for the suppression of all self-supporting competition at home and +abroad. With the moral hardihood of Shakspeare, who shrinks not from +rudely shocking our feelings by making Henry V discard his old boon +companion Falstaff, Toombs never wearied of proclaiming the unpopular +truth that the government ought not to be the helper, guardian, patron, +protector, guarantor, surety, almoner, of any of its citizens. Ponder +these stout-hearted and golden words of his, although the evil represented +therein is now established and magnified into dimensions far beyond what +he could conceive when they were said--an evil, to suppress which let us +hope all patriots will soon unite: + + "Whenever the system shall be firmly established that the States are + to enter into a miserable scramble for the most money for their local + appropriations, and that senator is to be regarded the ablest + representative of his State who can get for it the largest slice of + the treasury, from that day public honor and property are gone, and + all the States are disgraced and degraded." February 27, 1857. + +He is always preaching against the heinous abuse of diverting government +from impartially guarding the whole community and making it profit only a +few. His text is never far-fetched. He finds it in the proposed +legislation of the day, which it is his duty to consider in his place. He +cares not that he makes no present effect. Just before Bell's bill for +improving the Cumberland river was passed, he said of it and its +companions: "These bills are passing _sub silentio_, and I suppose attempt +to resist is wholly useless. I wish it understood that I do not assent to +their passage. I am opposed to all of them." February 24, 1855. + +He sees that the appropriations for harbors and rivers, lighthouses, +private claims, pensions, etc., are almost as baneful as was the +distribution of corn to the Roman populace, and yet the people everywhere +are eager for the corrupting gifts. Against his party, against many of his +section, he fights alone and single-handed, reminding of Horatius keeping +the bridge against the Etruscan host. Though always outvoted, he behaves +with spirit and dignity. Either he, or some one of the faithful few who +act with him in the slim minority, always have the yeas and nays recorded. +His grand purpose was to appeal to the American people upon an issue +involving the article of his creed which he had held up with so much +puissance and fidelity in days of evil report. These words contain the +motto of the long contest which occupied all of his non-sectional career +in the senate: + + "I think every one of these bills should be considered. I do not wish + to have them considered in such a manner as improperly to occupy the + time of the senate. I desire to spread before the country reasonable + information. That is the only purpose we can have now; because the + combination is sufficient to carry everything that the committee + report. But there is a day of reckoning to come; and I trust that + those who support this system will be called to judgment." + + "I desire the truth to go to the honest people all over the country. + Let the taxpayers look at this matter; let the jobbers beware. 'To + your tents, O Israel!'" July 29, 1856. + +The sectional agitation, mounting higher and higher, as Toombs said often, +blinded the people to this great subject. Secession came, and his +State--to him the only sovereign--called the solitary combatant away from +the ground that ought to be kept forever in loving memory for his long, +desperate, thrice-valiant stand. And the world should also remember that +the clauses of the constitution of the Confederate States, "prohibiting +bounties, extra allowances, and internal improvements," came from +him.[105] + +The struggle that wins our deliverance from the monopolists now causing us +to go hungry, cold, and unshod is yet to be. I cannot say when; but I know +it will come soon, and that the people will conquer. As in that day +Calhoun's monetary doctrine will be brought out of its obscurity to add +new lustre to his fame, as I believe, so I believe also that the name of +Robert Toombs will become an object of affectionate reverence to all his +countrymen, and the weighty and eloquent sentences in which he sought to +shield general industry from drones and rivals favored by government, and +in which he advocated that the public burdens be reduced to the minimum, +and then apportioned justly,--these stirring words will be quoted +everywhere to receive at last their due audience and favor. And when no +branch of our government either robs or gives to its citizens, Toombs's +never-remitted, brave, unselfish, and gigantic endeavor to bring on this +millennium ought to be put by Americans in their Sunday-school books. When +we who fought the brothers' war completely forget and forgive, as we soon +will, it will then be understood how much the sectional agitation impeded +him, and that when he was caught away from the senate by the whirlwind of +secession he was only fifty years old, and of such constitutional vigor +that he had the guaranty of at least a quarter of a century more of +undiminished activity. A fond imagination will inquire: Suppose the energy +spent upon the Kansas discussion; the protection of slavery in the +Territories; in the great speech of January 24, 1860, on the Invasion of +States, and in that of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, his supreme +effort, as most of his admirers claim, could have been saved for themes of +Pan-American concern; and suppose him remaining in the senate, eschewing +all other place, with increasing years loved the more by his people for +his courageous fidelity to the right, age assuaging his vehemence and +softening his invective, ripening his judgment and bringing him charity +and wisdom to the full,--to what a height and glory he would have grown! + +If there had been no slavery, I verily believe that the south would have +been the leading and most prosperous part of the union, and that Toombs +would have been the greatest American. Stephens knew Webster, Calhoun, and +Clay. The longer he lived the more positive he became in believing that +Toombs was superior in ability to each one of the three. I have heard him +say often that he had never found anything to which he could compare the +power of Toombs, discussing a great theme extempore, except Niagara. + +Turning back from these unavailing conjectures, I must say a last word as +to that part of Toombs's career in the senate which I have been +discussing. Its exemplariness is not so much in single great achievements. +It is his uniform attention to the current duties of his place. Whether +the particular duty impending was important or trivial, whether it was +popular or not, it received from him at the proper time whatever effort +was needed for doing it rightly. His performance averages so high in merit +that I cannot find a like. No plodder ever kept more closely to the safe +and beaten path. But he did far more than plod. Almost every day for eight +years he showed how genius can manifest itself fully and fitly and find +its true activity in the common round of affairs; how it can better, +exalt, ennoble, and beautify daily routine. I believe that if you will +reflect over this, you will at last see that such are the greatest of men, +and those that the world most needs. + + * * * * * + +I now take up Toombs's sectional career. The aggressive defence of +slavery, looming in sight as Calhoun is within a few months of death, +called for a leader who did not hug the union, and whose eyes were shut to +everything but the justice and sanctity of the southern cause. Calhoun's +last speech, that of March 4, 1850, was throughout an appeal to the north. +In that same session, and some while before that speech was delivered, the +true apostle of secession begins the proclamation of his mission, and some +time after Calhoun's death and before the end of the session that +portentous proclamation was complete. Robert Toombs--then in his fortieth +year, and having as yet attained but little conspicuousness in +congress--is the man I mean. His appeal was really to the south. + +Just after the new congress assembled in December, 1849, a caucus of the +whigs, to which party Toombs then belonged, having met to nominate a +candidate for speaker of the house, he introduced a resolution to the +effect that congress ought not to put any restriction upon any State +institution in the Territories, nor abolish slavery in the District of +Columbia, and, the resolution being rejected, Toombs, Stephens, and a +small number of others retired from the caucus, and they did not act any +further with their party in the organization of the house. Toombs and his +following declared their purpose to disregard former connections and side +with whatever party accorded the south the guaranty demanded by the +resolution above mentioned. As these southern whigs, and also fourteen +northern democrats and whigs, would not support for speaker either Cobb, +the democratic nominee, or Winthrop, the whig, neither one of the two +nominees could muster the majority necessary under the rules for election. +Toombs's tactics were like those of the commons who would not vote the +supplies until the king granted their wishes in other matters. At this +time all the southern democrats and a majority of the southern whigs were +opposed to his action. He was leading what appeared to be a hopeless +advance. This is the beginning. + +The next stage is when, after nine days of balloting for speaker without +result, a resolution was introduced declaring Cobb, who had received a +plurality, speaker, when Duer of New York opposing, said he was willing +for the sake of organizing to elect a whig, democrat, or free-soiler--only +that he could not support a disunionist. This manifest reflection upon the +whigs who had held themselves aloof made Toombs break the silence he had +theretofore kept. + +He surprised everybody--perhaps himself--with an impromptu of powerful +argument and burning eloquence. Note, in order to compare it with whatever +utterance of Calhoun you please, these passages: + + "Sir, I have as much attachment to the union of these States, under + the constitution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to have. I am + ready to concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable + man ought to sacrifice. I will do no more. I have not heeded the + aspersions of those who did not understand or desired to misrepresent + my conduct or opinions. The time has come when I shall not only utter + them, but make them the basis of my political action here. I do not, + then, hesitate to avow before this house and the country, and in the + presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to + drive us from the Territories of California and New Mexico, purchased + by the blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery + in the District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon + half of the States of this confederacy, _I am for disunion_; and if my + physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of + right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its + consummation." + + "The Territories are the common property of the United States.... You + are their common agents; it is your duty while they are in the + territorial state to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment + by both sections ... the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. You have + made the strongest declarations that you will not perform this trust; + that you will appropriate to yourselves all the Territories.... Yet + with these declarations on your lips, when southern men refuse to act + with you in party caucuses in which you have a controlling + majority--when we ask the simplest guaranty for the future--we are + denounced out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we + are met with the cry of 'Union, union!'" + + "Give me securities that the power of the organization which you seek + will not be used to the injury of my constituents, then you have my + co-operation; but not till then.... Refuse them, and, as far as I am + concerned, 'let discord reign forever.'" + +I must emphasize the effect of this speech made December 13, 1849,--nearly +three months before that of Calhoun last mentioned,--and which goes great +lengths beyond anything ever said by Calhoun. The _Globe_ mentions that +the speaker was loudly applauded several times. Stephens, who was present, +says "it received rounds of applause from the floors and the galleries," +and we can well believe his assertion that it "produced a profound +sensation in the house and in the country."[106] Another eye-witness, +Hilliard of Alabama, a southern whig who was not in sympathy with his +refusal to act with his party, relates with rapturous reminiscence the +full-orbed splendor with which Toombs unexpectedly rose upon the house at +this time. He tells: "A storm of applause greeted this speech. Mr. Toombs +had left his desk and taken his stand in the main aisle and the southern +members crowded about him."[107] + +For completeness and height, and for sudden surprise, this speech exceeds +all impromptus on record. To appreciate it you must recognize it as surely +forerunning the future uprising of southerners as one man in what they +deemed the holiest of causes. When you do this you can adapt to it +Webster's words: + + "True eloquence ... does not consist in speech.... It must exist in + the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.... It comes ... like ... + the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous original, + native force.... Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is + eloquent.... This, this is eloquence; or rather it is something + greater and higher than all eloquence--it is action, noble, sublime, + godlike action." + +The remaining facts of this remarkable session, which show that Toombs and +not Calhoun was the apostle of secession, can now be told very briefly. + +December 14, 1849, debate in the house was prohibited by resolution. On +the 22d the whigs and democrats, in order to organize without agreeing to +the demands of Toombs, joined in a resolution that the person receiving +the largest vote on a certain ballot, if it should be a majority of a +quorum, should be speaker. This was a palpable violation of the rules, but +perhaps authorized by the great emergency. When the resolution was +presented, Toombs, having resolved to prevent any organization until he +had secured the guaranty he was standing for, in defiance of the +prohibition of debate, made a demonstration of his surpassing endowment, +as compared with all other orators, to outmob a hostile mob and scourge +them into respectful audience. He adroitly led Staunton, introducing the +resolution, to yield the floor. Why should he want the floor? The house +had forbidden any discussion, and especially were nine-tenths of them deaf +to him, deeming him the cause of their failure to organize. Announcing his +purpose of discussion, he was called to order. Then a point of order was +raised, which the clerk tried to put. The yeas and nays being demanded, +the clerk began to call the roll. There was turmoil and din, but Toombs +held on, denying the right of anybody to interrupt him, supporting his +attack on the resolution by the constitution, the act of 1789, and the +high authority of John Q. Adams, challenging the right of the clerk +calling the names, and indignantly inquiring of the house how they could +so permit an intruder and an interloper in nowise connected with them to +interrupt their proceedings. At the last he forced the house into quiet, +and completed the argument he had risen to make. You will not understand +this marvellous achievement if you deem it, as many do, to have been +prompted by the pride of ostentation and the rage of turbulence. Toombs +was thinking only of securing the rights of his people. He was as earnest +in this cause as ever Webster was for the union. And destiny, +providence,--not himself nor other men,--was in this juncture revealing +him to the south as her leader. + +He now begins to be conscious of his coming leadership, and to feel that +he is an authority and entitled to pronounce _ex cathedra_ upon the +question of southern equality in the disposition of the Territories. +Consequently, February 27, 1850, he made a long speech on the subject of +the admission of California--one far more elaborate and finished than his +average efforts. Especially to be noted is its ending with the famous +words of Troup, "When the argument is exhausted, we will stand by our +arms." + +One other exploit of Toombs during this session must be told. It crowned +him as the leader of the south. + +Excitement had become intense. The extreme northern partisans for bringing +in California were challenged to answer if they ever would vote to admit a +slave State, and they declined to say that they would. Thereupon came from +Toombs an outburst which is perhaps the finest example of his miraculous +extempore declamation which has survived. He did not consume the five +minutes to which he was limited. We append the conclusion, which is a +little more than a third of the whole: + + "We do not oppose California on account of the anti-slavery clause in + her constitution. It was her right to exclude slavery, and I am not + even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise--that is her + business; but I stand upon the principle that the south has the right + to an equal participation in the Territories of the United States. I + claim for her the right to enter them all with her property and + securely to enjoy it. She will divide with you, if you wish it; but + the right to enter all, or divide, I shall never surrender. In my + judgment, this right, involving as it does political equality, is + worth a thousand such unions as we have, even if they each were a + thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not for others, but + for myself. Deprive us of this right and appropriate this common + property to yourselves, it is then your government, not mine. Then I + am its enemy, and I will, if I can, bring my children and my + constituents to the altar of liberty, and, like Hamilcar, swear them + to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just rights, + and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the union, every + part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and for one I shall + strike for independence." + +Stephens, ever a most accurate and trustworthy witness, says that of all +speeches which he heard during his congressional course, which covered the +years 1843-1859, this produced the greatest sensation in the house.[108] +Its effect outside--that is, in the southern public--was widespread, deep, +and permanent. The comparison with which it closed had been, I believe, +used before; but what of that? It exactly voiced the revolutionary +sentiment which, as his deliverances on the 13th of December before +showed, was beginning to come into consciousness in his section. It gave +new impetus to the circulation of the other speeches. The young men of +Georgia, as I know, and perhaps those of other southern States, read them +over and over, reciting with passionate emphasis the most stirring +passages. Especially did they delight to declaim the peroration of the +Hamilcar speech, as that of June 15, 1850, has always been called in +Georgia. To the stump orators, the last mentioned and that of December 13 +became examples which they emulated only to find in their despairing +admiration that parallel was impossible. And even the retiring, quiet, and +elderly people who care for nothing but their daily business caught the +fire. Not long ago, one who is now old, who was entering middle age in +1850, and who has been a stanch union man all his life, told me that he +could not keep from reading these speeches over and over, and whenever he +read one of them, it made him for the time a disunionist. + +The part played by Toombs in the congressional session of 1849-50 seems to +me one of the most wonderful exploits in all parliamentary annals. Since +slavery is gone, and I can at last understand that it was all blessing to +the African and all curse to us, my joy is inexpressible. But I must ever +hold that its defence was one of the noblest efforts of the best of +people. It will soon be understood by the whole world, and especially by +our brothers of the north. They will acknowledge that neither Greek nor +Scot nor Swiss were more manly or heroic than southerners, and the +supporters of the Lost Cause will be crowned with such lustre and glory as +magnify Hannibal succumbing to Rome, or Demosthenes unvailingly stirring +up his country against Macedon. It will forever bring me ecstatic emotion +to recall the many, many places where my fellows suffered or fell at my +side without a murmur. Our victories at the opening of the brothers' war; +then the drawn battles; then the defeats; and the round of sickening +disasters at the end,--all these come thronging back, and I can never be +other than proud of the prowess and endurance of our out-numbered armies, +the energy and untamable spirit of our people, and the devotion of our +blessed women to the weal of our soldiers. I often look back over the +track of what I have called the aggressive defence of slavery. Though it +was disguised under various names, such as the threat of disunion in +certain contingencies by the Georgia Platform, just division of the public +domain between the sections called for by all parties in the south, and +finally the demand for full protection of slavery in the Territories; and +though it was now and then seemingly at rest, that movement from the day +it set in was in reality one directly towards secession, and it kept on as +steadily as the Propontic. And as I look back at the further edge of this +retrospect, marking the beginning, towering above all who took high place +later,--even above Lee and Jackson,--ever comes more plainly into view the +majestic figure of Robert Toombs, revealing his unsuspected power like a +thunderclap from the sunny sky, December 13, 1849, when he extorts wild +acclamations of applause from the majority of southern whigs and all of +the southern democrats, both unanimous against his stand for a guaranty of +congressional non-restriction; a few days later coercing an infuriated +house trying to cry him down into wondering silence; and through the whole +session upholding his cause with such might that the single champion +proves an overmatch for the two parties striking hands against him, and he +finally conquers preaudience and dictation upon the main southern theme. + +I become more and more confident that future history will find the +achievement of Toombs in the session of 1849-50 to be the exact point +where the drift towards secession, which had before that been only latent +and potential, becomes actual, and that here is the dawn of the +Confederate States. The more I gaze at it the plainer and redder that dawn +becomes. + +We need not tell the rest of Toombs's sectional career with much detail. +The all-important part of it historically is its beginning, and how he +vaulted into the lead of the aggressive defence of the south, which I hope +I have adequately told. From this time he showed in all that he did the +quality which Mommsen glorifies in Julius Caesar,--ready insight into the +possible and impossible. Much discontent manifested itself in Georgia, and +also in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, against the compromise +measures, and especially against the admission of California with its +constitution prohibiting slavery. A convention being called in Georgia to +consider what should be done, there was thorough discussion. An +overwhelming majority of delegates opposing any resistance was elected. To +this result Toombs contributed more than any one else, and he really +shaped the platform finally promulgated by the convention. This--the +Georgia Platform of 1850, as we always called it--is a most important +document to the historian; for it was the weighed and solemn declaration +of some nine-tenths of the people of a pivotal southern State. + +The southern-rights men, as a small but noisy part of the southern people +then called themselves, had mistaken Toombs's last-mentioned speeches in +congress as declarations for immediate disunion in case California was +admitted under her free constitution; and when he supported the compromise +measures, and also the Georgia Platform, they hotly denounced him as a +turncoat. In their blind fury they could not see, as everybody else did, +that vehement and fervent language, proper to awaken one's people from +perilous apathy, may really be at the time understatement, and that, after +the people have awakened, to seek in that same language the counsel of +right action would be the extreme of immoderate folly. The more you +meditate it the more plainly you discern that his leadership was masterly. +From the first to the last his appeal was to the middle class of property +owners--then so numerous that it was practically the whole of southern +society. His object at the first, as he declared, was to make with this +class the protection of their fundamental property interest the prominent +question of national politics. And the end showed that he not only took, +but that he kept, the right road. The Georgia Platform became the bible of +every political following in the State. The next year, 1851, Toombs, still +a whig, supported Howell Cobb, a democrat, for governor against McDonald, +one of the most popular men of the State, the southern-rights candidate. +Toombs's side, which won by a large majority, was called the union party. +You will not be deceived by this if you keep in mind that Cobb was elected +on the Georgia Platform, which had pledged the people of the State to +resist, even to disunion, certain named encroachments upon slavery which +providence had already ordered to be made. + +In 1848 Yancey had aroused the people of Alabama into demanding that the +United States protect slavery in the Territories, and he advocated +secession in 1850. But in both these things he was premature. As compared +with Toombs he uncompromisingly stood for every tittle of what he believed +were the rights of the south. Toombs was a far more practical and able +opportunist. His falling back upon the Georgia Platform from a much more +advanced position, as I have just told, is an instance. I want to give +others. He always declared in private conversation after the war that the +democratic party was ripened and committed by Douglas and his co-workers +to the repeal of the Missouri compromise while he was kept away from +Washington by necessary attention to the interests of a widowed sister, +otherwise, with his commanding position at the time, he would have crushed +the scheme at its first proposal. When he returned to his public duties, +to his amazement he found that every prominent member of the party was +irrevocably for the repeal, and he could do nothing but embrace the +inevitable. Then he would say substantially, "Had it not been for that +administratorship which I could not avoid taking, we would all still be +working our slaves in peace and comfort. That Missouri settlement was not +right, but we had agreed to it; and with me a wrong settlement, when I +agree to it, is just as binding as a righteous one." + +When others are urging that the United States ought to protect slavery in +the Territories, the record does not show that he is interested at first; +although when at last the question is forced into debate he makes by far +the strongest speech of all in championship of the Davis resolutions. I +believe the current sucked him in. + +Just after Lincoln's election--an event which influenced nearly all of +even the most moderate elderly people of my acquaintance to declare at +once for a southern confederacy--he proposed that Stephens join with him +in an address to the people of Georgia, counselling that no immediate +secessionist nor non-resistance man be elected to the convention;[109] and +later he professed willingness to accept the Crittenden compromise. + +The truth is that the ablest leaders, as we call them, do not lead--they +are led. If they should become non-representative, their followers would +go elsewhere. And those of these leaders whose influence is the most +potent and permanent are the conservative and moderate. Toombs was never +really ahead in the southern movement except when for a brief while in the +session of 1849-50 he planted the standard far to the front and called his +people forward. Afterwards there were always others who appeared to be +fighting much in advance of him. + +He companioned his people as they steadily developed their readiness for +the dread action commanded by the Georgia Platform if the north should say +not another inch of extension for slavery, and no extradition of fugitive +slaves. Of course he matured in feeling for secession far beyond what +appeared to be his ripeness in 1850. With all his conservatism, he was of +that stuff out of which the most earnest and biased partisans are made. +There are many who can admit nothing against those they love, and a still +larger number who hug their country with a religious acceptance of +everything in it as the best in the world. To him and his people, the +south, under the mighty influence of the nationalization we have +explained, had long been unconsciously displacing the union in their +hearts. As one may learn from his Tremont Temple lecture, he saw and +magnified all of the good in the society to which he belonged, and was as +blind to the bad as a mother is to the faults of her children. He was +often heard to run through an enumeration of southern superiorities. The +courage and valor of the men, the virtue and loveliness of the women, the +purity of the administration of justice and of the performance of all +public duties; especially did he love to say that the honesty of his +section was so well established that its few venal congressmen were like a +woman of easy virtue in a good family, whom the reputation of the latter +keeps from solicitation; and he would fall to praising the kingliness of +cotton, the beneficence of slavery both to master and slave, the delicacy +of our yam, the excelling flavor given by crab grass to beef and butter, +the juice of the peach of Middle Georgia, sweeter than nectar, the +incomparable melon, and cap the climax by asserting persimmon beer to be +more acceptable to the palate of a connoisseur than any champagne. And in +the days just preceding the great outbreak he had become more intense in +his deep love for his State and section. The raid of John Brown into +Virginia was, I think, the event which turned the scale with him, and made +him feel that secession was near. Taking the occasion offered by Douglas's +resolution, directing the judiciary committee to report a bill for the +protection of each State against invasion by the authorities and +inhabitants of other States, January 24, 1860, he delivered in the senate +a speech which we must notice. It is common in Georgia to adopt the eulogy +of Stephens and pronounce the speech of January 7, 1861, justifying +secession, as Toombs's greatest effort. But I hesitate, unable to decide +which is superior. He states his propositions thus: + + "I charge, first, that this organization of the abolitionists has + annulled and made of no effect a fundamental principle of the federal + constitution in many States, and has endeavored and is endeavoring to + accomplish the same result in all non-slaveholding States. + + Secondly, I charge them with openly attempting to deprive the people + of the slaveholding States of their equal enjoyment of, and equal + rights in, the common Territories of the United States, as expounded + by the supreme court, and of seeking to get the control of the federal + government, with the intent to enable themselves to accomplish this + result by the overthrow of the federal judiciary. + + Thirdly, I charge that large numbers of persons belonging to this + organization are daily committing offences against the people and + property of the southern States which, by the law of nations, are good + and sufficient causes of war even among independent States; and + governors and legislatures of States, elected by them, have repeatedly + committed similar acts." + +The facts are reviewed closely and summed up with extraordinary force; the +subject is treated as carefully under the law of nations as under the +constitution; the quotation from Mill's "Moral Sentiments," and that from +Thucydides, narrating the successful effort of Pericles in persuading the +Athenians to resort to war rather than concede the right of the Megareans +to receive their revolted slaves, are appositely used; the conviction that +there is no longer safety for the south in the union speaks out in every +line; and, with the exception of a few overheated passages, the entire +speech is from the loftiest height of the statesman who bids his people +arm for self-preservation. Just preceding the peroration there are +paragraphs describing nervously and graphically the great resources of the +south and her rapid development from feeble beginnings, one of which +especially emphasizes the past and present of Virginia, adding at the last + + "One blast upon her bugle horn + Were worth a million men." + +Next before this are words which invoke the northern democracy, but they +seem out of place and foreign. He abruptly ends his appeal to the national +classes who have his respect by saying, "The union of all these elements +may yet secure to our country peace and safety. But if this cannot be +done, peace and safety are incompatible with this union. Yet there is +safety and a glorious future for the south. She knows that liberty in its +last analysis is but the blood of the brave. She is able to pay the price +and win the blessing. Is she ready?" + +The last three sentences are the southern correlative of Webster's soaring +when he magnified the union in his reply to Hayne. They were repeated over +and over by everybody with a wild acceptance utterly without parallel in +my knowledge, and after the election of Lincoln became the war cry of +Georgia. + +The position taken in the very conclusion of this truly Periclean speech +is especially to be attended to here. It is that in the event of the +success of the republican party in the next presidential election the +people of his State must redeem their pledge made nine years before in the +Georgia Platform. + +From this time on he is _facile primus_ of southern champions. Note his +long and elaborate reply to Doolittle, February 27, 1860; the discussion +with Wade, March 7, 1860,--both relating to his speech last noticed above; +and his very able argument, May 21, 1860, on the duty of protecting +slavery in the Territories. + +During the presidential campaign of 1860 the Douglas men and the Americans +in Georgia charged the supporters of Breckinridge with plotting disunion +that would bring on war. The charge was generally denied. The truth is, +hardly anybody was aware that the awful crisis was near. Those who really +expected secession believed with Howell Cobb and his brother Thomas, and +with Thomas W. Thomas, that it would be peaceable, and perhaps they were +about a tenth; the rest followed Stephens, believing that the American +people on each side of Mason and Dixon's line would, when it was demanded, +rise up in resistless co-operation and make safe both southern +institutions and the union. Generally Stephens was far superior to Toombs +in forecast and discernment of the sentiment of the masses. But while the +former was too wise to consider even for one moment the probabilities of +peaceable secession, he had a most un-American conviction that nothing +good was ever gained by war, and he so loved peace and the union that he +could not believe his people would secede. In his great sympathies Toombs +was here far more clear-sighted. While he was the only speaker in this +presidential campaign that was disrespectful to the union, often calling +it in derision "the gullorious," and he gave no promise that withdrawal +from the union would be peaceful, and so appeared to be to himself and +alone, he was really the only one riding the waves of the undercurrent +rising every day nearer the surface, and soon to sweep all of us onward +upon its raging waters. The other speakers discussed the rival platforms, +but the nearer election day approached the more potently he was preparing +the people and himself for secession, though unawares to both. And when +Lincoln was elected,--the man who had solemnly published his belief that +this government could not endure permanently part slave and part free,--an +occurrence which aroused the south throughout as the firing upon Fort +Sumter afterwards aroused the north, Toombs drank in every accession to +the emotion of his people, and towered more largely before them every day +as the soul of the revolution now palpable in its coming to all. When +secession was debated before the Georgia legislature, after enumerating +what he declared to be the wrongs of the south, he said, "I ask you to +give me the sword; for if you do not give it to me, as God lives, I will +take it myself." In his immortal eulogy of the union the next night, +Stephens quoted these words, and Toombs, who was present, answered in a +voice of thunder, "I will." The house rocked to and fro with frenzied +applause. Long afterwards Stephens told me that this outburst was the +first revealing sign to him that his people were rushing to war. He lost +his breath while gasping out the awful word, and there was terror in his +looks as if the direful ghost had risen again. Some ardent secessionists +professed themselves ready to drink all the blood that would be spilled, +but Toombs, in his warlike nature, was already revelling in the joy of +fighting for his people in this most sacred of causes. In one of his +speeches he eulogized beforehand those who were to fall in defence of the +south, giving them the requiem of sleeping forever where + + "Honor guards with solemn round + The silent bivouac of the dead." + +I did not hear this, but a friend told me that the speaker's electric +recitative made the hackneyed words forever new and fresh to him. + +I must go faster. January 7, 1861, Toombs made in the United States senate +his famous defence of secession. He presented in behalf of the south these +demands expressed in writing: + +1. Any person to be permitted to settle in any Territory, with any of his +property, including slaves, and be protected in his property till such +Territory is admitted as a State on an equality with the other States, +with or without slavery as its people may determine. + +2. Property in slaves to receive everywhere from the United States +government the same protection which under the constitution it can give +any other property, it being reserved to each State to deal with slavery +within its limits as it pleases. + +3. Extradition of persons committing crimes against slave property, as +commanded by the constitution. + +4. Extradition of fugitive slaves as commanded by the same constitution. + +5. Congress to pass efficient laws punishing all persons aiding or +abetting invasion of a State or insurrection therein, or committing any +other act against the law of nations that tends to disturb the +tranquillity of the people or government of the State. + +It is plainly evident to the unprejudiced that he had the warrant of the +constitution, the law of nations, of the practice and professions of the +great body of even northern citizens ever since the adoption of the +constitution, for every one of these demands. It is also as plainly +evident that every one was vital to each southern community, founded as it +was from basement to roof, upon property in slaves. The justice of his +demands could not be denied without repudiating the constitution, the law +of nations, and the solemn compacts of the fathers, their children and +children's children. And providence had really made each one of these +astounding repudiations, in her purpose to extirpate slavery as the only +menace to the American union, even if the people so dear to Toombs must be +all cast out of their prosperity and comfort into beggary. But when a man +is fighting for his loved ones,--especially if he is fighting for his +country,--and he has the valor of Toombs, his not-to-be-shaken conviction +is that providence is on his side, and the nearer great disaster +approaches, the stouter becomes his heart. Toombs's support of his +demands, and his defence of what he knew the south would do if they were +refused, are the most earnest words he ever spoke. Note these paragraphs: + + "You cannot intimidate my constituents by talking to them about + treason. They are ready to fight for the right with the rope around + their necks." + + "You not only want to break down our constitutional rights; you not + only want to upturn our social system; your people not only steal our + slaves and make them freemen to vote against us; but you seek to + bring an inferior race into a condition of equality, socially and + politically, with our own people. The question of slavery moves not + the people of Georgia one half as much as the fact that you insult + their rights as a community. You abolitionists are right when you say + that there are thousands and ten thousands of men in Georgia, and all + over the south, who do not own slaves. A very large portion of the + people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains there are + comparatively few of them; but no part of our people are more loyal to + their race and country than our brave mountain population; and every + flash of the electric wires brings me cheering news from our mountain + tops and our valleys that these sons of Georgia are excelled by none + of their countrymen in loyalty to the rights, the honor, and the glory + of the commonwealth. They say, and well say, this is our question; we + want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race + to degrade our own; and as one man they would meet you upon the + border, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. We will + tell you when we choose to abolish this thing; it must be done under + our direction, and according to our will; our own, our native land + shall determine this question, and not the abolitionists of the north. + That is the spirit of our freemen." + +Here is the grand conclusion: + + "This man, Brown, and his accomplices, had sympathizers. Who were + they? One who was, according to his public speeches, his defender and + laudator, is governor of Massachusetts. Other officials of that State + applauded Brown's heroism, magnified his courage, and no doubt + lamented his ill success. Throughout the whole north, public meetings, + immense gatherings, triumphal processions, the honors of the hero and + conqueror, were awarded to this incendiary and assassin. They did not + condemn the traitor; think you they abhorred the treason? + + Yet ... when a distinguished senator from a non-slaveholding State + proposed to punish such attempts at invasion and insurrection, Lincoln + and his party say before the world, 'Here is a sedition law.' To carry + out the constitution, to protect States from invasion and suppress + insurrection therein, to comply with the laws of the United States is + a 'sedition law,' and the chief of this party treats it with contempt; + yet, under the very same clause of the constitution which warranted + this bill, you derive your power to punish offences against the law of + nations. Under this warrant you have tried and punished our citizens + for meditating the invasion of foreign States; you have stopped + illegal expeditions; you have denounced our citizens engaged therein + as pirates and commended them to the bloody vengeance of a merciless + enemy. Under this principle alone you protect our weaker neighbors of + Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua. By this alone are we empowered and + bound to prevent our people from conspiring together, giving aid, + money, or arms to fit out expeditions against a foreign nation. + Foreign nations get the benefit of this protection; but we are worse + off in the union than if we were out of it. Out of it we should have + the protection of the neutrality laws. Now you can come among us; + raids may be made; you may put the incendiary torch to our dwellings, + as you did last summer for hundreds of miles on the frontier of Texas; + you may do what John Brown did, and when the miscreants escape to your + States you will not punish them, you will not deliver them up. + Therefore, we stand defenceless. We must cut loose from the accursed + 'body of this death,' even to get the benefit of the law of nations. + + You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard + constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What, + then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State a free State? We are + freemen. We have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I have + recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into + power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude thousands + of millions of our property from the common Territories, that it has + declared us under the ban of the union, and out of the protection of + the law of the United States everywhere. They have refused to protect + us by the federal power from invasion and insurrection, and the + constitution denies to us in the union the right either to raise + fleets or armies for our defence. All these charges I have proved by + the record; and I put them before the civilized world and demand the + judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages and of heaven + itself, upon the justice of these causes. I am content, whatever may + be the event, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have + appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights. You have + refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had them, + as your court adjudges them to be just as our people have said they + are; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will + restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them, and + what, then? We shall ask you, 'Let us depart in peace.' Refuse that, + and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our banners + the glorious words 'Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to the blood + of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity." + +No new nation about to be launched upon a sea of blood was ever heralded +with words that were above these in appeal to the conscience and strongest +affections of humanity. They are not outvied by those of Patrick Henry +reported by Wirt, or those of John Adams reported by Webster, which the +world will ever treasure as all gold. O that he had corrected them! He +could not use the file, as we have already said. + +Soon after making the speech he went away from the senate without taking +leave. March 14, 1861, that body passed a resolution reciting that the +seats before occupied by Brown, Davis, Mallory, Clay, Toombs, and Benjamin +had become vacant, and directing that the secretary omit their names from +the roll. + +It was clear from his incomparable and faultless leadership of the active +defence of the south, and his unique ability in affairs, that he was the +choice of the directors of southern nationalization for president of the +Confederate States; but these were overcome by stronger spirits, and Davis +was made president. I have always believed that Toombs regarded this as +the great miscarriage of his life. He could not continue his connection +with the unbusinesslike conduct of the administration, and he retired from +his secretaryship of state. Read what his superiors say of him at +Sharpsburg, and what Dick Taylor with admiration tells of the help he +afterwards got from him in a dark hour, as specimens of his gallantry and +efficiency in the service. But his was not the nature of Epaminondas, to +doff his natural supereminence and sweep the streets. Pegasus did not show +more unsuited to the plow than he did to his inferior station in this +stage of the great conflict which was his meat and drink. + +The collapse came, flight from America, return at last to his stricken +people, and disability for the rest of his life. Though he had something +of even a great career at the bar, and in State politics, his longing for +the old south and discontent with the new increased, slowly at first, then +faster and faster. As infirmity from age came on apace, and his wife whom +he had always made his good angel went to heaven, every day he became more +lonely. He had survived _his_ country. Such love as his for that loves but +once and always. The sacrifices that he had made for it became his +treasures. He hugged his disability as his most precious jewel. Our +gallant Gordon was not more proud of the scars on his face. Not long +before his mind and memory were failing, speaking of the past, he said +with the utmost firmness: "I regret nothing but the dead and the failure. + + 'Better to have struck and lost, + Than never to have struck at all.'" + +What a fall! Greater by far than Lucifer's. Lucifer was rightfully cast +out because of heinous offence. But Toombs was cashiered because he had +been the best, ablest, and most faithful servant of his people, whose +dearest rights were in jeopardy. According to our merely human view it is +the way of fiends to reward such supremacy in virtue and achievement with +hell pains. If we cannot hope confidently, may not we survivors at least +send up sincere prayers that the Lord will yet give this Job of the old +south twice as much of fair fame as he had before. + +If the defeated in the wars between England and Scotland and in the +English civil wars; and if Cromwell and the regicides who set up a +government that had to fall,--if all these have found respectful and fully +appreciative mention at last, why shall not Calhoun and Toombs look to +have the same after some years be passed? Trusting that such will come, I +close this sketch by suggesting where Toombs will, I think, be niched in +American history. + +He is often spoken of as the southern correspondence to Wendell Phillips. +There was nothing whatever in common between the two except extraordinary +fluency of zealous speech. Early in life, Phillips, almost a mere boy, +broke with Mrs. Grundy by advocating abolition before his neighbors were +ripe for it. While Toombs cared nothing for Mrs. Grundy, he always so +comported himself that he was her great authority. He was a very able +lawyer, who had made a considerable fortune by practice, and a thorough +statesman, when fate confided the southern lead to him; and while Phillips +was reckless and rash, Toombs never, never essayed the impossible with his +people. The more you balance him and Phillips against each other, the more +unlike you will find them. Prof. William Garrott Brown is quite correct in +pairing Phillips and Yancey. + +There is a northern character to whom Toombs as a southern opposite +corresponds in so many important particulars that it surprises me it has +not been proclaimed. As Webster was the special apostle of the +preservation of the union, Toombs was the same of secession. Their +missions were parallel in that each one was the foremost champion of his +nationality, Webster of the Pan-American, as we may call it; and Toombs of +the southern. All through the brothers' war their phrases were on the lips +and fired the hearts of each host, those of Webster impelling to fight for +the union, those of Toombs for the southern confederacy. Each was probably +the ablest lawyer of his day. Each was surely the ablest debater to be +found. Each was of sublime courage in defying what he thought to be unjust +commands of his constituents. And the last point which I think of is that +each was of most complete and perfect physical development, and was the +most majestic presence of his day. The busiest men in the streets of all +sorts and ranks always found time to look upon either Webster or Toombs as +he passed, and admire. I never saw Webster. But I believe that from his +pictures, from long study of his best speeches, and from what I have +greedily read and heard of him in a fond lifelong contemplation, I have an +almost perfect figure of him before my mind's eye. Toombs from my boyhood +I saw often. I will describe him as I observed him at the hustings just +before the war. His face, almost as large as a shield, but yet not out of +proportion, was in continual play from the sweetest smile of approval to +the scowl of condemnation, darkening all around like a rising +thundercloud. His flowing locks tossed to and fro over his massive brow +like a lion's mane, as was universally said. In every attitude and gesture +there was a spontaneous and lofty grace--not the grace of the +dancing-master, but the ease and repose of native nobility. His face was +not Greek, but in his total he looked the extreme of classic symmetry and +the utmost of power of mind, will, and act. Princely, royal, kingly, even +godlike, were the words spontaneously uttered with which men tried in vain +to tell what they saw in him. He and just one other were the only men of +my observation whose greatness, without their saying a word, spoke plainly +even to strangers. That other man was Lee. I noted, when we were near +Chambersburg in Pennsylvania those three or four days before the great +battle, that, while the natives would curiously inquire the names of +others of our generals as they rode by, every one instantaneously +recognized Lee as soon as he came near. This publication of her chosen in +their mere outside which destiny makes is not to be slighted nor +underprized. And so remember that Webster looked the greatest of all men +of the north, and Toombs the greatest of all men of the south. + +To my mind I give each unsurpassable praise and glory when I call Webster +the northern Toombs and Toombs the southern Webster. + + * * * * * + +I add a note by way of epilogue. I observe with pain that the obloquy +against Toombs in the north seems to increase, while that against him in +the rising generation of the south--who do not know him at all--is surely +increasing. It is, however, a growing consolation to me to note that every +charge, currently made against him north or south, is founded either upon +complete mistake of fact or the grossest misunderstanding of his character +and career. It is a duty of mine not only to him as my dead and revered +friend, but a high duty to my country, to set him in his right place in +the galaxy of America's best and greatest. I never knew a man of kinder or +more benevolent heart; nor one who had more horror of fraud, unfairness, +and trick; nor one whiter in all money transactions; nor one whose +longing and zeal for the welfare of neighbors and country were greater; +nor one who showed in his whole life more regard for the rights and also +the innocent wishes of everybody. The model men of the church, such as Dr. +Mell and Bishop George Pierce, loved him with a fond and cherishing love. +The humblest and plainest men were attracted to him, and they gave him +sincere adulation. Many of my contemporaries remember rough old Tom +Alexander, the railroad contractor. I saw him one day in a lively talk +with Toombs. As he passed my seat while leaving the car he whispered to +me: "Bob Toombs! his brain is as big as a barrel and his heart is as big +as a hogshead." From 1867 until 1881 I was often engaged in the same cases +with Toombs, either as associate or opposing counsel, and I saw a great +deal of him. It falls far short to say that he was the most entertaining +man I ever knew. He was just as wise in judgment as he was original and +striking in speech. I am sure that his superiority as a lawyer towered +higher in the consultation room just before the trial than even in his +able court conduct. And he led just as wisely and preeminently in the +politics of that day, when it was vital to the civilization of the south +to nullify the fifteenth amendment. Georgia would indeed be an ungrateful +republic should she forget his part in the constitution of 1877. That was +deliverance from the unspeakable disgrace of nine years--a constitution +made by ignorant negroes, also criminals who, to use the words of Ben +Hill, sprang at one bound from State prisons into the constitutional +convention, and some native deserters of the white race--the constitution +so made kept riveted around our necks by the bayonet. The good work would +have remained undone for many years had not Toombs advanced $20,000 to +keep the convention, which had exhausted its appropriation, in session +long enough to finish our own constitution. The railroad commission +established by that instrument is really his doing. This post-bellum +political career of his, in which he restored his stricken State to her +autonomy and self-respect, has not yet won its full appreciation. + +If Toombs could but be delineated to the life in his extempore action, +advice, and phrase he would soon attain a lofty station in world +literature. It mattered not what he was talking about,--an affair of +business or of other importance, communicating information, telling an +experience, complimenting a girl, disporting himself in the maddest +merriment, as he often did after some great accomplishment,--his language +flashed all the while with a planet-like brilliancy, and the matter was of +a piece. Those of us who hang over Martial, how we learn to admire his +perpetual freshness and variety! But when we compare him with Catullus, +his master, we note that while his epigram is always splendid, the +language is commonplace beside that of the other.