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-Project Gutenberg's The Heritage of The South, by Jubal Anderson Early
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Heritage of The South
-       A History of the Introduction of Slavery; its Establishment
-       from Colonial times and final Effect upon the Politics of
-       the United
-
-Author: Jubal Anderson Early
-
-Editor: Ruth Hairston Early
-
-Release Date: September 21, 2020 [EBook #63254]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by MFR, Cosmas and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber Note
-
-Text emphasis is denoted as _Italics_ and =Bold=.
-
-
-
-
-                               THE HERITAGE
-                              _of_ THE SOUTH
-
-
-                               A HISTORY OF
-                       THE INTRODUCTION OF SLAVERY
-                  ITS ESTABLISHMENT FROM COLONIAL TIMES
-                          AND FINAL EFFECT UPON
-                    THE POLITICS OF THE UNITED STATES
-
-
-                              [Illustration]
-
-
-                                   _By_
-
-                              JUBAL A. EARLY
-
-                MEMBER OF THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1861
-
-
-  Copyright 1915
-  By R. H. EARLY
-
-
-  PRESS OF
-  BROWN-MORRISON CO
-  LYNCHBURG, VA.
-
-
-
-
-Editor's Note
-
-
-A review is given, in the pages following, of the causes which led to
-the political issue of the '60s; an issue which will be open to argument
-until, in all of its bearings, it becomes understood through familiarity
-with the conditions of the past. Sentiment divorced from reason occasioned
-misconception. Many causes contributed to that effect. The lack of
-authentic records doubtless was one; certainly ill-advised publications
-inflamed, if they did not inspire, public opinion at this critical period.
-
-The author was actuated by the desire to correct erroneous opinion in
-relation to the South. His manuscript has lain unpublished during the
-passing of half a century, till passion having cooled and prejudice
-abated, there is no longer reason for clash from difference of feeling
-upon the subject.
-
-The African slave trade began in the year 1442, when Anthony Gonsalez,
-a Portuguese, took from the Gold Coast, ten negroes, which he carried
-to Lisbon. In 1481, the Portuguese built a fort on the Gold Coast, and
-as early as 1502, the Spaniards began to employ negroes in the mines of
-Hispaniola. In 1517, Charles V, Emperor of Spain, granted a patent to
-certain persons, for the supply of 4,000 negroes, annually, to the islands
-of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica and Porto Rico. John Hawkins, afterwards
-knighted by Queen Elizabeth, got into his possession, partly by the sword
-and partly by other means, 300 negroes, and sold them in the West Indies.
-Hawkins' second voyage was patronized by Queen Elizabeth, who participated
-in the profits; and in 1618, in the reign of James I, the British
-government established a regular trade on the coast of Africa.
-
-When negotiations for the slave traffic were first agitated, the cost to
-the victim seems not to have been considered. The white man's need--or
-greed--demanded sacrifice. The negro, a product of the "three-cornered
-rum, slave and molasses trade" was brought to New England to a condition
-offering few advantages beyond certain comforts which were to be provided
-by the master who was to assume all the obligations of the position.
-
-Wrenched from his home, separated from his people, exiled to a foreign
-land, which was governed by laws maintained through penalties, the
-enforced emigrant was set to labor in unaccustomed ways under uncongenial
-circumstances.
-
-The experiment of settling him in a manufacturing section proved
-disadvantageous to the investor. The demand for field labor furnished a
-Southern market; this occasioned his removal to that part of the country,
-his aptitude for the work kept him there.
-
-His insurrectionary spirit made his training difficult. It was a trial of
-endurance for master as well as apprentice, but custom and good treatment
-tamed the wild nature of the latter and converted him into an important
-factor in Southern industries; to this day none other has been found to
-take his place in cotton or tobacco field.
-
-He was also a form of property, and laws were made in that connection.
-That instances of abuse on the part of the owner arose was axiomatic--such
-is the history of life in every sphere, and that was neither a Utopian age
-nor country.
-
-Having served its aim, the slave trade diminished, then ceased. The
-attitude of those engaging in and encouraging it altered, the base
-of operations changed, and there remained only the people of the
-slave-holding states (upon whom now fell the responsibility of the
-support of these nation wards) with any reason for interest in the
-subject. Perhaps it was inevitable that diverging interest should arise to
-cause the politics of the country to become affected through distrust of
-those who owned that particular form of property.
-
-Originally acquired as a necessity, the slave's value lessened and the
-burden on his master increased, as other interests divided his attention.