[110] Toombs was even +more than Martial in exhaustless productivity and unhackneyed point, and +his words always reflected, like those of Catullus, the hues of Paradise. +Perhaps a reader exclaims, "As I do not know Martial and Catullus your +comparison is nothing to me." Well, I tell him that I have read Shakspeare +from lid to lid more times than I can say, and that I have long been close +friends with every one of his characters, all the way from Lear, Othello, +Hamlet, and Macbeth at the top, down to his immortal clowns at the bottom. +Surely with this experience it can be said of me, "The man has seen some +majesty." I have often tried, and that with the help of a few intimates +almost as deeply read in Shakspeare as myself, to find in the dainty plays +an equal to Toombs throwing away everywhere around him with infinite +prodigality gems of unpremeditated wisdom and phrase. Samuel Barnett, +Linton Stephens, Henry Andrews and my cousin, his wife, Samuel Lumpkin, +and S. H. Hardeman, all of whom knew him well, were among these. The end +of every effort would be our agreement that Shakspeare himself could +hardly have made an adequately faithful representation of Toombs. + +The mental torture of the last three or four years of his life I must +touch upon again. The most active anti-slavery partisan and most scarred +soldier of the union will compassionate if he but contemplate. I met him +only now and then. As I read his feelings--one eye quenched by cataract +and the other failing fast; his contemporaries of the bar and political +arena dead; the wife whom he loved better than he did himself sinking +under a disease gradually destroying her mind; ever harrowed with the +thought that his country was no more, and that he was a foreigner and +exile in the spot which he had always called home,--though I was full of +increasing joy over the benefit of emancipation to my people and gladness +at the promise of reunited America, my tranquillity would take flight +whenever he came into my mind. He was that spectacle of a good man in a +hopeless struggle against fate that moves enemies to pity. To me his last +state was more tragic and pathetic than that of Oedipus. + +Of course his powers were declining. I know that he would never have drank +too much if there had been no sectional agitation, secession, war, nor +reconstruction. His appetite was never that insane thirst, as I have heard +him call it, which impels one into delirium tremens. He always +disappointed his adversaries at the bar calculating that drink would +disable him at an important part of the conduct. Others as well as myself +can testify to this. Near the end he deliberately chose to drain full cups +of purpose to sweeten bitter memories. With moderation he had more +assurance of longevity than any other of his generation; and he would, I +verily believe, have been green and flourishing in his hundredth year. He +lost his rare faculty of managing money. It was a shock of surprise to me +when the fire in August, 1883, disclosed that he had let the insurance of +his interest in the Kimball house run out shortly before. It was a +pitiable sight to see him in his growing blindness and wasting frame armed +by his negro servant along the streets of Atlanta in his last visits to +the place. During all this time he was dying by inches. + +But the sun going down behind heavy clouds would now and then send forth +rays of the old glory. It was in May, 1883, during the session of the +superior court of Wilkes, where I had some of my old business to wind up, +that I was last in his house. He had made invitations to dinner without +keeping account. At the hour his sitting-room was densely packed. A few of +us were late. When we arrived many were compounding their drinks. He +hospitably suggested to us new-comers that there was still some standing +room around the sideboard. In a little while the throng was treading the +well-known way to the dining-hall, which we overflowed so suddenly that +his niece, whom Mrs. Toombs, then keeping her room, had charged with +seeing the table laid, was astounded to find she could not seat all of the +bidden guests. Just as her flurry was beginning to make us uncomfortable +our host entered. In spite of his infirmity and purblindness he took in +the situation with his wonted quickness. He said in a tone of tender +remonstrance to his niece, "O, I do not object to having more friends +than room; it is usually the other way in this world." And with despatch +and order he had the surplus given seats at side tables. My eyes +moistened. I had an unhappy presentiment that this was my last observation +of the only man I ever knew whose fine acts and words never waited when +occasion called. I was aroused by the whisper of a neighbor, "Can any one +else in the world do such a beautiful thing on the spur of the moment?" +The admiring looks that followed inspired him, and his talk seemed to have +more than its old lustre and gleam. + +In his final illness, when paralysis was slowly creeping up his frame, and +he had lost the sense of place and time, he would now and then start from +his stupor and send across the State a bolt from the bow which no other +could bend. Somebody spoke of a late meeting of "prohibition fanatics." +"Do you know what is a fanatic?" he asked unexpectedly. "No," was replied. +"He is one of strong feelings and weak points," Toombs explained. And +overhearing another say that an unusually prolonged session of the State +legislature had not yet come to an end, he exclaimed with urgency, "Send +for Cromwell!" + +He died December 15, 1885, in his seventy-sixth year. + +If I have told the truth in this chapter,--and God knows I have tried my +utmost to tell it,--ought not my brothers and sisters of each section to +lay aside their angry prejudices and bestow at last upon the only and +peerless Toombs the love and admiration which are the due reward of his +virtues, his towering example, his wonder-striking achievements, and his +incomparable genius? May that power which incessantly makes for +righteousness, and which always in the end has charity to conquer hate, +soon bring to us who really knew him our dearest wish! + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +HELP TO THE UNION CAUSE BY POWERS IN THE UNSEEN + + +If you are not balked by adherence, either to the rapidly waning +overpositiveness of materialism, or to the ferocious orthodoxy which +denies that there has been any providential interference in human affairs +since that told of in the bible; and if you are exempt from the fear of +being regarded as superstitious which keeps a great number of even the +most cultivated people forever in a fever of incredulity as to every +example of what they call the supernatural, you have long since become +convinced that evolution is intelligently guided by some power or powers +in the unseen. I seem to myself to discern plainly in many important +crises of history the palpable influence of what are to me the directors +of evolution. Washington, to found our great federation, and Lincoln to +perpetuate it--these come at once as examples. Now follow me while I try +to show you what the directors did in preparation for and in conduct of +the brothers' war, of purpose that the north should triumph and save the +union. Of course I am precluded from all attempt to be exhaustive. I shall +only glance at a few of the facts that appear to me cardinal and most +important. + +In the first place, they deferred the war until under the effect of +foreign immigration the population of the north greatly outnumbered that +of the south and had become almost unanimous against slavery; and until +the south was almost entirely dependent upon her railroads and her river +and ocean commerce. Had secession occurred because of the excitement over +the application of Missouri for admission into the union with a slave +constitution, there might have been a war, but it would have been short, +the end being that every foot of the public domain admitting of profitable +slave culture would have fallen to the south. Suppose a serious effort had +been made in 1833 to collect the revenue in South Carolina, how long would +the south have endured invasion of the little State and slaughter of its +citizens? Even President Jackson would have soon forgotten his enmity to +Calhoun and recognized that blood is thicker than water. The time was not +then ripe, as the directors saw; and so they effected an adjustment of the +controversy. It did not suit the directors to have the war commence in +1850, for there was at the time no general use of ironclads, and the +railroad system was far from completion. Consider for a moment the +advantage to the north of having gunboats and the disadvantage to the +south of not having them. Fort Donelson really fell because of gunboats. +Grant got re-enforcements in time to save him from disastrous defeat at +Shiloh because of the command of the river by gunboats. The gunboats +caused the fall of Vicksburg. And it was the holding of the James from its +mouth to Fort Darling by gunboats which gave Grant such secure grip at +Petersburg that Richmond had to fall at last, and with it the confederacy. + +Now a word as to the southern railroads. Next to the navigable rivers they +were the lines of easiest penetration to invaders. Remember how the +British in 1898 advanced in Africa only as they completed their railroad +behind them. Of course had the railroad been already made their advance +would have been along it. How could Sherman have ever crossed the +devastated tract from Dalton to Atlanta had he been without the railroad +behind him? During his retreat Johnston kept the invading army between +himself and the railroad without which it could not have been subsisted, +and staid so close that Sherman had him constantly in view; conduct which +is still lauded by some people in the south as masterly beyond compare. + +To conceive more vividly the river and railroad situation which I am +striving to explain, suppose that during the Revolutionary war the States +had been as dependent as the south afterwards became upon rivers and +railroads, and the British had and the Americans did not have iron-clad +gunboats; as matters now look, our forefathers would have been beaten back +to the foot of the throne. I believe that the railroads alone would have +rendered their subjugation certain. + +So much for the matchless judgment shown by the directors in deciding as +to the time of the war. I shall now tell what I have long thought is most +unmistakably their work in conducting that war. + +As soon as secession was an accomplished fact, they deprived the better +southern statesmanship of all guidance of the brothers' war now inevitable +and about to begin. In such a war a proper executive is of far more +importance than good legislators and even good generals. Toombs was the +man who stood forth head and shoulders above all others as the logical +president of the southern confederacy. But the wily directors hypnotized +the electors into believing that Davis, because of his military education, +service in Mexico, and four years' secretaryship of war, was the right +man. It is generally believed in the south that the considerations just +mentioned turned the scale in favor of Davis. But sometimes I think that +the true explanation is different. Stephens has told how Toombs was got +out of the way. When this narrative[111] was published, both Toombs and +Davis, with many of the partisans of each were alive, and regard for them +may have kept him silent as to a reported mischance to Toombs, which +provoking opposition--as was whispered--from some of those who had been +among his most earnest supporters, decided him to retire. A biographer +writes: "There was a story, credited in some quarters, that Mr. Toombs's +convivial conduct at a dinner party in Montgomery estranged from him some +of the more conservative delegates, who did not realize that a man like +Toombs had versatile and reserved powers, and that Toombs at the banquet +board was another sort of a man from Toombs in a deliberative body."[112] + +Something like that stated in the quotation just made did happen, as +Stephens was wont to relate at Liberty Hall--the name which he gave his +hospitable home at Crawfordville, Georgia. I was present more than once at +such times. + +Such could have been the work of the directors. + +Georgia, being the pivotal State of the new federation, was by many +conceded the presidency. Besides Toombs she had two other men, far abler +statesmen than Davis and then as conspicuous in the public eye--A. H. +Stephens and Howell Cobb. The election of either one of these would really +have been the same almost as the election of Toombs, for the three were in +complete accord, and Toombs was the natural and actual leader. So great +was their fealty to him that neither one could have been induced to stand +for the place after he had missed it. The directors saw to it that neither +one of the three should be president of the Confederate States. + +Suppose that Toombs--or that either Stephens or Cobb--had been made +president, what a different conduct there would have been of the war. +Besides being the foremost statesman of the south, Toombs was its very +ablest man of affairs, and as far superior to Davis in practical and +business talent as a trained and experienced man is to an untrained and +inexperienced woman. Not intending to disparage the other great +qualifications of Toombs, I must emphasize it that of all his +contemporaries he alone evinced a clear understanding of the principles +according to which the confederate currency could have been better managed +than were the greenbacks by the other side. A letter of his during the war +to Mr. James Gardner, of Augusta, Georgia, published at the time in the +paper of which the latter was then editor, shows insight and grasp of the +subject equal to Ricardo's. Toombs as president of the confederacy would +have had congress enact proper currency measures. When he was in place to +advise and lead, his influence exceeded by far that of any other man that +I ever knew. + +But this, important as it is, is far from being the most important. He and +Stephens were fully convinced at the very first of the overruling +importance to the confederacy of these two things: (1) to make full use of +cotton as a resource; (2) to prevent a blockade of the southern ports. I +make these extracts following from a speech of Stephens's at +Crawfordville, Georgia, November 1, 1862: + + "What I said at Sparta, Georgia, upon the subject of cotton, many of + you have often heard me say in private conversation, and most of you + in the public speech last year to which I have alluded. Cotton, I have + maintained, and do maintain, is one of the greatest elements of power, + if not the greatest at our command, if it were but properly and + efficiently used, as it might have been, and still might be. Samson's + strength was in his locks. Our strength is in our locks of cotton. I + believed from the beginning that the enemy would inflict upon us more + serious injury by the blockade than by all other means combined. It + was ... a matter of the utmost ... importance to have it raised. How + was it to be done?... I thought it ... could be done through the + agency of cotton.... I was in favor, as you know, of the government's + taking all the cotton that would be subscribed for eight per cent + bonds at a rate or price as high as ten cents a pound. Two millions of + the last year's crop might have been counted upon as certain on this + plan. This, at ten cents, with bags of the average commercial weight, + would have cost the government one hundred millions of bonds. With + this amount of cotton in hand and pledged, any number, short of fifty, + of the best ironclad steamers could have been contracted for and built + in Europe--steamers at the cost of two millions each, could have been + procured, equal in every way to the 'Monitor.' Thirty millions would + have got fifteen of these, which might have been enough for our + purpose. Five might have been ready by the first of January last to + open some one of the ports blockaded on our coast. Three of these + could have been left to keep the port open, and two could have + conveyed the cotton across the water if necessary. Thus, the debt + could have been promptly paid with cotton at a much higher price than + it cost, and a channel of trade kept open till other ironclads, and as + many as were necessary, might have been built and paid for in the same + way. At a cost of less than one month's present expenditure on our + army, our coast might have been cleared. Besides this, at least two + more millions of bales of the old crop on hand might have been counted + upon--this with the other making a debt in round numbers to the + planters of $200,000,000. But this cotton, held in Europe until its + price became fifty cents a pound, would constitute a fund of at least + $1,000,000,000 which would not only have kept our finances in sound + condition, but the clear profit of $800,000,000 would have met the + entire expenses of the war for years to come."[113] + +The reader who carefully reflects over the passage just quoted may well +think that the extravagant profit pictured savors more of Mulberry Sellers +than of a cool-headed statesman; but if the war price of cotton be +recalled he readily agrees that under the plan proposed the south could +easily have got a fleet of the best ironclads. Such a fleet would have +kept the southern ports open. The advantage of which would have been very +great. It would have held the Mississippi from the first, or have +recovered it after the capture of New Orleans. It would have cleared the +gunboats out of all the navigable rivers in the south. And we must not +forget how it might have ravaged the northern coast, perhaps capturing New +York, and forcing an early peace. + +I must make you see the greatness of cotton as a resource. There has been +from soon after the invention of the gin a steadily increasing world +demand for it, and the south has practically monopolized its production. I +can think of no other product of the soil except wine and liquor that is +as imperishable. But wine and liquor spill, leak, and evaporate, while +cotton does neither. If you but safe it against fire it will not +deteriorate by age. In 1884 I was told of a sale just made of some cotton +for which the owner had refused the famine price in 1865. It brought the +market price of the day, and experts said it sampled as well as new +cotton. It was at least 19 years old. Wine and liquor cannot be +compressed, but the same weight of raw cotton becomes less and less bulky +every year. By reason of the foregoing, cotton is always the equivalent of +cash in hand. Now add the effect of the steadily growing war scarcity, and +remember how easy it was during the first two years of the war to carry +out cotton in spite of the blockade. The European purchasing agent of the +Confederate States government says "it possessed a latent purchasing +power such as probably no other ... in history ever had."[114] He means +cotton. There were several million bales of it in the confederacy, all of +which could be had for the taking--much of it for merely the asking. And +there were a legion of carriers eager to run the blockade. I cannot +understand how Professor Brown could have ever written, "The government +had not the means either to buy the cotton or to transport it."[115] +Surely the government could have seized the cotton as easily as it did all +the men of military age, and collected the tithes in kind. + +If Toombs had been president of the southern confederacy, the very best +possible use of its cotton as a resource would have been made. At the +time, if but managed with the financial skill which he always showed, that +cotton would have been a great war chest in a secure place, always full +and appreciating. It is very probable that almost at the beginning of the +war the confederacy would have struck terror into its adversaries with +some warships far superior to any with which the United States could have +then supplied itself. In this case there never would have been any +Monitor. And the south would have had all the benefits of wise husbandry +and conduct. + +During his short premiership of the confederacy Toombs showed marked +ability. Note his extraordinary insight when instructing the +commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war nor +establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of both +conditions;" and consider how accurately he foresaw that the north would +be rallied as one man to the stars and stripes by attack upon Fort Sumter, +and how earnestly he opposed the proposed attack.[116] + +Stephens was thoroughly against the policy of many pitched battles. He +counselled from the very first that we should draw the invaders within our +territory, where, having them far from their base and taking advantage of +our shorter interior lines, we could when the right moment came, by +attacking with superior numbers, virtually destroy their entire army. The +more I think over it, the more clearly I see that this was the true way +for us to have fought. Stephens's influence would have been so great with +Toombs or Cobb as president that he would have shaped the conduct of the +war. + +There would have been no keeping of inefficient men in high command; and +no efficient one would have been kept out. Mr. Lincoln would have had an +executive rival worthy of his steel. As the former searched diligently and +with rare judgment for his commander-in-chief and at last found him in +Grant, so Toombs would in all probability have found the proper southern +general in the west. It would have been Forrest. The marvellous military +genius of this illiterate man, who at the beginning of the war could not +have put a recruit through the manual of arms, showed him far superior to +his superiors who sacrificed the southern army at Fort Donelson. The +lieutenant-colonel would not surrender, and his escape with his entire +command proved that he could have executed the offer he had made to the +commander to pilot the whole army out. From this moment Forrest moves on +and upward with the stride of a demigod. The night after Johnston has +fallen at Shiloh he alone in the southern army discovers that Grant is +receiving by the river thousands as re-enforcement, and he gives +Beauregard wise counsel which the latter is not wise enough to heed. Read +his letter of August 9, 1863, to Cooper, adjutant-general of the +Confederate States,[117] in which he proposes to do what will virtually +wrest the Mississippi from the federals, and the sane comment thereon of +his biographer.[118] Think of him just after the battle of Chickamauga; +how, had Bragg listened to him, he would have reaped the fruits of a great +victory which he was too stupid to know he had won. Meditate the capture +of Fort Pillow, in spite of its strong defences and the succoring gunboat, +by dispositions of his troops and a plan of attack which, though made and +executed on the spur of the moment, are the most superb and brilliant +tactics of all the engagements of the brothers' war. And his incomparable +conduct by which the army of Sturgis was almost annihilated at Brice's +Cross-Roads. The conception of Forrest is as yet, even in the south, very +untrue. He is thought of only as always meeting charge with countercharge, +in the very front crying "Mix!" sabring an antagonist, and having his +horse killed under him. When he is rightly studied he is found to be a +happy compound of the characterizing elements of such fighters as mad +Anthony Wayne and Paul Jones, of such swoopers and sure retirers as Marion +and Stonewall Jackson, of such as Hannibal, whose action both before, +during, and after the engagement, is the very best possible. Of all the +northern generals Grant showed by far the best grasp of the military +problem. I think Forrest's grasp was equal. Toombs would have divined the +genius of Forrest. The confederate army under him would probably have +equalled--possibly surpassed--the achievements and glory of that under +Lee. + +It was one of Toombs's epigrams that the southern confederacy died of too +much West Point. Of course one must not unjustly disparage the military +school. Yet there were plainly graduates on both sides who had in them too +much of it. This was true of Halleck and McClellan; also of Davis and +Bragg. Mr. Davis, by reason of his exaggerated West Point spirit, was not +nearly so well qualified as Mr. Lincoln for finding the few real generals +in the south. Toombs, with the help of Stephens and all the real statesmen +of the section, would have kept the best generals in command. + +Let us briefly summarize. Had Toombs been president these things would +have followed: + +1. The cotton of the south, fully realized as a resource, would have given +her an adequate gold supply, a stable currency, and an unimpaired public +credit. It would have also kept our ports open and the hostile gunboats +out of our rivers. + +2. There would have been no unwise waste of our precious soldiers. As it +was, their very gallantry in our contest with a foe so greatly +outnumbering, was made a guaranty of defeat. + +3. These magnificent soldiers would have been led always by the best +commanders. + +These were resources enough, and more than enough, to have won for the +south. I often paralleled her neglect to use them with the supineness of +the French Commune in 1871. Lassigaray tells us how there were piles of +money and money's worth in the bank deposits and reserves, which could +have all been had by mere taking.[119] But the Commune made no use of this +great treasure. It surprises one as he reads of it. Then it occurs to him +that the new French government was in the hands of men who generally had +had no experience in government whatever. It was widely different with the +southern confederacy. No other revolutionary government ever started with +so little jolt and difficulty. The grooves along which it was to run were +all ready. "Confederate States" was instantaneously substituted for +"United States" in the constitution, organic federal statutes, and the +thoughts of the people, and the administration of the new government +seemed to everybody in the south but a continuation of that of the United +States. And this new federation was inaugurated by the best-trained +statesmen in America. That these men should have overlooked the great +resources we have pointed out is a far more strange and wonderful blunder +than was that of the raw and inexperienced managers of the Commune. You +can explain it only by recognizing it as the accomplishment of fate. Fate +put in charge of the fortunes of the confederacy an executive as just as +ever was Aristides, and as much respected and confided in by his people. +That executive most conscientiously drove out of the public counsels the +only men who could have saved the southern cause. + +To the foregoing I shall add but a few other instances briefly told. + +Grant was at the opening of his career put in a place which taught him the +importance of gunboats, and held there until his skill in using them had +given him resistless prestige. Beauregard's failure to make use of the +daylight remaining after the fall of Albert S. Johnston seems to have been +prompted by the powers who had the future conqueror in charge. Had he been +sent against Lee in 1862 or 1863 he would hardly have done better than +McClellan, Burnside, or Hooker. Compare how the powers in charge of the +Roman empire prevented a too early encounter of Scipio with Hannibal. + +Ordinary conduct ought to have captured McClellan instead of driving him +to the James. The tone of McClellan's boasting over the flank movement by +which he successfully marched across the entire front of Lee's army within +cannon shot is really that of a man who feels that he has miraculously +escaped an unshunnable peril. + +The directors sent Stuart astray and hypnotized Lee into believing that +Gettysburg was to be another Chancellorsville. + +They blinded Davis to the merits of Forrest. Especially to be thought of +here is the rejected proposal of the latter to recover the Mississippi +shortly after the fall of Vicksburg. + +I need not go further. The student of the brothers' war can add to the +foregoing many other favors shown the union cause by the powers in the +unseen. + +Of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting to the last against +increasing odds with the resoluteness of hereditary freemen. In spite of +all their potency the powers were often hard pressed by Lee, Jackson, +Forrest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate soldiers. These +should have some such eternizing epitaph as this: + +"For four years they kept the fates banded against them uneasy." + +The parallelism of the fall of the confederacy to that of Troy has +incalculably deepened the interest I take in Vergil's great description. +Especially of late years do I realize more vividly how his goddess mother +removed the cloud darkening his vision, and gave AEneas to see Neptune, +Juno, and Pallas busy in the destruction of the burning city; and a lurid +illumination falls upon the statement, + + "Apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae + Numina magna deum."[120] + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +JEFFERSON DAVIS + + +For some time after the brothers' war it was very generally believed that +Davis had been one of the Mississippi repudiators; that through all his +ante-bellum public career he had been an unconditional secessionist--what +we in the south mean by a fire-eater; that cherishing an accursed ambition +for the presidency of the southern confederacy he organized a secret +conspiracy which consummated secession; that as the chief executive of the +Confederate States he aided and abetted the perpetration of inhuman +cruelties upon federal prisoners of war; that he was accessory to the +murder of President Lincoln; and that when captured he was disguised as a +woman. I suppose that these accusations--all of which are utterly +untrue--are still in the mouths of many at the north. They have attained +some currency abroad. I note that the leading German encyclopedia--that of +Brockhaus--repeats those as to the conspiracy and disguise. But "The Real +Jefferson Davis," as Landon Knight has of late presented +him,[121]--without hostile bias and with something like an approach to +completeness--is at least beginning to be recognized outside of the south. +It is about as certain as anything in the future can be that all +detraction from the moral character and patriotism of Davis will after +some while wear itself out. I believe far greater favor than mere +vindication from false accusation will at last be awarded him in every +part of his own country and also abroad. Later in the chapter I shall try +to bring out fully the praise and appreciation which world history will, +as seems probable to me, shower upon his career. Here I can take time to +mention only the beginning of that great fame which we of this day have +looked upon. We saw him fall from one of the highest and proudest places +in which for four years he had been the talk and envy of the earth. We saw +him in sheer helplessness, accused of murder and treason, his feeble +health and personal comfort made a jest of, disrespect and insult heaped +upon him--we saw him endure all the most refined tortures of imprisonment. +Then we saw him set free--his innocence confessed by the acts of his +accusers. Then for over twenty years he lived with the people who under +his lead had been conquered and despoiled; and we saw them always eager to +pay him demonstrations of the warmest love; we saw them bury him with +inconsolable grief; and we see them keeping his memory green by +reinterring him in the old capital of the Confederate States, giving him +there a conspicuous monument, and making the anniversary of his birth a +legal holiday in different States. This--which we impressively mark now as +only a beginning of glory--must develop into something far larger. + +Whenever Davis comes into your mind, of course, you first think of that +with which his name is most closely connected--his elevation and his great +fall. Therefore it is quite right that we make our start from this point, +which is, that he was the head of a subverted revolutionary government. He +is one of a few who, like Richard Cromwell, Napoleon, and Kruger, were +suffered to survive deposition. Nothing in nature hates a rival more than +sovereignty--which, be it remembered, is the representative of a distinct +nationality. Note how inevitably a young queen bee is killed by her own +mother when found in the hive by the latter. Humanity has not in this +particular evolved as yet very far above bee nature; and the fate of +Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, usually befalls the sovereign head of a +defeated revolution. To the student of history it is a surprise that the +life of Davis was spared when American frenzy was at its height. Think of +some of the things which then occurred. Mrs. Surratt and Wirz were hanged; +the cruel cotton tax; the negroes were made rulers of the southern whites; +it was provided _ex post facto_ that the high moral duty of paying for the +emancipated slaves should never be done. While good men and women both of +the north and the south will always censure with extreme severity the +treatment which Davis as a prisoner received, they ought to note it as a +most significant sign of American progress that he was at last allowed to +go forth and live without molestation the rest of his life among his old +followers. + +Before we begin the sketch which we contemplate let us bring out more +vividly the novelty of his example by contrasting him with the failing +leaders of revolutions mentioned above. Richard Cromwell could be +tolerated as a private man by the restored royal government, because his +protectorate had been, so far as he himself is considered, a mere +accident. It was the mighty Oliver, his father, that overthrew and +beheaded Charles I, and then took the reins of rule. These, when he died, +came to his son, who in ability and ambition was a cipher. They who set +him aside would have been ashamed to confess the slightest fear of him. +His captors exiled Napoleon, and Kruger exiled himself. Richard Cromwell, +having been cast out of the protectorate, living forgotten in England, is +no parallel to Davis spending his last years in Mississippi honored by the +entire south with mounting demonstration to his death. Had Napoleon lived +in France and Kruger in the Transvaal, each after his overthrow, they +would be parallels. As it is, the subsequent life of Davis is without any +parallel. + +Having thus shown you what it is that Davis especially examples, let us +now give you briefly such a biography as suits the purpose of this book. + +The fairies bestowed upon him treasures of mind and heart, of form, mien, +and face, of speech and manners. He was not of the very first rank, as +Webster, Toombs, and Lee, who suggest comparison with the Pheidian Zeus, +nor was he in the next with Poseidon and Ares. When President Pierce and +the members of his cabinet were passing by Princeton, a throng of citizens +and students called them out during the stop of the train at the Basin. As +we went away it seemed to me that no speech but that of Davis was +remembered. Compliments were rained upon him. At last a student from New +York State cried, "He's an Apollo!" and all the hearers assented with +enthusiasm. This placed him right,--at the head of the Olympians in the +third circle. + +Though he became a very prominent political leader, the choice of a +profession made by him was that of a soldier. And that profession was +always his first love. His early education, though very deficient and +limited, was far superior to that with which Calhoun had to be content +until he was eighteen. But Davis had when a boy something which supplies +educational defects--a taste for study and a fondness of and access to +books. When at the age of thirty-five he made his debut in politics he had +become really a well-schooled and highly cultured man. He completed his +West Point course, graduating in July, 1828. His wife says: "He did not +pass very high in his class; but he attached no significance to class +standing, and considered the favorable verdict of his classmates of much +more importance."[122] + +He served in the army until June 30, 1835, when he resigned. I will cull +from the entertaining narrative of Mrs. Davis certain occurrences of his +army life which are characteristic. + +Reaching a ferry on Rock river in Illinois, in 1831, with his scouts, he +found the boat stopped by ice, and the mail coach with certain wagons +going to the lead mines waiting on the bank. All the crowd put themselves +at his direction. He had the men to cut blocks from the ice for a bridge. +Water was poured upon each block as soon as it was laid, and this +freezing, the block was kept firmly in its place. Whenever a cutter would +fall overboard, he was sent to turn himself round and round before the +fire until he was dry and ready to resume work. The bridge was soon +finished, and the entire party crossed the river. This incident shows that +there was something in Davis's appearance that invited full trust, and +that he was unwontedly quick and ingenious in expedient. + +How he disabled a disobedient soldier of ferocious temper and great size +by an unexpected blow, and then beat him into complete submission; and how +he captivated the other soldiers by announcing that he would not notice +the affair officially, illustrates his talent for command. + +Men desperate and well armed had taken possession of the lead mines, and +they were to be removed. He tried to induce their consent by making them a +speech. Some weeks later he sought another conference. Finding a number +of them in a drinking booth, he was begged by his orderly not to go in. +"They will be certain to kill you," the orderly said; "I heard one of them +say they would." + +"Lieutenant Davis entered the cabin at once, and, as they expressed it, +'gave them the time of day' [that is, he said "Good-morning" or what the +hour demanded]. He immediately added, after saluting them, 'My friends, I +am sure you have thought over my proposition and are going to drink to my +success. So I shall treat you all.' They gave him a cheer."[123] + +How much more heroic is such Caesar-like courage and tact in quelling the +mob than to butcher misguided men with musketry. + +I have reserved for emphasis here, as illustrating Davis's presence of +mind and readiness in emergency, two incidents which are earlier in time +than what I have just been telling. The first is this. One of the +professors disliked and was inclined to disparage Davis while he was a +cadet at West Point. Lecturing on presence of mind, this professor fixed +his eye on Davis "and said he doubted not there were many who, in an +emergency, would be confused and unstrung, not from cowardice, but from +the mediocre nature of their minds. The insult was intended, and the +recipient of it was powerless to resent it. A few days afterwards, while +the building was full of cadets, the class were being taught the process +of making fireballs, when one took fire. The room was a magazine of +explosives. Cadet Davis saw it first, and calmly asked of the doughty +instructor, 'What shall I do, sir? This fireball is ignited.' The +professor said, 'Run for your lives!' and ran for his. Cadet Davis threw +it out of the window, and saved the building and a large number of lives +thereby."[124] + +In the affair last told, Davis showed a freedom from confusion and an +alertness that is very rare. But the second thing which I have to tell is +still more remarkable. + +While stationed at Fort Crawford in 1829, he had set out in a boat with +some men to cut timber, accompanied by two _voyageurs_. + + "At one point they were hailed by a party of Indians who demanded a + trade of tobacco. As the Indians appeared to have no hostile + intentions, the little party rowed to the bank and began to parley. + However, the voyageurs ... soon saw that their peaceful tones were + only a cloak. They warned Lieutenant Davis of the danger, and he + ordered his men to push out into the stream and make the best time + they could up the river. With yells of fury the Indians leaped into + their canoes and gave chase. There was little, if any, chance for the + white men to escape such experienced rowers.... If taken ... death by + torture was inevitable. They would have been captured had not + Lieutenant Davis thought of rigging up a sail with one of their + blankets. Fortunately the wind was in their favor, but it was very + boisterous. As it was a choice between certain death by the hands of + the Indians, or possible death by drowning, they availed themselves of + the slender chance left and escaped."[125] + +These things which we have selected to tell of him prove that he had in +large measure some of the endowments which are indispensable to the +excellent soldier. They will be recalled by you when we tell his feats in +Mexico. I must say here that I do not mean to claim first-rate ability for +him; but I do believe that he was equal or almost equal to the best in +that great department of the military requiring the powers of the gifted +officer and not those of the few born generals of the world. + +It is a most amiable touch that he left the army to marry a woman the +choice of his heart, and give her a happy home. He cordially sacrificed +for her an occupation which he loved only less than herself. He had had as +brilliant a career as could be won by a lieutenant in garrison duty and +service against the Indians. It must be remembered he had been promoted to +first lieutenant for gallantry. + +It is proper to mention here one other fact of his army life. He had +resolved that if the regiment to which he belonged should be sent to help +execute the force bill in South Carolina, he would resign. Though he never +was a nullifier, his conscience could not permit him to abet in any way +the coercion of a sovereign State, as he always believed each one of the +United States to be. + +His wife lived only a few months. Her death was a fell blow. Her husband +mourned her for nearly ten years. Then he made a most happy marriage with +the lady who survives him. + +In 1836--the next year after the death of his first wife--he settled on a +plantation. Mr. Knight is especially happy in telling how, with his elder +brother Joseph, who had been a successful lawyer, but was now a rich +planter, as instructor and guide, he studied diligently for some while. To +quote: + + "During the period of their residence together, the time not required + by business the brothers devoted to reading and discussion. Political + economy and law, the science of government in general and that of the + United States in particular, were the favorite themes. Locke and + Justinian, Mill, Adam Smith, and Vattel divided honors with the + Federalist, the Resolutions of ninety-eight, and the Debates of the + Constitutional Convention. It was said they knew every word of the + last three by memory; and it is certain that year after year, almost + without interruption, they sat far into the night debating almost + every conceivable question that could arise under the constitution of + the United States." + +Jefferson Davis, as his congressional speeches and his book show, became +deeply versed in the subjects of the joint study just described. I must +note, however, that the discussion which engaged him for such a +considerable period of his ante-public life was had only with one who was +of the same State-rights creed as he himself was, and that it was all in +the closet, as it were. You can only begin the making of a great lawyer by +feigned cases and moot courts. Likewise the true political leader must +early be plunged into real contentions over questions of actual interest, +and thus almost from the very first mix practice with theory. Compare +Webster and Toombs, each at his outset combating with the ablest lawyers +of his State as adversaries, and also publicly discussing varied questions +of policy. I suspect that this prolonged closet training, with its +abundance of academic debate, had much to do in developing Davis into that +supra-logical consistency, stiffness, and unmodifiability of opinion which +is one of his special differences as a practical statesman from the two +great men last mentioned. This, and the mental habitude given by his +military education and experience, mark him as _sui generis_ among our +political leaders. His public career shows more of the doctrinaire and +precisian than can be found in any other one of these. + +In the long post-graduate course which he took in private under his +brother, he was preparing for public life without being aware of it, as it +seems to me. + +He had now but one acquisition to make--to think on his legs and tell his +thoughts at the same time. Extempore speakers are generally made. But +Davis was a born one. He did not have that experience at the bar and in +the State legislature which has been the beginning of so many famous +American orators. The democrats of his county nominated him for the +legislature in 1843, and his first experience in public speaking was in a +stump-debate immediately afterwards with the redoubtable S. S. Prentiss, +Davis then being thirty-five years old. The debate consumed most of the +day. The disputants had each fifteen minutes at a time. The result of the +campaign was in favor of Prentiss. As Davis, a democrat, was merely +leading a forlorn hope in a county overwhelmingly whig, that was to be +expected. But the pluck, readiness, and power which he exhibited in this, +his maiden effort, pitted as he was against the ablest speaker of the +State, astounded the auditors, and it seemed even to the whigs that the +raw debater while nominally losing had really triumphed. + +The next experience he had is thus narrated by Mr. Knight: "Mr. Davis took +a conspicuous part in the presidential campaign of 1844, and was chosen as +one of the Polk electors. Before this campaign he was but slightly known +beyond his own county, but at its conclusion his popularity had become so +great that there was a general demand in the ranks of his party that he +should become a candidate for congress in the following year." + +He had to receive just one more lesson as a speaker. In 1845 Calhoun was +coming to Natchez. Davis was selected to welcome him with a speech. He +made careful preparation, which his wife, whom he had lately married, took +down at his dictation. But when Calhoun had come, after a moment or two of +slowness in the exordium, Davis gave up trying to recite from memory, and +delivered with grace and effect an unpremeditated speech of taking +appropriateness.