-Legislation was resorted to without success in the enactment of measures
-for the abolishment of a system so firmly rooted.
-
-In 1805, Mr. Jefferson wrote "I have given up all expectation of any
-early, provision for the extinguishment of slavery among us. There are
-many virtuous men who would make any sacrifices to effect it, many equally
-virtuous who believe it cannot be remedied." In 1814, however, Mr.
-Jefferson again urged the policy of emancipation.
-
-That many owners were in sympathy with this proposed disposition of a
-vexed problem, is manifest from the records of the courts, which show that
-slaves were sent to Liberia, settled in the free states, permitted to
-purchase their freedom, bequeathed land and liberty by the masters who had
-held them.
-
-A strange condition existed in the holding of slaves by free negroes.
-These were to be found in nearly all of the colonies and states where
-there were slaves. In some counties they were numerous, while in others
-they were unknown. In certain states this condition was at times forbidden
-by law, but often continued in spite of the law, tolerated or ignored; the
-laws upon the subject also varied from time to time. In other states free
-negroes were given the privilege of being masters by special statute or
-this liberty was covered by general laws.
-
-Certain good was accomplished by the transportation of the African savage
-to a congenial clime among those who trained him to become a useful
-citizen. Under the tutelage of his master, he was guided, stage by stage,
-along the pathway to civilization by the law he recognized in his native
-land--that of coercion--till he attained his present status. Standing
-upon this vantage ground, it remains for him to work out his further
-advancement and to discover the position he can maintain. In the fact that
-some have made strides forward, and thus fitted themselves as leaders
-of the race, lies the hope and inspiration for the rest, an encouraging
-factor being the imitative faculty with which many are gifted.
-
-Criticism today discovers that in the portrayal of the character of "Uncle
-Tom" Mrs. Stowe paid a glowing tribute to the achievement of the Southern
-master. Africa has not done as much for the brother left upon her soil,
-nor has the foreign missionary. We may still read of such practices as
-cannibalism on the western coast of the dark continent--even along the
-trail of the religious enthusiast. Taking then into account what has been
-accomplished, the claim that the Southern master was the most successful
-missionary can easily be proved.
-
-We have no doubt but that some cause other than the avarice of the white
-man led to the rescue of the man of color from a life of ignorance and
-barbarism--to his expatriation to this country of opportunity--to his
-settlement under apprenticeship calculated to encourage self-helpfulness
-by developing his capabilities. To this end he passed through the
-probationary period of servitude.
-
-General Early's review of the situation previous to the war, as here
-presented, illustrates the point of view of the people of the South. His
-attitude towards slavery took its color from his familiarity with the
-institution as it existed in the homes of those to whom it had become a
-natural condition of life. It was so incorporated with their daily living,
-and with the traditions of generations, that they became accustomed to it
-without considering the reasons for its establishment.
-
-The author was never an investor in slaves, although he always possessed
-a negro servant. One who served till age enfeebled him, was retired
-on a pension. Another, cut short in his service by fatal disease, was
-respectfully followed to his last resting place by the master upon whom
-in health he had attended. His thoughtful care of his attendants and his
-liberality when trouble overtook them, won their affection and respect.
-
-It may be understood then that interest in slaves as property did not
-enter into his defense of slavery as an institution of his country. No
-selfish thought prompted the use of his pen in the exposition of the
-unfairness of opinion abroad--but, imbued with a keen sense of right,
-he was actuated by the desire to dissipate that injustice which took
-possession of many minds--coloring their views and proving barriers to
-their sympathies.
-
-To make clear his point of view by stating the true conditions which
-brought about slavery in the South and to define the relation which
-existed between master and slave, was the purpose of General Early in
-writing this real story of slavery as it was established in America, and
-as it continued to exist in that section of which it became the heritage.
-
-                                                              R. H. Early.
-
-
-
-
-Contents
-
-
-  CHAPTER                                                            PAGE
-
-    I--The African Slave Trade                                         11
-
-   II--Origin of Slavery in the United States                          16
-
-  III--Legislation on the Question of State Establishment              36
-
-   IV--Causes Leading to Secession--Secession of the Cotton States     62
-
-    V--Action of the Border Slave States--Convention of Virginia       88
-
-   VI--The Right to Withdraw                                           94
-
-  VII--Injurious Effect of Misinformation                             110
-
-
-_Come now let us reason together_
-
-
-
-
-
-
-The Heritage _of the_ South
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-=The African Slave Trade=
-
-
-The struggle for independence made by the Southern States of the American
-Union, grew out of questions of self government arising mainly in regard
-to the institution of African slavery as it existed in those states,
-and as that institution was the occasion for the development of the
-difficulties which led immediately to the struggle, the conduct of the
-states lately forming the Southern Confederacy has been misunderstood,
-therefore, misrepresented, with the effect of casting upon them not
-only the odium of originating the war but even for the existence and
-continuance of slavery itself.
-
-Much misapprehension has existed in the minds even of intelligent
-foreigners upon these subjects and it is therefore not inappropriate
-to take a retrospective view of the history of slavery in general and
-especially of the slave trade and of slavery in the United States, as well
-as of the questions which led to the secession of the Southern States and
-to the war consequent thereon.
-
-It is said that the Portuguese began the traffic in slaves on the coast of
-Africa in the 15th century, and that at the beginning of the 16th century
-negro slaves had become quite common in Portugal.
-
-After the discovery of America, the Spaniards made slaves of the Indians
-and employed them in their first settlements in the newly discovered
-country, but the supply not being found sufficient and the Indians not
-being very well adapted for the purpose in the tropical regions, negro
-slaves were introduced from Africa--the first being imported into
-Hispaniola (St. Domingo), in the year 1503. The example of Spain in regard
-to the use of negro slaves in her American Colonies was followed by all
-the other nations of Europe, who undertook the colonization of the newly
-found continent and islands, to-wit: the Portuguese, English, French,
-Dutch, Danes and Swedes.
-
-Sir John Hawkins, an English admiral and adventurer, was the first
-Englishman known to have engaged in the African slave trade, and he
-carried his first cargo to the Spanish West India islands about the
-year 1562. Report says that Queen Elizabeth became a partner in and
-shared the profits of his subsequent voyages in the prosecution of the
-trade. From that time the African slave trade became a regular branch of
-English commerce, and was conducted in its first stages principally under
-monopolies granted to companies, in the profits of which members of the
-Royal family, noblemen, courtiers and churchmen, as well as merchants,
-shared, as was the practice in those days in all important branches of
-commerce.
-
-From the restriction under Charles II, the African trade, including that
-in slaves, was monopolized by the "_Royal African Company_" for a number
-of years; and that company built and established, on the coast of Africa,
-forts and factories for the purpose of facilitating and protecting the
-trade; but in the year 1698, the slave trade was thrown open to private
-traders, upon the payment to the company of a certain percentage towards
-the support of its forts and factories.
-
-The growing demand in Europe for colonial products now gave a new impulse
-to the slave trade, and its profits were very great. It was not only
-recognized by the government, but was sustained by the universal public
-sentiment in England, and was fostered and cherished by Parliament as a
-lucrative traffic.
-
-In the year 1713, by the treaty of Utrecht, the _Assiento_, a contract
-originally entered into by the Spanish government with a company of French
-merchants for a monopoly by the latter of the trade in slaves to Spanish
-America, was assigned to the South Sea Company. By the terms of this
-contract 4,800 negro slaves were to be furnished to the Spanish colonies
-annually for thirty years, the company being privileged to introduce as
-many more as could be sold.
-
-In this company Queen Anne and the King of Spain became stockholders, as
-did a large portion of the nobility, gentry, churchmen, and merchants
-of England. England thus sought a monopoly of the entire slave trade,
-at least so far as her own and the Spanish colonies were concerned. The
-exclusive privileges granted to the Royal African Company having expired,
-in the year 1750 the British Government undertook to maintain the forts
-and factories on the African coast at its own expense, and the slave trade
-was thrown open to free competition on the part of its citizens. A great
-increase of the trade now took place, and England had become the leading
-nation in that trade, which was carried on chiefly from the ports of
-Bristol and Liverpool, but other ports including that of London shared in
-it--the West Indies furnishing the principal market, but a considerable
-number were also introduced into the colonies of North America.
-
-In the meantime the Puritan settlers in New England, under the allurements
-of the high profits of the trade, had been tempted to engage in it from
-the time of the earliest settlements there, which they did by evading
-the monopolies and restrictions in favor of English merchants, and as
-New England rum was mainly used in the traffic, by the Puritans, the
-Parliament of Great Britain had, at the instance of English merchants,
-passed an act, called the "Molasses Act" imposing duties on molasses,
-sugar and rum imported into the colonies from the French and Dutch West
-Indies, for the purpose of preventing interference with the English trade
-in slaves.