[126] + +What Mrs. Davis says of him as a speaker is so just and in such good +taste, that I quote it: + + "From that day forth no speech was ever written for delivery. Dates + and names were jotted down on two or three inches of paper, and these + sufficed. Mr. Davis's speeches never read as they were delivered; he + spoke fast, and thoughts crowded each other closely; a certain + magnetism of manner and the exceeding beauty and charm of his voice + moved the multitude, and there were apparently no inattentive or + indifferent listeners. He had one power that I have never seen + excelled; while speaking he took in the individuality of the crowd, + and seeing doubt or a lack of coincidence with him in their faces, he + answered ... with arguments addressed to the case in their minds. He + was never tiresome, because, as he said, he gave close attention to + the necessity of stopping when he was done. + + Only so much of his eloquence has survived as was indifferently + reported. The spirit of the graceful periods was lost. He was a + parenthetical speaker, which was a defect in a written oration, but it + did not, when uttered, impair the quality of his speeches, but rather + added a charm when accentuated by his voice and commended by his + gracious manner. At first his style was ornate, and poetry and fiction + were pressed from his crowded memory into service; but it was soon + changed into a plain and stronger cast of what he considered to be, + and doubtless was, the higher kind of oratory. His extempore addresses + are models of grace and ready command of language."[127] + +He took his seat in the United States house of representatives in +December, 1845, he and Toombs, who was two years younger, beginning their +congressional careers together. Davis made a very creditable speech on the +Oregon question early in February, 1846. He was a modest member, but he +did all the duties of his place with praiseworthy diligence. + +Although he was a thoroughgoing anti-tariff democrat and Webster a +pro-tariff whig leader, he could not be induced to join in the effort to +make political capital for his own party by blackening the name of +Webster. The minority report of the committee which investigated the +conduct of Webster, as secretary of state, was really made by Davis, who +was one of the committee. The stand taken by the latter, and the true +presentation which he made, at last got the whole committee to adopt his +report substantially. Webster was greatly pleased with it. + +Early in May, 1846, Taylor had won his first victories. On the 29th Davis, +supporting joint resolutions of thanks to the general and his army, made +reply to what he deemed were unwarranted reflections upon West Point. He +emphasized Taylor's operations as proving the high value of military +education. He asked Sawyer of Ohio, who had disparaged the Academy, if the +latter believed that a blacksmith or tailor could have done such good +work. Thus, without knowing it, he trod upon the toes of two members of +the house; for Sawyer had been a blacksmith, and Andrew Johnson, of +Tennessee, a tailor. Sawyer took it good-humoredly, but Johnson, the next +day, passionately defended tailors, and used language very offensive to +Davis, implying that the latter belonged to "an illegitimate, swaggering, +bastard, scrub aristocracy." To this the latter, justly indignant, +rejoined with cutting severity. There was never any love lost between the +two afterwards. When President Lincoln was murdered Johnson, succeeding +him, committed the unspeakable folly of offering by proclamation $100,000 +reward for the arrest of Davis as accessory. When Davis, having been +captured, was told of the proclamation he said to General Wilson--hoping +his words would be reported to Johnson--that there was one man in the +United States who knew the charge was false; this was the man who had +signed the proclamation; "for," said Davis, "he at least knew that I +preferred Lincoln to himself." + +Of course had Davis possessed the chief qualifications of popular +leadership he would have made a fast friend instead of a bitter enemy of +this man, whose rise from low estate to greatness proves that he had in +him elements of manhood and virtue that ought to have homage from the +highest and proudest. + +It was by his course in the Mexican war that Davis commenced life in the +eye of the nation. Without canvassing for the place--he never did canvass +for a place--he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi volunteers, +and "he eagerly and gladly accepted." The president, authorized by a new +law, offered to make him a brigadier general. Mrs. Davis says: "My husband +expressed his preference for an elective office; when pressed, he said +that he thought volunteer troops raised in a State should be officered by +men of their own selection, and that after the elective right of the +volunteers ceased, the appointing power should be the governor of the +State whose troops were to be commanded by the general. This was his first +sacrifice to State rights, and it was a great effort to him."[128] + +General Scott doubted if the percussion lock was as well suited to field +use as the flint lock, but Davis knew better. He had his men furnished +with the percussion-lock rifle, a very superior arm to the old +smooth-bore. He drilled his regiment well. And he kept its members from +pillaging. + +As the storming of Monterey opened, the head of the column recoiled in +confusion from a deadly cross-fire, "producing the utmost confusion among +the front of the assaulting brigade. The strong fort, Taneira, which had +contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag, and amid the wild +cheering of its defenders redoubled its fire of grape and canister and +musketry, under which the American lines wavered and were about to break. +Colonel Davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for orders, placed +himself at the head of his Mississippians, and gave the order to charge. +With prolonged cheers his regiment swept forward through a storm of +bullets and bursting shells. Colonel Davis, sword in hand, cleared the +ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers on, they mounted the works +with the impetuosity of a whirlwind, capturing artillery and driving the +Mexicans pell-mell back into the stone fort in the rear. In vain they +sought to barricade the gate; Davis and McClung [the lieutenant-colonel] +burst it open, and leading their men into the fort, compelled its +surrender at discretion. Taneira was the key of the situation, and its +capture insured victory. On the morning of the 23d of September, the +following day, Henderson's Texas Rangers, Campbell's Tennesseeans, and +Davis's Mississippians, the latter again leading the assault, stormed and +captured El Diabolo, and the next day General Ampudia surrendered the +city."[129] + +Davis's quickness, coolness, and dash--and especially his promptness to +take such wise initiative as is permissible to a colonel in action--shone +forth conspicuously in this affair. + +He was the very soul of the glorious stand of the Americans at Buena Vista +against odds of more than 4 to 1. At the opening of the battle a ball +drove a part of his spur into the right foot just below the instep, making +a very painful wound. He kept his seat as though nothing had happened. +Later in the day, his bleeding foot thrown over the pommel, he spurred his +horse into leaping a ravine, in which he saw a horse and cart beneath him +as he flew over. But his great exploit was the re-entering line of his +regiment and Bowles's Indianians, with which he received the charge of a +host of heavy cavalry. His rifles being without bayonets, the hollow +square, then the approved mode of defence, was not to be thought of. So +necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which +poured something like two crossing enfilades into the head of the cavalry +column. The brilliant conception was brilliantly executed. The carnage +that befel the cavalry drove it from the field. Did not the spirit of +Napoleon looking on regret that he had not given the pesky Mamelukes like +punishment? The world has noted how Sir Colin Campbell learned from Davis +the right way of opposing infantry to the onset of heavy cavalry. + +The great distinction won most deservedly by Davis, as the colonel of a +raw regiment in these important engagements, is, so far as I know, without +any parallel. It was but natural that he should always afterwards believe +himself to be a great military genius. Of course he had become famous +throughout the whole country. + +There was a vacancy in one of the United States senatorships from +Mississippi, and Davis was appointed to fill it. I need not go into much +detail at this point. He was warmly greeted at his entrance into the upper +house. He maintained himself with growing ability. While he was +independent and self-reliant enough now and then to differ with Calhoun, +in the main he followed the latter as his leader. There was a dignity and +poise in his nature that suited the senate better than the house of +representatives. And he was doubtless frank when he asserted later that he +preferred the senate to any other place. As I contemplate his record at +this part of his life he impresses me as that one of all the more +prominent southern public men who was most fixed in the opinion that the +very surest preservative of the union was for the south to be always +unflinching and utterly uncompromising in demanding exact enforcement of +every constitutional protection of slavery. He loved the union most +fondly. It was only the south that he loved more. Conscientious +doctrinaire as he was, he believed that the rights of the south were so +plain and palpable that if they were but stated they would be conceded by +the great mass of the northern people. He thought it was to encourage +disunion to surrender even a jot of our claim to equality in the +Territories and that the fugitive slave law should be fully enforced. His +anticipation was that the more we yielded to the anti-slavery men the more +we would be asked to yield, until at last we would be driven into the +ditch, when we could save the south only by secession. So he counselled +with all his might that the south should resolve to surrender nothing +whatever--to go out of the union rather than so to do. Let the north +understand this and the abolition party will disappear. That is the only +way to save the union. This explains why he refused to support the +compromise measures of 1850. He was beaten for governor of Mississippi on +that issue. He was classed with the fire-eaters. But that was utterly +untrue. Remember that in 1860 he actually contemplated being the +democratic presidential candidate, and that Massachusetts sent a +delegation to the Charleston convention instructed for him. + +A word or two as to his secretaryship of war. He was as up to date in +adopting every new thing of merit as he had been in insisting upon +percussion-lock rifles for his regiment in the Mexican war. The diligence +and prolonged labor which he conscientiously gave his official duties were +truly exemplary. I wish especially to have my reader reflect upon two +things belonging here. In selecting men to fill offices, from the highest +to the lowest, he was utterly regardless of their politics. When +remonstrated with by democratic partisans for not giving democrats the +preference in competition for appointments, he declared positively that he +should always make fitness and qualification the only conditions of such +selection. And his actions as long as he held the important office spoke +even louder than his words. Surely here is an example for these times to +profit by. The second thing really belongs to the same class as the first. +It is that when civil war actually prevailed in Kansas between the +anti-slavery men on one side and the pro-slavery men on the other, and the +commander of the federal troops in the Territory would virtually be +absolute in power, though Davis was the very extreme of pro-slavery he +gave the place to Colonel Sumner, an outspoken abolitionist, "whose honor, +ability, and judgment recommended him as the best man for the difficult +duty."[130] + +The secretaryship must be noted as deepening the regular-army grooves in +which Davis's thoughts and tastes had long been moving. + +He became United States senator again in 1857, which position he held +until the secession of his State. I need touch upon nothing but the +prominent part he took. Without knowing it he became the guide that +conducted the south in the aggressive defensive which the closing in +around her of the hostile lines imperatively dictated. All that he did of +importance but led up to or supported his famous resolutions of February +2, 1860. Their gist was that if the judiciary and executive could not and +the Territorial legislature would not protect slave property in any of the +Territories, congress was bound to pass efficiently protecting laws, to +remain of force until the Territory was admitted as a State, with a +constitution that authorized or prohibited slavery. + +Compare the speech he made for these resolutions with that made for them +by Toombs, and the wide difference of the two men comes out plainly. The +former is the height of commonplace morality and patriotism, expressed +with manly strength and eloquence, while the speaker does not see clearly +into the gulf of the brothers' war into which his measure has been made by +the fates the lever to plunge America. That of Toombs shows titanic +mastery of law and statesmanship, and almost full discernment of the +national catastrophe at the door. It is destined, I believe, to stand in +the highest class of great speeches. + +Compare the last speeches of each in the senate. Toombs's justification of +secession is with argument and appeal to conscience that the greatest men +cannot, and only cosmic forces, the fates, the directors of evolution, can +answer. Davis's does satisfy the conscience of the typical southerner, and +in the tone preserved from beginning to end is a marvel of propriety. The +pathos of his leave-taking melted the sternest hearts on the other side. +It was especially in his freedom from offensive words and the gentlemanly +self-restraint of his manner that Davis showed as decidedly superior to +the other. In the speech of Toombs last noticed there are some harsh and +heated words that I would blot into complete oblivion if I could. There is +not a single line in the other that I can find fault with. I will here +parallel them in another place that is strikingly illustrative. Some years +after the war the people of Mississippi wanted to send Davis back to the +United States senate. To this end the legislature memorialized him to +apply for the removal of his disability. He replied that repentance ought +always to precede asking for pardon, and that he had not yet repented. One +day about the same time a sympathizing southerner asked Toombs if the +yankees had pardoned him yet. He scowled his darkest, and thundered, "No. +And God damn 'em, I haven't pardoned them." Of course the average man or +woman will cordially approve the decorum of Davis's reply, and on +reflection will censure the other. + +Davis was completely representative of the real chivalry of the south; and +from the Mexican war on, this was more and more recognized in the section. +When he was made president of the confederacy the great majority of the +people approved. He is such a gentleman; so conscientious; so attentive to +his public duties; and then his military education and experience make him +far superior to Lincoln--this was said by the general. Thus were his +disqualifications for the place concealed from the people of the south. + +His chief defect was that not being a successful business man, he was not +a practical statesman. On this point we have already said enough. + +His own judgment upon himself was that he ought to command the armies of +the confederacy. To the very last he believed he had the extreme of +military ability. During the gloomy days that set in after Gettysburg he +often exclaimed, "If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we +could between us wrest a victory from those people."[131] + +But he did not have extraordinary military capacity, as appears from the +facts which I will now tell. + +He was on the field at First Manassas when that unprecedented panic seized +the federal army. It was instantaneously understood by the latest recruit +looking on from our side. The men and line officers around me ejaculated, +"We ought to press forward and go into Washington with 'em." Davis with +his training should have seen better even than these raw volunteers, and +recognized it was his part by pursuit to accelerate the flight and raise +that panic to its top. There were remaining several hours of daylight, +during which five of his men could chase a hundred and a hundred put ten +thousand to flight, and when night came the excited imagination of the +fliers would re-enforce the confederates with a vast host of destroying +monsters behind and before. The federals losing all organization, were +racing to escape over the bridge at Washington which was a little more +than twenty miles away. They were choking the roads with abandoned +vehicles and artillery. As it was, they seriously choked the bridge. Had +there been rapid advance by us, and firing in the rear, it is more than +probable we should have got the bridge unharmed. We should have added +thousands to our prisoners. But far more important than this, would have +been the arms, ammunition, wagons, horses, quartermaster and commissary +supplies of all sorts--in short, the entire baggage of the enemy--that +would have been ours for the taking. And if the federals had destroyed the +bridge before we reached it, we should have had McDowell's pontoons, or +captured material out of which to make a bridge of our own. We should have +crossed somehow, and at the place which circumstances and the insight of +genius suggested. The capital would have fallen, really without a blow; +and what an immense addition to our booty would have been here. And the +prestige! In a day or two our flag would have waved over Baltimore, the +consequence being that Maryland, with a throng of most true and valiant +fighters, would have been won for the Confederate States, and its northern +line instead of the Potomac would have become the frontier. All this would +have happened if Davis had been a Caesar and had Caesar-like used the one +great opportunity of the war. It must be set down to his credit that he +did far more than Johnston and Beauregard insist upon pursuit. But he does +not seem to have thought of it until night; and at last he permitted +himself to be reasoned out of it. + +There have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful supineness of our +army after this victory. We were without transportation means, and a +retreating army always outruns its pursuers, said Johnston. Mr. Knight +says Northrop had left us without commissary supplies, and of course men +without anything to eat had to wait until they could be fed. Beauregard +says we ought to have made for the upper Potomac, which was fordable. All +such reasons come from those who ignore the situation. A real general +would have said to his soldiers, in the first moment of the panic, "You +are weary; it will rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him +because of the obstructing bridge. You are hungry; there are full +haversacks and commissary wagons of your enemy just beyond Centerville +without defenders. Forward, and escort the grand army into Washington +city!" And such a general with just what infantry he could find to hand, +all the while being re-enforced by eager men catching up, pressing forward +as persistently as Blucher spurred with his cavalry after the French +flying from Waterloo, would have been in sight of Washington when the sun +rose. + +Mr. Knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of Davis as the military +chieftain of the Confederate States.[132] I would abridge what can be said +here under these heads: + +1. Each particular army ought to have operated as a part of the whole +force of the confederacy, and that whole force ought to have been wielded +as one machine. Instead of trying to effect this end, the president +decided that all exposed points must be defended. The result was that +these were taken one after another by superior armies. A military man will +understand me when I say his strategy was below mediocrity. True strategy +dictated the abandonment of many places in order to assemble by using our +shorter interior lines a resistless power on a really decisive occasion. +McClellan, in Virginia, and Grant, in Mississippi, ought each to have been +captured as Burgoyne and Cornwallis were. + +2. He selected his generals and important officers according to his likes +and dislikes, and not according to their true qualifications. + +3. He was without practical administrative talent in any high degree. Such +a man as Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, would have shown far superior to +him. + +It will doubtless be the decision of future history that he was neither +statesman nor military man of sufficient ability for the presidency. He +did not want it. Compare him as secession was dawning, with Toombs, who +was the man of all to be president. The latter scenting battle in the air, +was really eager for the inevitable fighting to begin; Davis was cast down +and dejected. He loved the union, and it was inexpressibly bitter to him +to part with it. And then he was sure that there would be a long and +bloody brothers' war. What he wanted was to fight for the south so dear to +him. The news of his election as president was perhaps the greatest +surprise of his life. Says Mrs. Davis: "When reading the telegram he +looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a +few minutes' painful silence he told me, as a man might speak of a +sentence of death."[133] + +Writing of his inauguration at Montgomery, he says to his wife: "The +audience was large and brilliant. Upon my weary heart were showered +smiles, plaudits, and flowers; but, beyond them, I saw troubles and thorns +innumerable."[134] + +And she tells this of his inauguration as president of the permanent +government: + + "Mr. Davis came in from an early visit to his office and went into his + room, where I found him an hour afterwards on his knees in earnest + prayer 'for the divine support I need so sorely' [as he said].... 'The + inauguration took place at twelve o'clock.' [The anterior proceedings + having been described, the contemporary account she quotes goes on + thus:] + + "The president-elect then delivered his inaugural address. It was + characterized by great dignity, united with much feeling and grace, + especially the closing sentence. Throwing up his eyes and hands to + heaven he said, 'With humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging + the providence which has so visibly protected the confederacy during + its brief but eventful career, to Thee, O God, I trustingly commit + myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country and its + cause.'" + +Then she adds: + + "Thus Mr. Davis entered on his martyrdom. As he stood pale and + emaciated, dedicating himself to the service of the confederacy, + evidently forgetful of everything but his sacred oath, he seemed to me + a willing victim going to his funeral pyre; and the idea so affected + me that, making some excuse, I regained my carriage and went + home."[135] + +So did this thrice-noble man sacrifice his dearest wishes and with +superhuman resolution step into the arena at the command of the fates, to +be the target of their wrath against his people. + +He was like Hamlet upon whom destiny had imposed a high task far beyond +his powers. We can believe that to the end of his presidency Davis sorely +sighed more and more often: + + "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite + That ever I was born to set it right." + +His official career from beginning to end was full of fatal mistakes. But +in every one of these he did the right--to use Lincoln's grand word--as +God gave him to see it. This will more and more through all the future +turn his failure to glory. He will be like Hector, who draws the +admiration of the world a thousand-fold more than Achilles, his +vanquisher.[136] + +At the last, when the sword of Grant had beaten down the sword of Lee, and +all of us, it seemed to me, knew that it was the highest duty of +patriotism to yield our arms, he was for fighting on. Casabianca would +not go with those who were leaving the burning ship until his dead father +bade him go. Davis would not abandon the cause of his nation without its +command; and it could give none; for it was dead and he did not know it. +He was trying his hardest to reach the west, intent upon prosecuting the +war from a new base, when he was taken. + +His capture was accepted by the southern people as the fall of the blue +cross. Every man, woman, and child old enough to think, in the late +confederacy became sick and faint. Sorrow after sorrow, and grief after +grief tore their hearts. The first was the thought, for all the blood we +have poured out during four years of such effort on the battlefield as the +world never knew before we have lost; we have been beaten, and we are +subjugated. The next thought that pierced was, the property that made our +homes the sweetest and most comfortable on earth has all been destroyed, +and for the rest of their lives our dear ones must pine in hardship and +misery. O how this pang actually killed many old men and women! It seems +to me that heart failure commenced in the south with the great harvest it +gathered in the first five years succeeding the war. But the agony of +agonies was that the negroes were put over us. Those five +years--particularly the last three of them--are the one ugly dream of my +life. To pay his debts, which would have been a small thing to him had he +kept his slaves, but which were now monsters, my father overworked +himself, while trying to make a cotton crop with freedmen. I did not learn +of his imprudence until I had been summoned to see him die. There was +something like this in every family. A night of impoverishment, misery, +contumely, and insult descended upon us, and the sun would not rise. I +kept the stoutest heart that I could. Now and then it was a comforting +day dream to imagine how well it would have been for me if I had fallen in +the front of my men on the second day of Gettysburg, when I was trying my +utmost to make them do the impossibility of charging across the narrow bog +staying us, and mixing with the men in blue lining the other side. Had +that happened to me I should never have known, in the flesh, of our +decisive defeats, nor of the trials of my people after they laid down +arms; and even if my grave could not have been found, there would have +been at a place here and there for some years honorable mention of me with +tears on Memorial Day, to gladden my spirit taking note. This would +sometimes be my thought, and thousands of others had like thoughts. + +Early in this time of sorrow and suffering the women of the south +instituted Memorial Day. Each year when it comes they do rites of +remembrance to the fallen soldiers of the confederacy. These soldiers lie +in every graveyard from the Ohio and Potomac to the Rio Grande. When the +day comes these women in their unforgetting love assemble the people, have +praises and lamentations of their dead darlings fitly spoken; and then +they deck their graves with the fairest flowers of spring. It is an annual +holiday, sacred to grief for our heroes who died in vain. It is the +fairest, tenderest, and sweetest testimonial of love ever given--love from +those who have nothing else to bestow, lavished upon those who can make no +return; and it is further the most splendid and glorious, being the +co-operative demonstration of a whole people of "true lovers."[137] + +I cannot say where and when the observance of Memorial Day began. Perhaps +Miss Davidson correctly asserts that it was in Petersburg, Virginia, in +1866.[138] It had reached its height at Charleston, South Carolina, in the +spring of 1867, when as prelude to decorating the graves in Magnolia +cemetery, Timrod's hymn, containing this oft-quoted passage, was sung: + + "Behold! your sisters bring their tears, + And these memorial blooms. + + "Small tributes! but your shades shall smile + More proudly on these wreaths to-day, + Than when some cannon-moulded pile + Shall overlook this bay. + + "Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! + There is no holier spot of ground + Than where defeated valor lies, + By mourning beauty crowned." + +The "true lovers" could no more forget their living leader in prison than +they could forget their soldiers in the grave. "Out of sight, out of mind" +could not be said of Davis during his two years' confinement. The concern +of his people mounted steadily. They made all his sufferings their own, +lamenting and praying for him as a loved father. When he was about to be +released on bond the news gave the south a wilder joy than did the +unexpected victory of First Manassas. He was brought in custody to +Richmond by a James river steamboat. Mrs. Davis thus describes how he was +received: + + "A great concourse of people had assembled. From the wharf to the + Spottswood Hotel there was a sea of heads--room had to be made by the + mounted police for the carriages. The windows were crowded, and even + on to the roofs people had climbed. Every head was bared. The ladies + were shedding tears.... When Mr. Davis reached the Spottswood Hotel, + where rooms had been provided for us, the crowd opened and the beloved + prisoner walked through; the people stood uncovered for at least a + mile up and down Main street. As he passed, one and another put out a + hand and lightly touched his coat. As I left the carriage a low voice + said: 'Hats off, Virginians,' and again every head was bared. This + noble sympathy and clinging affection repaid us for many moments of + bitter anguish. + + When Mr. Davis was released, one gentleman jumped upon the box and + drove the carriage which brought him back to the hotel, and other + gentlemen ran after him and shouted themselves hoarse. Our people + poured into the hotel in a steady stream to congratulate, and many + embraced him." + +Bear in mind the people, and where it was, and when it was, from whom this +show of respect so great, so earnest and unfeigned, spontaneously came. +They were of that part of the south which had lost more in blood, +property, and devastation than any other, and who, one might think, were +too embittered against their defeated leader to show him anything but +disapproval. They were also of a State which had not been readmitted into +the union. The axe was suspended over their necks by a party seeking +excuses for letting it fall; by a party to whom Davis was the most hated +of men. Surely these Virginians who thus risked their fortunes were the +truest of lovers. + +No reader of mine, though he search history and encyclopedias through and +through for years, can find anything like the Southern Memorial Day and +the honors given Davis in Richmond as we have just told. They unmistakably +mark an ascent of humanity. But it is not my purpose to emphasize them as +specially signalizing the south. Their great lesson is not learned if it +is not understood that they are glories of federal government. Under any +other form of government such demonstrations would be suppressed as +disloyal and treasonable. + +For more than twenty-two years after this auspicious day the ex-president +of the southern confederacy lived most of his time among his people. Their +love for him steadily grew. He proved worthy of it. He would not accept +the bounty they stood ready to shower upon him, and he was poor and +without money-making faculty. When Mississippi wanted to make him United +States senator again, he felt that he was too old and broken to serve the +State efficiently, and he declined. It occurred to all of us that he +sorely needed the salary of the place. He struggled on under the load of +poverty and ill-health. All of us knew that the latter came from that +cruel and inhuman imprisonment, and the more he suffered the closer our +hearts drew to him. The cause of his section he justified to the last, and +with all his energy. His book defending that cause was written under +difficulty almost insurmountable by man. His character as one tried in +every way and found true came out clearer and clearer. He showed more and +more of spotless virtue, becoming all the while to us a stronger +justification of the fight we had made under him for the lost cause. We +thought to ourselves with pride that the world will some day learn what a +good man he was, and that will be our complete vindication from the +slanders now current. + +Let me tell of some of the other demonstrations made over him. I witnessed +that in Atlanta, in 1886. April 30, all the State of Georgia was there, as +it seemed. Old and young, white and colored, waited impatiently for the +railroad train bringing him from Montgomery. My wife, divining the rare +sight thus to be gained, secured a station out of town where she could see +the train pass without obstruction. As long as she lived afterwards, his +car, prodigally and appropriately bedecked with the fairest May flowers of +the sunny south, was her proverb for that which pleases too greatly for +description. + +When he had come out of his bower of flowers and we knew he was resting, +we felt as if the angel of the Lord was here with tidings of great joy for +all our people. + +Who can describe the rejoicing of the next day that came forth everywhere +as Mr. Davis showed himself to his people! I have seen popular outbursts +of gladness, but nothing like this. It surpassed in profundity of feeling +and sustained energy and flow that which seemed to come straight out of +the ground when, in 1884, we knew at last that Cleveland was elected, and +the south was convulsed with an ecstasy of happy surprise. The women and +men who had tasted the war all crying; all pouring benedictions upon his +gray hairs as they came in sight; "God bless him" displayed on every +corner. I am utterly unable adequately to report this grand occasion. I +will tell only a few things that I saw or heard of. He passed by a long +line of school-children in Peachtree street. They made the sincere and +decided demonstrations of children whose pleasure is at its height. But +what was especially noticeable to me here was the behavior in the section +of colored children. Their delight seemed, if that were possible, to be +somewhat wilder and more unrestrained than that of the white children. The +occurrence has come back to me a thousand times. Is it to be explained by +Mr. Davis's character as a master, to whom, as to all really typical +masters, his slaves were but a little lower in his affections than his +children? Or was it unconscious approval of the resistance by the south +with all her might against the emancipation proclamation, the end of which +may be the wholesale destruction of the black race in America, such +approval being suggested by a cosmic influence as yet inexplicable? + +When he was going through Mrs. Hill's yard to enter her house, little +girls on each side of the walk threw bouquets before him, every one +begging, "Mr. Davis, please step on my flowers." The feeble man tried to +gratify all of them. The flowers that he did step on were eagerly caught +up by the owners, to be treasured as the dearest of relics and keepsakes. + +I was told that some old grayhead who met him during the day, gently +raised Mr. Davis's hands to his lips, saying, "Let me kiss the hands that +were manacled for me," and as he kissed his tears fell in a flood. + +What we have just described occurred in Georgia--a State in which of all +during the brothers' war the most formidable opposition to his +administration was developed. This opposition was lead or upheld by +Toombs, both the Stephenses, and Brown--the most influential of all the +Georgians at that time. That for all this the State gave him this +wonderful ovation shows how deep and strong is the southern sentiment that +glorifies the lost cause. It was Henry Grady, a Georgian revering and +treasuring the men I have just mentioned, who when Mr. Davis was in +Atlanta, in 1886, called him the uncrowned king of our hearts, the words +evoking plaudits from the entire south. And remember that Georgia voted +for Greeley in 1872, although Toombs and the Stephenses opposed him. I +think I was representative of the dominant public feeling at the time. +While my companions and I avowed the fullest confidence in Greeley's +integrity and statesmanship, we each said we were in haste to honor with +our votes the northern man who got Mr. Davis bailed and became one of his +sureties. And Georgia is among the States which has made June 3 a legal +holiday, because it is the anniversary of Mr. Davis's birth. + +Some northern paper sympathetically described the reception given Mr. +Davis in Atlanta, in 1886, as the swan song of the southern confederacy. +And to me it has always been the funeral of the old south. But there were +other obsequies and swan songs. When he died December 6, 1889, the south +sorrowed as it never sorrowed before. We are pleased to quote from the +memoir, the noblest monument a true wife has ever given a dead +husband--far nobler, more splendid and immortal than that which Artemisia +gave Mausolus. Mrs. Davis tells: + + "Floral offerings came from all quarters of our country. The orphan + asylum, the colleges, the societies, drew upon their little stores to + deck his quiet resting-place. Many thousands passed weeping by the + bier where he lay in state, in his suit of confederate gray, guarded + by the men who had fought for the cause he loved, and who revered his + honest, self-denying, devoted life. His old comrades in arms came by + thousands to mingle their tears with ours. The governors of nine + states came to bear him to his rest. The clergy of all denominations + came to pray that his rest be peaceful, and to testify their respect + for and faith in him. Fifty thousand people lined the streets as the + catafalque passed. Few, if any, dry eyes looked their last upon him + who had given them his life's service. The noble army of the West and + that of Northern Virginia escorted him for the last time, and the + Washington Artillery, now gray-haired men, were the guard of honor to + his bier. The eloquent Bishops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the + clergy of all denominations, delivered short eulogies upon him to + weeping thousands, and the strains of 'Rock of Ages,' once more bore + up a great spirit in its flight to Him who gave, sustained, and took + it again to himself." + +These aptly chosen words come short of describing the general grief. +Nobody can yet tell all of it. One but feebly expresses it by saying that +when Jefferson Davis died, broken-hearted men, women, and children +gathered in funeral assemblies everywhere in that vast area from Mason and +Dixon's line on the north to the Mexican border on the south, wept over +his bier, and hung the air and heavens with black. + +In 1893 his remains were carried to Richmond, the dead capital of the dead +Confederate States, and there reinterred. The ceremonies were impressive, +and thoroughly in keeping with those I have narrated in the foregoing. + +And in 1896 the corner-stone of a monument to him was laid in Monroe Park. +On this occasion General Stephen D. Lee delivered an oration which, as a +monument itself, will long outlast the stone one. + +Thus has the overthrown and most evilly entreated president of the +Confederate States become, by some marvel of fortune, far more than the +proudest conqueror. The honors which every one who "can above himself +erect himself" estimates as the very richest, Mr. Davis has had given him +more prodigally than any other man. These honors that make everything else +shabby in appearance and cheap, are the spontaneous offerings of sincere +love from those who know us. Smiles, tender words, prayers for blessing, +tears of joy, admiration, pity, and sympathy, flowers--how dear are any of +these from a friend, brother, sister, father, mother, sweetheart, wife, +child. For almost a generation all these tokens were given the +ex-president by everybody in the south, and each year to his death they +were given in greater profusion. And really the whole south mourned at his +burial. Our wives, mothers, and other dear ones give us up, and we give, +them up, to fight and perhaps die for the country. We are so made that we +love the great brotherhood better than we do ourselves. And so an offering +of regard from that brotherhood--to be made to feel that throughout the +whole of it one is recognized as most worthy of love--the true man would +prize this above every other. Before this time this great honor has been +given only by happy ones to their victors--to such as Washington, Lincoln, +Grant. But the south has begun a new era. In the misery and ruin of her +subjugation she magnifies her deposed chief. Much of the applause heaped +upon the victor is selfish and feigned, but the whole of that given the +conquered hero comes direct and straight from the hearts of his +countrymen. It seems, therefore, to me that this decoration of the +conquered hero is the crown of crowns of this world. It is Davis's +historical uniqueness that he has won this lone crown. + +The achievement is so counter to common-sense that it is not yet credited +nor understood. I cannot help believing that when all the fog raised by +the brothers' war has cleared away, and our historians tell what brought +and what followed that war with unclouded vision of cosmic agency, that +Jefferson Davis will be permanently placed high in the American temple of +fame. There he will be the world's contemplation, showing something like +Hester Prynne. As what was at first to her the branding placard of guilt +turned to a badge of the greatest righteousness, so has that which was +unutterable obloquy and disgrace to him become unparalleled fortune and +glory. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE CURSE OF SLAVERY TO THE WHITE, AND ITS BLESSING TO THE NEGRO + + +The master got the curse and the negro the blessing of slavery. + +We set out by mentioning how certain ants have been injured by becoming +masters. Before this they were doubtless the equals of any +non-slaveholding tribe in self-maintenance. Now they "are waited upon and +fed by their slaves, and when the slaves are taken away the masters perish +miserably."[139] It did not become so bad as this with human slaveholders; +but the consequent disadvantage was very great, as we shall now exemplify +with some detail. We shall throughout keep to the average and typical man +and woman. And for brevity's sake, we shall not look beyond the domestic +and agricultural spheres, because when the reader has learned what slavery +did in these, he can of himself easily add the little required to make +complete statement of its entire effect. + +In non-slave communities baby is tended only by mother and near relatives. +Though petted and indulged, it is steadily constrained into more obedience +to those who tend it. In due time the child is taking care of itself in +many things, and is also doing light chores. Until the parental roof has +been left he or she has every day something to do. What we may call the +open-air home-work is done by the boys, and the inside by the girls. But +in the old south baby commenced its life as a slaveholder with a nurse +that it learned to command by inarticulate cries and signs before it could +talk. And to the end, as grandfather or grandmother, self-service in many +common things, as is usual with all other people, was never learned, but +great expertness in getting these things done by slaves was learned +instead. + +I was only fifteen years old in 1851, when I entered the sophomore class +in Princeton College, never having been out of the south before. Of course +much of my time at first was consumed in observing and thinking over many +sights very novel and strange to me. I came in August. Soon afterwards I +saw them saving their Indian corn. In the south we "pulled" the fodder, +and some weeks later we "pulled" the corn, leaving the stripped stalks +standing. But the New Jersey farmers, without removing the blades or the +ears, cut the stalks down, put them up in stacks, and after a while hauled +them to the barn. This was such a wonder that I described it minutely in a +letter to my mother. The next great surprise that I had was to note the +lady of the family and her daughters doing everything in and about the +house, which I used to see at home only the negroes do. They were +marvellously more expert and neat in despatch than the negroes. Their easy +and, as it seemed, effortless way of getting through their daily +employment grew upon me steadily. What I intently observed in those times +and reflected over much subsequently, I have had a recent experience to +refresh and enforce. In the summer of 1902 two ladies from Pennsylvania +took a house in Atlanta next to mine. They had never before been in the +south. I found out these lonely strangers at once, and was soon seeing +much of them. They kept no servant. The two did all the household tasks. +The younger washed the clothes. This is something which but few city +southern ladies, except those whose ancestors were not slaveholders, have +ever consented to do. The laundry of even the poorest families in our +towns is nearly always the care of a negro washerwoman. Although their +work was every day punctually done by my two new-found friends, and their +house always the tidiest, like the New Jersey ladies of my boyhood at +Princeton, they were never flustered nor worried, but were always pleasant +and agreeable. + +Plainly they lived in far more ease and comfort than the native +housekeepers. There are two classes of the latter. In one is the woman who +is greatly plagued by the waste, dishonesty, and eye-service of her negro +cook and housemaid, and always in craven fear that she will wake up some +morning to know that they have taken French leave. In the other class is +the woman who often must, with the help only of her children, do +everything at home. What a laborious, fatiguing botch they make of it! +Their day-dream all the year round is to find that needle in a haystack, a +servant who will take no more than the established holidays and always +come in time to get breakfast. + +I sorrow for these present housekeepers of the south. They all know by +heart and often retell to their children the tales of their mothers and +grandmothers,--how, early in the morning, the affectionate and faithful +nurses stole the children out of the room, without waking papa and mamma; +how the cook and the waiters, not superintended, had the best of +breakfasts ready at the right time; how at this meal there was happy +reunion of the family beginning a new day, the children bathed and in +their clean clothes, each one pretty as a picture and sweet as a pink; and +how all the affairs of the household under the magic touch of angel +servants were fitly despatched without trouble or worry to mamma, until +the day ended by the nurses' bathing the little tots again, putting them +to bed, and mammy's getting them to sleep by telling "The Tar Baby" or +some other adventure of Brer Rabbit over and over as often as sleepily +called for, or by singing sweet lullabies. With this vision of a real +fairyland in which their ancestors lived not so very long ago, how can any +one of these mothers of the new south contentedly make herself the only +nurse, cook, and house servant of her family? For many a year yet, to do +every day the drudgery of all three will be the extreme of discomfort and +sore trial to her. We must give her loving words and sympathy without +ceasing, and trust her to the slow but sure healing of inevitable +necessity. + +This lamentable condition of our southern woman is due, as plainly +appears, to the miseducation given their ancestors by slavery. Slavery +went forty years ago; but it left the negro, and the dependence of these +women upon her as their only servant. It is indispensable that they cut +loose completely from this dependence. Their resolve should be firm and +unwavering that they will learn to minister to themselves and their dear +ones, and teach the blessed art to their children; as their northern +sisters have always done. I would have them here receptively contemplate, +as a part of the new lesson which they must learn, this true and +enchanting picture of a New England home: + + "There are no servants in the house, but the lady in the snowy cap, + with the spectacles, who sits sewing every afternoon among her + daughters, as if nothing had ever been done, or were to be done,--she + and her girls, in some long-forgotten forepart of the day _did up the + work_, and for the rest of the time, probably, at all hours when you + would see them, it is _done up_. The old kitchen floor never seems + stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the various cooking + utensils never seem deranged or disordered; though three and sometimes + four meals a day are got there, though the family washing and ironing + is there performed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are in some + silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence."[140] + +Of course it is not to be demanded that the southern woman exactly +reproduce the New England system of fifty years ago just described by Mrs. +Stowe. But she must learn to be entirely independent of servants in the +era of co-operation, electric dish-washers, and other helping machines, +about to begin. + +Let us see how it has been with the fathers and boys. The planting of the +old south required proportionally less cash outlay annually than any +common business that I now call to mind. The owner of 750 acres of +land--an ordinary plantation--worth $6,000, thirty slaves worth $18,000, +and mules and live-stock worth $1,000, had usually but five considerable +items of expense: the overseer with his family was "found"--to use the +then current vogue--and paid not more than $150 yearly wages; a few sacks +of salt to save the pork--a little to be given the live animals +occasionally; a few bars of iron for the plantation blacksmith shop--the +latter being furnished with bellows, anvil, tongs, screwplate, vise, and a +few other tools, all hardly amounting to $100 investment; sometimes coarse +cotton and woollen cloth for the clothes of the negroes, made by the +slave-women tailors (even in my day this cloth was, on many plantations, +spun and wove at home from the cotton and wool grown by the owner); and +the fifth item was a moderate bill of the family physician for attendance +upon the sick slaves. The whole would seldom amount to $350; and remember +the income yielding capital was $25,000. This planter paid no wages for +his labor; he bred his slaves, and all animals serving for work, food, or +pleasure;--in short, the establishment was self-supporting. The good +manager sold every year more than enough of meat, grain, and other produce +to pay the expense itemed a moment ago, and so the $1,200 from the sale of +his crop of thirty bales of cotton was often net income. + +The natural increase of slaves which I have explained above operated in +many cases to encourage wastefulness and idleness. But even in the +majority of these cases the estates more than held their own. + +Let us illustrate the change wrought by emancipation by having you to +contemplate a small middle Georgia farmer of to-day. If he employ but four +hands to his two plows, he will, in wages, fertilizers that have come into +general use since the war, purchase of meat, corn, and other supplies that +the slaves used to produce, necessarily lay out annually more than did the +planter making thirty bales as we mentioned above. If this small farmer +makes twenty bales--which is far above the average--worth, if the price +be, say, eight cents, $800--more than half of it will be needed to cover +his outlay. It is to be emphasized that as a general rule this farmer and +his boys have not yet been trained to work as steadily and diligently as +their circumstances demand of them. As the women slight in the house what +they regard as fit employment only of negroes, so the men do the same in +the farm. The whites of both sexes cling to the negro instead of making +good workers of themselves. + +In the old south money grew of itself. Now constant alertness is needed to +see that every dollar laid out comes back, if not with addition, at least +without loss. To keep from falling behind, the farmer must have a very +much higher degree of mercantile capacity than he could ever acquire under +the old system. And he and his boys ought to supplant much of the negro +labor he now employs by their own systematic and steady work. All these +necessary lessons are very hard to learn, because to do that we must first +unlearn widely different ones. + +This examination shows that the men of the new south are almost as +inadequate to the demands of the day as we found the women to be. + +I do not mean to say that our women and men have not improved at all in +their respective spheres in the last forty years. I believe that when due +allowance is made for the unavoidable effect upon them of the system into +which they were all born it must be conceded that the little improvement +which they have made is greater than what could have been reasonably +expected. But I see clearly that the habits of thought and the modes of +house and farm economy, bred first from our contact with the negro slave +and then with the negro freedman, are yet an oppressively heavy load upon +our section. + +I have now to do with a still greater evil as part of the curse of slavery +to the southern whites; which is, that it prevented the normal rise in the +section of a white labor class. If one but look steadily at developments, +either now in progress or surely impending, in Germany, France, England, +the English colonies, and the United States he sees that the workers most +of all are influencing the other classes to pursue the best policy in all +departments of government. The truth is that in every stage of society +there is the leading energy of some particular class. Let me make you +reflect over a few well-known examples. In their unremitted struggle with +the patricians, the plebeians of Rome gradually climbed out of their low +estate into complete political, civil, and social equality with the former +who had long been the constituency of the so-called republic. Some +centuries later a tacit combination of those belonging to each division of +the middle class dried all the fountains of civil disorder and made +domestic peace sure and permanent by establishing the Roman empire. Much +later employers of the free labor which had displaced slavery made +European towns democratic, and set them in such strong array against the +feudal barons that the latter were at last restrained from plundering the +new industry. The American revolution and the French revolution were each +mainly middle-class movements. By them the middle class cleared out of its +way, as far as it could, distinctions of birth, title, rank, and all other +special personal privileges. But, unawares, it put in the place of the old +hereditary lords and monopolists, known as such by everybody, a nobility +in disguise. The members of this nobility make no claim to our labor or +substance by reason of their having had such and such fathers or having +received such and such grants or patents to themselves as natural persons. +They pose as government agents in such functions as the transportation and +monetary, of which efficient, cheap, and impartial performance is vital to +the general welfare. Clandestinely they have had the law of the land made +or interpreted and the practice of government shaped each as they want it; +and sitting in their masks wherever these sovereign powers must be invoked +by producer or worker, it is these usurpers and not the legitimate public +authorities who must be applied to and given, not the just cost of the +service, but the supreme extortion possible. These masked rulers toll our +wages, profits, and property as insidiously and deeply as does indirect +compared with direct taxation. In fact they are government licensees, +levying upon us for their own benefit all the indirect taxation that we +can bear. Some--I may say, a large number--of middle-class property owners +and producers are heart and soul in strong and strengthening resistance +now forming against the tyrants they have unwittingly set up. But the +initiative and most effective elements of this benign uprising do not come +from the middle class. It was the workers who excited and kept at its +height the righteous indignation of the country that shamed the coal-trust +into decency. It is the workers who are the most influential of all that +strive to arm us with those plutocracy-destroying weapons, direct +nomination and direct legislation; and of all who demand that the +railroads pay just taxes; of all who would lay the axe at the root of +public corruption by having government resume its powers and do every one +of its duties without favor or prejudice to a single human being. It is +clear that the laborers are gathering all the anti-monopoly interests and +classes of society to their banner, and that from the steady and +increasing impulsion of these laborers, in unions and political campaigns, +industrial democracy will at last come in, to open the millennium by +keeping every man, woman, and child, except the wilfully idle and +criminal, permanently supplied with necessaries and comforts. + +Who are the laborers that are both to spur and lead us forward in this +great course? Why, the white laborers, whose interests and whose +qualifications to share in governments are the same as those of the rest +of us; who are really part and parcel of the body politic and whose sons +and daughters can be married by our sons and daughters without social +degradation to themselves or degeneration of the proud Caucasian stock in +their children. The negroes cannot do the great work we are contemplating. +They are strangers in blood. They are as yet far too low in development. +It is idle to think of making these aliens, whose highest interests are +irreconcilably antagonistic to ours and our children's, allies of the +white laborers--a point which will be treated at large in later chapters. + +To bring out the situation more clearly, suppose that instead of the eight +millions of negroes now in the south we had eight millions of native white +workers and no negroes at all. Would it not be far better for us of the +section? Would it not be far better for the anti-monopoly cause in the +north? Ought there not to be a real labor party in the south instead of +what we now see? The so-called labor party of the south has a large +percentage of leaders whose chief activity is to win positions in the +unions, in agitation, in the city and State government wherein they can +serve themselves by delivering the labor vote to corporate interests, or +doing the latter legislative or official favor--a sure symptom that the +movement is as yet merely incipient. In no northern State have the +railroads and allied corporations such complete command of nominative, +appointive, and legislative machinery as in Georgia; and it seems to me +that Georgia is but fairly representative of all the south except South +Carolina, which has advanced further in direct nomination than any other +one of the United States. In many places the people of the north are +successfully rising against the corporation oligarchs. In New York and +Michigan the latter have been made to pay some of the taxes which they had +always been dodging. In a recent Boston referendum the street railroad, +which for years had ridden roughshod over the public at will, was snowed +under, although it had the machine, all the five daily papers but one, and +the outside of that, fighting for it with might and main. Los Angeles, +followed by three or four other towns, has just made a beginning with the +_Recall_. Oregon has direct legislation. Illinois has pushed ahead with +both direct nomination and direct legislation. Cities here and there, in +very grateful contrast with the apathy prevalent in this section, have +awakened to the importance of rightly guarding the common property in +public-service franchises. I could cite many other examples which show +that the anti-plutocratic tide gathers force all over the north. Why is it +that there is this blessed insurgence against corporation misrule there, +and hardly a trace of it here? Simply because the north has and the south +has not the motor of insurgence--a real labor class, growing steadily in +zeal and organization, and rapidly increasing in numbers. + +That a southern State has no real labor class with potent influence upon +the public, puts it as far behind the most enlightened communities in +political and governmental condition, as it was with its slaves behind +them in productive condition. Such a State lacks a most essential organ of +the highest types of democracy.[141] + +To sum up: Slavery disqualified the white men and women of the south for +the domestic and business management proper to this era; and ever since +emancipation the presence of a large number of negroes available for labor +in house and on the farm, and preventing the coming in of any other labor, +has powerfully helped both races in their efforts naturally made to retain +the familiar ways of the old system. Thus the south has been sadly +retarded in her due economical rehabilitation. In the second place, it has +kept the political influence of labor at the minimum, and consequently +sent her backwards in true democracy, while England, the English +colonies, and the northern States, are slowly but surely going forward. + +These are the main things. Let me in briefest mention suggest some of +their results, which, at first blush, seem to be independent. + +Slavery engendered among the whites a disrespect for labor, which, +although now at last dying out, is still of hurtful influence. + +As negroes were always and everywhere in number sufficient to do every +task of labor, there was but little demand for labor-saving machines and +methods--a fact which prevented the southern whites from developing the +inventive faculty equally with their northern brothers. We all are +beginning to see that, except in much of agriculture and other activities +in which the process is that of nature and not of art, the future of +industry belongs more and more to the constantly improving machine. + +Think of such things as these in the brood of evils brought forth by +slavery;--agriculture primitive or superannuated in many particulars; our +entire structure of investment, production, and occupation bottomed upon +slaves, property in which could be, and was, totally destroyed by a stroke +of the pen; immigration both from Europe and the north repelled; slowness +in exploiting our water power and mines; inferior common schools, and lack +of town-meeting government due to the sparseness of the population and +their roving habits which were incident to the plantation system. I have +given some consideration to these in the "Old and New South," and I refer +you to that.[142] + +Of course had there never been any negro slavery in America we should have +escaped the brothers' war, its spilling of blood, its waste of wealth, and +the long sickness of the section unto death which has ensued. And to-day +in solid prosperity, institutions, government, and progressiveness in +everything good, the section would be abreast of the other. Nay, her +better climate, her agricultural products--especially her cotton, which +she would have learned to make with white labor--these and other resources +would, I fully believe, have by this time pushed her far into the lead. As +it actually is, she is far, far behind. She has been sorely scourged, not +for any moral guilt. + + "Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt." + +It was because she did that which the wisest and best had done--the Greeks +who gave the world culture and democracy, the Jews who gave it religion, +the Romans who gave it law and civil institutions. She really did far +better than they did. She did not enslave the free. She merely took some +of the only inveterate slaves upon earth out of lawless slavery, in which +they would have otherwise remained indefinitely without recognition of the +dearest human rights, and placed them in a far other slavery which was for +them an unparalleled rise in liberty and well-being; which was, as becomes +more and more probable with time, the only opportunity by which any +considerable portion of the negro race can ever evolve upward into the +capability of enlightened self-government. In doing this she unconsciously +antagonized the purposes of the iron-hearted powers guarding the American +union, and when the critical moment of that union came, they dashed her to +pieces. + +It will be many a year before the pathos of southern history can be fully +told. I must satisfy myself here by saying only that the curse of African +slavery to her has been of magnitude and weight incredible, and that one +cannot yet be sure when it will end. + +The title of the chapter demands that I now tell you of the blessing of +African slavery in the United States to the negro. Of course there are +many who have been born into the unequalified condemnation of every form +of slavery, which was resolutely preached for years all over the north by +conscientious men and women of great ability and influence. Such will +exclaim against me, and perhaps some of them will not even read the rest +of the chapter. But it is my note, which becomes surer and more confident +every year, that the great body of men and women shrink from every +over-positively urged dogma. I have already mentioned those who are trying +to curb the evils of drink. All the while an increasing majority of them +recognize that to assert that any use of liquor, wine, or beer is a moral +wrong, as do a noisy few in season and out of season, is too extreme to be +true or even politic. The ultra democrat will zealously justify the +assassination of Julius Caesar, while the wisest friends of the people +become more firmly convinced every century that the empire which Caesar +founded was, by reason of the circumstances, the best possible government +for the Romans of that and the succeeding times;--the surest guaranty that +the main benefits of ancient civilization should be preserved for the +human race. And as there has now and then been something of substantial +good in even absolute government, there has also been good to the slave in +his slavery. Surely it was an improvement of the captor and a bettering of +the condition of the prisoner of war, not to barbecue the latter, as was +the custom for ages, but to have him work for a master. Perhaps the +fabulist AEsop had been a slave. Terence, a great Roman dramatist, surely +had been. Horace's father had been one. It may well be true that it was +slavery that gave each one of these three immortals his opportunity. The +more familiar you become with ancient history the larger you estimate the +number of those to have been who as slaves got many of the benefits of +Greek and Roman civilization, which benefits they afterwards transmitted +to free descendants. I need not repeat what I have already told--how the +negroes in the mass were advantaged by transfer from slavery in Africa to +slavery in America. But do let me inquire, would Professor DuBois have +ever outstripped all the white children in a New England school, graduated +creditably from two American universities, studied at the university of +Berlin, acquired the degree of Master of Arts and then that of Doctor of +Philosophy, been made in sociology fellow of Harvard and assistant of the +university of Pennsylvania, become president of the American Negro +Academy, got the professorship of economics and history in Atlanta +University, and pushed forward as an author into prominent and most +respectable place; all before he was thirty-six years old--would Professor +DuBois have surpassed this brilliant career, if an "evil, Dutch trader" +had not seized his "grandfather's grandmother--two centuries ago"?[143] If +the transfer just mentioned had not been made what would now be Fred +Douglass, Booker Washington, Richard R. Wright, Professor DuBois, Bishop +Turner, and other great negroes, their good works and glory? Would Hayti +have arranged for some of its young men to be trained in farming at +Tuskegee? more especially do I ask, would negroes educated at Tuskegee be +now teaching the missionaries how to christianize the Africans of +Togoland? Who would now be arousing people north and south in behalf of +the race? and where could nine millions of blacks be found--or even half a +million--as far above the African level of to-day as ours? + +My conclusion is that the whites and the negroes of the south ought to +learn wisdom and interchange their holidays and great annual rejoicings. +The former ought to keep the anniversary of the emancipation proclamation +as the southern 4th of July, and the blacks ought to observe that day by +wearing mourning and eating bitter herbs. Further, the negroes of America +ought to celebrate the day when the Dutch ship landed the first Africans +at Jamestown as the dawn of their hopes as a people. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE BROTHERS ON EACH SIDE WERE TRUE PATRIOTS AND MORALLY RIGHT--BOTH THOSE +WHO FOUGHT FOR THE UNION, AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR THE CONFEDERACY + + +The proposition of the heading has really been demonstrated in the +foregoing chapters. I feel that the demonstration should have impressive +enforcement. It will surely be for the great good of our country if the +brothers of each section be truly convinced that those of the other were +morally right in the slavery struggle from beginning to end. + +Let us begin by noting the ambiguity of the word "right." Something may be +right in expediency, policy, or reason, and yet wrong ethically. Likewise +something may be a mistake and wrong in policy while it is right in +morals. General Sherman was a conspicuous example of the almost universal +proneness to confound right in the sense first mentioned above with it in +the other. The two are widely different--not merely in degree, but in +kind. That which is right or wrong in expediency is decided by the +understanding--by the head; that which is right or wrong ethically is +decided for every human being by his own conscience--by his heart. To try +with all my might to do a particular thing may be my highest moral duty; +to try with all your might to keep me from doing it may be yours. The +brothers who set up the southern confederacy and defended it, the brothers +who warred upon it and overturned it--they were on each side sublimely +conscientious; for every one--to use the high word of Lincoln--was doing +the right as God gave him to see it. No people ever waged a war with +deeper and more solemn conviction of duty than did our northern brothers. +Rome, rising unvanquished from every great victory of Hannibal, much as +she has been most justly lauded by foremost historians, fell behind them +in supreme effort--in undaunted perseverance in spite of disaster after +disaster until the difficulty insuperable was overcome. We of the south +should be proud of this unparalleled achievement of our brothers. Most of +all should we be proud of the complete self-abnegation and unwavering +obedience to conscience with which they waded a sea of blood, for the +welfare of future generations rather than their own. I am glad to observe +that many who most affectionately remember the lost cause have come at +last to concede without qualification that the restoration of the union by +force of arms was morally right. But I note that as yet only a few at the +north--men like Dr. Lyman Abbott, Mr. Charles F. Adams, and Professor +Wendell--have learned that the south, in all that she did in "The Great +War,"[144] was likewise morally right. To show that the confederates were +exemplary champions of a legitimate government, I need not repeat what I +have said above when I told how southern nationalization had given them a +country of their own as dear to them and as much mistress of their +consciences as the union was to the northern people. If there are those +who cannot bring themselves to allow the all-potent coercion of the +nationalization mentioned as justification, and who still think of us as +traitors and rebels, I beg them to give due consideration to the feelings +with which the southerner now looks back upon his life in the confederate +army. I call a most convincing witness to testify. I do not know a man who +ever followed what his conscience pronounced right more faithfully, who +was truer to the better traditions of the old south, and who was a more +devoted soldier in the brothers' war, nor do I know another who now draws +from every class in his community more respect for real manhood and +honesty. All who know him will believe his word against an oracle or an +angel. Here is what he said thirty-seven years after the close of the war: + + "That period of my life is the one with which I am the most nearly + satisfied. A persistent, steady effort to do my duty--an effort + persevered in in the midst of privation, hardship, and danger. If ever + I was unselfish, it was then. If ever I was capable of self-denial, it + was then. If ever I was able to trample on self-indulgence, it was + then. If ever I was strong to make sacrifices, even unto death, it was + in those days; and if I were called upon to say on the peril of my + soul, when it lived its highest life, when it was least faithless to + true manhood, when it was most loyal to the best part of man's nature, + I would answer, 'It was when I followed a battle-torn flag through its + shifting fortune of victory and defeat.' + + My comrades, how easy it is to name the word that characterizes and + strikes the keynote of that time and should explain our pride to all + the world--self sacrifice--that spirit and that conduct which raise + poor mortals nearest to divinity. Oh, God in heaven, what sacrifices + did we not make! How our very heart strings were torn as we turned + from our home, our parents, our children!... How poor we were! How + ragged! How hungry! When I recall the light-heartedness, the courage, + the cheerfulness, the fidelity to duty which lived and flourished + under such circumstances, from the bottom of my heart I thank God that + for four long years I wore, if not brilliantly, at least faithfully + and steadfastly, in camp and bivouac, in advance and retreat, on the + march and on the battlefield, the uniform of a confederate + soldier."[145] + +The passage just quoted most truly expresses the feelings with which the +southern people stood by their cause and now look back upon the support +which they gave it. In this matter their word will be taken by everybody. +Their actions before, during, and ever since the war speak louder than +their word. There can be no doubt that in founding the Confederate States +and waging the resulting war everything they did was counselled by the +most tender and enlightened conscience. Bear in mind how they clung to +Davis and how they still remember him, winning the precious eulogy + + "--he that can endure + To follow with allegiance a fallen lord + Does conquer him that did his master conquer, + And earns a place i' the story." + +Bear in mind how truly they keep Memorial Day. The love which the south +gives Davis and her dead soldiers protests to all the earth and heaven the +righteousness of her lost cause. Calmly, serenely, confidently she awaits +future judgment upon her love. It needs that all the north appreciate this +fealty as the height of heaven-climbing virtue. + +The real soldiers of each section--those who--to use a confederate +saying--were "in the bullet department," and fighting every day, learned +great regard for their foes; and when the war ended they became at once +advocates of speedy reconciliation. And the non-combatants on each side +felt far less resentment towards the actual fighters of the other than +they did towards its political leaders. It is a common error to overrate +the accomplishment of potent and ambitious men in tumultuous times. As the +world long ascribed meteorological phenomena to the mutations of the moon, +conspicuous above all things else as the apparent cause, so most people +now believe that revolutions are caused by the men who appear to be +leading. We have explained above that the only effective leaders--even of +revolutions--are those who are the most completely led by the people. To +lead, the leader must keep on the tide and let it lead him. If he makes +serious effort to balk it, he is at once stranded as a piece of drift +thrown out of the current. All of us--both those north and those south of +Mason and Dixon's line--ought to learn this truth thoroughly. The former +should correct their false judgments as to Calhoun, Toombs, Yancey, and +Davis; the latter as to Sumner, Garrison, and Phillips. It was but to be +expected that these false judgments would be cherished all through what we +may call the era of civil fury. That begins with the excitement over the +admission of California and extends to the time after the war when the +project of giving a negro constituency the balance of political power in +each southern State was abandoned. But now as the brothers can look back +upon those evil days with at least the beginning of dispassionate +calmness, the task of convincing the whole people of each section that the +more prominent figures of the other in the era mentioned were all true men +and patriots, should be pushed forward with his whole might by every one +who loves his country. It is not demanded that we claim too much for them. +To begin illustrating: Toombs's Tremont Temple lecture on slavery is such +an able and powerful defence of the south that its reputation must forever +increase. Yet as we consider it now we see that what he believed with all +his heart to be the perpetual pillar and weal of his community was in fact +its woe and ruin. We see, as to Calhoun, that if he had but given the +resources of southern slavery against the implacable oppugnancy of free +labor, roused for decisive combat, the sure and marvellous vision with +which he searched the innermost nature of money, he would have had to +acknowledge that the proud structure of southern society was wholly +builded upon sands. The rains descended and the floods beat, and we saw +the great fall. Of course we must admit that had our leaders been endowed +with unerring prescience they ought to have warned us, and striven heart +and soul for compensated emancipation. I need merely allude to State +sovereignty, treated fully above. We of the south now see that though in +advocating it we showed that the fathers were with us, and thus got the +better of the argument, yet that the north was right in historical fact, +and right also as to the true interest and welfare of America. Thus I have +indicated some important acknowledgments which we of the south must make +to our brothers of the north. Now I must state some that they must make to +us. + +The root-and-branch abolitionists and many following their lead +interpreted the statement in the declaration of independence that all men +are created equal and with inalienable liberty as both intentional and +actual condemnation of the slavery then existing in our country. They shut +their eyes to the significant fact that the same document published to the +world, as one of the causes justifying the solemn act therein proclaimed, +that the king had "excited domestic insurrections amongst us"; which means +he had instigated the slaves to rise against their masters. Many of the +signers owned slaves then and to the end of their lives afterwards. +Palpably the declaration did not mean to say that the negroes in America +were unjustly held in slavery, but did mean to say that inciting them--as +John Brown with the approval of Phillips, Garrison, and such, afterwards +sought to do--to gain their liberty by insurrection was inhuman and +atrocious. These root-and-branch abolitionists confidently alleged that +slavery in America was proscribed by the christian religion. Yet Jesus, +the founder, who definitely reprehended every particular sin, never once +denounced slavery. Paul, or some one else, whom the canon accepts as +speaking with the authority of Jesus, says: "All who are in the position +of slaves should regard their masters as deserving of the greatest +respect, so that the name of God, and our teaching may not be maligned. +Those who have christian masters should not think less of them because +they are brothers, but on the contrary they should serve them all the +better, because those who are to benefit by their good work are dear to +them as their fellow-christians. Those are the things to insist upon in +your teaching. Any one who teaches otherwise, and refuses his assent to +sound instruction--_the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ_--and to the +teaching of religion, is puffed up with conceit, not really knowing +anything, but having a morbid craving for discussions and arguments."[146] + +The passage last quoted--to which several others from the new testament, +almost as strong, can be added--demonstrates that christianity did not +disapprove of slavery. Further, as I have already suggested, the slavery +not rebuked by Jesus and his apostles was mainly that of kin in blood and +race, of those who had been in a measure free themselves or descendants of +the free. The slaves of the south were far remote in blood, and their +native condition so bad that American slavery was for them elevation and +great improvement. + +The new testament, the declaration of independence, and the federal +constitution--surely three very respectable authorities, in America at +least--stand together in solid phalanx. They clearly demonstrate that the +charge that southern slavery was heinously wrong in itself, and that the +masters were wicked man-stealers and kidnappers, made for a long while in +every corner of the north, was mere opprobrium and abuse. Both sections +ought to learn that there was nothing in negro slavery to shock the moral +sense, but that on the contrary it was in its general effect of the utmost +beneficence to the slave. Both ought to learn also that the white-hot zeal +with which the institution was fought was due mainly to these things: + +1. Free labor had long been in an uncompromising hand-to-hand struggle +with slave labor. Years before this commenced the employing class had +subconsciously divined it was far more profitable to hire the laborer only +when his work was needed, and then let him go until he was needed again. +The worker with the advance of democracy had become more and more hostile +to a system coercing his labor and denying him all political and civil +rights. The co-operation of employer and laborer had expelled slavery of +white men from Europe. The feeling towards slavery had become one of +decided opposition. + +2. In America the opposition to slavery was powerfully re-enforced, first, +by the new cause the latter gave in competing with free labor for the +unsettled public domain, and then in its operation to nationalize the +south into a separate federation. With this combined the growing +conception among the northern people of the negro as a man who had reached +the stage of development characterizing the typical white. This huge +mistake, hugged to their bosoms and championed with unflagging zeal by the +ablest and most influential root-and-branch abolitionists, had a +prodigious propagandic effect. It identified the cause of the negro slave, +whom evolution had not yet made ready for liberty, with that of the +oppressed European who had been long ready for it; and consequently that +cause was continuously advocated with the passion which the French +revolution had started against human inequality. The root-and-branch +abolitionists at last excited a pseudo-moral paroxysm among thousands at +the north and kept it increasing for a long while. + +Facts which cannot now be gainsaid plainly justify me in denying that +conscientious conviction was the real primary motive. The northern and +southern churches split, all the wisest and best of the former standing +against, all those of the latter for slavery. You must see that their +moral convictions were secondary, not primary motives; that some superior +power had given to one side to regard slavery as wrong and to the other to +regard it as right; that it really had given the two sides differing +consciences. If you but invoke the universal history of mankind this fact +now under consideration will cease to appear marvellous. You will find it +to be the rule that the struggle for existence develops in every community +an instinct which resistlessly prompts to the maintenance of its great +economic interest. This instinct is the special preserver of the family, +of the neighborhood, of the country. It is not strange that that which +gives sustenance and comfort to one's family, and what he sees all the +best of his neighbors using as he does, will seem unquestionably right to +him. It is not strange that, in such a serious conflict of interest as the +intersectional one of dividing a vast empire between such fell +competitors as free labor and slave labor, each side will differ +diametrically in conscience as to right and wrong. Also it is not strange +that they should lose temper, shower abuse upon their opponents, and fill +the land with mutual accusations of heinous moral offences. + +It is just as far wrong to regard the controversy between anti- and +pro-slavery men--which was at bottom but a quarrel between north and south +at first over the division of the Territories between the free labor +system and the slave labor system, and later over the other question +whether a slave republic should divide the continent with the United +States--as a contest over a moral question, as it would be to make either +the American or the French revolution such a contest. All three--the +intersectional struggle as to slavery and the two revolutions--were mainly +impelled by a desire of each side in every one to better or hold on to its +material resources--that is, the leading impulsion was economic. Of course +the combatants on each side claimed that they themselves were right and +their adversaries wrong in morals. The rencounter between free labor and +slave labor was very much like that now on between capitalists and labor +organizations. Note how each side denounces the conduct of the other, +alleging it to be against moral justice. The most superficial observer +discerns that the real cause of difference between them is not one of +conscience, but one of interest. We ought to understand that the +crimination of the root-and-branch abolitionist and the recrimination of +the fire-eater were each but stage thunder. The southern master must be +wholly exonerated from the charge that in working his slave he committed +moral offence against the dearest American rights; the claim for the +African, who was in a far lower circle of development, of equal civil and +political privileges with the white must be disallowed; and it be fully +conceded that the southern people, leaders and all, were but doing their +conscience-commanded duty throughout. Also we of the south must learn that +the root-and-branch abolitionist, even in his wildest moments--Sumner +refusing in the United States senate to show respect to Butler's gray +hairs, Wendell Phillips degrading Washington below Toussaint, Garrison +denouncing the slavery-protecting constitution as a covenant with death +and an agreement with hell, John Brown's raid into Virginia--was just as +conscientious as Robert Lee was when he was defending the soil of his +native State. They were each irresistibly constrained by the powers +working to save the union to think his particular action right and the +highest patriotism. + +When the quarrel is over, when the broil and the feud have been fought out +and the survivors have shaken hands, when the lawsuit has become a thing +of the past and the litigants have renewed their old relations, no wise +and good man keeps repeating the accusations of bad faith and of +unrighteous conduct which he passionately hurled against his adversary +during the variance. Rather he confesses to himself, "I wronged him when I +said those hot words;" and his repentance does not bring complete peace +until he has found his brother and taken all of them back. + +If it only could be, the nation ought to have a great reunion, a feast of +reconcilement, where, with proper solemnities, the people of each section, +with their forefathers and leaders, should be fully and finally exculpated +as to everything done for or against slavery by the people of the other +section. It is plain that both ought to forget and forgive. They ought to +do still more. They ought to compete each in utmost effort to vindicate +the favorites and loved ones of the other the more intelligently, and to +admire and praise them the more enthusiastically. This would be to bring +the millennium nearer, and give our country "a nobleness in record upon" +all others. It only needs for this consummation to cast aside the remnant +of greatly diminished prejudice, and make a brief study of a small volume +of material evidence and of the ordinary principles which guide the +conduct of the good citizen. Such study will show that southerner and +northerner throughout their fell encounter have each the very highest +claims to the respect and love of the entire nation. + +What a golden deed it was of President McKinley when, December 14, 1898, +fully using a rare opportunity, he spake in his high place to the members +of the Georgia legislature this message of reunion: + + "Sectional lines no longer mar the map of the United States. Sectional + feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other. Fraternity + is the national anthem, sung by a chorus of forty-five States and our + Territories at home and beyond the seas. The union is once more the + common altar of our love and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice. The + old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories, which your + sons and ours have this year added to its sacred folds. What cause we + have for rejoicing, saddened only because so many of our brave men + fell on the field or sickened and died from hardship and exposure, and + others returning bring wounds and disease from which they will long + suffer. The memory of the dead will be a precious legacy, and the + disabled will be the nation's care. + + Every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a + tribute to American valor. And while when those graves were made we + differed widely about the nature of this government, these differences + have been settled by the arbitrament of arms. The time has now come, + in the evolution of sentiment and feeling, under the providence of + God, when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you the + care of the graves of the confederate soldiers. The cordial feeling + now happily existing between the north and south prompts this + gracious act. If it needs further justification, it is found in the + gallant loyalty to the union and the flag so conspicuously shown in + the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of these heroic dead." + +By the favor given Fitzhugh Lee, Joe Wheeler, and other old confederates, +and his earnest and successful efforts for universal amnesty to all who +had helped our cause, Mr. McKinley had already won the hearts of the +southern people. This speech increased our love a hundred fold. We +repeated the "soft words" over and over, companioning them with + + "O they banish our anger forever + When they laurel the graves of our dead." + +On each one of our three subsequent Memorial Days during his life he was +thought of as tenderly as the precious dead. And since the death of +Jefferson Davis there has been no sorrow of the south equal to that over +his assassination. This is the age of funerals that crown with supreme +popular honor the doers of high deeds for country and race. The imposing +obsequies given the president, the demonstrations in his own section, and +those in foreign lands, have rarely been outdone. But he had a greater +glory. It was the genuine lamentation over him that day by reconciled +brothers and sisters in every southern household. You that know history +better, tell me when and where a whiter and sweeter flower was ever laid +upon a coffin. + +Let all of us on each side of the old dividing line strive without ceasing +to give the good work which the great peacemaker begun so well its fit +consummation. + +And replacing hate and anger with love, fiction with fact, and false +doctrine with true, let the people of the north and the people of the +south join heads, consciences, and hearts to ascertain what is our duty +both to negro and white, and then join hands and do that duty. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE RACE QUESTION--GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY + + +1. Dense fogs from various sources have settled over this subject. The +root-and-branch abolitionists have made many believe that emancipation of +the slaves was the great object of the north in the brothers' war. The +authors and defenders of the three amendments--especially of the +fifteenth--have made many others believe that the inferiority of the +southern negro is the effect of American slavery; that the cause having +been removed by emancipation he became at once ready and well prepared for +the exercise of political privileges; and that the practical denial to him +of this exercise is a heinous crime of the southern whites. Politicians +want southern negro ballots in national conventions and the northern negro +vote in elections. The bounty, both public and private, founding, +sustaining, and multiplying colleges, schools, and other negro educational +institutions, finds a growing host of beneficiaries--such as site-owners, +who scheme to sell for two prices, those who want to be presidents, +principals, professors, teachers, even janitors and floor-scrubbers, +schoolbook publishers, and still others--who would keep it copiously +flowing; and so they all magnify the ability of the typical negro and the +benefit to him of the institutions mentioned. Respectable and influential +magazines and newspapers, with an increasing number of negro readers, +really believe that very many more can be added by a little effort, and so +they champion what these readers favor. Persuasive speakers and writers +like Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, unconsciously influenced either by +employers who would always have a wage-depressing lever at command, or by +those who would have Cuffee do what they ought themselves to do, overrate +the importance of negro labor as a southern resource. And the last fog +makers whom I shall mention are the inveterate optimists--amiable beyond +expression--who will not admit that there is now any serious menace to +either race in the south. + +The several fogs enumerated overlay one another in an aggregate too opaque +for the uncleared eye to pierce. As examples of their obscuring effect, +consider anything said in the census as to the negro, and the articles +"Negro Education," "Negro in America," and especially "Hayti" in the +Encyclopedia Americana lately published. The authors of the fifteenth +amendment, in making voters and rulers of late negro slaves, repeated what +had been done in Hayti. It seems therefore that the Encyclopedia must tell +nothing of the island but what is good. So we read in the relevant article +that it abolished slavery in 1804, being "the first country to rid +humanity of such a sad practice;" that there education "is compulsory and +gratuitous," a sixth of the revenues being devoted to it, and the most +pleasant things concerning religion, liberal naturalization practice, +natural and artificial products, railroads, telegraph, and telephone. One +without other information would surely think the community greatly +advanced and blessed. Its true condition is thus told in Brockhaus by +somebody who does not swear by the fifteenth amendment: "It may be said in +general that the country is sparsely populated, partly because of +incessant civil wars, partly because of a high infant death rate."[147] + +These fogs must be lifted. Great harm to each race will follow if we +persist in keeping the facts concealed. + +2. Do not confound the feeling that you are different from Jew, European, +protestant, catholic, absolutist, socialist, anarchist, or any other +white, with the feeling that you are different from negroes; for to do +this is to keep you from all clear thinking upon our present subject. The +former are all of our own race, and we can and do intermarry with them to +the improvement of our population. If the per cent of negroes was no +greater in the south than in the north, fusion could not be a very grave +matter; for should it become complete, our lily-white would not be +diminished by the fraction of a shade. But to absorb the eight millions of +them now in our section would make us chocolate, if not mulatto. Their +color is the smallest racial objection. Although their schooling for two +centuries and more in American slavery has elevated them--as Mr. +Tillinghast proves--far above what they were in native slavery, still +their cranial capacity, brain convolutions, and moral, intellectual, and +social development--inherited without fault of theirs--from West African +ancestors, are still greatly inferior to ours. Remote generations of our +forefathers were much lower than the present American negroes, as Darwin +admits in the oft quoted passage, describing his first sight of the +Fuegians. We should never forget that the Caucasian was once on a level +with those Fuegians. The negroes when they came to America were little +better. And yet they have gone up so much higher, it is plain that +evolution, if only permitted to work in a proper environment, will do for +them what it has done for us. + +But the whites cannot consent to intermarriage. That would greatly benefit +the negroes. While some who have never had good opportunity of actual +observation confidently contend that there are no backward or lower +races, we southerners have noted all our lives that a very great majority +of the negroes who climb above the level and prosper in occupation, have a +large admixture of white blood. It would be an enormous rise for the mass +if fusion were assured. But for us--why, we should disinherit our children +of their share in the grand destiny of the Caucasian race if we made +average negroes their fathers or mothers. + +Southern dread of amalgamation is not to be scouted as a mere bugbear. +Think of the half-breeds that lined all the border between the States and +the Indians; of how the whites have mixed with native races in Mexico, +Central and South America; of white and negro intermingling in Cuba, +Hayti, Jamaica, in the United States, and especially in the south. Think +of whites and negroes now legally married and marrying in the neighboring +States of the Union. In 1902, eight white women were living with negro +husbands in Xenia, Ohio;[148] and there were children of all these mixed +marriages except one.[149] Consider also that prominent negroes advocate +these marriages. Douglass had a white wife. He preached that the American +negro must set before himself assimilation as his true goal. Professor +DuBois is really a disciple of Douglass, as appears from some of his +utterances. We give in a footnote what another prominent negro has +recently said in public.[150] The moment that the negro became an +influential factor in southern politics, a real agitation against the +anti-intermarriage laws would begin. There would come a small number of +negroes, controlling votes, of so much property and respectability that +their children would be regarded as eligible matches by some of the poorer +and more destitute whites. Marriages between such, solemnized on a visit +to a State permitting, would occur. And our laws last mentioned would be +more and more evaded and their repeal become gradually more probable. When +they had won political equality with the patricians, the Roman plebeians +repealed the prohibition of intermarriage which the former had stubbornly +maintained. These two orders were of the same race. Therefore +intermarriage could not be the boon to the plebeians that it would now be +to the southern negro, lifting him up as it would do. If he has +opportunity, he will struggle for it more resolutely than the plebeians +did. A small number of negroes have already been assimilated in America, +and a few more are still to be assimilated, as I shall explain later on. +This sure deliverance from the destruction which now threatens is more and +more sought after by the intelligent few. And if the vote of the negroes +was allowed to count, it would not be long until, under the example and +appeal of their leaders, all of them would be making for that haven of +refuge. Mongrelism beats upon the border all around the south; it +threatens to burst forth from an exhaustless source within. We know we +must keep it out as Holland does the ocean. Subconsciously discerning that +fusion would probably follow the entrance of the negro into government, +the whites have made of the race primary and other measures _de facto_ +disfranchising him, dikes against the filthy waters of mongrelism which +they would not have to wash over themselves. This is not because we hate +the negro. We love and cherish him. It is not to be demanded of us that we +sacrifice ourselves, our children, and our children's children for his +sake. We will gladly do all that friends--nay, that near relatives--can +with justice ask of one another, to better his condition and rescue him. +We cannot give him political power at the cost of our degeneration. + +I would enforce the foregoing contents of this section with these +profoundly true and very forcible words of a northern man, now residing in +Columbia, South Carolina: + + "A word about race hatred, race revulsion, or race antipathy. Many + people in the north believe the devil is the author of it, and some + people in the south are more devoted to it than to religion. Race + antipathy is really a race instinct, a moral anti-toxin developed by + nature in the individual whose environment involves constant and close + contact with an inferior race in large numbers. It works for the + salvation of the purity of the superior race."[151] + +Professor DuBois says that "legal marriage is infinitely better than +systematic concubinage and prostitution."[152] And some writers seem to +think it would be well to coerce miscegenators to legitimate their +relations by intermarrying. An innocent girl--a maid--undone; all good men +and women are agreed that her seducer should be made to marry her.