-
-Numerous acts of the colonial legislatures imposing duties on the
-importation of slaves, had also been vetoed or repealed by royal
-proclamation, because they were regarded and styled "impediments to
-British commerce not to be favoured," and all such acts continued to be
-vetoed and repealed down to the time of the American Revolution, except
-in the solitary case of Virginia, when, after repeated acts imposing such
-duties had been vetoed or repealed, privilege was finally given to the
-colonial legislature in 1734, to impose a duty to be paid by the colonial
-_purchaser_ and not the English _seller_.
-
-But it was not by fostering the slave trade and prosecuting any
-restrictions on it, only, that the British government made itself
-responsible for African slavery in its American colonies. In the year 1730
-seven of the principal Cherokee Chiefs from the unsettled country west
-of South Carolina, were carried to England by Sir Alexander Cumming, and
-while there they were induced to enter into a treaty with the Board of
-Trade then having charge of colonial affairs, by which provision was made
-for the return to their owners, by the Indians, of all runaway slaves; and
-in the year 1732, an act of parliament was passed "for the more speedy
-recovery of debts in America" by English creditors, among the provisions
-of which was one subjecting slaves to execution in judgments for all
-demands. While England thus became so identified with the introduction of
-African slavery into America, all the commercial nations of Europe were
-likewise implicated in the trade; and if England took the lead in it, that
-fact was owing to the superior intelligence and energy of her merchants
-and traders, and not to any qualms of conscience on the part of other
-nations.
-
-In fact during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, until towards the close
-of the latter, when a very few "philanthropists" appeared, there was no
-sentiment in any Christian or unchristian country which regarded the
-reduction of the negroes of Africa to slavery as opposed to moral right or
-religious duty, or in any other light than as a blessing to the negroes
-themselves and a great benefit to their owners.
-
-It is a fact, not undeserving of notice, in reviewing the conduct of
-England in forcing African slaves upon her American colonies, that during
-the whole period from the settlement to the revolt of those colonies, all
-trade with them to and from Ireland was absolutely forbidden, and hence it
-is that the Irish formed so inconsiderable an element in their population
-previous to the Revolution. The native Irish were then regarded by their
-rulers as having but few more rights than the negroes of Africa.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Having thus briefly shown the origin and progress of the slave trade, I
-will now trace the settlement of the colonies, which afterwards became the
-United States, and the introduction of slavery into them.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-=Origin of Slavery in the United States=
-
-
-The first permanent settlement within the limits of the United States--as
-they became afterwards--to be established, was that of Florida, which
-was begun by the Spaniards in the year 1564. Slavery was introduced into
-Florida, as it was into all the Spanish colonies, and that colony remained
-under the control of Spain until the year 1763, when it was ceded to Great
-Britain, at the close of the war which resulted in the cession of Canada,
-and the territory east of the Mississippi by France to the same power, but
-in 1783, after the recognition of the independence of the United States,
-Florida along with that part of Louisiana east of the Mississippi and
-south of the 31st degree of latitude, which had been ceded by France, was
-re-ceded to Spain, and remained a Spanish colony until the year 1821, when
-it was ceded to the United States; slavery continuing to exist there under
-all these changes.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-The next permanent settlement in point of time, was that of Virginia by
-the English in the year 1607. In the year 1620, twenty negro slaves were
-brought to Jamestown in Virginia by a Dutch man-of-war and sold to the
-colonists, but the number of slaves in that colony remained so small
-for a long time, that there was no legislative enactment recognizing
-the existence of slavery for more than forty years after the first
-introduction of it.
-
-The reduction of Indians to slavery was prohibited in Virginia from the
-beginning, and in the year 1658 by the revised laws adopted in that
-colony, the Indians were protected in the possession of their lands, and
-in order to secure the Indian children, placed with the colonists for
-education, from being sold as slaves, the transfer of their service was
-forbidden. In the revised code adopted in 1662, very humane provisions
-were contained for the protection of the Indians, in the enjoyment of
-their lands, and it was enacted that no Indians entertained as servants
-should be sold into slavery for a longer period than English indented
-servants of like age. In the same year, the first act was passed by the
-colonial legislature recognizing the existence of slavery, and it was to
-the effect that children should be held as bond or free "according to the
-condition of the mothers."
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-This law recognized the generally received principle that slavery was
-valid according to the laws of nations, but did not itself enact slavery.