[153] +But that is only where the marriage would be tolerated by society. Thus it +would not make man and wife of parties to an incestuous liaison. No +moralist contends that one who has received a favor from a public woman is +under obligation to become her husband. The miscegenation common is that +between white men and promiscuous black women. How idle is the attempt to +put these cases on a par with that of the ruin of a virtuous woman. And +Professor DuBois could not have rightly weighed the words in which he +represents them to be as criminal as those horrible offences which +especially provoke lynching; that is, that the negro woman who consented +most willingly to the embraces of her master was as foully wronged by him +as her mistress would be by a slave who outraged her against her +will.[154] No. Intermarriage of these mixed lovers is not demanded by any +principle of justice. But the public weal does demand that such a +tremendous evil as amalgamation be kept off by the surest and most +decisive measures. It is playing with plague and curse unspeakable for us +of the south to permit the existence of any condition which tends even in +the slightest degree to legalize intermarriage.[155] + +3. Writers still under the spell of the root-and-branch abolitionists who +were wont to exalt Toussaint, the Haytian general, above our Washington, +strain hard to conceal the real cause of the lamentable conditions now +prevailing in Hayti and San Domingo. One tells us that because of the many +mountains, there being no railroad system, separate communities are +defended by almost impregnable natural barriers, and as neighboring +peoples are hereditary enemies, there is always war somewhere. The remedy +recommended is to build railroads in the island as the English have done +in Jamaica. Another writer tells us that we must not jump to the +conclusion that all the inhabitants of San Domingo are degraded negroes; +that while the population of the interior are sunk in ignorance, +superstition, and barbarism, yet in the capital and the coast towns there +are some people of apparently lily-white strain, well educated, speaking +two or three languages, who supply the mulatto republic with generals and +political leaders. The masses of these Dominicans are very patriotic, and +would indeed do finely if they were not divided into hostile parties by +self-seeking agitators. And you may consult many others who keep back the +real explanation. There is one cardinal fact which stands forth in the +history of Hayti as prominently as slavery does in the train of American +events which brought on the brothers' war. It is this: soon after the +outbreak of the French revolution the mulattoes were accorded political +privileges, and then a little later--it was in 1794--France equalized the +negroes of her colonies just freed with the whites in political and civil +rights. This made the negroes of Hayti, who were in intelligence and +development somewhat below those of the south when the latter were +emancipated, full-fledged self-governing republicans. The whites were but +few. What of them were not massacred at once by the blacks fled for their +lives. The history of both the Haytian and the Dominican republic (the +latter achieving its independence in 1844) is the same. Their people make +a hell on earth of the most beautiful and fertile of islands. As slavery +was plainly the cause of the southern confederacy, the grant of political +power to the mulattoes and negroes not at all qualified to use it is just +as plainly the cause and sole author of chronic civil war and anarchy in +Hayti and San Domingo. + +This enfranchisement of semi-barbarians was from the 'prentice hand of a +new republic, without any experience in free institutions. The English did +far better when they emancipated the Jamaica negro by the act of 1833. +They gave him full protection of his liberty, person, and contract and +property rights. Five sixths of the 800,000 of its present population are +colored people or blacks. These--to quote the Encyclopedia +Americana--"have no share in the government whatever." It further says: +"The Jamaica negroes are fairly good laborers when well fed; the menial +work of the island is performed by them, and they are regarded as +cheerful, honest, and respectful servants." + +This happy condition of quiet and content is not due to the fact that the +railroads prevent settlement of the negroes in separate neighboring +communities to quarrel and fight with one another; but it is because the +English never allowed them to get the taste of blood as the French +permitted to their brothers in Hayti; they have not been incited by +unseasonable political power to license and riot. + +The negroes of Jamaica are evidently bettering in condition slowly. They +need only enough of Booker Washingtons to rise much faster. I beg +attention to this comparison of Jamaica and Hayti, made by a well-informed +negro, a native of the former, who lived there until some nine years ago, +and who has lately lived several years in Hayti:[156] + + "They [the negroes of Jamaica] aim at rising, but many make the + mistake of not rising, _in_ but _out_ of labor: the most intelligent + flock to the professions, civil service, &c. Few turn their steps to + what is for the real upbuilding of the country, agriculture, that for + which it is best adapted. + + "The people of Hayti and San Domingo are of a political turn of mind, + and sacrifice everything for politics, or are made to do so. That + island produces as fine coffee and cocoa as can be found anywhere, but + the most intelligent keep out and deprive these crops of scientific + cultivation." + +The negroes of Hayti and San Domingo spurred by their politics into +perpetual fighting and bloodshed; the negroes of Jamaica peaceful and ripe +for industrial training, which it seems the English have resolved to give +them--if Booker Washington had to choose one of the two islands for his +future activity, do you not know that he would decide he could do great +things in Jamaica and nothing in the other? + +The thirteenth amendment emancipated the slaves instantly and not +gradually, the fourteenth made them complete citizens of the United States +and of the particular State wherein they reside, and the fifteenth +practically conferred unlimited suffrage upon them. The Hayti, and not the +Jamaica, precedent was followed. The brothers that had conquered were +blind from civil fury: and they had been brought by the root-and-branch +abolitionists into full persuasion that the southern negroes were ready +for and entitled to these high privileges. By the amendments they +confidently tried to railroad the African slave in one instant of time up +the long steep to the topmost Caucasian who had established liberty and +self-government over a continent, and made it perpetual. We pray that they +be forgiven, for they knew not what they were doing. Had the white +population of the south been at the time as disproportionate to the black +as it was in Hayti in 1794, it would also have been massacred. But the +section was full of late confederate soldiers. When the fates had decided +against the dear cause for which they had fought for four years they +accepted peace in good faith. Now their conquerors turned loose a horde of +black plunderers to despoil the little that war had left. When I read +Professor Brown's inability to say whether the work of the Ku-Klux was +justifiable or not,[157] I thought of Christ's asking if it was right to +do good on the sabbath day. + +The lesson to be learned here is that while it is now too late to make the +thirteenth amendment what it ought to have been, and there is perhaps no +need to alter the fourteenth, yet there must be abrogation of the +fifteenth as to the great mass of southern negroes. In fact this has +really come already through the white primary. Booker Washington is a +great, a decisive authority on this question. He counsels the negroes to +eschew politics. This is wise. It is the solid interest of the negro +masses that they accept the inevitable; just as the south gave up slavery +when we could hold on to it no longer. + +4. The southern negroes have split into what I shall roughly distinguish +as an upper and a lower class. The former includes property owners and +such as are in higher occupations, trades, and professions. I do not +believe that the entire class contains three per cent, but I shall take it +to be five per cent of the whole negroes in the section. Exact accuracy +here is not important. It needs only to be remembered that the lower class +outnumbers the other many times over. They are moving in different +directions. The dominant inclination of the upper class is towards +incorporation as citizens, exercising all the rights of the white. The +dominant inclination of the lower class is towards segregation in their +own circles. A true representative of the former would always travel in a +white railroad car, while a true representative of the other is perfectly +content with the shabbiest Jim Crow, if the whites be kept out of it. +Thousands in the south never think of any negroes but those of the lower, +thousands in the north never think of any but those in the upper class. +The lower class subsists mainly upon agricultural, domestic, and day +labor. There is a rural and urban section of each one of the two. The +rural section of the upper class has little promise of permanence and +growth, but its urban section seems to have securer foothold. For a while +this urban section will probably increase and rise in condition--both +slowly. This upper class is now steadily sending some of its members from +country and town, to settle in the north. As I read the signs its destiny +is ultimate dispersion over the entire country and gradual disappearance. +The lower class settles downwards steadily. The outlook for it is gloomy +in the extreme. + +5. Somewhere about 1890--which year we may regard as approximately +beginning the manufacturing era of the South--many whites in the section +had broken with the old ways and methods and resolved to substitute their +own for negro labor as far as possible. These awakened men and women +multiply. They are pushing the lower class out of all rural labor, and +both classes out of agriculture; and they are also pushing some of the +upper class out of the trades and more important occupations in both town +and country. Evidently the powers have decreed that the labor class of the +south shall be white and homogeneous with that of the north. These powers +who delivered the white laborers of the west from the Chinese will also +deliver the white laborers of the south from the negroes. + +6. There is soon to be a New Industrial South, in which the most advanced +machinery and laborers of the very highest skill are to be chief factors. +A little later there is to be a still more important New Agricultural +South. In this, the empirical restorative methods of the Chinese, which +Liebig, in his day, showed to be ahead of the world, must be far +surpassed. Economy of the enormous mass of fertile elements now washing +into the sea; adequate exploitation of the nitrogen of the air and of all +accessible mineral elements needed; scientific dairy industry, stock +rearing, fruit culture, and all related branches; farmers of the most +efficient training, and laborers whose deft hands are the proper +instruments of the strongest brains--all these must combine to give the +south that perfect intensive culture which she will add to her blessings +of climate and soil in order to supply the fast growing demand of all the +world outside for her especial products. Further, as everything now seems +to indicate, the southern yield of the more important minerals and metals +will lead that of the entire country. Further again, the bulk of +transcontinental railroad traffic must be across the south on snow-free +routes, and the upbuilding which in time will follow from this is as yet +incalculable. And when the inter-ocean canal connects us with the Pacific +trade--what new impetus will this give to our development! What needs and +opportunities there will then be for skilled labor, for inventive talent, +for managerial ability, for every element of a most highly organized +community of unwontedly many diversified prospecting interests. The demand +will be for a vast population of the very best strain and breed, knowing +the best methods of physical, moral, and self-subsisting education of +their children, out of whom will come the best of all workers and +producers. To attempt to do the required tasks of the new south of the +near future and hold our own against the competition of the world--to try +to do these with negro laborers, negro farmers, negro producers, negro +employers, would be like substituting the ox-wagon for the present +railroad freight train. Nay, it would be more like one with a wooden leg, +and a millstone around his neck, offering to run against a trained racer. +The negro laborer, farmer, manufacturer, and contractor show more clearly +every day that they are hopelessly outclassed in the struggle with white +competitors. As a body where they now are they are becoming useless and an +incubus. They will soon be still more in the way, and a more serious +hindrance to southern development. They keep back the immigration which is +especially called for. That is the immigration of northern and European +farmers, producers, and manufacturers of all kinds to teach us their +advanced methods, and the most skilled labor in every department to +stimulate with example our native white labor to its highest +accomplishment. The northern people would come south very largely if there +were no negroes here. Their desire to come increases steadily, and so does +our desire to have them come. The whites of both sections naturally +co-operate more and more earnestly to effect their joint wishes. The +disinclination of the United States supreme court to overturn the recent +anti-negro amendments of the constitutions of southern States, and the +palpably growing favor showed these amendments at the north are very +significant signs that the south is to be made more to the liking of +northern settlers. + +Since the last sentence was written that court has ruled it to be a crime, +punishable severely, to hold one to the performance of a contract to pay +his debt by laboring for you.[158] The average negro has no resource but +credit on the faith of such a contract. So soon as it becomes generally +known that he cannot be lawfully held to its performance, the credit will +be denied. As has been suggested to me by an observant and far-seeing man, +the decision overturns the main pillar of the negro's subsistence. It will +powerfully favor northern immigration, as well as the substitution of +white for black labor--that is, if it is vigorously enforced. + +7. I believe that the two races together, in the same community as they +are now in the south, are oil and water. Meditate the course and portent +of these facts. Immediately upon emancipation the negroes set up their own +churches and schools; they manifested approval of the separate passenger +car for themselves, politely hinting in season that the whites ought to be +kept out of it; and they influenced the planter to remove their cabins out +of sight and hearing of the Big House. They showed a great +disinclination, the men to do agricultural work by the year for standing +wages, the women to hire as house servants. It was some while before the +whites really recognized this drift of the negro towards segregation, when +many of them--especially the wives and mothers--gave the rein to much +unreasonable resentment. Now, if you but know how to look, you will find +everywhere the proofs of deepening antagonism. The black driver will not +see even a white lady--not to mention a man--on the crossing, but he will +always see a negro of either sex. The face of the white inconveniently +stepping aside flushes with momentary anger. If your colored servant tells +you there is a lady at the door you may know it is a negro woman; he never +calls a "white 'oman" a lady. A negro woman is prone to make the most +prominent white lady give the street. In Atlanta, a negro man or a white +boy cannot safely go at night the former through the factory white +settlement, the latter through Summer Hill, a negro residence quarter. I +have been informed that where the mill operatives of Anderson, South +Carolina, have their cottages, there is conspicuously posted, "Nigger, +don't let the sun go down on you here." I hear that the same is true of +certain places in the Texas Panhandle; also that a negro settlement in the +Indian territory displays a similar warning to the white man.[159] Parties +of black and white children meeting on unfrequented streets of Atlanta +nearly always exchange opprobrious language, often throw stones at one +another, and sometimes fight--a proof so significant that, whenever I see +it, it always makes me serious. The most decided change from old times +that I note is that white society everywhere proscribes mixed sexual +intercourse and the procreation of mulattoes with rapidly increasing +severity. The advocate of mixed marriages is more and more regarded as a +fiend. The white woman seized by a negro man--how gladly would she change +place with the victim of the torturing savage or of the tiger that would +mangle and eat her alive! This menace is everywhere, and naturally it is +magnified by excited imagination. It increases in fact. The trial of +negroes for capital offences was given the superior court of Georgia in +1850. From then until the end of the brothers' war but two cases of rape +of white women by negroes are in the supreme court reports;[160] and I +never heard of but two other cases occurring in that time. But there have +been many since. It steadily becomes more frequent. Women more and more +dread to be left alone. And now there is hardly a man in the Black Belt +who, when he is to be a night away from wife, daughters, mother, and +sisters, without help at call, does not have uncomfortable thoughts of the +sooty desecrator. The increasing effect of these multiplying outrages and +the increasing horror which they cause is proved by a fact which ought to +receive more intelligent recognition from everybody. This fact is that +lynching of a negro for rape, and lately for other crimes of violence +against whites, whether in the south or in the north, seems to be every +time marked with a greater outburst of popular fury. The public grows more +decidedly anti-negro. They give as little heed to the appeals of the +papers in these matters as they do to the editorials always advocating the +projects of the machine and corporations. The mob sweeps aside the +military. The military will not load its rifles. If they were loaded it +would probably refuse to fire, or would fire into the air. A few exclaim +against lawlessness, while it is plain that the great mass of the whites +do not really condemn in their hearts. + +Let us try to understand the real cause of these things. The plainest +parallel that occurs to me is the riots and violence excited by attempts +to execute the fugitive slave law. The greatest of our southern statesmen +misunderstood. What they thought to be lawlessness was in fact the +struggle of nature by which the social organism of the United States +expelled all cause of dissolution. These hostile demonstrations of the day +against negroes are, as they seem to me, far other than acts of +unenlightened and ignorant race prejudice, to which some writers ascribe +them. They indicate, I think, another struggle of nature to expel a +foreign and death-breeding substance out of the American body politic; +they are each the protest of the self-preserving instincts against keeping +the negro with us to counteract our progress, to debase our politics, to +corrupt our blood, to injure us more than even successful secession could +have done. How aptly has Matthew Arnold said, "O man, how true are thine +instincts, how overhasty thine interpretation of them!" + +8. Plainly the disparity of the negro in the deadly struggle with the +white over every resource of subsistence fast becomes greater; plainly +does his stay in the south more and more injure both sections; plainly +under the effects of hard life, growing idleness and growing crime, +increasing ravages of disease, and the naturally engendered feeling of +helplessness, the average negro in the lower class gravitates downwards; +plainly this negro ought to have, in a sphere of his own, opportunity and +stimulus for self-recovery and progress. Plainly whites and negroes ought +to be separated. The latter seriously clog the evolution of the desired +southern labor class, and the southern whites completely exclude the +negroes from public life. The two are really each different communities in +juxtaposition, but not united. You may think of them as plants, one of +which has a diseased root, and the other has its top kept in the dark and +out of the sun. Both these evils result unavoidably from keeping the two +races together. So let us give the negro his own State in our union. That +will allow the root of the one plant to get well, and it will give the top +of the other permanently to the sun. + +We are rich enough and have land enough to give the negro this State, +which is his due from us. His especial need is to exercise political and +civil privileges, in his own community, all the way up from town meeting +to congress. + +If something like this is not done it is extremely probable that the great +mass of the lower class of the negroes will die out. Let not this crime be +committed by the American nation. + +9. We should be extremely liberal to the negro in education--in primary, +in industrial, and also in the higher. Especially ought we to combine the +second with the first, and give it the lead for both races. + +10. All the southern states should at once by proper constitutional and +legal provisions substitute judicial for mob lynching. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE RACE QUESTION--THE SITUATION IN DETAIL + + +The distinction between the two classes of southern negroes, glanced at in +the last chapter, is to be always kept in mind--at the beginning, in the +middle, and at the end, of our discussion. Its importance commands that we +say something of it here. Consider how enormously the two differ in +numbers. Five per cent of these negroes, that is, some four hundred +thousand, in the upper; ninety-five per cent, that is, seven million and +four hundred thousand, in the lower class. The latter, being nineteen +times as large as the other, first demands attention. + +In the country many of the men are croppers. A group of negroes--generally +parents and children--do the labor of preparation, cultivation, and +gathering, while the owner contributes the land, necessary animals, and +feed for the latter. The croppers get half the crop, and the land owner +half. The latter retains out of their half whatever he has advanced the +croppers. The advances must be limited with firmness, otherwise they will +cause loss. These croppers are the great bulk of the agricultural +laborers. So few of the men work for standing wages that they need not be +noticed. In the towns the men subsist upon day labor, the pay of which +ranges from 50 cents to $1.25. It hardly averages 80 cents. Some of the +women, both in country and town, take places as house servants and nurses +at weekly wages that vary from $1 to $2 with board. The growing +disinclination of the women to these places is much stronger in the +country than in town. In country and town the women do laundry for the +whites at an average price per family of a dollar a week; and they get +jobs of sewing, cleaning kitchen utensils, scrubbing, etc. In the country +these women do some field labor, sometimes plowing, often hoeing. If +trained in childhood they make expert cotton-pickers. But the women +agricultural workers steadily decrease in number. + +The negro has inherited from a thousand generations of forefathers, bred +in the humid and enervating tropical West African climate, a laziness +which is the extreme contrary of Caucasian energy and enterprise.[161] +Thus we are told of him in Jamaica, "In many cases a field negro will not +work for his employer more than four days a week. He may till his own plot +of ground on one of the other days or not as the spirit moves him."[162] +The first Saturday in June, 1904, I saw the thriving little town of +Abbeville, South Carolina, thronged with idle negroes from the surrounding +plantations. A merchant, who was kept busy in his store, offered to pay +several of them 75 cents to cut up a load of firewood--something more than +the market price. They do not work on Saturday unless compelled by +something unusual; and so each one replied at once, without any inquiry if +the logs were large or small, seasoned or not, and thus finding whether +the job was hard or easy, that the weather was too hot. And yet these +negroes all exhibited in their clothes and hungry looks unmistakable signs +of want. Those that superintend the gangs working for contractors in +Atlanta and the vicinity, all--except now and then one who has managed to +form a small party of picked laborers--tell me that it is very seldom that +a negro can be induced to work Saturday; if that does happen he will make +up his lost holiday by not returning to work before Tuesday. Your cook, +nurse, maid, or black servant of any kind will every now and then suddenly +inconvenience you by taking an utterly unnecessary rest. When Booker +Washington was starting his system of industrial training, as he tells us, +"Not a few of the fathers and mothers urged that because the race had +worked for 250 years or more, it ought to have a chance to rest."[163] + +The negro has likewise inherited lack of forecast and providence. If at +the end of the year he finds himself with a small purse from his part of +the crop, standing wages, or profits from a tenancy, he will often +squander much of it for a top buggy, a piano which none of his family can +play, or expensive furniture. Those in the gangs just mentioned always +want to fool away their money before it is made. If one has been advanced +$4, and his wages amount to $5, he will hardly ever abridge his holiday by +turning up to get the dollar balance when the others who have not been +advanced are paid Saturday night. He will waste his cash on watermelons +and fish that an average white will not even smell. When forced down to it +he can live contentedly upon almost nothing. A very large proportion of +both sexes are happy upon a real meal every two or three days, and a sly +change of mate every two or three weeks. Toombs, who was always looking at +Cuffee, pronounced him "rich in the fewness of his wants." Bring him out +more clearly to yourselves by comparison with an Irishman struggling up +from starvation wages of hard daily work into comfort and ease. Reflect +over the only success a cotton mill has had with black labor, which was +due to whipping the operatives for breach of duty.[164] + +In Atlanta--which of course is but like other southern cities in the +particular now to be mentioned--many of the men live upon their women. It +is a common saying that you cannot keep a colored cook if you do not allow +her to carry the keys. There is great complaint that the colored +washerwomen help their dependents out of the clothes. The criminal class +of negro men, women, and children is large and growing much faster than +that of the whites. Two very striking developments are the negro burglar +and the negro footpad. There are many breakings and entries every year in +Atlanta, many holdups of pedestrians, and nearly all of them are by +negroes. Now and then a negro snatches a lady's purse from her on the +street. The prisoners sent to the Atlanta stockade during the twelve +months beginning December 15, 1902, were + + Colored. Whites. + Men 2325 1030 + Women 1168 100 + Boys 471 18 + ---- ---- + 3964 1148 + +According to the twelfth census, the negro population of Atlanta was +35,727, and the white 54,090. So, while there are in every thousand of the +whites 21 of these criminals, there are in every thousand of the blacks +110. But the case is worse still. About an equal number of convicts +escaped the stockade by paying fines. Allowance for this will much +increase the per cent of negro criminals. I wish I could get the +approximate number whose fines are paid by their employers, white friends, +mothers, wives, and other relatives. I have observed facts which make me +confident that it is large. The number of boys that in one year were sent +to the stockade--471--is a most important fact, showing as it does that a +large per cent of negroes become criminals in childhood. Nearly all of +these boys have been abandoned by their fathers. There are just as many +abandoned girls in the city. Of course under the prevailing conditions the +proportion of criminals in each generation must increase portentously. + +The depth of the negroes' debasement is shown in the impurity of the +women. This is another inheritance from their ancestors. The "ancient +African chastity" alleged by Professor DuBois,[165] if it ever existed, +was entirely prehistoric. A white who has not been bred in close contact +with the race is quite unable to understand the degree and universality of +this impurity. I will illustrate by a case which occurred in a prosperous +town of Middle Georgia not very long before I settled in Atlanta. A +prominent negro preacher had been caught in adultery. The woman, who was +the mother of several children, and her husband, were both members of the +same church as the preacher, and of unctuous piety. The detection was so +complete and certain, and it had immediately become so notorious that +church notice was unavoidable. The problem was how to whitewash the +affair. The office of a lawyer friend of mine in the town last mentioned +was waited on by a member of the church--a say-nothing sort of negro, who +always applied for leave to attend the meetings at which the preacher was +being tried. This office boy had returned several times with the news, +when inquired of, that nothing had been done. At last, one day he answered +that they had cleared the preacher. My friend commanded that this be +explained. The darkie said, in his laconic way, "Well, he 'fessed de act, +but he 'scused de act." "How in the world did he excuse it?" was asked. +"He said his heart wasn't in it." "Were you fools enough to believe +that?" was ejaculated. The negro, with an air as superior as was +compatible with the great politeness of his race, replied, "He said it was +de debble dat had his body dar; but all de time his soul was at de throne, +praying for God's people. In course we couldn't blame him for what de +debble done." + +This defence, suggesting the make-believe loan of his body by the friar in +the Decameron to the angel Gabriel, which, of course, had never been heard +of by the accused, convinced the church, willing to be convinced. It +appeased the injured husband, willing to be appeased. It fully vindicated +the gay clergyman and the erring sister, who were in effect told to go and +sin no more with such little discretion. + +Had this case, or another like it, occurred at that time or since in any +other negro church of that region, there would have been acquittal and +justification of the accused, although perhaps the good plea and the right +psychological moment to make it might not have been so aptly found.[166] + +The habits and customs of the race mix men and women always and +everywhere; and in those opportunities each one of the young and the old, +married and unmarried of both sexes--of even children just arrived at +puberty--chases a short-lived amour with ever eager zest.[167] The blacker +the Lothario the more show of white blood he seeks in his fancies. Now +and then furious desire for real white overmasters him. Surprising some +unattended angel of a girl or matron, he chooses to see Rome and then die. +Her avengers pour kerosene on him and burn him to a crisp. His lusty +fellows think to themselves what Hermes, in the song of Demodocus, says to +Apollo of the mishap to Ares and golden Aphrodite--that is, that for the +same brief pleasure they would each gladly endure thrice the penalty. + +Professor DuBois says that the chastity of the negro women has improved so +greatly "that even in the back country districts not above nine per cent +of the population may be classed as distinctly lewd."[168] Inquire of +honest witnesses who have good opportunities of observing--the farmers, +small and large, and the storekeepers, in the country, those who do +contract work and the police in the cities--of all who have close access +to negroes at all times, and especially at night; and the concurring +report will be that right correction of Professor DuBois' statement just +given cannot stop with mere inversion of his percentages; that the fact +is, no negroes in this lower class which we are now dealing with are +chaste except those whose physical condition has made a virtue of +necessity.[169] + +It is sadly true that men of all races are too prone to unchastity. It is +chaste women that give human amelioration its main propulsion; for they +make every husband to know that the children around his fireside are his +own. If I were asked in what one particular had my life-long comparison +convinced me that the two races are farthest apart, I would unhesitatingly +answer, in the character of the women of each--the average white woman, +from her marriage on, forgetting all other men but her husband, the black +wife always with a paramour, if to be had. + +The tie which holds the family stanch is wanting. The men often cast aside +their domestic burdens, and begin their lives over in a distant region +with a new woman. The wife and mother left behind does not mope. She has +generally prearranged satisfactorily with another man. + +Disease is making great ravages in this lower class of negroes. I never +knew of a case of consumption among the slaves, and I can recall but one +serious case of pneumonia. Now these two diseases slay the negroes by +hundreds. Before the war the negro was regarded as immune from yellow +fever, and almost immune from dangerous malarial affections. He has lost +his charm against these also. There has been a dreadful increase of +insanity among them. The only ante-bellum case that I can recall was due +to an accidental injury of the head. + +It is but natural that the death rate among the negroes mounts fearfully. +Their great multiplication has far outrun their reasonable means of +subsistence. We note what a heavy burden a large family is to a man in +hard times. I must believe that the thirteenth census will show a still +greater negro death-rate. + +We shall sum up as to this lower class after we have described the +displacement of black by white labor. + +Now we must consider the upper class. We need look only at its main +divisions, to wit, the negro farmers, and the well-to-do urban negroes. + +The rose-colored statements of Professor DuBois as to the former cannot +impose upon residents of the south.[170] I shall begin with the negro farm +owners of Georgia. In what he says of them in the second Bulletin +mentioned in the last footnote he hardly ever looks away from the report +of the comptroller-general of the State. I shall deal with relevant facts +about which the comptroller-general is not required to concern +himself--and of which the census takes but little note. Where agricultural +land commands only a few dollars per acre a large part of it will get into +possession of purchasers under title-bond who expect to work it and pay +for it in annual instalments out of its produce. Of course the vendor sees +to it that he himself escapes taxation on this land, and so the +purchasers, although they may have paid him but a trifle or nothing at +all, are assessed as if they were the real owners, while the vendors are +retaining the title as security. Soon after the war many a white planter, +in order to get out of a failing business and procure capital for +something else, sold his land in whole or part. He could find no purchaser +but some exceptional negro; and the latter could buy only on credit. Much +of the lands so sold had to be retaken because the purchasers failed to +meet their payments. It was my observation when I left Greene county +twenty-three years ago that in that and the adjoining counties the number +of negro owners of agricultural land was decreasing, and it is my +information that such is now the case. This indicates an important fact +not shown in the reports of the comptroller-general, to wit, that a large +number of the negroes appearing therein as owners are really not owners, +and are losing their holdings. + +The next fact to be mentioned is that, as I learn from residents, many +farms of which a negro had acquired the fee are heavily encumbered, and +often fall to the local merchants. + +Further, as Professor DuBois states, "the land owned by negroes is usually +the less fertile, worn-out tracts."[171] + +According to the comptroller's report for 1903 the acres of white +ownership are 29,762,259, returned at a value of $121,629,094; which is +$4,139 per acre. The per cent of the total value owned by the blacks is +4.07. This result--that the negroes own a fraction over four per cent of +the improved lands of Georgia--must be corrected by proper deduction for +purchase money debts, and also for encumbrances. It must be further +corrected by another deduction. The negroes land is considerably below the +average of the rest in quality and market value. Yet while the white +returns at $4.08 an acre, the other returns at $4.13. This higher +valuation is not because of conscientious avoidance of tax-dodging. It +comes from that optimistic exaggeration characterizing the race, which is +vividly illustrated in Booker Washington's gravely stating that the love +of knowledge by the average negroes of the south has become the "marvel of +mankind,"[172] and in the extravagant assertion of Professor DuBois as to +their chastity commented on a few pages back. + +There are a few negro owners of farming lands that are prospering, but I +am credibly informed that as a class they are falling behind. + +The tenants--the renters, as they are commonly called--are the more +prosperous negro farmers. The whites hold on to their lands more firmly +than they did some years ago, and the tenantry class both of whites and +blacks is becoming larger. The whites in the Black Belt all believe that +the negroes generally belong to societies, in which they have bound +themselves not to hire to the former as house servants or for standing +wages except when they cannot otherwise subsist. So most of the cotton is +made by tenants and croppers. They grade as many bad and mediocre, and a +few good. The latter work with a will, and make fair crops. They send +their children off to expensive schools. When they die the property they +have accumulated is distributed and squandered, and a new +tenant--generally, of late years, a white--succeeds. + +It is to be observed everywhere that some reliable white man is generally +backing or superintending a negro farmer that can get credit. The negro +farmers, in almost any large county in the Black Belt that you may select, +that are an exception can usually be counted on the fingers of one hand. + +Their implements and methods are primitive;[173] and they employ hardly +any labor except that of their own families.[174] As soon as the negro +farmer's children have grown up they leave him; the negro laborers in his +neighborhood become more idle every year, and they become also more +scarce. It is not to be thought of that he employ white labor. This class +will give no help to the new agriculture, which I have glanced at in the +last chapter. + +Twenty-odd years ago when I left the planting section, the white +landowners all preferred negro tenants. But white tenants are now +preferred. They do not send their children to school as much as the +negroes do, but keep them at work while the hoeing, which is the first +main thing to the cotton farmer, and the gathering, which is the second +and last and greatest by far, are unfinished. The negroes' hoeing and +other cultivation are bad; and after the crop is laid by until Christmas, +during which time comes the all-important laborious cotton-picking, they +spend so much of their nights at church they are incapacitated from doing +good work. They lose much time by going to camp-meetings in the late +summer and early autumn, and riding on railroad excursion trains at every +opportunity. The white tenants and their families, by careful "chopping +out" and hoeing, get the proper "stand" and they pick clean; the negroes +fall behind in both respects. The bettering credit of the white steadily +hits the negro harder. The only tenants who are good for the rent are the +class a few of whom have cash of their own and the rest can get credit +with the local merchant for necessary supplies. Such tenants the +landowners seek after, and find every year more and more among the whites, +and less and less among the blacks. + +Every year a larger part of the staple crops of the south is made by +whites. The negroes have lately decreased in Kentucky. Mr. Tillinghast +brings forward, from Hoffman, weighty proofs that in the State just +mentioned, which has just become the principal seat of tobacco growing, +and also in the largest yielding counties of Virginia, that black labor +constantly grows less of the crop.[175] He uses Hoffman, too, to show that +white labor is slowly expelling black from rice production.[176] The old +south believed that rice culture was sure death to the white, Mr. +Tillinghast quotes, as to the greatest agricultural product of the south, +this from Professor Wilcox: "It would probably be a conservative +statement to say that at least four-fifths of the cotton was ... in 1860 +grown by negroes; at the present time [i.e. in 1899] probably not one-half +is thus grown."[177] + +Compare this further: "He [Hoffman] finds that 'with less than one-half as +large a colored population as Mississippi,... Texas produced in 1894 +almost three times the cotton crop of the former State.' Even more +significant is the fact that with almost twice the colored population of +1860, Mississippi, in 1894, produced less cotton than thirty-four years +ago.'"[178] + +Very significant are the facts lately published by the Agricultural +Department which show that in an area of some sixty-three per cent of the +production, the white outpicks the negro. "One hundred and fifty-two +counties, with a negro population amounting to seventy-five per cent of +the whole, averaged one hundred and eleven pounds per day, whereas one +hundred and ninety-two counties, with a white population constituting +seventy-five per cent or more of the whole, averaged one hundred and +forty-eight pounds per day,"[179] that is, the white picked one-third more +than the black. There are other statements in this bulletin of importance +here. I can give this one only: + + "In the Indian Territory and Oklahoma, where the whites represent + about eighty per cent of the population (including Indians) the + average number of pounds picked is greater than in any of the States + except Arkansas and Texas. The highest number of pounds picked in any + State is one hundred and seventy-two in Texas, the counties + represented having a white population of eighty per cent."[180] + +In Arkansas the population of the counties mentioned was fifty-nine per +cent white, the rest negro. + +It is almost certain that the foregoing estimates do great injustice to +the whites. They assume that there is no inferiority of the negro to the +white except the per diem quantity of cotton picked. Ponder the statement +as to a county of Georgia which I now give. + + "According to the ginners' report, Madison county made sixteen + thousand bales of cotton in 1902. Its negro population is about three + thousand, its white, twelve thousand. The negroes are one-fifth and + the whites four-fifths, and out of every five bales the negroes ought + to have made at least one and the whites four. But the former do not + average as well as the others. The white who runs one plow, whose wife + and children do the hoeing and picking, probably makes ten bales. The + negro who runs one plow, whose wife and children hoe and pick, hardly + makes more than five or six bales. The greater part of the cotton + credited to negro labor is made by negroes who are superintended by + white men."[181] + +Weighing all that I have just told, I am as sure as I can be of anything +in the near future, that the negro will soon be of greatly diminished +importance as laborer, cropper, renter, or farming landowner in the +staples of southern agriculture. + +There are other kinds of property than improved lands set out in the +report of the comptroller-general, such as $3,531,471 of horses, cattle, +and stock of all kinds, $810,553 of plantation and mechanical tools. Such +needs no separate consideration. These holdings do not in view of what we +have told, give the negro farmer any strong foothold. + +Nearly all that remains of the rural upper class--the negroes in trades, +professions, mercantile business, etc.--is so evidently dependent upon the +masses of the lower class, now gravitating away from the country that the +most of it can be incidentally disposed of at certain places later on in +the chapter and the rest be treated as negligible. + +The "city or town property" of the negroes of Georgia, according to the +report of the comptroller-general for 1903, amounts in value to +$44,668,620. From all that I can learn, while it is largely, it is +considerably less, encumbered than the real and personal property of the +negro farmers. + +A large admixture of Caucasian blood marks nearly every member of the +upper class both in country and town. I note that occasionally a coalblack +acquires property, on which his miser grip is tighter than that of an +accumulating Irishman; but such are very few. There is hardly a well-to-do +negro in work, occupation, profession, or property, who is not several +shades at least removed from coalblack. Mr. Tillinghast observes "that the +porters, cooks, and waiters on a Pullman train are usually mulattoes, +while the laborers in the gang on the roadbed are nearly all black."[182] +In this day when the pictures of prominent men and women are in many +illustrated magazines and papers, it is to be observed that hardly one of +a negro shows unmixed blood. Thus a recent monthly contains pictures of +Judson W. Lyons, R. H. Terrell, Kelly Miller, Archibald H. Grinke, T. +Thomas Fortune, Daniel Murray, and Booker Washington.[183] Of these the +third only, to my eye, seems all negro; and I cannot be confident that he +is wholly without appreciable white blood. His head has the shape of a +white man's. + +It is my observation that a negro entirely pure in blood hardly ever gets +out of the lower class; and that if he does he is much more unprogressive +than an average member of the upper class. Note what Bishop Holsey says of +how amalgamation with the white improves the descendants of the blacks, in +a passage quoted later herein. + +This upper class contains only persons of exceptional blood, talent, or +some other rare fortune. The higher education, and the education which is +now best of all for the negro--industrial education--is for this little +circle only. Hampton and Tuskegee do not open to all comers. Mr. +Tillinghast convincingly proves that those who have got really good +training at the two institutions just named are far above the average +negro in physical stamina, education, and other important +particulars.[184] The graduates go forth, not to benefit their brothers in +the lower class, but to win for themselves surer and higher standing in +the upper class. + +Some of the resources which this urban section of the upper class have +enjoyed for a while they are losing, as I shall tell when I hereinafter +summarize the details of white encroachment. But other resources open to +them. Such are professions like dentists, eye, ear, and throat surgeons, +doctors, barbers, and others who must content themselves with only colored +patronage; such the growing retail trade, multiplying boarding-houses, +restaurants, and saloons, finding their custom exclusively in the +increasing negro town population. The number of negroes who become +teachers, lecturers, preachers, authors, etc., steadily augments. Other +resources of this upper class can be pointed out, but it needs not here. +Although nearly always when the father who has struggled up dies, his +property, as we saw to be the case with the negro farmer, goes, and no +child succeeds to his occupation, there is perhaps generally compensation +for his loss by the accession of some other who has got up out of the +lower class by an extraordinarily lucky jump. It is clear that the class +is without the wholesome influence of uninterrupted inheritance, from +generation to generation, of faculty and character progressively +improving. Take this inheritance away from the men and women of any +enlightened nation and it would be to lower them very near to the level of +barbarism. It is also nearly certain that there will be no further +infusion of white blood into this class, by reason of the hostility to +inter-mixture which becomes stronger--yea, intenser--every year. The +probable consequence will be the dilution of much of the white blood now +in the upper class through the lower class to such an extent that it will +practically disappear. But some of it, I think, will persist, perhaps +increase in degree--preserved by the aversion of many to intermarriage +with persons less white than themselves, and occasional intermarriage with +white persons in northern States. + +Exceptional ones of this class enjoy privileges of the higher education, +afforded by schools and colleges opulently endowed by private persons, +which education is bringing forth fruit in teachers, clergymen, and +representatives of the learned class. There are already some good books, +as well as sermons, speeches, poems, essays, and short articles, by +negroes which have won favorable opinion in our literature; and there is +evidently to be steady increase. + +There is among some of this urban upper class the beginning at least of +better things under the lead of better mothers. We must not be +unreasonable in our demands that these women who carry in their veins a +very appreciable proportion of polyandrous blood shall become immaculately +chaste at once. Leave them to the influence of the improving society in +which they move; to the noble and faithful efforts of such as Mrs. Booker +Washington; their persistent imitation of white mothers; the teachings of +the really christian pastors whom the negro universities are beginning to +send abroad in numbers far too few; but especially of all to devoted +conjugal, maternal, and domestic duty. This last has made the pigeon +mother unconquerably true to her life mate. It will do the same for the +negro woman.--Let us consider the class further for a moment. + +The longer you look at it with unbefogged eyes the more plainly you see it +is really a natural aristocracy hugging its special privileges more +jealously every year, and that cleavage in interest, affection, and +destiny between it and the other class goes on so steadily that it must +after some little while yawn in the sight of the entire nation. Here in +Atlanta, as seems to be the case in all the southern cities, there are +respectable negro districts and also negro slums. The latter are the more +numerous and far more populous. The inhabitants of these several districts +are almost as wide apart as are the whites in the fashionable circle and +the million of poor folk without. + +I must postpone my final contrast of these two classes until I have +completed what remains to be said of the displacement of black by white +labor. For a few years after the war it was so slow moving that I was not +confidently aware of it. Now it has proceeded so far, and so much +accelerated its pace, that I can indicate it with something like accuracy. +In the thirteenth chapter I noted its beginning. This was when the mother +and her girls took upon themselves the daily indoor work, and the father +and sons took upon themselves the outdoor work, morning, noon, and night, +around the house and the horse-lot,--the word which in the south +corresponds to the barnyard of the northern farmer. Especially significant +is it that a large per cent of the white matrons in the country have at +last discarded the negro laundry-woman and habitually themselves use the +washtub for their families. The impulse to supplant negro labor showed its +greatest energy where the black population had been sparse. I have heard +my friend, F. C. Foster, a resident of Morgan county, often mention that +what were before the war the rich and poor sides of that county have +become interchanged; where most of the large slave-owners lived was the +rich, but now is the poor side; and the other, where there were but few +slaves, is now the rich side. + +I see many proofs in every quarter that the whites of the Black Belt have +commenced to learn good lessons from their neighbors outside, and show +every year a greater self-reliance. Many more causes than I have space to +set down conspire to increase this self-reliance. The small farmer must, +by himself or his wife and children or white help, do such things as +these: work his brood mare; care for his blooded stock, fine poultry, and +bees; handle his reaper, mower, and more expensive tools and implements; +give all necessary attention to his orchards and larger and smaller +fruits,--industries which, with that of the dairy, are now pushing +forward with mounting energy; for he has learned that the average negro +cannot be trusted in these and many other things which can be suggested. + +I must not overstate the advance of white production and labor upon black +in the country. In the regions of densest negro populations the whites +show a backwardness in taking to work that is discouraging. A very +observant man familiar with Jackson and Madison counties of Georgia, both +of which are out of the Black Belt, and who now lives where negroes +outnumber the whites, not long ago made this comparison, while answering +my inquiries: "In Jackson and Madison the whites work. A farmer who runs +but one plow does all the plowing. He hires but one negro. In my present +county the one-horse farmer always hires two negroes, one to plow and the +other to hoe, and the only work he does is to boss them." But the negroes +are going away from many parts, in fact from nearly all, of the Black +Belt. Wherever they have become scarce, the whites go to work; and, as is +now occurring in that part of Greene county called "The Fork," and in +places in adjoining counties, the lands rise greatly in market value. In +many parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene counties, where +negroes were doing practically all the agricultural labor when I came to +Atlanta, I learn that many white boys are becoming good all-around +workers. It surprised me greatly to be told that in this region in +different places the white women and children, as soon as the dew is off +in the morning, go to cotton picking, and they become so efficient that +often no extra labor need be hired to finish that greatest task of all to +the farmer. Before the war, all of us white boys picked just enough of +cotton to learn that our backs could never be made to stand picking all +day. The whites now beating the negro in what we once thought he only +could do, and white women in the old slave regions doing the family +laundry,--these begin a marvellous economic revolution. + +The cotton mills and other manufactories rapidly springing up in many +southern localities are developing a class of white operatives. Mining of +various kinds is on the increase. Stone, slate, and marble cutting, +cabinet making, and other trades attract greater numbers to follow them. +White railroad employees, printers, engravers, stenographers, typewriters, +and those in numerous other gainful occupations, grow in numbers. White +women and girls stream to work for employers every morning. In all places, +if you but look long enough, you catch sight of swelling crowds of the +race who once lived almost entirely from slave labor now doing their own +labor. + +I will close what I have to say of this part of the subject by +observations of Atlanta. When I settled here, the barbers, shoe repairers, +blacksmiths, band-musicians, sick-nurses, seamstresses, ostlers, and +carriage-drivers were, so far as I noted, black almost without exception. +Now the first five are nearly all white, and whites steadily multiply in +the rest, although they are far from being in a majority. The only +expulsion of white by negro labor that I have noted is the substitution by +the bicycle messenger service and the telegraph of negro for white +messengers, made not long ago. These messenger services thrive by +exploiting child labor. By the change mentioned they got much larger and +stronger boys--often grown-up ones--for the same price which they used to +pay white children a year or two older than mere tots. Against the recent +loss just told I have these two recent gains of the whites to tell. There +had always been only negro waiters in the restaurants. In some of them +the eaters at the lunch counters are now served by a white man standing +behind it; and what he needs, if it is not kept in store so near that he +can reach it, is brought to him, at his command, by a negro, whom you may +call his waiter. This negro also wipes off the counter. After we became +used to white barbers we generally preferred them to the black ones. And I +note that a growing majority of those who frequent the counters like the +white waiters, although I now and then hear a growler say that he would +rather have a waiter that he can reprimand and speak to as he pleases. +Some of the restaurants begin to advertise that their help is all white. +With the superior alertness and quickness of his race, a white behind the +counter accomplishes more than twice as much as the former black. To use a +common saying, the white waiters keep at active work all their twelve +hours as if they were fighting fire, while the negroes commanded by them +take things easy. Every one of the whites is constantly on the lookout for +a better place; and generally he manages somehow, after a short while, to +get it. One who now serves me studies bookkeeping two hours every night, +and will doubtless soon be giving satisfaction in his chosen occupation to +some business house. The negroes look out only for tips, are interested in +nothing but amusements, and never get any higher. Bear in mind, they are +considerably above the average negro in qualifications and station. + +The other instance is that some co-operating Greek boys have recently +captured a very considerable proportion of the shoe-shining. They provide +more convenient and comfortable seats and give a better shine than the +negro does, in a much shorter time, and for the same price. It looks now +as if they are bound to make full conquest of the business. With my +experience it is more of a surprise to me to see clothes laundered, +tables waited on, and shoes shined by the whites, than even to see cotton +picked by them. + +But to go on with Atlanta. Occupations requiring the management of +machinery or peculiar skill are nearly always filled by whites. The street +railroad conductors and motormen are all white. The only negroes connected +with the road that I, as a passenger, generally see is the curve-greaser, +and now and then a helper on the construction car. The steam railroads +will employ a negro fireman because of his ability to stand heat, but they +do not trust him to oil and wipe. In the smaller buildings negro +elevator-runners some time ago were frequent, but now it is clear that the +whites will soon have the occupation exclusively. There is, I believe, +more building, in this year of 1904, in Atlanta than ever before. The +preparation of all the material is done by white labor in the +planing-mills and machine-shops, while the more unskilled work of putting +it in place is done by the negro carpenter. + +The lathers and plasterers are all negroes, there are more negro brick and +stone masons than white, and the carpenters are nearly all negroes, there +being but few young white ones. The painters are about equally divided. +The negro's standard of living is so much lower than that of the white, +that where there is competition he proves victor by accepting a price upon +which the white man cannot live. But the latter does not throw up the +sponge. At the point where race competition begins he induces the negroes, +whenever he can, to join his union, and soon to have one of their own. +Just now (August, 1904) there are not enough of brickmasons to supply the +demand, and there is both a white and black union of that trade. But so +far there has been no success in the efforts made for a black carpenters' +union. The negroes have of late years kept such firm hold of the trade, +that it seems no young whites come into it, there being but few white +carpenters in Atlanta under forty years of age. The negroes understand +that their grip is due to their ability to work for lower pay than the +whites, and when the union is proposed they say to themselves, that means +only more places for white carpenters and less for us. But the trend to +form unions seems to strengthen. There is a mixed union of tailors, +separate unions of blacksmiths' helpers, moulders' helpers, painters, and +also of brickmasons, as just mentioned. There is a black union of +plasterers and no white one. It is to be remembered that the initiative to +unionize the negro workman comes from the other race, the purpose being to +balk the exertions of employers to depress wages by encouraging the +cheaper worker. Consider the dilemma of the negro workman invited into the +union by whites. He foresees that if he accepts, his race will after a +while be swamped in the trade by white competition. At the same time he +foresees that if he does not accept, he cannot increase his income, which +in its smallness becomes more and more inadequate to sustain himself and +family under the constant demands of the day for larger and larger +expenditure. The immediate needs of those dependent upon him will +generally decide his course. I cannot say how long the negro carpenters of +Atlanta will refuse the proposal to federate themselves in a union with +the whites; but this I can say, that all attempts of the negroes to keep +the whites out of any well-paid vocation must fail, even with the most +resolute and stubbornly maintained effort. As I view it on the spot the +white forward movement palpably strengthens and the defence weakens. Bear +in mind that the whites receive constant re-enforcement from all other +white American and European communities, and the blacks are confined to +their own resources of supply, all the while declining. + +What I have just told as happening in Atlanta intelligent and observant +negroes detect to be but a part of the general recession before white +competition. The National Negro Business League had its last meeting at +Indianapolis. In one of the resolutions adopted, mainly because of the +influence of Dr. Booker T. Washington, its president, occurs this +allegation, "During our discussions it has been clearly developed that the +race has been steadily losing many avenues of valuable employment." The +resolution ascribes this to lack of proper training, and recommends that +the lack be supplied. A negro makes this acute and true comment, which I +would have attended to here, and considered again when further on I +discuss what the industrial schools can do: + + "That the colored man has of late years been losing many avenues of + employment is quite true, but the conclusion that this is due to a + lack of training is not to be hastily accepted. Nobody believes that + our people are now less capable of work than they were when recognized + in these avenues of labor. As a matter of fact they are far better + equipped now than they were then, or Tuskegee and Hampton and the + other industrial schools that are crowded from year to year are making + a signal failure. In those days men were picked up here and there and + started in as apprentices as green as they could be. Now thousands of + them are prepared before they go out to work. The two chief reasons + our folks are not employed so universally now is, first, the fact, + that _the white south has gone to work with its own hands_, and + second, the negro refuses longer to work for nothing. _The continued + assertion by some of our leaders that a man who can labor will not be + discriminated against, is untrue. The preference is given to the white + man in almost every case, and the negro is allowed to do the work he + refuses._ It is well enough to ask our people to secure industrial + education, but it is wrong to place all our ills upon a lack of such + training or to recommend industrial education as a panacea. Though it + was quite inevitable that the league should adopt such a resolution as + an endorsement of its president's policy."[185] + +I have italicized in the quotation the statements specially pertinent +here. They are very weighty proofs supporting my proposition of fact, to +wit, that there is now waging between the whites and negroes an +internecine war for every opportunity of labor above the very lowest and +unskilled. + +I ask also that it be noted that the writer is utterly unconscious of any +negroes than those of the upper class. Not a thing that he says can be +applied to the ninety-five per cent. + +The death rate of the negro is coming close to, while that of the white +keeps far below, the birth rate. Rapid native increase and vigorous +immigration for the whites, nothing but slow and decreasing propagation +for the negroes; and larger and larger hosts of the former giving their +champions active sympathy and help--the event of this inter-race struggle +over the trades and occupations may be delayed, but it cannot be doubtful. + +The reader must not forget that the negroes now in mind belong all to what +I have called the upper class. Their number is so small and its promise of +increase so slight that I should hardly have done more than allude to +them, if the subject did not emphasize so impressively as it does the +inevitable expulsion of negro by white labor. Let me explain this fully. +Professor Wilcox, summarizing the pertinent information of the twelfth +census as to ten leading occupations competed for by the two races in the +south, states that in the year 1900 the per cent of negroes was larger in +seven and smaller in nine of them than ten years before.[186] That alone +shows white gain. But I want you to add to Professor Wilcox's statement +something of which the census gives no hint, that is, the bound forward of +the negroes on one side, and the inaction of the whites on the other, +during many years beginning with emancipation in 1865. When that has been +done, the encroachment of white labor upon black effected in the +comparatively short time since its beginning appears almost prodigious. It +is somewhat like the race-horse, who, falling far behind in the first +stages of a long heat, at last wakes up and gains so fast that nobody will +bet against him. It means that the whites are now as ruthlessly taking all +opportunities of labor away from the blacks, as their fathers took his +lands away from the American Indian. + +We can now say our last word in contrasting the two classes. Many fail to +see clearly the difference between them. Thus Ernest Hamlin Abbott[187] +and Edgar Gardner Murphy,[188] in their pleasant discussions, only here +and there, and as if casually, say something which momentarily implies +existence of the lower class, and then relapse into claiming for all of +the southern negroes, if not the actual condition of the upper class, at +least hopeful possibility of soon achieving it. These two kind-hearted men +represent a large number who firmly believe that education and the church +are now rapidly elevating the negro masses, when the fact is far +otherwise. Many from the north see nothing but the upper class. In what he +writes of the negroes whom he knew in public life, the late Senator Hoar +was utterly unconscious of the average negro whom all of us in the south +know.[189] Dr. Lyman Abbott, a most benign example of broad and almost +perfect tolerance to both sections, taking all southern hearts by his +loving sympathy with and full justice to the better sentiment of our +section in every matter of importance except the appointment of negroes to +office, he never seems to have in mind any negroes but the prominent ones +who are giving their fellows industrial or the higher education, and those +who have been blessed with either. Do but consider how pathetically he +lately lamented the case of the "white negro" lady shut out from the +circle of cultivation and kept confined in one of ignorance and lowness. +This last circle--its magnitude, its bad and desperate state--he really +knows nothing about. He can no more study its deplorable and heartrending +conditions than the mother can endure to have the expectoration of her +child threatened with tuberculosis examined under the microscope. Chicago +has been for some while "farthest to the front" in the struggle against +corporation rule. Her battles for direct nomination, direct legislation, +and municipal ownership have been chronicled more accurately and +intelligently in the _Public_ than I can find elsewhere. Therefore I read +it with diligence; and I relish more and more Mr. Post's sound and able +anti-machine and anti-plutocratic advocacy. But in everything that the +paper says or quotes on the race question I am pained to note that its +shortcoming is greater than its very high merit in preaching democratic +democracy. Mr. Ernest Hamlin Abbott does now and then call the negroes a +child race, but Mr. Post repudiates all backwardness and inferiority of +race. He seems to maintain the equality of the average negro to the +average white in all essentials of good citizenship with the zeal of +Wendell Phillips, when the providence of the American union frenzied and +deputed him to infuriate its defenders against the disunion slave-owners. +Mr. Post, as appears to me, believes with all his heart in the doctrine of +Mrs. Stowe and Whittier, to mention no others, as to the negro. Every +pertinent utterance in his paper indicates that he has no thought whatever +of the lower class. A most striking illustration of this is how he treats +the story of the negro Richard R. Wright.[190] When the latter was ten +years old he won great fame by the answer he made General Howard, who had +inquired of the negro children at the Storrs School in Atlanta, just after +the close of the war, "Tell me what message I shall take back from you to +the people of the north?" His face ablaze with enthusiasm, the boy Richard +said, "Tell 'em we're risin'." Whittier went as far astray over this as we +saw that he did in his "Laus Deo." In his poem celebrating he sang-- + + "O black boy of Atlanta! + But half was spoken: + The slave's chain and the Master's + Alike are broken. + The one curse of the races + Held both in tether: + They are rising--all are rising, + The black and white together." + +I never read the last two lines without in mind admonishing the author, +"Praise in departing." + +When Mr. Post published the story, he ought to have mentioned that while +the boy who sent forth the winged words did rise and has become president +of the Georgia Industrial College, yet that such negroes are far more rare +than millionaires, and the main host of their people in the south were +sinking at the time, and have been sinking ever since. It is not true that +"all are rising." The whites have recently begun to rise; five per cent +only of the negroes, most of whom are largely white, are rising, while the +rest of them are doomed, if the nation does not interpose. And the colored +dentist of Chicago, slighted by some of the white dentists--Mr. Post sees +in him, just as he sees in Richard R. Wright, a representative of the +negro millions. + +These conscientious and amiable gentlemen are wasting much effort +uselessly. There is no very urgent problem as to the upper class of +negroes. It has two strings to its bow. If the lower class should perish, +a large part of it--perhaps the greater part--will be assimilated. Every +day I detect a larger movement toward the north among our better-to-do +negroes. I hear of girls that get places as chambermaids and cooks, of +boys that find places as ostlers or other domestic service; and I have +heard of a few families who have gone in a body, also of some men who have +left wife and children here. They believe the north will allow their votes +to be counted, will not proscribe them in society as the south does, and +they will probably get for themselves or their descendants intermarriage +with whites. The determination of these southern negroes towards the north +will probably gain in volume and energy. It is plain that those who go do +much increase their chances of final absorption into the body of whites. +This assimilation is one of the two strings. And if the American negroes +shall one day be conceded their own State, as I hope and pray for, their +leaders must come from the upper class. That is the other of the two +strings. + +This upper class of southern negroes has demonstrated full ability to take +care of itself. It has its schools and colleges, newspapers, magazines, +and augmenting literature, its widening circle of students and readers, +and its good shepherds and able leaders. It rapidly wins favor in the +south. A few of our residents see no other negroes but those in this upper +class, a most striking instance of which is Joel Chandler Harris's +sweeping assertion "that the overwhelming majority of the negroes in all +parts of the south, _especially in the agricultural regions, are leading_ +sober and _industrious lives_."[191] When one who fully understands the +situation studies the assertion just quoted he sees from the context that +the writer was led to make it because he had at the time in his eyes only +a few of the better negroes in the Atlanta upper class. This is powerful +testimony to their prosperity and self-maintaining faculty. Similarly the +Chicago _Public_ rates the four hundred inhabitants of Boley in the Creek +nation as common or average negroes. According to a news dispatch +mentioned in that paper the town is only a year old, has "two churches, a +school-house, several large stores, and a $5,000 cotton gin, owned and +controlled exclusively by negroes." It is without a system of law and +without municipal government, and "yet no serious crime or offence of any +kind has been committed in the place." These four hundred negroes do not +permit any white man to settle in the town. Commenting in conclusion upon +the news, the _Public_ says, "If that dispatch is not a canard, +Anglo-Saxon civilization has something to learn of one race which it has +outraged and abused and despised."[192] + +Any such place as Boley, if a reality, is peopled only by negroes of the +upper class, and, further, only by those who have been sifted out from the +rest of that class by a peculiarly drastic selection. Had they not each +had remarkable good fortune, extraordinary capacity, and exceptional +experience and training, Boley would never have been heard of. I ask that +the fair-minded make two comparisons. 1. Suppose four hundred negroes--not +naturally selected, but taken in a body, just as each one comes, from the +masses of the lower class described herein--given opportunity to found a +town of their own amid what we may call Boley conditions, what would be +the result? You may be sure that what occurred in Hayti when the reins of +government were suddenly given to the negroes at large would in some sort +be repeated. 2. Compare Boley in all its bloom and happy condition as +described in the _Public_ with certain communities of select whites, which +have flourished now and then for years, without formal government; say the +Amana community. If this be rightly done, social organism of select whites +will at once appear to be incomparably superior to that of select negroes. + +I have tried my hardest to make my readers see as clearly as one bred in +the south ought to see what a world-wide difference there is between the +small upper class and the numerous lower class of negroes. If I have +succeeded they will agree with me that it is the better policy to leave +the upper class, for the present, just where it is. If this advice be +followed, that class will flourish, and some day either be assimilated, or +be giving benign salvation to the lower class in the negro State. +Especially should this upper class eschew politics. Booker Washington in +preaching this is the only real American prophet of the day. With all of +his zeal for his race, he is far better appreciated in the south than in +the north, and perhaps just as popular. What a lamentable arrest of its +benign development it would be to this upper class to turn it away from +industrial betterment of its condition to lead the mass of the negroes at +the polls in a struggle for rule and office! That would be something like +renewing the conditions that developed the Ku-Klux Klan. + +It is the great body of the southern negroes--those in the lower class, +who have no string at all, nor even a bow--that demands the profoundest +attention. I wish I could make every white man, woman, and child of +America see them just as they are. As I compare them with what they were +in 1865 I note they have advanced somewhat in mental arithmetic, because +of practice in computing small sums of money involved in their wages and +purchases; that they have learned somewhat of self-providence, and very +much endurance of want (which last is really a reversion to a trait of +their West African ancestors); and that the per cent of illiteracy among +them has been greatly lessened. On the other hand, each generation becomes +more disinclined to work, and its vagrants multiply; each generation more +prone to live by crime, more unchaste, and more quick to desert their +conjugal partners and children. Especially are they far more unhealthy and +prone to insanity, and their death rate rapidly rising. They have no +resource but unskilled labor of the lowest and cheapest grade; white +competition in agriculture and domestic service, machinery in other +fields, such as the scrape which has superseded the dump-cart, the +improved steam-shovel and method of handling construction trains, and the +steam laundry, steadily curtailing that resource; a slothful, improvident, +and wasteful disposition curtailing it still further. The resurrecting +hand of the trades union cannot reach down to them. Steadily they are more +useless to every upbuilder of the coming south except the wage-depresser. +More and more they get in the way of real progress in every direction. And +as their supplies of necessaries diminish they get in one another's way. +Nearly all of the whites who were bound to them in the domestic love of +the old south times are dead. Most naturally and unavoidably as the new +generation discerns the growing incompatibility of their stay in the +section with its true welfare, unfriendliness comes and grows. Listless, +lethargic, careless, without initiative, without opportunity and coercion +to make use of it, these multitudes of inveterate have-nothings are in a +bottomless gulf of want, immorality, crime, and disease. A true +philanthropist has familiarized the world with the "submerged tenth." Mr. +Ernest Hamlin Abbott, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, Dr. Abbott, +Mr. Post, stand beside me on the strand, and fix your eyes, minds, and +hearts upon the slowly drowning ninety-five per cent of the southern +negroes. Lay aside the excess of your devotion to the upper class. It does +not need it. The Chicago dentist, as the _Public_ itself reports, was +really more than indemnified for the insult given him because of his color +by the sympathetic resentment of white members of his profession. Why will +you keep agitating the nation in behalf of a few thousands, who are well +able to maintain themselves, and neglect millions who require, as Mr. +Tillinghast says, some heroic remedy for their salvation? + +I shall now tell you the utter inadequacy of Hampton, Tuskegee, and the +like, after which I shall consider what, in my judgment, is the only +remedy. + +The annual output, as we may call it, of all the negro educational +institutions in the south is a mere drop in the bucket when compared with +the enormous need. The latest reliable figures accessible to me are those +of Booker Washington for 1897. They are as follows: 13,581 receiving +industrial training, 2,108 collegiate education, 2,410 classical +instruction, and 1,311 "taking the professional course,"[193]--the last +three aggregating 5,829. Suppose the entire 17,999 were following +industrial courses, and that every one graduated with credit; and suppose +there be added the work of the land companies providing homes and every +other enterprise helping the negro in any way--suppose this output to be +trebled annually from this time on (which is far above possibility for +many years yet, to say nothing of probability), what would be its +accomplishment? Why, no more than a slight shower in a few townships +during the drought a few years ago would have done in preventing injury to +the Kansas corn crop. When you attend, you understand that the great +advantages of these excellent institutions are only for a few lucky +negroes,--picked ones of the upper class,--and not for the millions whose +crying need is for opportunity to earn honest daily bread and a really +benevolent coercion to use the opportunity. The problem, what to do for +this mass, cannot be solved by philippics against such things as _de +facto_ or constitutional disfranchisement of the blacks, lynching them, +showing them disrespect in military parades, giving them Jim Crow cars, +and not dividing the educational fund more liberally with them; nor would +it contribute one jot or tittle towards its solution if every lady in +America cordially received in her drawing-room the few negroes who have +most deservedly won the respect of the nation. To solve this problem, +something must be found which will train and elevate the average negro, +while the exceptional one is at the industrial school or college, or +studying for a profession; something which will check the prevalent +reversion away from monogamic family life, and stimulate that life to +develop steadily; something also which will impart to this entire mass +permanent and strengthening impulse to better its condition. The only +thing that can do this is to separate the negro as far as may be from the +whites, give him his own State in our union, and constrain him there with +vigilant kindness to subsist and govern himself in such ways as suit him. +I have long thought that our negroes had far stronger claim upon the +nation for land than the uncivilizable redskins on whom we have lavished +so much expense in vain. + +Righteousness demands that we give the former full opportunity to develop +normally in self-government. Put him in a State of his own on our +continent; provide irrepealably in the organic law that all land and +public service franchises be common property; give no political rights +therein to those of any other race than the African; compel nobody to +settle in this State, but let every black reside in whatever part of the +nation that pleases him; let this community while in a Territorial +condition, and also for a reasonable time after it has been admitted as a +State, be faithfully superintended by the nation in order that republican +government be there preserved,--do these things, and there need be no fear +that the examples of Hayti and San Domingo, which were not so +superintended, will be repeated. Nearly all of the American Indians, +because of rigid adherence to their old customs and ways, were crushed by +Caucasian rule. But the negro, wherever he comes in contact with a +superior, shows a pliancy, a self-adaptability to new circumstances, to +which no parallel has ever been suggested, so far as I know. If civilized +self-government will but kindly keep him a while at its labor school where +he is to learn by doing, I am profoundly convinced that he will develop +into the very best of citizens. And I am also just as profoundly convinced +that if something like what I recommend is not done at a comparatively +early day, after some while, as there are now in America a few prosperous +Indians and in New Zealand a few prosperous Maoris, we will have here and +there a few prosperous negroes; but the rest of them will either be +confirmed degenerates, or have gone no one will know whither. And Booker +Washington, the moral exemplar of the day, rivalling Horace's + + "Iustum et tenacem propositi virum," + +as he resists the pernicious counsels of the overwhelming majority of +negroes and keeps to the wise and right course which they passionately +condemn; who is far more able and who has accomplished infinitely more of +good than Toussaint or Douglass--he will be a great hero statesman of a +great cause lost. The historian of the future that has something like +Shakspeare's genius for contrast will make his glory and that of Calhoun +magnify each other by comparison. + +The foregoing as to a negro State, which is the result of years of +observation and reflection, had all been written for some time when I fell +in with the address of Bishop Holsey, mentioned above. It is the +proposition of the address that a part of the United States should be +assigned to the negroes. I add an abstract from the synopsis of his views +given in the address: + +1. Negroes and whites "are so distinct and dissimilar in racial traits, +instincts, and character, it is impossible for them to live together on +equal terms of social and political relation, or on terms of equal +citizenship." + +2. The general government only has power to settle the problem, and it +ought to settle it. + +3. Separation of the negroes and whites "is the most practicable, logical, +and equitable solution of the problem." + +4. "Segregation and separation should be gradual ... and non-compulsory, +so as not to injure ... labor, capital, and commerce ... where the negro +is an important factor of production and consumption." + +5. The southern negroes should petition the president and congress "for +suitable territory ... as ... equal citizens ... and not go out of their +country to be exposed to doubtful experiment and foreign complications. +Afro-Americans should remain in their own country, in the zone of +greatness, and in the latitude of progress." + +6. The government should, in effecting segregation, maintain "civil order, +peace, progress, and prosperity." + +7. The place for the negroes may be in the western public domain, such as +a part of the Indian Territory, New Mexico, or elsewhere in the west. + +8. No white person unless married to a negro, or a resident federal +official, to be allowed citizenship in the negro State or Territory, but +all citizens of the United States to be protected therein as in the other +States.[194] + +9. Only those of reputable character and some degree of education, and +perhaps those possessed of a year's support, to become citizens. Criminals +and undesirable persons to be kept out. + +It was gratification extreme to me to find a prominent negro so much in +accord with my long-cherished project. I hope there is a determination of +the mass of southern negroes thitherward, as seems to be indicated by the +activity both of Bishop Holsey and also by that of Bishop Turner. With +nearly all of the negro writers and speakers now in the public eye +upper-class sympathies are dominant. But Holsey, demanding a State in the +union, and Turner, putting his whole soul into immigration to Liberia, are +actuated by lower-class sympathies. The others just mentioned really +advocate assimilation,--and at bottom, only the assimilation of the upper +class,--but these two are of far different and higher ambition. They are +patriotic, and as true to their race as that famous heathen who rejected +christianity when told that it consigned his forefathers to perdition. He +declared he would go to hell with his people and not to heaven without +them. The others are representative of only some five per cent, these two +represent the ninety-five per cent--the real negroes. I never took to +Bishop Turner's proposal, for all of the ability with which he advocates +it, because I want the negroes where our nation can foster and protect +their State, it matters not what may be the resulting pains and expense. I +highly approve the earnestness of Bishop Holsey in objecting to +expatriation by the Afro-Americans. + +Let our negroes have their own State. That will be the fit culmination +which was foreshadowed in their deserting the galleries assigned them in +our churches and flocking to their own churches, immediately upon +emancipation, and their effecting soon afterwards the removal of their +cabins from the old site. Their masses have ever since been inclining +towards a community of their own by an internal impulsion in harmony with +the external white expulsion. The impulsion and the expulsion are each, as +it seems to me, manifestations of the same all-powerful cosmic force. + +Further, I would say a negro State makes a precedent for the world +federation. Each race that ought not to intermarry with others can +flourish under its separate autonomy. Then loving brotherhood between +white, yellow, red, and black people will bless all the earth. Whether the +proneness of opposites to fancy each other, progressively going from the +smaller to the greater differences, will ultimately compound a universal +color, no man can now tell. + +Of course some reader has exclaimed, "Your proposal is absurdly +chimerical." Is it indeed chimerical to demand of the great republic that +it do its very highest duty? Suppose an ignorant, neglected child taken +home by a rich man, taught to work, the world of industry, with all of its +prizes, kept in his sight, until he begins to cherish the hope that some +day he can have a happy fireside of his own; suppose further that just as +he reaches the age of discretion the adopting father sets him where he may +see the fair world plainer and long for it more than ever, but so +completely strips him of all means and opportunity that there is nothing +for the outcast but ignoble life and uncared-for death. How you would pity +the outcast! how you would curse the false father! I cannot believe that +the nation will prove such an unnatural parent to these its helpless and +lovable children. It may be that some thousands of them, nay, some +millions, may be left to perish in their dire constraint. But when the +people fully understand, their consciences will awaken, and they will give +the American negro a bright house-warming. + +Suppose we do not give him his State, or suppose it will be long years +before we give it to him, what do you say we are to do for him? + +We must help Booker Washington and his co-laborers to the utmost. Grant +that they can snatch only a few brands from the burning. Is it not most +praiseworthy to save even one? Further, I can never abandon the hope that +the nation will yet allot the negroes their State, even if to do it land +must be condemned on a large scale. When that fair day does dawn on +America, out of the scholars of these worthy teachers will come many a +good shepherd for the blacks in their new land. This may now be but a +glimmering of hope. All the good must join in effort to enlarge and +brighten it. + +We should not begrudge the higher education to the few in the upper class +who can get it. The negroes need teachers, preachers, writers, and others +of the learned occupations. + +We should impartially equalize the negro population to the white in common +school privileges. Both ought to have rational industrial training. The +right primary education is just beginning to show itself. It will more and +more recognize what a prominent factor the hand has been in evolution. +Think of the superiority of animals with, to those without, hands. What a +high brain the elephant has made for himself by exercising his single +hand; the polar bear kills the seal by throwing a block of ice; the 'coon +goes through his master's pockets for sweetmeats; the greater intelligence +of the house-cat as compared with the average dog is due to long use of +the forepaws as rudimentary hands. Think of how we note humanity dawning +in the monkey ever busy with his hands. Think of the importance of his +hands to beginning man. With them he could gather fruits, rub fire-sticks +together, make war-clubs, spears, fish-hooks, bow and arrows, bar up his +cave door against beasts of prey, elevate his roosting place in a tree too +high for night prowlers, and do all other vital things up the whole ascent +to civilization. The steady enlargement of man's brain has been mainly +because of his progressive use of his hands; for whenever a new thing was +to be done his brain had first to acquire faculty of telling hands how to +do it. To train the hands is the true way to develop brain power. The +negroes in American slavery had risen far above the level of West African +hand ability, and at emancipation they were prepared to go higher by leaps +and bounds. Had they from that time steadily on been drafted off into +their State, gradually, as Bishop Holsey suggests, and a tithe of the +millions which have since been lavished in giving them premature literacy +and smattering of learning been applied in teaching their children +handicraft faculty and the best methods of labor, the promise for them now +would be satisfactory to their dearest friends. Somebody wisely advises, +Never do the second thing first. Those who took charge of the negro when +he was freed tried to make him do the hundredth or thousandth thing first. +Instead of patiently schooling him in handicraft and self-support until he +was really ready to take part in his own self-government, they made the +ignorant and inexperienced slave of yesterday a complete citizen, and +plunged him up to his neck into politics and letters. What a baleful +_hysteron proteron_ was this. The looming greatness of Booker Washington +is that he teaches by his actions that the seeming advance was in fact +prodigious retrogression, and he strives with all his might to draw the +negro backwards to his right beginning. Let us further his good work by +incorporating the utmost practicable of his industrial training in our +common school system for both whites and blacks. America has learned +important military lessons from the redskin; and, as I am almost sure, she +acted on his suggestion when she confederated the separate colonies. Let +her now show similar good sense in permitting a negro to teach her the +true system of education for the new times.[195] + +Now as to lynching. It is entirely wrong to conceive of a popular outbreak +against one who has outraged a sacred woman as lawless. It is the furthest +possible from that, being prompted by the most righteous indignation. The +wretch has outlawed himself. Society can no more tolerate such an insult +to its peace than it can permit a tiger to go at large. It is under no +obligation to him whatever. It is the people dealing with him that should +concern us. We ought to keep them from brutalizing themselves and their +children. We must put down lynching with gentle firmness. The first thing +to do is to shorten the "law's delay" as much as possible. After the State +has made the enabling constitutional amendment, if such be necessary, let +an act provide that whenever an alleged crime likely to excite popular +violence has been committed the governor select a judge to try and finally +dispose of the case, three days only, say, being allowed for motion for +new trial or taking direct bill of exceptions; both the supreme court and +the court below to proceed as fast as may be through all stages until +acquittal or execution. Let the governor earnestly ask for some such +measure, and let him also, after he gets it, impressively appeal to the +people to assist in enforcing the law. With this preparation, more than +ninety per cent of the whites will approve the most decided action of the +military protecting prisoners, if that be necessary. Just at this time +(September 27, 1904) there is a very decided manifestation of +anti-lynching public opinion in the south. We should strike while the iron +is hot, and bring it about that the law itself make quick riddance of the +ravisher. It should be a spur to us that the party opposed in politics to +the great majority of southerners finds much support and help from every +lynching in this section. Why should we play into its hands? + +The last thing that I have to say is that the south ought to invite +immigrants only of white blood. We want no settlers from whose +intermarriage mongrels would spring. All Europeans should receive +welcome--the Germans perhaps the warmest. But in my judgment those that +will most advantage us are the truckmen, growers of the smaller and larger +fruits, grass, grain, and stock farmers, manufacturers, miners, builders, +contractors, business men, and skilled laborers, of the north. It looks +now as if the cotton mills of England as well as of the north would be +profited by coming to us; and it also seems probable that there will be +for many years so great a demand for our cotton that the worn-out soil of +the older parts of the lower south must be restored to more than virgin +richness by the method which Dr. Moore has patented and made a gift of to +the nation, or some other intensive culture; and that there must be +consequently great multiplication of southern mill-operatives and +agricultural workers in the near future. Recall what we have said in the +last chapter as to the future promise of the section. Every day the south +by disclosing some new opportunity cogently makes new invitation to +immigrants. It is the interest as well as the duty of the nation to remove +the great clog upon development of the south. That clog is the presence of +some millions of unassimilable negroes in the section. It is also the best +interest and the highest duty of the nation to segregate these negroes +into a territory of their own. As Bishop Holsey says, and what I believe +with my whole soul, "The union of the States will never be fully and +perfectly recemented with tenacious integrity until black Ham and white +Japheth dwell together in separate tents."[196] + + * * * * * + +I must add an epilogue to these chapters on the race question as I did to +that on Toombs. + +Brothers and sisters of the north, you should learn why there is a solid +south. There is but one cause. It is the menace to the whites from the +political power given the negroes by the fifteenth amendment. There is +nothing in your section--in its past or its present--from which I can +illustrate to you the gravity of this menace to us. In not one of your +States are there ignorant negroes in so great a number that, by combining +with the debased whites, they can make for it such a constitution and laws +and set up such authorities as they please. We, your brothers and sisters +of the south, have lived under the rule of this foulest of coalitions. We +know from actual experience how it plunders and preys upon honest workers, +producers, and property owners; how it licenses and fosters crime. In my +own State, from the first day that a governor, elected by fiat voters and +ex-whites, as we called the latter, was inaugurated, until we virtually +restored the supremacy of our race by carrying the three days' election in +December, 1870, fifty dollars would get a pardon for the greatest offence, +and robberies, burglaries, horse-stealing, and the like each went free for +a much smaller sum. Is it forgotten that the negro speaker was voted one +thousand dollars by a South Carolina legislature, ostensibly as extra +compensation for unusual services, but really of purpose to reimburse him +for a bet lost upon a horse race? Why, the foremost of our people in +virtue, wisdom, and patriotism were agreed that these sordid tyrannies +should be subverted at once and at any cost to ourselves. The emergency +justified any practice, device, or stratagem at the polls by which we +could defend our homes, families, and subsistence against assassins of the +public peace, wholesale robbers of the people, and instigators and +protectors of every crime. It justified the shotgun and six-shooter in +politics just as legitimate war justifies the musket in the hands of the +soldier. It called forth most righteously the Ku-Klux. That spontaneous +resistance finds a close parallel in the battles of Lexington and Bunker +Hill, fought before American independence was declared. But the Ku-Klux +fought for something still dearer than the dear cause for which our +forefathers bled in the two battles just mentioned. Had the latter failed +in the war they had thus begun, their children and people would +nevertheless have had such good government as England is now giving the +defeated Boers; but had the southern whites failed in their defence, their +land would have for long years been befouled like Hayti, and those who had +not been slaughtered unspeakably degraded. I think that all our countrymen +who so rightfully eulogize the heroes of Lexington and Bunker Hill should +also learn to give the greater praise to the southern heroes whose +indomitable spirit routed the madmen that, with all the power of the +federal government in their hands, tried their best to give the section +over to negro rulers. Brothers and sisters, "picture it, think of it," +until you can fully understand that hour of our trial. All my northern +acquaintances who have resided in the south for several years--they are +many--come to look at the subject just as the natives do. A candid and +honest settler from Vermont has told me how he was made to change his +mind. Conversing with a southerner, he had reprehended the different ways +in which the negro's ballot had been rendered nugatory. The other replied, +"Suppose that there was an incursion of Indians given suffrage into your +State in such a mass as to make them seventy-five per cent of all the +voters, wouldn't you whites in some way manage either to outvote or +outcount them!" The Vermonter answered in the affirmative. We had to +deliver ourselves. We used the only means at our command. + +It was not to be thought of that these negro governments be endured, even +if tempered by the Ku-Klux, for government is in its nature lasting and +permanent while the other was only temporary. They would have gradually +gathered strength. Then there would have been rapid enrichment of a few +exceptional negroes and rapid expulsion of the whites impoverished by +emancipation, from all their little that was left. And then, the leading +negroes desiring nothing else so much, there would have come many white +men and women, each one willing to climb out of the depths of want by +intermarriage with a prosperous negro. Who can predict what would have +been the future of mongrelism thus beginning? We of the south are most +conscientiously solid against what we know from actual trial to be the +worst and most corrupting of all government; and we are still more solid +against everything that tends to promote amalgamation. Can you blame us +for standing in serried phalanx by white domination and against the +misrule exampled in the early years of reconstruction, and for our own +uncontaminated white blood and against fusion with the negro? We must be +solid in the face of these dangers, and as long as they are threatened by +the presence of millions of negroes in our midst. There is no other +solidity in the south. In all matters of the locality republicans and +democrats count alike. When one offers to vote in the primary, if his name +is on the registry list, and he appears on inspection to be white, his +vote is accepted; and he generally casts that vote, not for the interest +of a political party, but for that of the public. The triumphant election +in November, 1904, of independents or democrats, in four northern States +which at the same time went for Mr. Roosevelt, indicates solidity for the +true local welfare of the people as against the behests of party. So what +the white primary has produced in the south, has commenced in the north. +And the result in Missouri, voting for Roosevelt, republican, and Folk, +democrat, shows that what we may call federal independentism has commenced +in the south. This will spread as the people learn it does not hurt them +to split their tickets while voting upon national questions, if they but +maintain their solidity while voting upon State or municipal. + +Now may I be allowed some decided words, most kindly and inoffensively +spoken, as to appointing negroes to federal offices in the south. It is no +sound argument for it that now and then some negro may have been appointed +in a northern community which manifested no opposition. Consider the case +of Mr. William H. Lewis, a negro lately made assistant district attorney +in Boston by Mr. Roosevelt. He is a Harvard graduate, was captain of the +Harvard eleven while in college, had represented Cambridge in the +Massachusetts legislature, and the community was not at all averse to his +appointment.[197] Therefore when it was made there was no disregard of the +wishes and feelings of Boston and the regions adjoining. But when a negro +is given office in the south, it is felt by all the community to be an +insult. Would President Roosevelt cram the appointment of a white down the +throats of a northern community in which all the best citizens protested +against it? Would he not confess to himself that the wishes and feelings +of these good people ought to be respected, even if he considered them +foolish and unreasonable? It seems to me that he would, and that he would +find for the place somebody else in his party acceptable to the locality. +Why should he not do the like when his southern brothers and sisters who +have such convincing reasons against the encouragement of negroes in their +politics, protest unanimously against his filling an office in their midst +with a negro? Will he snub them because a negro has more sacred right than +a white? Is that what he means by keeping open the door of hope and +opportunity? Or will he snub them because enough of punishment has not yet +been given them, and because the south is still a province or dependency +on which he is justified in quartering his partisans and pets without +regard to the feelings and wishes of all the better inhabitants? + +Brothers and sisters of the north, I cannot believe that any one of you +who impartially considers the subject, would ever approve appointing even +the most competent and deserving negro to a southern office in the teeth +of universal objection by the whites of the community. + +My last word is to implore every honest one in the country to lay aside +all prejudice and master the southern situation before judging. Whoever +does this, whoever will accurately place himself in the shoes of a good +southern citizen, will, I most firmly believe, approve the attitude of the +south, with his whole heart and soul. + + + + +APPENDIX + +THE OLD AND NEW SOUTH, a Centennial article for the International Review, +afterwards corrected and published separately. New York: A. S. Barnes & +Co. 1876. + + +The approach of the Centennial Celebration is not hailed in the south with +the demonstrative joy of the north. It would be out of taste to expect +that the former should appear to triumph greatly over the life of the +nation preserved at the cost of her recent overthrow. Her late antagonist +can rejoice in a vast and happy population, great material prosperity, and +the fresh fame of a world-renowned success. It is meet, while remembering +she has so lately saved the union by her stupendous armipotence, that the +north should exult as a people never did before. The south has been made +to feel the pangs of a sudden impoverishment and the incalculable +discomfort of complete economical unsettlement; and she has not learned +the new lessons which she must learn to become self-sustaining and +progressive. But her earnest spirits, doing painfully the slow task of +repairing lost fortunes; seeking after the system proper to succeed +planting; striving to make their homes pleasant again and to give their +children a fair hope in the land,--these intent workers, who are most of +them scarred confederate veterans, even if they will not say it loudly, +have come around to hold in steadfast faith that it is far better the Blue +Cross fell, and the American union stands forever unchallengeable +hereafter. And they have brought with them the great mass of their people. +They cannot joy so happily as the north, but they have a warm welcome for +the Great Commemoration. For they see that the evils which followed as the +scourge of defeat are soon to pass away, while the fall of slavery and +the failure of secession are to prove greater and greater blessings as +years roll on. + +And so the time has come for a southerner calmly to discuss the past, +present, and future of the south. He has no use for the methods of popular +and unscientific politics, wherein everything is blamed or applauded as +being the result of party measures. The intentions and motives of the +actors, on both sides of the late strife, will give but proximate +explanations. How the two sections became, to use the fine phrase of Von +Holst, economically contrasted; how the southern people and their +representative politicians were bred, under their circumstances, into +opposition to the union; and how the northern people and their +representative politicians were bred, under widely different +circumstances, into love of the union; how the long clashing in politics +culminated in civil war; how the south was utterly crushed and her whole +industrial system destroyed; how she slowly re-erects herself into a new +condition better than the old,--the ultimate solution of these questions +can only be found by discussing them in the light of those laws of +development which give every community a policy suited to what it discerns +to be its best interest. These laws are of far more importance than the +politician, who is but their creature. Leaving to others to fight over the +old struggles of the political arena and bandy hard words with one +another, we will try to discuss our subject in the manner we have +indicated to be appropriate. + +To understand the present and future, we must first understand the past. +To understand the New south, we must first understand the Old south, the +distinguishing feature of which was negro slavery. Mr. Stephens, then +Vice-President of the southern confederacy, in an address to a large +assembly in Savannah, in March, 1861, said of the new government: "Its +foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that +the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery--subordination to +the superior race--is his natural and normal condition." There is no doubt +slavery was the corner-stone of southern society; and when it was removed, +four years later, a thorough disintegration of the whole fabric was the +logical result. + +When our country was first settled, the southern regions were far more +attractive in soil and climate; and their other natural +resources--minerals, good harbors, navigable streams, water-power idling +everywhere, to mention no more--were equal to those of the other section. +The subsequent advancement of the north has been so rapid as to excite the +wonder of the world; while it is said by us of the south, jesting upon our +worn-out and exhausted land, that we have done worse for the country than +the Indians before us, who stayed here many centuries and yet left the +soil as good as they found it. + +The plantation system was the great barrier to southern progress. From its +first historical appearance, among the Carthaginians, from whom the Romans +seem to have derived it, this rude and wholesale method of farming has +rested on slaveholding. Its workings have been similar everywhere. In +Italy, under the Roman republic, absorbing the petty holdings, it drove +out the small farmer; it destroyed the former respect for trades and +handicrafts, and brought them into disfavor; it prevented the development +of the industrial arts; it created a non-reciprocal commerce. Centuries +later, it did the same things in our southern States. + +A sketch of the leading features and results of the plantation system, as +it existed in America, is our proper beginning. + +The driver, as the negro foreman was called, was not very common in the +south, and was generally under the superintendence of the overseer. Could +the planters have made a good overseer of the driver, of course they would +have consulted their interest, and reproduced the ancient slave-steward of +Rome. Slaveholders keep their slaves under careful surveillance, but they +do not usually overlook them in person. It is not often that a master +engages in an employment which brings him into daily and intimate contact +with the lowest orders, and which he instinctively feels to be degrading. +The planter could have neither his first choice, which would have been a +slave overseer, nor his second choice, a superintendent from his own rank +in society; and so, as the next best thing, he took as overseer a white +hireling from the non-slaveholding class. The tillage of the fields was +thus intrusted to the overseers, who were, for the most part, men of +little education and business skill, and who had no interest in their +employment except to draw its wages. Thus the foremost, if not the only, +southern industry was managed by incompetent and careless agents. + +The Roman master, in the later days of the republic, having always vast +markets open to him, shunned the expense of providing for women and +children, and bought new slaves instead of breeding them; but the closing +of the African slave-trade, and the softer hearts and manners of modern +times, led our planters, at last, to rely on propagation as their only +source of supply. The negroes were, therefore, well cared for, and, in a +genial clime, increased rapidly. This increase, however, did not keep pace +with the increasing demand for southern products, and so the market value +of the slave rose rapidly. To the Roman slaveholder, land was almost +everything, and his rustic slaves nothing; to the southerner, the slaves +were almost everything, and the land nothing. There was no careful +cultivation of the soil, no judicious rotation of crops, and no adequate +system of fertilization. Southern husbandry was, for the most part, a +reckless pillage of the bounty of nature. The planter became possessed +with a roving spirit, and was continually seeking "fresh land," as virgin +soil was termed. In the older sections, where there was most stability, +the best farming consisted in judiciously eking out the natural fertility +of the fields, and when that was exhausted, in leaving them to recuperate +by years of rest. Thus a given working force required, year by year, a +greater and greater allowance of land, and the plantations became steadily +larger, the small farmer retiring, and the white population becoming +continually less. Many of these older sections turned, from being +agricultural communities, into nurseries, rearing slaves for the younger +States where virgin soil was abundant. The fertile lands of the new +settlements, by yielding bountiful crops, gave fresh impulse to the +plantation system, and here the small holdings were absorbed more rapidly +than they had been in the older States. The southern slaves, regarded as +property, were the most desirable investment open to the generality of +people that has ever been known. They were patient, tractable, and +submissive, and never revolted in combined insurrections, as did the +slaves of antiquity. Their labor was richly remunerative; their market +value was constantly rising; they were everywhere more easily convertible +into money than the best securities; and their natural increase was so +rapid that a part of it could be squandered by a shiftless owner every +year to make both ends meet, and he still be left enough of accumulation +to enrich him steadily. And so the plantation, or rather the slave, system +swallowed up everything else. + +There were no distinct industrial classes. There were negro blacksmiths, +negro carpenters, negro shoemakers, etc., all over the land, but they were +mere appendages to the plantations, and far inferior in capacity and skill +to the artisan slaves of antiquity. + +The commerce of the south was non-reciprocal. She traded raw produce for +manufactures which she should have made herself, or which she should have +got in exchange for manufactures of her own. The over-mastering energy of +slave property, dissolving, as it were, all things into itself, kept her +from that development of trades, manufactories, and industrial arts which +is the solid and unprecedented progress, and far more durable wealth, of +the north. + +There were a few exceptions in the way of restorative agriculture, and of +diversified investments of capital in railways, manufactories, inland +navigation, and mercantile enterprises. All along the northern border +there were efforts to let go slavery, and non-slave industry was slowly +emerging in a few places; but these things were as dust in the balances. +The slave system was rooted in the best portions of the land, and nearly +all of the productive wealth of the south was in, or dependent upon, +planting. Implacable enemies of slavery were rapidly increasing in numbers +and power, but she continued blindly sacrificing everything to rear +negroes. When actual emancipation came--that nipping May frost--the south +showed, on a gigantic scale, in her poverty and one solitary and +portentously dried-up source of wealth, a parallel to Ireland, smitten +with famine by the sudden failure of her only supply of food. When the +charity of the world and the returning bounty of nature had again fed the +Green Isle, everything fell back into the old track, and she could go on +smoothly as before. But not so with the south: her wealth has fled; her +occupation, the plantation system, is gone; and she must, for a +generation, grope painfully in the dark, trying novel ways of subsisting, +enduring want and many failures, before finding again the light of plenty +and comfort. + +The duties of the planter have changed. The management of a farm is not +like that of a plantation, and one skilled in the management of slaves is +not necessarily efficient in the directing of freedmen. Many other +countries have been impoverished by wars; but is not this instantaneous +and almost complete taking away of a great people's mode of living unique +in history? The most resolute secessionist would have lost heart and put +up his sword, could he have seen, before the war commenced, how easily the +solitary prop of southern wealth and comfort could be overturned, to be +set up no more. But in none of the ablest of the anti-secession arguments +of 1860 were the consequences of defeat predicted. + +Some portions of our country have been built up into a high degree of +prosperity by a steady influx of foreign settlers. How much has been added +to the power and wealth of the northern States by the immigration from the +old lands of those who, when first they come, can do no more than subsist +themselves by their own industry, almost defies computation. How the force +of the preponderant population of the north pressed upon the south during +the war, and at last crushed her down! Slavery repelled the free immigrant +from the south, and he went elsewhere with his power to enrich and defend. + +The uniform and rapid advancement of civilization is mainly due to the +struggle of the poor to better their condition. These efforts result in +complex division of labor, accumulation of wealth, and better than these, +in the production of a great population engaged in diversified industries. +In such a population, improving year by year in business habits, consists +the strength of a nation. The slave had no hope of rising, and the system +of which he was a part repelled free workingmen, and thus the south lost +the benign emulation and energy of a lower class. The ancient slaves were +not alone rural laborers and domestic servants, as were those of the +south. The former, being of kindred blood with their masters and near +their level in natural capacity, were initiated in the various industries, +some of which flourished greatly under their management. Though the slaves +of old were very degraded, they were not as low and grovelling as those of +our day. Enfranchisement was common; and, in a few generations afterwards, +the descendants of the freedman were indistinguishable amid the body of +free citizens. The ancient states were not, therefore, prevented by +slavery from having advanced and diversified industries, nor were they +denied the impulse of a possible rising from the lower to the higher +classes. But the American slave was of the remotest race, far below his +master in development, and the horror of receiving him into the body of +free citizens grew continually stronger. The law discouraged manumission, +and frowned upon the increase of freedmen. Thus, the African slavery of +the south was the most hopeless form of servitude the civilized world has +ever seen; and, by preventing the formation of a great class of freemen, +engaged in respectable industry, it killed the very roots of social +progress. These influences of slavery, so repugnant to American ideas, +will be more vividly seen and understood in the answer to the question, +What would have been the present condition of the south had it not been +for slavery? Undoubtedly her land would have smiled with a fertility +richer than the endowment of nature; her industrial arts would, ere this +time, have branched out into multifarious activity; her own ships would +have been carrying her produce and manufactures abroad; and, as the crown +of all, she would have had a teeming population of workers, whose +education in the methods of self-support would have been the assurance of +unlimited future advancement. In brief, in all the elements of the +greatness of a community, the south might now have equalled, if not +excelled, the north. + +But there are some other effects of slavery to be noted before the outline +of the Old south can be clearly and fully drawn. + +Among the planters, costly and liberal instruction was given to a few of +those who were to adorn places of leisured ease, or to fill the necessary +professions and public positions; but, in the midst of the sparse and +shifting rural population, there could not be that devotion to the +education of all, which is one of the most conspicuous glories of the +northern States. + +In consequence of the sparseness of the planters and their roving habits, +there was not that subdivision of different portions of the counties into +small self-governing wards, which Jefferson so fondly desired. He said of +the New England townships, that they had "proved themselves the wisest +invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of +self-government, and for its preservation." He also said that he +considered the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging +on two hooks, to wit, "the public education, and the subdivision into +wards." This government of every vicinage in its home affairs by itself, +as originated in New England, and is now spread far and wide throughout +the northern States, is the most beneficent achievement of American +democracy. By this coercion of the citizen to participate in the constant +administration of public matters directly concerning his interests, +self-government becomes, as it should be, the business of everybody, and +everybody is compulsorily educated in the best of all learning for the +race. + +The finale of slavery remains to be told. As opposition to it increased +from without, the south became more and more closely united. She honestly +believed that wanton intermeddlers were attacking her dearest rights. The +steady and continually strengthening warfare against slavery, and her +continuous and earnest defence of it, began--it is impossible to determine +precisely when--to knit her into a nationality of her own. He who +understands what Mr. Bagehot calls "nation-making" will discover, in the +past history of the south, if he looks attentively, many signs of this +tendency, which steadily progressed unperceived on her part, and still +more so on the part of the north, until the south began to coalesce into a +nation as compact as her scattered and random elements would permit. The +long advocacy and support of slavery in the political arena had fevered +her whole people, and finally, under these promptings to a national life, +politics absorbed nearly all of her intellectual powers. + +There is a striking parallel between this sustained effort of the south +and the struggle of Ireland, when the latter, for the fifty years ending +with the advent of the present century, was arrayed against the British, +in their encroachments upon her independent government. During this +half-century, Ireland maintained that she was an independent integral part +of the British Empire, just as Virginia contended that she was a sovereign +in the federation of States. Ireland, like a southern State, challenged +every seeming interference, by the general government, in her local +affairs; and the claims put forth, in each instance, were inexorably +contested by an adverse government, claiming supremacy and supported by +superiority of power. Both were on the eve of revolutionary secession +without knowing it. The results in Ireland and the south were similar: +there was but one intellectual activity, namely, politics. The memory of +all Irishmen of that time not forgotten--and many of their names are +familiar words--is nothing but resistance to English aggression. Even +Curran, Ireland's great forensic advocate, made his world-wide fame in +defending Irishmen against the prosecutions of the British ministry. It +was much the same at the south in the period antecedent to the civil war. +She had neither literature nor science; but she had statesmen and +advocates, who will be remembered as long as her soldiers and generals. + +The national germ had long been growing below the surface, in darkness, +and at last it burst into view, and shot up into a body of amazing +proportions. There was not the birth of a new nation at Montgomery in +1861; only the majority of this vigorous young member of the family of +nations was there proclaimed. But, for all of the eloquence of its orators +and the virtue and bravery of its people, it was, as compared with its +adversary, in raw and untutored nonage, and the great disaster that befell +four years afterwards was then preordained. It was her unshunnable fate +that she should be denationalized on the battle-field. + +The late war was a conflict between implacable enemies. Each belligerent, +standing up for national life, was resistlessly coerced to fight to the +last. Neither can be blamed. The past may be taxed with lack of wisdom. It +may be that as Scotland and, more lately, Ireland have been peacefully +denationalized, a preventive, anticipating the dreadful event of war, +might years before have been devised by statesmanly forecast. The actual +combatants--the southerner fighting for the confederacy, and the northern +soldier bearing up the flag of the union--were equals in manhood and +virtue. The survivors, federal and confederate, at last see this, and +therefore they go in company to decorate alike the graves of the dead of +both armies. + +The cause of all these evils--the backwardness and stationariness of the +south; a wasteful husbandry, without other industries; the instability of +her wealth; her want of a great class of freemen engaged in the different +arts; her barbarically simple social structure; her neglect of common +schools; the absorption of all her intellectual energies in feverish and +revolutionary politics; and, finally, secession and the reddened ground of +a thousand battle-fields--was slavery. It is gone. The malignant cancer, +involving, as it seemed, every vital and menacing hideous and loathsome +death, was plucked out by the roots; and after a ten years' struggle of +nature, we see the body politic slowly but surely reviving to a health and +soundness never known before. + +Here we find the dividing line between the Old and the New south. The +former ended, and the latter began, with the giving of freedom to the +negroes--an event which will prove in the future to have been an +emancipation even more beneficial to master than to slave. Immunity from +all the evils of slavery which we have catalogued will distinguish the +New south from the Old.[198] + +The sudden impoverishment of the southern people, and the unlooked-for +change in their ways of living and thinking, had they occurred in the most +peaceful times, and been followed with the best of government, would have +produced a profound shock and a long paralysis. But the bitterness of +subjugation, and the mistake of needlessly offensive and goading +government, with harsh reconstructive measures, have prolonged the +lethargy. And yet the American union shows benignly in the present +condition and promised future of the section. The ten years since +emancipation are instructive. Slowly has the New south been disentangling +herself from the debris of the Old, and she has emerged far enough to +enable us to perceive that a better era has commenced. Much has been lost, +but more has been saved. All the germs of true wealth and power and the +solid well-being of a community have survived; and solace for the past and +earnest of a great future may be found in the fact that she has reached at +last, and for the first time, a position in which she can develop these +elements, free from the suffocating hindrances of former days. We may now +properly inquire, What of the past does the south retain, and in what will +consist her future progress? + +She retains her genial climate, her kindly soil, and her many natural +resources. If the peace of the American union is assured, as everything +now graciously promises, these natural advantages will, in a few +generations, far more than compensate for all her losses, and ultimately +place her in the very van of progress. + +The best inheritance of the New from the Old south is the southern people. +We have seen how slavery checked industrial development, and how many of +its other effects were hurtful. After allowing fully for all these, there +will be found a great residuum of progressive energy, of intellectual +strength, and of moral worth in the people of the southern States. They +need not fear a comparison, in these respects, with the most enlightened +communities. Great men, like Washington, Jefferson, Calhoun, Jackson, and +Lee; political and military heroes, judges, lawyers, and orators, such as +the south has given birth to, in unbroken succession,--are the +unmistakable signs of a great people. + +The rank and file of the confederate armies have given proof that the men +of the south must be classed, in all the elements of complete character, +with the best that the world has ever seen. Crime was so infrequent that a +single morning of the term of a rural court, before the war, nearly always +sufficed to dispose of every indictment; there was little want or +pauperism; virtue was everywhere the rule in private life, and there was +seldom even the suspicion of corruption in government or the +administration of justice. The history of this people since the war shows +that they are possessed of the best Anglo-Saxon mettle. They are slowly +beginning to thrive wherever they have been left to govern themselves, in +spite of the complete industrial revolution, the loss of property, and +change of occupation, of which we have written. And in many places, where +reconstruction has been harshest, and negro misrule yet prevails, the +whites have developed an unlooked-for self-maintaining capacity, and have +demonstrated that even there must be the eventual predominance of +intelligence and virtue, should "natural selection" alone work to secure +it. + +The southern people have learned much wisdom in the last ten years. Their +heavy vote in 1872 for Horace Greeley--a man to whom a foreigner would +have supposed them unappeasably hostile--if there was nothing else, would +alone suffice to show that they are rapidly laying aside all hindrances to +progress. And now that slavery is gone and she has so quickly conquered +the animosities of the war, the south may be likened to a capable and +energetic young man, who, having failed, as the result of inevitable +misfortune, in a wrongly-chosen business, has been relieved of all +embarrassments and has entered upon his proper calling. More may +reasonably be expected of such a man than of one more prosperous who has +not had the like discipline. + +As her nationalizing tendency has been destroyed by the removal of +slavery, and as her future must necessarily be shaped by union influences, +she will heartily embrace the political creed of the union. The doctrine +of the sovereignty of the States, which was advocated with very great +ability by many of the southern statesmen--notably by Calhoun, in his +speeches in congress, and in his "Discourse on the Constitution of the +United States," and with still more taking effect by Mr. Stephens in his +"Constitutional View of the War between the States,"--has now no disciples +at the south. General Logan gave expression to the prevailing creed of the +present, when he said, at a recent reunion of former confederate +companions: + + "In considering, then, the future of the south, there is one fact + suggested at the outset which has been demonstrated to us by the logic + of events. It is, that under the operation of causes, which, although + unseen at the time, appear now to have been inevitable in their + results, a vast _social organism_ has been developed, and is now so + far advanced in its growth as a _national body politic_, and no longer + a mere aggregation of States, that _unity_ is a necessity of its + further development. In reviewing the past, we can now clearly see + that this national organism has been _gradually developed_; and, while + many seek by various theories to account for the failure of the + confederacy, the result may be regarded as the necessary consequence + of those laws of development under which this social organism--the + United States--was being evolved." + +And the south is pleased to observe that there are no genuine signs of too +much centralization. On the contrary, the town system is destined to +spread fast and far; and the increase of local option laws; the splitting +of larger into smaller counties; the strengthening tendency to submit +constitutions and many legislative acts to voters; the greater disposition +often to amend the State constitutions in the interests of progress; the +vigorous growth in each State of its own body of laws; the rapid +multiplication of towns and cities, with governments peculiar to each, are +some of the many convincing proofs that local self-government is +increasing and flourishing. Of the last particular Judge Dillon says: + + "We have popularized and made use of municipal institutions to such an + extent as to constitute one of the most striking features of our + government. It owes to them, indeed, in a great degree, its + decentralized character. When the English Municipal Corporations + Reform Act of 1835, was passed, there were, in England and Wales, + excluding London, only two hundred and forty-six places exercising + municipal functions; and their aggregate population did not exceed two + millions of people. In this country, our municipal corporations are + numbered by thousands, and the inhabitants subjected to their rule, by + millions." + +Reflecting southerners see, in the present condition of the southern +States, the very strongest possible guaranty that the true balance +between national cohesion and local freedom is to be preserved. They see +that the happy equilibrium is of a character so permanent and stable as to +have survived the convulsion of civil war. The southern States are not +held as conquered provinces. On the contrary, aside from the abolition of +slavery and the fundamental legislation securing to the old slaves the +full fruition of their freedom, there has been no perceptible change in +the relations of these States to the United States. + +Surely, to the student of history, wherein _vae victis!_ is written on +every page, this fact has wonderful significance. It recommends the +American form of government to the rest of the world as the incoming of +the new stage of civilization, wherein oppression and war shall become +unknown. However long contending armies may devour populations and +paralyze industry elsewhere, we are assured that war-sick America will +fight with herself no more. This assurance repays the south a thousand +fold for all that she has lost and endured. + +The great economical interest of the south is her agriculture; and in this +industry, as well as among those who conduct it, a constant transition has +been taking place during the ten years since emancipation. There is a +melancholy change in the homes of landholders from the case and comfort of +_ante bellum_ days. The neat inclosures have fallen; the pleasant grounds +and the flower-gardens, once so trim and flourishing, are a waste; all the +old smiles and adornments are gone. Change at home is accompanied by still +greater change without. The negroes--and they constitute the great bulk of +the laboring population--tend to become a tenantry, cultivating the land, +in some instances, for a part of the produce, but oftener for a fixed sum +of money. Many of these realize from their labors little more than enough +to pay a moderate rent. Others work for wages, either in money or in some +portion of the crop made by their labor. As the negroes are scarce, and +their labor so important, they have often, directly or indirectly, a voice +in the area of land cultivated, the mode of cultivation, and the kind of +crop raised. The result, in many places, is retrogression. The face of +the country is much altered. Only a small part of the land, as compared +with that tilled before the war, is under cultivation, the remainder +becomes wild. Could the fallen confederates return they would not in many +places recognize their old homes. Nearly every man of average business +ability could control his slaves, before the war, with little trouble; but +it now requires far more than ordinary capacity to find and keep good +tenants, to employ laborers amid the present scarcity, and to retain and +make them remunerative when employed. The freedman is a different +character from his former slave self, and is to be governed by different +methods; and the true art of managing him is cabalism to many who were +prosperous planters before the war. Multitudes of these show great +despondency, for there have been thousands of failures among them. + +But when we examine into this depression, we find that it is but the +result of the transition from the former _regime_, and not a deep-seated +and fatal decay of the vitals. These are some of the symptoms of assured +recovery, noted within the last three or four years: a steady contraction +of credit, and widening prevalency of the cash system; growing conviction +that the whites must depend upon their own labor more, and less on that of +the negroes; augmenting number of land-owners who decline to secure the +merchants advancing supplies to their tenants and laborers; a greater +acreage devoted to food crops; general advocacy of diversified planting; +spreading dissatisfaction with the laws giving large exemptions to +debtors. Southern economical affairs, in their sinking, "touched bottom" +(to use the forcible expression now in vogue) about the end of 1874.[199] +There has been a probable increase since of the mass of distress, as the +heat of a summer day increases, by accumulation, for a while after noon, +though the sun is imparting less and less. Steady amelioration will soon +be general. A new system is slowly developing, and can be plainly +discerned among the rubbish of the old. The change from former days most +noticeable now is the multiplication, increased energy, and continually, +growing trade of the smaller towns. This is due to the decay of planting, +which was a wholesale system, and the coming-in of farming, which is a +small trading system using much less concentrated capital. The large +moneyed man, for evident economical reasons, buys in commercial +centres--in cities--but the small purchaser must needs buy in the nearest +market. Allowing for the great increase of farmers, and the control by the +negroes of their earnings, there are many thousands more of small buyers +in the south than there were before the war, and towns build up to sell to +them. + +There is another fact, not so noticeable as the rapidly growing local +trade, but still more important. A class of new planters, consisting +mainly of men too young to have become fixed in the methods and habits of +former days, is springing up. They are new yet; but there is, in many +parts of the south, at least one who is teaching many watching idlers by +deeds and silence. They have remodelled their domestic economy, +accommodating it to their smaller incomes and to the uncertainty of +household help. They have discarded the outside kitchen, have substituted +the cooking stove for the old voracious fireplace, and have brought the +well with a pump in it, instead of the old windlass and bucket, under the +roof of the dwelling, so that the household duties may be more easily +despatched by their wives and children. And they have also remodelled +their planting. They diversify their crops and products, raising more +grain, and introducing clover and new forage plants. Some abandon entirely +the cultivation of the old slave crops, and supply the nearest towns with +feed and provisions. These planters of the New south till less land, and +strive to improve it; they study the superiority and economy of machinery; +they provide themselves with better cotton-gins, often using steam to work +them; they have presses which require fewer hands than the old +packing-screw; better plows are used; and harrows, reapers, and mowers, +which, in many parts of the south, were seldom known before the war, are +now common. This little band keeps pace with agricultural progress, as +recorded in the journals; they seek for and find many new sources of +profit; they prepare the people for laws fostering the interest of the +planter in many particulars; they mold the opinion of their neighborhood; +and their ability, skill, and wealth slowly increase. They struggle with a +new order of things, having to think for themselves at every turn, and +often misstep and fall in the dark, but they pick themselves up, and find +the way again. The light of the new experience which they are kindling +grows brighter each year, and is beginning to draw some of their neighbors +to travel in it. + +It is not our object to give a false impression of the influence of the +class of farmers last referred to. They are but few, and their efforts are +but the beginnings of the happy coming change. Their courage, power, and +numbers are manifestly on the increase; and, as there is no other +progressive activity in agriculture, and they meet no opposition save the +passive resistance of despondency and inaction, it is almost certain that +they will lay deep and sure the foundations of the needed renovation of +the south. It is their belief that, to make agriculture generally +prosperous, and to school the people to habits of thrift and saving, are +the first steps, and that manufactories and trades and heterogeneous +industries will naturally follow. + +They desire northern settlers, to add useful features to agricultural +economy, and diversify planting. A few have come, and they are prospering. +It seems rational to expect a steady influx of these for many years, +bringing capital and methods better suited to the needs of the changed +times, raising the value of landed property out of its impeding +prostration, and strengthening the industrial force. The climate; the +abundance of cheap, cleared land; the long settlement having demonstrated +the country to be healthy; the fact that plowing and other important +outdoor work can be done on the farms all the winter round; the many +railways, the multiplying towns and growing cities; the variety of +products, and easy access to market--now that slavery and the animosity of +war are gone, and the misrule of the carpetbagger has ended nearly +everywhere--these, and many other advantages daily disclosing themselves, +excel most of the new States and the Territories in offering inducements +to immigrants; and, in due course of time, a vast number of settlers, both +American and foreign, will be added to the population. There are many +indications that the immigration of stock-raisers, wool-growers, +market-gardeners, orchardists, beekeepers, in fine, small farmers of every +kind, adapted to the soil and climate, will soon begin in earnest. When it +does, the rebuilding of the south will be rapid. + +The coming-in of northern capitalists, to invest in railways, mines, +manufactories, and other large moneyed enterprises--most especially to +develop the great resources of water-power--may be expected to begin at +once, and considerably, upon the close of the centennial year. It seems +now that this is the most powerful agency that may be expected to begin +immediate work, in introducing the much-needed higher type of industrial +organization. + +The feelings of the two races toward each other were, for a few years +after the war, bitterly hostile. The whites had, all their lives, seen the +negroes in slavery, and from their infancy they had heard their preachers +defend slavery, not in the abstract, as their phrase was, but in the +concrete. The "concrete" meant African slavery, which was justified on the +ground that the African was divinely intended in his nature for slavery, +which was to him christianization and civilization, so long as he remained +a slave; while, the moment he was set free, he would revert to his +primitive barbarism. When these God-given slaves were suddenly cut loose +from mastership, and the wealth of the capitalist, the portion of the +orphan, and the mite of the widow were swept away at once by emancipation, +either directly or as a necessary consequence, there was a great shock +given to the whites. But when, three years afterwards, a new constituency +was created, in which the slaves, just emancipated, outnumbered the +whites, in many counties, the storm of passion that burst forth can hardly +be described. The whites feared that the old relation was about to be +inverted, and that they would be made slaves to the negroes. There was +many a deed of violence, and many a poor negro paid his life for a few +offensive words. + +But a wonderful change has taken place. When the southern States were +"reconstructed," as it is termed, in 1868, a negro school-keeper or +preacher, if known to be a republican in politics--as he generally +was--was hardly safe anywhere beyond the limits of a city. The negro +schools were often broken up by mobs, and sometimes black congregations +were attacked at night in their churches and dispersed by armed whites in +disguise. Now, the colored children troop securely to school, and the +colored churches and their congregations are sternly protected by law +everywhere. Seven years ago a colored person could hardly get justice, in +even the plainest case, from a jury of the other race. Now, in all of the +courts, he has the influence of white men to aid him, and rarely is an +unjust verdict rendered against him. He makes better friends of the +whites. There is no need for him to legislate or hold office over them; he +cannot yet do these things right for himself. He rises, however, and his +importance is felt more and more. His labor is a necessity. Learning to +use it aright, he will surely win all that he deserves. The healthful +sentiment prevails everywhere, at the north as at the south, and with the +late slave also, that to force his growth is as unfortunate to him as is +misjudged parental assistance, which often keeps adult children from ever +becoming self-reliant. The colored race in the south must be educated by +the struggle for existence into self-maintenance. This training, like the +material recuperation of the south, will require time, with patience and +hopefulness. + +The negro tends resistlessly to a fixed position in his own class. He does +not wish to ride in the same railway-car with fine ladies and gentlemen, +nor could you persuade him to send his children to a mixed school to be +teased by white scholars. He will not be legislated out of his natural +circle, where he feels comfortable, into one where he will be ill at case. +He seeks for himself a separate home, school, church, and occupation, in +all of which he can, at a distance, imitate the white, to whom he is ever +looking up. The statute books may be covered with laws having a different +purpose, but they will be as powerless to check the current of separation +as prescribed rates of interest are impotent to keep down usury when +money is dear. In a domestic world, a company and circle of his own, the +negro will make a start for himself. + +But the negro is grossly misunderstood. It is too generally forgotten that +he is many centuries below the white in evolution. Slavery has elevated +him far above the savagery of Africa, and introduced him to perhaps his +only chance of civilization. + +His future in the south is a mystery. Many of his best friends do not +believe that he can hold all the great advantages that he has gained in +the last ten years. The whites have been muzzled by hostile government. +They were stunned, while the negro was stimulated, by emancipation. Their +natural effort to hold on to the _ante bellum_ system has also helped the +old slave. But, when small and diversified farming is fully developed, and +accumulating capital brings in the higher industries, there may be a +general need for more efficient and skilled labor than the average negro +can supply. While he is forever safe politically against the white, he may +not be economically safe. + +In noticing the leading features of the New south, we have merely hinted +at her rich natural endowments. We have deemed of more importance the +character of her people, the new views and principles beginning to assert +themselves, the great economical changes following and to follow the +abolition of slavery, and the potent effects soon to be wrought by copious +immigration. For upon these the future mainly depends. + +The south is in a thorough and long transition. Her fields are to be made +fertile and to smile beautifully with an infinite variety of products; her +provisional labor is to be gradually supplanted by a permanent system; +industries, trades, and manufactories are to be founded and everywhere +multiplied; she is to have local organizations which will foster more of +self-government; her common schools are to be reconstituted and rendered +truly serviceable to all; and she has also her part to do in literature, +science, and art, as well as in domestic and national politics. We must +not be oversanguine in hope of her immediate progress; but we can +certainly take courage, when we find that every one who perceptibly +influences society by precept or by example--whether he be prominent like +Gordon or Lamar, or only a humble planter leading the fore-row in his +fields--is seeking for and finding the right path. These leaders must, in +the nature of things, have a larger following every year. In due time, +their children and their children's children will make the south of a +piece with the more prosperous portions of our country. + + * * * * * + +[I intended to incorporate in the foregoing these two passages, but by +some inadvertence they were not printed in their several places: + +I said of Von Holst: + + "Though he does not equal Mommsen's vivid delineation of the effects + of Roman slavery, his work is in grateful contrast with most of the + anti- and pro-slavery literature of America, by reason of his freedom + from ethical declamation, and his presentation of the real evils of + slavery, in the light of social, and especially economical, laws." + +I also said of the negro: + + "His flexibility; his receptivity to civilization, so different from + the inveterate repugnance of the Indian; his satisfaction and almost + complete freedom from discontent, insuring him against any violent + change; the probably long necessity for his labor; are all great + things in his favor."] + + + + +INDEX + +[To decide what is the right handle to a passage not pointed to by a +chapter title, and place it in an index where an average reader will +expect it, is often very hard. An alphabetical list of proper names and +rememberable words that are in or near passages which one may wish to look +for is much more easy to make than a minute subject-index, and it supplies +much surer clews. What an _Index Nominum_ does for the Latin or Greek +scholar suggests the serviceableness of this Index.] + + + A. + + Abbott, Ernest Hamlin, 404. + + Abbott, Dr. Lyman, 347, 405. + + Abolitionists, root-and-branch, 15, 16, 84 _sq._ + + Achaean league, 62. + + Adams, Charles F., 28, 57, 58, 347. + + Adams, John, 59, 142. + + Adams, John Q., 20, 256. + + AEschines, 69. + + AEsop, 343. + + Africa, "poor, oppressed, bleeding," 180, 185. + + Alamance, 77. + + Alexander, Tom, 277. + + Altgeld, 112. + + Amana community, 409. + + Aristides, 293. + + Aristocracies, natural, 90. + + Aristotle, 37, 39, 106. + + Arnold, Matthew, 196, 376. + + Athens, 89. + + Atlanta stockade, 381. + + + B. + + Bacon, 144. + + Bagehot, 437. + + Barnett, Samuel, 279. + + "Battle Hymn of the Republic," 205. + + Bayard, 241, 244. + + Beatrice, 195. + + Beauregard, 293, 316. + + Beecher, Henry Ward, 152. + + Beecher, Dr. Lyman, 189. + + Benjamin, 239. + + Benton, 126. + + Bentonville, 60. + + Bible, the, 39. + + Binney, 64. + + Bishop, J. P., 141. + + Blaine, 39. + + Boley, 374, 408. + + Bonnivard, 128. + + Breckinridge, 266. + + Brockhaus, 296, 360. + + Brooks, Preston S., 237. + + Brown, John, 264, 270, 352. + + Brown, Joseph E., 317. + + Brown, Prof. William Garrot, 274, 289, 369. + + Buena Vista, 310. + + Bunyan, 145. + + Burgoyne, 317. + + Burke, 41, 187, 204. + + Butler, 244. + + + C. + + Caesar, 244, 343. + + California, 40, 80. + + Calhoun Correspondence, 100, 105, 123. + + Calhoun, Floride, 99. + + Calhoun, John C., 17, 18, 19, 22, 30, 40, 65 _sq._, 85, 89, 135, 143, + 150, 152, 153, 158, 186, 208, 209, 212, 225, 226, 239, 247, 250, + 251, 253, 254, 255, 299, 311, 351. + + Casabianca, 319. + + Cass, 239. + + Catullus, 151, 278. + + Centralizing and decentralizing forces in America, 5. + + Channing, 196. + + Chase (of Maryland), 54. + + Chase, Salmon P., 21. + + Choate, 146, 219. + + Cicero, 15, 18, 38, 124, 144, 237. + + Classics, ancient, 37. + + Clay, 97, 246, 251. + + Cleopatra, 19. + + Cleveland, Grover, 325. + + Clingman, 157. + + Clinton, George, 96. + + Cobb, Howell, 214, 229, 252, 253, 261, 285. + + Cobb, T. R. R., 38, 39, 42, 48, 266. + + Coleridge, 202. + + Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, the Anglo-African composer, 25. + + Comings, S. H., 368, 419. + + Cone, 218, 222. + + Confederate States, its evolution similar to that of the United States, + 53; + African slave-trade prohibited by its constitution, 55; + its commissioners, 74. + + Cornwallis, 317. + + Cosmic force and law, 26, 211. + + Cotton, 35. + + Cowper, 136. + + Crawford, George W., 246. + + Crawford, William H., 218. + + Crittenden compromise, 262. + + Crocket, 144. + + Cromwell, Oliver, 274, 281. + + Cromwell, Richard, 297, 298. + + Cumming, Major Joseph B., 35, 321, 347, 348. + + Curran, 437. + + Curtis, 70. + + + D. + + Dahlonega mint, 231, 245. + + Dane, Nathan, 64. + + Dante, 36, 129, 144. + + Darwin, 119. + + Davidson, Miss, 322. + + Davis, Jefferson, 18, 19, 30, 262, 272, 284, 349. + + Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, 22, 238, 300, 301, 302, 305, 306, 308, 315, 318, + 323, 327. + + Decameron, 170, 383. + + Decatur, 79. + + Declaration of independence, 41, 42. + + Delaware, 45, 56. + + Del Mar, 109. + + Demodocus, 384. + + Demosthenes, 18, 69, 124, 144, 258. + + De Quincey, 145. + + Dillon, 442. + + Dispensary, South Carolina, 111. + + Dixon, 369. + + Doolittle, 266. + + Douglas, Stephen A., 21, 262, 264, 266. + + Douglass, Frederick, 25, 362, 414. + + Dred Scott decision, 91. + + DuBois, Professor, 171, 193, 344, 362, 365, 382, 384, 386, 387. + + Duer, 233. + + Dumas, father and son, 25. + + + E. + + "Edwards's Sabbath Manual," 198. + + Elizabeth, Queen, 38. + + Epaminondas, 273. + + Erichsen, Hugo, 360. + + Erskine, 218, 237. + + Everett, Edward, 70. + + + F. + + Falstaff, 248. + + Farmville, 60. + + Faust, 118. + + Fessenden, 243. + + Fire-eaters, 15. + + First Manassas, 73, 315. + + Force-bill of 1833, 65 _sq._ + + Forrest, 290-293, 294. + + Fort Darling, 283. + + Fort Donelson, 283. + + Foster, F. C., 396. + + Frankland, 80. + + Franklin, battle of, 60. + + Freed Slave, the statue, 202. + + Free-labor and slave-labor systems, their antagonism, 45 _sq._, 49. + + Freeman, 62. + + Fuegians, 361. + + + G. + + Gaius, 141. + + Galphin claim, 245 _sq._ + + Gardner, James, 286. + + Garrison, 88, 350. + + Georgia Platform, 8-11, 183, 209, 215, 259, 260, 261, 263, 266. + + Germany, 77. + + Gethsemane, 197. + + Giddings, 152. + + Goethe, 144. + + Gordon, 273, 450. + + Grady, 326. + + Grant, U. S., 20, 30, 293. + + Greeley, 326, 441. + + Green, 235. + + Grinke, Archibald H., 392. + + Grover, 227. + + Grundy, Mrs., 274. + + "Gulliver's Travels," 202. + + + H. + + Hale, 141, 244. + + Ham, descendants of, 38. + + Hamilton, Alexander, 59, 64, 141, 247. + + Hamilton, Governor, 65. + + Hamlet, 319. + + Hammond, 246. + + Hampton, 393, 411. + + Hampton, Wade, 129. + + Hannibal, 258, 294. + + Hans, the Berlin horse, 25. + + Hardeman, S. H., 279. + + Harlan, 240 _sq._ + + Harris, Joel Chandler, 408. + + Harvey, 141. + + Hastings, 60. + + Hawkins, Sir John, 38. + + Hayne, Robert Y., 30, 82, 144. + + Hayti, 360, 366 _sq._ + + Heine, 197. + + Henry, Patrick, 21, 64, 97, 272. + + Herculaneum, 43. + + Hill, Ben, 277. + + Hill, Mrs. Ben, 326. + + Hilliard, 254. + + Hoar, Senator, 404. + + Holsey, Bishop, 362, 422. + + Homer, 144. + + Horace, 343. + + Horatius, 249. + + Houmas land, 246. + + Howard, General, 406. + + Howell, 54. + + Hunter, 238. + + Huschke, 141. + + Huse, Caleb, 289. + + + I. + + Iowa contested election, 240 _sq._ + + Ireland, 51, 52, 437. + + Iroquois, 77, 126. + + _Isabel_ (steamer), 245. + + Italy, 77. + + + J. + + Jackson, President, 283. + + Jackson, Stonewall, 91, 259. + + Jamaica, negroes of, 367 _sq._, 379. + + Jamestown, 36, 37, 345. + + Jefferson, 41, 53, 54, 56, 59, 106, 142, 147, 436. + + Jesus, 40, 128, 352. + + Jevons, 107. + + Johnson, Andrew, 307. + + Johnston, Joseph E., 284, 316. + + + K. + + Kansas, 209. + + Kent, Chancellor, 65. + + Kentucky, 186. + + Kimball House fire, 280. + + King's Mountain, 61. + + Knight, Landon, 296, 303, 305, 312, 316, 317, 319. + + Ku-Klux, 369, 423. + + + L. + + "Lana Rookh," 187. + + Lamar, 450. + + Landon, Miss, 177. + + Langdon, John, 96. + + Lassigeray, 293. + + "Laus Deo," 205. + + Lear, 128, 202. + + Lee, R. E., 20, 21, 128, 259, 276, 299, 356. + + Lee, Stephen D., 328. + + Legare, 150. + + Lewis, William H., 425. + + Lexington, 77. + + Lieber, 187. + + Liebknecht, 112. + + Lincoln, Abraham, 20, 21, 23, 30, 33, 64, 160, 169, 210, 262, 267. + + "Little Giffen," 29. + + Livy, 146. + + Lloyd, H. D., 187. + + Lodge, Henry Cabot, 70, 72, 133, 134, 136, 137, 146, 155. + + Logan, General, 441. + + Lower class of negroes, 24-26, 410 _sq._ + + Lucanian ox, 200. + + Lucifer, 273. + + Lucretius, 87. + + Lumpkin, 83, 219, 222. + + + M. + + Madison, 56-58, 64, 68, 96, 133. + + Mallory, 272. + + Mann, Horace, 152. + + Mansfield, 141. + + Maoris, 413. + + March, 146. + + Marshall, C. J., 141. + + Martial, 278. + + Marx Carl, 107, 124. + + Maryland, 54. + + Mason, Jeremiah, 136. + + Maximilian, 298. + + McClellan, 294 + + McClung, 309. + + McDonald, 261. + + McDuffie, 222. + + McKinley, President, 357. + + McMaster, 70, 134. + + Megareans, 265. + + Mell, Dr., 277. + + Memorial Day, 322. + + Mexico, 51. + + Michaelangelo, 129. + + Mill, John Stuart, 106, 107, 265. + + Miller, Kelley, 392. + + Milton, 136. + + Missouri question, 40, 84, 209. + + Mitchell, John, 240. + + Mommsen, 260, 450. + + Monitor, 289. + + Monterey, 309. + + Morgan, Joshua, 223. + + Morgan, Lewis H., 76, 126. + + Murphy, Edgar Gardner, 359, 404. + + + N. + + Napoleon, 297 _sq._, 310. + + Nationalization, American, 4, 5, 61-83. + + Nationalization, southern, 4, 6-14, 51-61, 436-438. + + National Negro Business League, 402. + + Nations, law of, 75. + + Natural increase of slave property, 48, 49. + + New England, 54, 59; + environment of Webster therein, 147-152. + + New Jersey, 56. + + New York, 54. + + Niagara, 251. + + Noah's curse, 38. + + North Carolina, 80, 109. + + + O. + + Oedipus, 279. + + Oregon, 80, 84, 101, 226. + + + P. + + Pace, J. M., 322. + + Page, Thomas Nelson, 165, 384. + + Parker, Theodore, 152. + + Parsons, Prof. Frank, 109. + + Pennsylvania, 54. + + Pennsylvania ladies, two, 331. + + Peonage decision, 373. + + Pericles, 110, 265. + + Philippine, the, 26. + + Phillips, Wendell, 21, 88, 274, 356. + + Pickett, 19. + + Pierce, Bishop, 277. + + Pierce, President, 299. + + _Pilgrim, The_, 296. + + "Pilgrim's Progress," 202. + + Pingree, 112. + + Pinkney, Gustavus M., 98, 112, 119. + + Pinkney, William, 41, 79. + + Plato, 37, 106, 144. + + Plautus, 155, 195. + + Pliny, 39. + + Poe, 143, 150. + + Polk, President, 103. + + Pompeii, 43. + + Pompey, 212. + + Pope, 136. + + Post, Louis F., 25, 403, 406. + + Prentiss, S. S., 305. + + Primary, Georgia, 111. + + Primary, South Carolina, 111. + + Princeton, 331. + + Propontic, 259. + + Prynne, Hester, 329. + + Pugh, 239. + + + Q. + + Quintilian, 37. + + + R. + + Race question, 23-26. + + Randolph, John, 69, 97, 222. + + Ransy Sniffles, 87. + + Rebellion, 81. + + Reed, of South Carolina, 54. + + Renascence, 36, 41. + + "Republic of Republics," 64, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74. + + Rhode Island, 56, 80. + + Rhodes, James Ford, 17. + + Ricardo, 108, 109, 286. + + Roman law as to slavery, 42. + + Roosevelt, President, 33, 425. + + Ruskin, 202. + + + S. + + Saint Pierre, 43. + + Savage, 196. + + Sawyer, 307. + + Schurz, Carl, 134. + + Scipio, 294. + + Scott, General, 309. + + Scribner, Anne, 406. + + Sellers, Mulberry, 288. + + Seneca, 37. + + Seward, William H., 21, 22, 236. + + Shakspeare, 30, 136, 138, 144, 278. + + Sharpsburg, 273. + + Sherman, General, 346. + + Shiloh, 283. + + Shirley, 136. + + Simmons, 243. + + Simonides, 171. + + Slavery. (See chaps. ii., iii., x., xiv.) + + Slavery, ancient contrasted with southern, 155 _sq._, 432. + + Slave-trade, African, 46. + + Smith, Adam, 107. + + Smith, James M., 391. + + Smith, W. B., 365. + + Socrates, 196. + + South Carolina, 54, 90, 111. + + Southerners and northerners contrasted, 59-61. + + Southern Mutual Fire Insurance Co., 225. + + Spaight, 54. + + Spencer, Herbert, 144. + + Starke, W. Pinkney, 93, 94, 97, 100. + + State, for the negroes, 413 _sq._ + + Staunton, 255. + + Stephens, A. H., 21, 55, 69, 71, 82, 99, 106, 219, 221, 227, 232, 249, + 251, 252, 254, 257, 264, 266, 268, 285, 286 _sq._, 290, 306, 430. + + Story, 64. + + Stovall, 222, 290. + + Stowe, Mrs., 185, 187, 189, 197, 333. + + Stuart, J. E. B., 294. + + Sulla, 244. + + Sullivan, 106. + + Summer, Charles, 89, 152, 356. + + Summer, Colonel, 312. + + Surratt, Mrs., 298. + + Switzerland, 77. + + + T. + + Taylor, Dick, 273. + + Taylor, Edward B., 364, 383. + + Territories, intersectional strife over, 3, 46-49. + + Texas, 51, 80, 101. + + "The Fork," 397. + + Thomas, Thomas W., 266. + + Thomas, William Hannibal, 383. + + Thucydides, 27. + + Thurston, 381. + + Ticknor, Dr., 29. + + Tillinghast, 163, 166, 194, 361, 379, 380, 389, 392, 393, 411. + + Timrod, 29, 322. + + Titania, 198. + + Tobacco, 35, 55. + + Togoland, 344. + + Toombs, 18, 19, 30, 32, 41, 90, 99, 130-135, 150, 164, 186, 191, 198, + 208, 209, 284, 290, 292, 313, 380. + + Toucey, 238. + + Toussaint, 366. + + Town-meeting, 90, 436. + + Trent, 119. + + Troup, 256. + + Troy, 294. + + Turner, Bishop, 416. + + Tuskegee, 344, 411. + + Tyrtaeus, 29. + + + U. + + "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 40, 161 _sq._ + + Upper class of negroes, 24, 25, 370. + + Upson, Frank L., 43. + + + V. + + Van Buren, 230. + + Vanderslice, 27. + + Vergil, 145. + + Vicksburg, 283. + + Virginia, 35, 36, 45, 54, 59, 153. + + Von Holst, 70, 101, 104, 119, 122, 123, 124, 439, 450. + + + W. + + Waddell, James, 262. + + Waddell, Moses, 93, 94. + + Wade, 239, 243, 266. + + Walker, J. B. A., 368. + + Washington, Booker, 25, 380, 387, 402, 409, 411, 414, 415, 417, 419, 420. + + Washington, Mrs. Booker, 395. + + Washington, George, 19, 53, 56, 64, 115, 118, 282, 440. + + Waterloo, 60. + + Watson, Tom, 224. + + Webster, Daniel, 19, 30, 64, 65 _sq._, 82, 83, 85, 100, 105, 113, 118, + 120, 121, 247, 255, 266, 275 _sq._, 304, 307. + + Wendell, Prof. Barrett, 28-30, 161, 162, 163, 206. + + West Territory, 54. + + White labor class, 336 _sq._ + + Whittier, 29, 88, 406. + + Wilfer, Reginald, 207. + + Willcox, Professor, 390, 403. + + Wilmot proviso, 155, 227. + + Wilson, General, 308. + + Winthrop, 252. + + Wirt, 141. + + Wirz, 298. + + Wright, Richard R., 344, 406. + + Wright, Silas, 242. + + Wyeth, 291. + + Wynne, John, 156. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] "Where Black Rules White," article by Hugo Erichsen, in _The Pilgrim_ +for July, 1905. + +[2] De Officiis, 1, Sec. 89. + +[3] Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 579-583. + +[4] Gettysburg, 164, 165. + +[5] Quoted by himself in his Charleston speech, mentioned later on. + +[6] Speech at the banquet of the New England Society of Charleston, S. C. + +[7] A Literary History of America, 345. + +[8] _Id._ 346. + +[9] _Id._ 489. + +[10] A Literary History of America, 494, 495. + +[11] Major Joseph B. Cumming, speaking to the toast, "New Ideas, New +Departures, New South," at fourteenth annual dinner of New England Society +of Charleston, S. C., December 22, 1893. + +[12] See Cobb, Slavery, xcvii, xcviii, for relevant citations. Chaps. V. +and VI. of the Historical Sketch, the former entitled "Slavery in Greece," +and the latter, "Slavery among the Romans" (pp. lix-xcviii), are very +readable, learned, and adequate treatments of their respective subjects. + +[13] Cobb, Slavery, cxii. + +[14] _Id._ + +[15] Aristotle maintained the justice of wars undertaken to procure +slaves. See Cobb, Slavery, xii, foot-note 3, for references. + +[16] "Pliny compares them to the drones among the bees, to be forced to +labor, even as the drones are compelled." _Id._ xcviii. + +[17] In his chapter entitled "Slavery among the Jews" Mr. Cobb cites most +of the important passages. _Id._ xxxviii _sq._ + +[18] Twenty Years in Congress, vol. i. I. + +[19] 1, 2, 2. + +[20] _Id._ 1, 3, 1-2. + +[21] Dig. 1, 1, 4, where, in an excerpt from Ulpian, it is said that all +human beings are _jure naturali_ (that is, by the law of nature) born +free. + +We of to-day must not regard the last three passages cited from the Corpus +Juris Civilis as particularly reprehending the property of the master in +his slave. Cicero asserts that there is no private property whatever +according to the law of nature; that according to that law all things are +common property. He details some of the ways by which private +appropriation is made, such as long holding, entry into vacant lands, +capture in war, acquisition by contract, etc. According to this, a +prisoner of war stood on the same footing as a horse captured from the +enemy. By the law of nature there could be private property in neither. +But this law of nature was really repealed by the _jus gentium_, under +which both horse and prisoner alike became private property. If another +took either the horse or slave away from the owner, he would--to use +Cicero's language--violate the law of human society. De Officiis Lib. 1. +cap. 7, Secs. 20, 21. + +[22] Inst. 1, 8, 1. When Mr. Cobb says that there is "but one voice in the +Digest and Code," book cited, xcviii, meaning that they give no +countenance to slavery, the statement is misleading. + +[23] In the first chapter of his History of England Macaulay ascribes this +result to moral causes, and to religion as chief agent. He is only one of +many acute historians who overlook the play of economical forces. + +[24] Cobb, Slavery, ccxviii (foot-note). + +[25] See p. 437 _infra_, where I have compared the struggle of Ireland for +autonomy during the last half of the eighteenth century with that of the +south narrated in this book. + +[26] Charleston Address mentioned above, 15. + +[27] Hist. of Fed. Gov., 2d ed., 59. + +[28] _Id._ 2. + +[29] See the Republic of Republics, 4th ed. The references in the copious +index, under the names Dane, Henry, Story, Webster (Daniel, not Noah), +will suffice to put the student in the way to finding ample support of the +statements in the text. + +[30] See Republic of Republics, 204-212 (chap. viii. of Part III.) +entitled "Daniel Webster's Masterpiece of Criticism," for copious proofs +of the statements made in the text. Hamilton, Madison, John Jay, and +Franklin are cited, and some eight or nine quotations from Washington are +made. The chapter is also instructive in showing State-rights utterances +of Webster made before and after the speech. + +[31] See Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 388, 389-392, 397-8; +and Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 207-211. + +[32] War between the States, two volumes. + +[33] The Republic of Republics; or, American Federal Liberty. By P. C. +Centz, Barrister, 4th ed., Boston, 1881. See what I said of it in 1882, +Am. Law Studies, Secs. 943, 944. Subsequent examination and comparison have +given me a still higher opinion of this book; which in its well-digested +presentation of evidence exhaustively collected, and complete +demonstration of its main proposition, to wit, that in the opinion of the +draftsmen, also of all the advocates of the constitution, and of the +people ratifying, the States were sovereign before adoption and would so +remain afterwards, is unique, and far foremost, in the literature of the +subject. Compare this strong statement of Henry Cabot Lodge, uttered in +1883: + +"When the constitution was adopted by the votes of States at Philadelphia, +and accepted by the votes of States in popular conventions, it is safe to +say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton +on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who +regarded the new system as anything but an experiment by the States and +from which each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw, a +right which was very likely to be exercised." Daniel Webster, 176. + +[34] Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 23. The entire chapter entitled +"Secession and Coercion," _id._ 22-27, will repay consideration, setting +forth as it does what according to the author the brothers on each side +ought to have done under the law of nations. + +[35] Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, 103. + +[36] Morgan, Ancient Society, 132. + +[37] "It used to be a remark often made by Chief Justice Lumpkin, who was +a man himself of wonderful genius, profound learning, and the first of his +State, that Webster was always foremost amongst those with whom he acted +on any question, and that even in books of selected pieces, whenever +selections were made from Webster, these were the best in the book." A. H. +Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 336. + +[38] Ransy Sniffles is a character in Georgia Scenes, who has long been a +proverb in the south for one who habitually provokes personal encounters +among his neighbors. + +[39] See _infra_, p. 436. + +[40] See what he said February 20, 1860, in the United States senate, to +Clark, repeating the charge, as reported in the "Globe." + +[41] W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun +Correspondence, 69. + +[42] The inscription on her tombstone states--so I have been +informed--that she died in May, 1802. In a short while afterwards he put +the mother of his future wife in her place and bestowed on her the highest +filial love. + +[43] W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun +Correspondence, 78. + +[44] Starke's Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun Correspondence, 87. + +[45] Life of John C. Calhoun. By Gutasvus M. Pinkney, of the Charleston, +S. C., Bar, Charleston, S. C., 1903. + +[46] Calhoun Correspondence, 88. + +[47] Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 41. + +[48] War between the States, vol. i. 341. + +[49] A Disquisition on Government, and A Discourse on the Constitution and +Government of the United States, Works, vol. i. + +[50] Works, vol. i. (A Disquisition on Government) 72. + +[51] They were made in the United States Senate, one, September 19, 1837, +on the bill authorizing issue of treasury notes; the other, October 3, +1837, on his amendment of the bill just mentioned. + +[52] His "Barbara Villiers" and his "History of Money in America" are very +important. But his most valuable addition to the few books which have +taught true monetary doctrine is his "Science of Money." While in this he +does not state the fundamental principle of good money as clearly as +Calhoun does, yet he assumes it most accurately and builds upon it +everywhere. + +[53] "Rational Money," published by C. F. Taylor, 1520 Chestnut Street, +Philadelphia. The author does not show the deep insight and genial +originality of Calhoun and Del Mar; but he has presented the entire +subject with a judgment so sane in accepting the true and rejecting the +false in the belonging theory, that the book is the very best of existing +compilations. + +[54] To be nominated in the South Carolina primary, a candidate for +governor or any other State place must receive a majority in the whole +State, one for congress a majority in the district, one for a county place +a majority in the county. Where no candidate receives a majority a new +primary is held only to decide between the two who got the largest vote. +The primary first mentioned is a State primary, held on the last Tuesday +of August. At this date, the crop--to use planting parlance--having been +laid by for some six weeks, the voters have had ample opportunity from +reading the papers, talks with one another, and hearing speeches to inform +themselves fully. Just across the Savannah in Georgia, the State +democratic executive committee, so called, being the faithful organ of the +railroads, has since 1898 put the primary in the early days of June, in +busiest crop-time. This precludes any real canvass. It also keeps +thousands from voting; and so the always full turnout of railroad regulars +and workers--which is but a relatively small portion of the body of +electors--wins a plurality. The committee allows a plurality to nominate, +as of course a plurality can be had more easily than a majority. To be +sure of the State senate, nominations to it are made by a convention +instead of a primary. And conventions in the congressional districts +nominate candidates for the lower house. + +Contrasting the results--in South Carolina nomination is really the voice +of the people; in Georgia the people seem to get, while the railroads +really get, the governor, and, as everybody now expects, the railroads and +liquor men always have at least twenty-three of the forty-four senators. + +I believe that the Swiss-like grip of the people of South Carolina upon +their liberties, shaming Georgia so greatly as it does, is mainly due to +the influence of Calhoun. That influence is still benignly powerful, even +where unrecognized. + +I think that if the dispensary law were so altered as to give each county +the purchase of its liquor by, say, its supervisor, nominated by this +primary, the opportunity of graft, now discrediting the administration of +the law with many, would be effectually closed. There would then be +everywhere a trustworthy official, of their own election, to keep the +people advised as to proper prices and cost. It would be to lose all +chance of re-election for the official to cheat the public by colluding +with the liquor sellers. + +[55] Life of John C. Calhoun, 225-229. + +[56] _Id._ + +[57] Heyward thus translates: "Reason and good sense express themselves +with little art. And when you are seriously intent on saying something, is +it necessary to hunt for words?" + +[58] Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 133. + +[59] _Id._ 141. + +[60] Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 148. + +[61] As illustrating his anti-tariff progress, see what he says in his +letter of July, 1828, to James Monroe, Correspondence, 266; what in that +to his relative, Noble, of January, 1829, _id._ 269, 270; in that to +Samuel L. Gouvernour, of February, 1832, _id._ 310, 311; and what as to +benefit from having concentrated opinions in south, in that to his +brother-in-law, _id._ 313, 314. + +[62] Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, +Works, vol. i. 392. + +[63] Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, +Works, vol. i. 393. + +[64] Ancient Society, 147, 148. + +[65] A Disquisition on Government, Works, vol. i. 92-96. Compare for +Calhoun's treatment Benton's report of his conversations, and the +pertinent excerpts he gives from Calhoun's speech in the United States +Senate of February 15 and 16, 1833, Thirty Years' View, vol. i. 335 _sq._ + +[66] Daniel Webster, 50. + +[67] _Id._ 45, 46. + +[68] _Id._ 46. + +[69] _Id._ 48. + +[70] In his _Encyclopedia Americana_ article Mr. Carl Schurz strains as +hard as Mr. Lodge does in his biography to conceal the real position of +Webster. I commend the homespun reasoning of this paragraph to all such. + +[71] Daniel Webster, 59. + +[72] McMaster, Daniel Webster, 88. + +[73] Daniel Webster, 52. + +[74] Dartmouth College Causes.--Mr. Lodge's narrative, Daniel Webster, +74-98--is a very helpful introduction to the book just mentioned. + +[75] Lodge, Daniel Webster, 22. + +[76] _Id._ 22. + +[77] The twelve words meant are, "The congress shall have power to +regulate commerce among the several States." + +[78] Huschke ought to have stated this fact at page 19 of his edition of +Gaius, in order to give the latter his full posthumous glory. + +[79] We support our statement in this sentence by quoting below in this +footnote two passages which stand a page or two apart in the Plymouth +oration, italicizing one word in the former, and one word and a clause in +the other, which, if Webster had taken accurate note of the intellectual +ferment then active throughout all New England, he would have made much +stronger: + +"We may flatter ourselves that the means of education at present enjoyed +in New England are not only adequate to the diffusion of the elements of +knowledge among all classes, but sufficient also for _respectable_ +attainments in literature and the sciences." + +"With nothing in our past history to discourage us, and with _something_ +in our present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, that, +as it is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonderful +advancement of the country in all its other great interests, _we may see +also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters_." + +[80] Daniel Webster, 318-321. + +[81] _Ante_, 28-30. + +[82] Literary History of America, 354. + +[83] _Id._ + +[84] Consider his virtual confession when Mrs. Davis good humoredly taxes +him with saying in his speeches hard things of slavery which he knew from +actual observation to be fictions. Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 581. + +[85] Lecture in Tremont Temple, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. +637, 638 (Appendix G). + +[86] The Negro in Africa and America, by Alexander Tillinghast, M. A., N. +Y., 1902. + +This really scientific work, very complete though very brief, is as +indispensable to whomsoever would enlighten the country upon the race +question, as is the latest and best text-book to the lawyer considering a +case under the law treated therein. + +Mr. Page's "The Negro: The Southerner's Problem," N. Y., 1904, has not the +scientific merit of the last. But it most ably advocates the side +generally taken by the south. + +Both books are free from blinding passion and prejudice. + +[87] Book cited, 88. The italics are mine. + +[88] _Id._ 88. + +[89] The Negro in Africa and America, 88, 89. Italics mine, again. + +[90] Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. xviii. + +[91] These quotations from The Author's Introduction, Riverside ed., +lviii, lix. The last sentence italicized by me. + +[92] Tremont Temple Lecture, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. +641. The italics are mine. + +[93] Professor DuBois, born in 1868, in New England, whose writings show +that his mind has been soaked to saturation in abolition misstatement and +bitterness, and that consequently he is utterly unfamiliar with either the +average negro slave of the south and the conditions and effects of slavery +in the section, attributes the present unchastity of the negroes to the +frequent separation of man and wife by the master. Here is what he says: + +"The plague-spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. +This is no sudden development, nor the fruit of emancipation. It is the +plain heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his master's consent, +took up with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in the busy life of the +great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually dispensed with. If now +the master needed Sam's work in another part of the same plantation, or if +he took a notion to sell the slave, Sam's married life with Mary was +usually unceremoniously broken, and then it was clearly to the master's +interest to have both of them take new mates. This widespread custom of +two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty years." The Souls of Black +Folk, 142. + +This statement is utterly untrue, as Professor DuBois can easily find out +from thousands of most credible witnesses. I never knew of a single such +separation. Of course, I will not say that there were none at all. But I +do say, in contradiction of his assertion, as flat as contradiction can +be, that the separations which he describes were not common. Every +impartial investigator who has formed his opinion from the actual evidence +knows that the unchastity of the negro slave of America was an inheritance +from Africa. I do not dispute the assertion often made that there were and +are still chaste negro tribes of that continent. But our negroes did not +come from them. They came from the West Africans, accurately described +above in citations from Mr. Tillinghast. + +[94] Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. lxxxix _sq._ + +[95] Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. ii. 273. + +[96] Georgians, 128. + +[97] The Life of Robert Toombs, 29-49 (New York, Cassell Pub. Co.). + +[98] Bethany, A Story of the Old South, 10 _sq._ + +[99] Johnston and Browne's Life of A. H. Stephens, 218. + +[100] Toombs thus anticipates the trenchant but kindly criticism by +Woodrow Wilson of congressional ways of governing. Congressional Gov. +58-192, and in other places. + +[101] What he says July 29, 1857, on death of Preston S. Brooks is a good +example of the forced and labored style of his set speeches. Stephens +often said that his set speeches were failures. And unless they were made, +as that on the invasion of States, that on the duty of congress to protect +slavery in the Territories, and his justification of secession, January 7, +1861, under the excitement of a great cause, working the same effect upon +him as the ardor of extemporaneous effort, his set speeches are below the +mark. And I wish he had more carefully revised the three just mentioned, +following the example of Cicero, Erskine and Webster, who habitually +corrected and improved their words after they had been spoken. He does not +seem to have given his good speeches--the extemporaneous ones--any +systematic correction. Of all speakers and orators I ever knew or heard +of, he has used the file the least. It is my belief that he did not know +how to use it. Had he but polished just some of his best unpremeditated +efforts; as for instances his first speech for the retired naval officers; +his most important utterances under various heads of internal +improvements; his humorous anti-pension harangues; and his titanic +struggle in vain with his own party to keep Harlan seated--what a find +they would be for the school speech books of the future! His lecture on +slavery, delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24, 1859,--a good +copy of which is given by Stephens (The War between the States, vol. i. +625-647)--is the best specimen extant, within my knowledge, of his +deliberate style. If I may make such a distinction, it was carefully +revised, but never corrected. The reader will find it, I believe, the very +ablest of all the many defences of slavery in the south. + +Mrs. Davis states that during the times of excitement concerning the +compromise of 1850, "He [Toombs] would sit with one hand full of the +reporter's notes of his speeches, for correction," with a French play in +the other, over which he was roaring with laughter. (Memoir of Jefferson +Davis, vol. i. 411.) As his speech of December 13, 1849, and the Hamilcar +speech of June next following, need very little correction, I incline to +believe that he did at least try to revise them. Naturally leading such a +novel movement as he then was--it will be fully explained a little later +on--he would desire to send forth his views in only carefully considered +words, and probably he corrected the proofs of the two speeches just +mentioned with something like diligence. In his pleadings, law-briefs, +sketches of proposed statutes, letters, etc., of which I saw much in his +last years, he was so palpably indifferent towards improving his first +draft that one might know it came from lifelong habit. + +[102] Third Session, 240-244. + +[103] _Globe_, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 360 (I am thus particular +in giving this reference, from a sense of justice to the memory of George +W. Crawford, which is now and then ignorantly aspersed because of the +Galphin claim). + +[104] See his argument, May 25, 1858, for putting duties on the home +valuation of imports; note also how familiar he is with trade, the motive +of smuggling, the relation of exchange; also what he says of the tariff of +1857, _Globe_, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 466, 467, 470. For his mastery of +trade and commerce, see what he says June 9, 1858, especially pp. +2832-2834. + +[105] Stephens, War between the States, vol. ii. 338. + +[106] War between the States, vol. ii. 186. + +[107] Address in the Supreme Court of Georgia, March 9, 1886. + +[108] War between the States, vol. ii. 217. + +[109] Waddell, Life of Linton Stephens, 237. + +[110] The rare perfection of Catullus's spontaneous poetic expression is +something like adequately represented in two quotations made by Baehrens, +one from Niebuhr, and the other from Macaulay, especially in the former. +Catulli Veronensis, Liber II. 42. + +[111] War Between the States, vol. ii. 329-333. + +[112] Pleasant A. Stovall, The Life of Robert Toombs, 218. + +[113] The War between the States, vol. ii. 781 (Appendix). + +[114] The supplies for the Confederate Army, How they were obtained in +Europe and How paid for.--Personal Reminiscences and Unpublished history. +By Caleb Huse, Major and Purchasing Agent, C. S. A. Boston, Press of T. R. +Marvin & Son, 1904. + +I commend this narrative to Professor Brown. Should he study it he will +have cause to retract what he has written (The Lower South in American +History, 164) in disparagement of this resource. Had Toombs, or Stephens, +or Cobb been president and represented by such an extraordinarily able +agent, the Confederate States would have got ironclads, broken the +blockade, kept out invaders, and had a money that would have held its own +much better than the greenbacks unsustained by cotton or anything like it. +From what I know of these men I am sure the right agent would have been +found. + +[115] Book cited, 164, 165. + +[116] Stovall, Life of Robert Toombs, 226. + +[117] Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 268, 269. + +[118] _Id._ 271. + +[119] See his 14th chapter. + +[120] "I see a vision of awful shapes--mighty presences of gods arrayed +against Troy." _AEneid_, II. 622-23, Transl. by JOHN CONINGTON, _Writings_, +II., Longmans, Green & Co. (1872). + +[121] In six consecutive numbers of the _Pilgrim_, beginning with that of +October, 1903. This is a monthly, edited by Willis J. Abbot, and published +by the Pilgrim Magazine Co., _Ltd._, Battle Creek, Mich. + +[122] Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 59. + +[123] Memoir, vol. i. 86. + +[124] _Id._ 52, 53. + +[125] Memoir, _Id._ vol. i. 59, 60. + +[126] Mrs. Davis tells all the details most delightfully; Memoir, vol. i. +207-212. + +[127] Memoir, vol. i. 214, 215. Compare what Stephens says of the speech +made by President Davis at the African church in Richmond in February, +1865, just after the return of our Commissioners who had sought in vain +for terms of peace which the south could consider. We give the part of the +passage pertinent here. + +"The newspaper sketches of that speech were meagre, as well as inaccurate +... and ... came far short of so presenting its substance even, as to give +those who did not hear it anything like an adequate conception of its full +force and power. It was not only bold, undaunted, and confident in tone, +but had that loftiness of sentiment and rare form of expression, as well +as magnetic influence in its delivery, by which the passions of the people +are moved to their profoundest depths, and roused to the highest pitch of +excitement. Many who had heard this Master of Oratory in his most +brilliant displays in the senate and on the hustings, said they never +before saw him so really majestic. The occasion, and the effects of the +speech, as well as all the circumstances under which it was made, caused +the minds of not a few to revert to like appeals by Rienzi and +Demosthenes." War between the States, vol. ii. 623, 824. + +[128] Memoir, vol. i. 146, 147. + +[129] Landon Knight, "The Real Jefferson Davis," already cited. + +[130] Landon Knight, "The Real Jefferson Davis." + +[131] Mrs. Davis's Memoir, vol. i. 392. + +[132] In his fourth chapter. + +[133] Memoir, vol. ii. 18. + +[134] _Id._ 32, 33. + +[135] Memoir, vol. ii. 180-183. + +[136] Mr. Landon Knight is happy in showing the fidelity, diligence, +courage, and unsurpassed conscientiousness, of Mr. Davis in his +presidency, and especially how he bore himself amid the multiplying +disasters of the last two years. + +[137] "We embraced the cause [i. e., of the Confederate States] in the +spirit of lovers. True lovers all were we--and what true lover ever loved +less because the grave had closed over the dear and radiant form?--And so +we--we, at least, who as men and women inhaled the true spirit of that +momentous time--come together on these occasions not only with the fresh +new flowers in our hands, but with the old memories in our thoughts and +the old, but ever fresh, lover spirit in our hearts, and seek to make +these occasions not unworthy of the cause we loved unselfishly and of +these its sleeping defenders." Major Joseph B. Cumming, in introducing +General Butler, orator of the day, when the Confederate soldiers' graves +were decorated at the Augusta (Ga.) cemetery in 1895. + +[138] The celebration at Covington, Georgia, April 26, 1866, was complete. +My friend Hon. J. M. Pace has just shown me a copy of the local newspaper +issued the next day, containing an account of the ceremony and the rarely +appropriate address which he made as part thereof. The fact is that the +observance of Memorial Day commenced everywhere in the south at the time +just mentioned. + +[139] Encyc. Americana, article "Ant." + +[140] Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, vol. i. 206 (Riverside ed.). + +[141] Says John Mitchell: "The Southern States, which have made rapid +progress, especially in cotton manufacturing, have, as a general rule, not +responded to the demand for a shorter working-day--the south lacking +effective labor organizations to compel such legislation." (Organized +Labor, 122.) He might have said the same as to the desired prohibition of +child labor. + +[142] _Infra_, pp. 431-438. + +[143] The Souls of Black Folk, 254. + +[144] In an address mentioned in the next footnote Major Joseph B. Cumming +rightly insists that this is the proper name for what is called "the +American Civil War" with some show of justification, and "the war of +rebellion" without any justification whatever. + +[145] Address of Major Joseph B. Cumming, entitled "The Great War," before +Camp 435 of United Confederate Veterans, Augusta, Ga., Memorial Day, 1902. + +[146] I Timothy vi. 1-4. I have quoted the Twentieth Century Testament +because of its extremely faithful version. Of course the italics are mine. + +[147] "Where Black Rules White," by Hugo Erichsen, in the _Pilgrim_ for +July, 1905, deserves the title "Hayti As It Is." The Americana article +ought to be conspicuously labelled "Hayti Whitewashed." + +[148] Bureau of Labor Bulletin, No. 48, September, 1903, pp. 1006, 1013, +1019. + +[149] _Id._ 1020. + +[150] Bishop Lucius H. Holsey, D.D., of the colored M. E. Church, is much +more in touch and sympathy with the negro masses than Professor DuBois. +Here is something recently said by him: + +"_As long as the two races live in the same territory in immediate +contact, their relations will be such as to intermingle in that degree +that half-bloods, quarter-bloods and a mongrel progeny will result._ This +is not only going on now, but is destined to annihilate the true typical +ante-bellum negro type, and put in his place a stronger, a longer lived, +and a more Anglo-Saxon-like homogeneous race. In other words, the negro to +come will not be the negro of the emancipation proclamation, but he will +be the Anglo-Saxonized Afro-American. It seems true, as has been said, 'No +race can look the Anglo-Saxon in the face and live.' Certainly no other +race can hold its own in his immediate presence. Being in immediate +contact and underrating the mental and moral virtues of others and +exercising a sovereignty over them, his opportunities are enlarged to make +other races his own in consanguinity. This he never fails to do." Address +before the National Sociological Society at the Lincoln Temple +Congregational Church, The Possibilities of the Negro in Symposium, 107 +(Atlanta, Ga.). + +In the same address, just a little above the quotation just made, this +occurs: "Legal intermarriage in the south, although not wrong in its +consummation, is a matter as yet undebatable, and belongs only to the +future." _Id._ 107. + +These words of Bishop Holsey are weighty proof that the negroes strongly +desire and expect amalgamation. + +[151] Edward B. Taylor, _The Outlook_, July 16, 1904, p. 670. + +[152] The Souls of Black Folk, 106. + +[153] See Exodus xxii. 16. + +[154] The Souls of Black Folk, 106. + +[155] May 6, 1905. Having finished my work I read two days ago, "The Color +Line. A Brief in behalf of the Unborn." By William Benjamin Smith, N. Y., +1905. It ably and vividly explains the transcendent importance of keeping +the blood of Caucasians in America uncontaminated with that of the +African, and demonstrates that to do this the color line must be rigidly +maintained between negroid as well as coal-black, on one side, and white +on the other. The utter impossibility of making the man of a particular +race like the man of another extremely remote one by even the most careful +education is shown with startling effect. The inability of the black to +hold his own against white competition, and his gradual and sure expulsion +is proved by overwhelming evidence. The book is useful as an introduction +to all the literature of the subject. The only fault that I note is its +excessive warmth and combativeness--especially in the first half. With the +dispassionate serenity of Mr. Tillinghast, it would have been perfect. + +[156] The quotations which immediately follow are from a letter of J. B. +A. Walker, dated Tuskegee, Ala., July 27, 1904, written to S. H. Comings, +who has kindly permitted me to make use of it. + +[157] Lower South in Am. Hist. 223. When Professor Brown read "The +Clansman" doubtless his hesitation ended. + +[158] Clyatt _v._ United States, March 13, 1905. + +[159] Possibly this is the village of Boley, mentioned in the next +chapter. + +[160] They are Stephen, a slave, _v._ State, 2 Ga. 225; Jesse, a slave, +_v._ State, 20 Ga. 161. + +[161] See Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, 10-14. + +[162] New Encyc. Britan., Article, "Jamaica." + +[163] Working with the Hands, 40. + +[164] Tillinghast, book cited above, 180, 181. Consider the quotation +there made from Thurston, the negro manager, in which he asserts that it +is only by this means that negro operatives can be made to do good work. + +[165] Souls of Black Folk, 9. + +[166] During the years after the war until the end of 1881, when I came to +Atlanta, I kept my eye upon the negro preachers in the country. Whenever I +could closely observe one and had opportunity of sifting members of his +congregation, I generally found him to be _vir gregis_. My acquaintances +tell me that there has been no perceptible change. Compare what Mr. Edward +B. Taylor, a northern man, now residing in Columbia, S. C., says of "the +immoral negro preacher" in _The Outlook_ of July 16, 1904. + +[167] William Hannibal Thomas, a negro of Massachusetts, says the same as +to the early corruption of children and "marital immoralities" both of the +poor, the ignorant, and the degraded among the freed people, and also of +those who assume to be educated and refined. Quoted by Mr. Page, The +Negro; The Southerner's Problem, 82-84. + +[168] Encyc. Am. Article, "Negro in America." + +[169] Noticing Mr. Page's book just mentioned, Professor DuBois treats +William Hannibal Thomas as utterly unworthy of credit. All of us in the +south familiar with negroes know that Thomas's statement quoted by Mr. +Page is unqualifiedly true. + +[170] That part of Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau Census, +Bulletin 8, called "The Negro Farmer," is by him. Consider the extravagant +claims made therein for the magnitude of negro farming in the United +States in the comment on Table xxxv. p. 92. Professor DuBois is also +author of the "Negro Landholder of Georgia," Bulletin of Department of +Labor, No. 35, July, 1901. + +[171] Bulletin 8, before cited, 75. + +[172] Article, "Negro Education," Encyclopedia Americana. + +[173] Professor DuBois, Bulletin 8, cited above, 73. + +[174] _Id._ 77. + +[175] Book cited, 183-185. + +[176] _Id._ 184. + +[177] Book cited, 184. + +[178] _Id._ 184. + +[179] Bureau of Statistics--Bulletin No. 28, p. 71. + +[180] _Id._ 72. + +[181] Extract from a letter of Hon. James M. Smith to the author. He is, I +believe, the largest planter in Georgia. His lands lie in the adjoining +edges of Oglethorpe county, which is in the Black Belt, and of Madison +county, which is outside. From his experience, and because of the great +accuracy of his observation, which I have noted for nearly forty years, I +regard him as better qualified than any one else who can be suggested, to +give a correct opinion on the subjects he deals with in the quotation. +Especially do I emphasize his exceptional advantages for comparing whites +and negroes as farmers, tenants, croppers, and laborers for standing +wages, in making cotton. + +[182] Book cited above, 121, 122. + +[183] The Voice of the Negro, September, 1904 (Atlanta, Ga.)--Consider +picture of "Board of Directors of the True Reformers' Bank, Richmond, +Va.," in number of same magazine for November, 1904. These directors are +nine in all, and there is but one who is decidedly black. Six of them look +to be more than three-quarters white. The number for March, 1905, contains +a sketch of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Ph.D., stating that the +Professor's ancestry is largely white and his color a rich brown. The +picture of his mother shows her hair to be straight and her complexion +bright. + +[184] Book cited above, 213-215. + +[185] The Voice of the Negro, October, 1904, p. 435. + +[186] Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau of the Census, Bulletin 8, +Negroes in the United States, p. 13. + +[187] I have in mind his late articles in the _Outlook_. + +[188] See his "Problems of the Present South." + +[189] Autobiography of Seventy Years, vol. ii. 60-62. + +[190] By Anne Scribner, and copied in the _Public_ of September 17, 1904, +from the Chicago _Evening Post_. + +[191] The passage with the context quoted by Dr. Booker Washington, +"Working with the Hands," 238. + +[192] Issue of October 15, 1904. + +[193] Encyclopedia Americana, Article "Negro Education." + +[194] But the most drastic provisions to keep the greedy whites from +preying upon the negroes as they did upon the Indians most be adopted, +such as permitting the negro State to tax without limit whites owning +property or doing business therein. This will prevent the result +anticipated by Booker Washington. + +[195] The best thing upon the joint education of hand and brain known to +me is "Pagan _vs._ Christian Civilization," by S. H. Comings (Charles H. +Kerr & Co., Chicago). The title does not indicate, as it ought to do, the +special purpose of the book to show that to give the scholar expertness +with his hands at the first and thus develop his self-supporting ability +is far better than to cram his memory. What the author says in maintenance +of his proposition, that our industrial schools should be operated upon a +plan that will make the scholar pay as he goes, out of his own work, for +his subsistence and expense of education during the entire course, +deserves respectful and thoughtful consideration. In its brevity, and at +the same time variety and fulness, coming as it does at the beginning of a +new era, it reminds me of Sullivan's tract which some years ago started +the American agitation for direct legislation, with store of examples and +exposition almost sufficient for its entire needs. + +The above had been written when Booker Washington's "Working with the +Hands" came along. The well-chosen title informs accurately as to the +subject of the book. Its scope covers working with the hands from its +beginning in childhood to the close of life. As illustration of his +principles Dr. Washington circumstantially tells of the beneficent +industrial and moral training given at Tuskegee, in all its many +departments, to children, youth, and adults, in everything which it is +important that a negro of either sex should know how to do. Besides its +wisdom, its attention-commanding and interest-exciting style deserves high +commendation. Any reader longing for the day of real education to dawn who +opens the book will go to the end, without skipping, in a delightful +gallop. It is my conviction that it will be of far more advantage to the +white industrial and technological schools than to those for which it is +specially intended by the author. + +[196] Book cited, 119. + +[197] See Collier's Weekly for November 26, 1904. + +[198] The English translation of the first volume of Von Holst's +"Constitutional and Political History of the United States" has just been +published. The titles of the ninth and tenth chapters, to wit, "The +Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States," and "Development of +the Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States," are very apt and +striking, and the contents of the chapters are profoundly original and +instructive. Having ample space, the author has, among other merits, well +handled the following incidents and consequences of slavery: + +1. Implacable hostility of slave and non-slave labor. + +2. Self-protecting necessity to slavery of continuous expansion, and, to +insure this expansion, necessity that the south keep political mastery of +the country. + +3. Economic importance to south of invention of cotton-gin in 1793. + +4. Exclusive possession by north of wholesale trade. + +5. Greater immigration to north. + +6. Missouri Compromise, and rise therefrom of geographical parties. + +7. Internal improvements and tariff passing inter-geographical question. + +8. Economic decay of south due to slavery, and not to tariff. + +9. Opposition of slavery to the spirit of the age. + +The following is a brief statement of the chief demerits of the two +chapters: + +1. Misstatement that there were different circles of slaveholders; +overstatement of inhumanity of masters; and unjust disparagement of +character of smaller slaveholders. + +2. Failure to note the great absorbing energy of slave property. + +3. Failure to note the lack of a population of free workers. + +But the work, considering the short time the clouds of battle have had to +clear away, recollecting, too, that the author is a foreigner, is, +excepting a little heated partisanship here and there, a most valuable +contribution to the history of our country. + +[199] I see now--in 1905--that the statement in the text was a great +mistake; and that nadir was not reached until some fifteen or twenty years +later. + + + + +THE INDIAN DISPOSSESSED + +By SETH K. HUMPHREY + +With sixteen full-page illustrations from photographs + + 300 pages. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50 net. Postpaid, $1.64. + +A plain, connected, carefully prepared narrative of the actual and proved +dealings of the United States government with the subdued Indian--the +Reservation Indian. The author's account of governmental oppression and +ill-faith, and of successive removals of the Indians from their homes to +regions unattractive to white settlers, and of the confiscation of Indian +property, are supported by extracts from official records. After chapters +describing the experience of the Umatillas (with whom the government held +to its treaty), the Flathead Indians of the Bitter Root, the Nez Perces, +the Poncas, and the Mission Indians, comes an important chapter on +"Dividing the Spoils," with a graphic and moving description of the scenes +at the opening of the Cherokee Strip, drawn from the author's personal +experiences. A chapter is devoted to an exposure of the Rosebud +Reservation bill,--the latest example of governmental confiscation,--while +the final chapter gives an original and convincing explanation of the +remarkable persistence of vicious influences in our Indian system, in the +face of the equally persistent desire of the American people to grant the +Indian fair play. Helen Jackson's "A Century of Dishonor" has received a +valuable companion work in the present book. + + LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., _Publishers_ + 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brothers' War, by John Calvin Reed + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROTHERS' WAR *** + +***** This file should be named 37890.txt or 37890.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/9/37890/ + +Produced by Jana Srna, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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