-That principle prevailed universally, all over the world at that time, and
-had prevailed since the foundation, being recognized in the bible.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-In the year 1667, a law was passed providing that negro slaves converted
-and baptized should not thereby become free. The motive for the adoption
-of this law, was to secure to slaves religious instruction, as an idea
-prevailed among some that it was not lawful to hold a Christian in
-slavery, and it was apprehended that masters might be indisposed, under
-such impressions, to encourage their slaves to become converted. In the
-same year it was provided by law that "all servants, not being Christians,
-imported by shipping shall be slaves for life."
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-In 1671, there were in Virginia, according to a statement furnished by
-Governor Berkeley, 40,000 inhabitants, including in that number 2,000
-"black slaves" and 6,000 Christian servants. The latter consisted of
-English servants brought into the colony as indented servants for a term
-of years, and sold--as was the practice in all of the colonies at that
-day--to pay the expenses of their passage.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-During what was known as Bacon's rebellion in 1676, the Virginia Assembly,
-acting under the coercion of Bacon's followers, passed an act for the
-prosecution of a war against the Indians, and one of its provisions was
-that all Indians taken prisoners in war should be held and accounted
-slaves for life. This was the first and only provision of the laws of that
-colony authorizing the reduction of Indians to slavery, though Indian
-slaves, not being Christians, brought in by shipping might be held, under
-the law of 1667; but there were no slaves made under this forced enactment
-of Bacon's, as the war was not prosecuted, the rebellion having come to an
-end, by the death of its leader, the same year.
-
-A law was enacted in the year 1682, by which negroes, Moors, mulattoes
-or Indians, brought into the colony as servants, by sea or land, were
-recognized as slaves "whether converted to Christianity or not, provided
-they were not of Christian parentage or country, or Turks or Moors in
-amity with his majesty."
-
-In the year 1692, an act was passed providing for "a free and open
-trade for all persons, at all times and at all places with all Indians
-whatsoever," under which the Virginia courts decided that no Indian could
-be reduced to slavery, or brought into Virginia as a slave, after the
-passage of the act.
-
-In the revised Code of Virginia, adopted in the year 1705, is contained
-the final enactment upon the subject of slavery during the colonial state,
-except some acts imposing duties on imported slaves, and by that enactment
-it was provided that "all servants imported or brought into this country
-by sea or land, who were not Christians in their native country (except
-Turks and Moors in amity with his majesty, and others who can make due
-proof of their being free in England or any other Christian country
-before they were shipped in order to transportation thither) shall be
-accounted and be slaves, notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity
-afterwards"; and it was further provided--as in the first act on the
-subject--for "all children to be bond or free according to the condition
-of their mothers."
-
-The Virginia Assembly had passed, from time to time, acts imposing a duty
-of twenty shillings a head on all imported slaves, and this being renewed
-in 1723, was repealed by royal proclamation, but the Board of Trade
-in England intimated that they had no objection to a duty on imported
-negroes, provided it was exacted from the colonial purchaser, and not from
-the English seller; and in 1734 an act was passed imposing a duty of five
-per cent. to be paid by the purchaser, which was subsequently increased
-and reached as high as twenty per cent.
-
-In the year 1772, the House of Burgesses of Virginia adopted an address
-to George III, declaring the importation of negroes from Africa to be an
-inhuman trade and asking that all restraints be removed from the passage
-of acts to check "that pernicious commerce," which request was not granted.
-
-After the commencement of the difficulties which led to the Revolution,
-the Virginia convention, which assembled the 1st of August, 1774, and
-took upon itself the actual management of the affairs of the colony,
-adopted among its first acts, a resolution to import "no more slaves, nor
-British goods, nor tea." Practically this resolution put an end forever
-to the African slave trade so far as Virginia was concerned, and its
-abolition was subsequently confirmed during the war of the Revolution by
-a more formal act passed by the legislature in the year 1778, prohibiting
-the importation of slaves from any quarter, whether by sea or land,
-and providing that all brought into the State in violation of the law
-should be free. Slaves brought in by citizens of other of the United
-States coming into Virginia as actual residents, and those inherited by
-citizens of Virginia in other States of the Union and brought in by them
-being exempted from the operation of the act. In addition to the grant
-of freedom to the slaves themselves heavy penalties were imposed on both
-the buyer and seller who violated the act. In adopting this prohibition,
-Virginia was ahead of all the States in the Union except the little State
-of Delaware, and its action preceded the abolition of the slave trade, by
-England, thirty years.
-
-The citizens of Virginia had never engaged in the slave trade as
-importers, and were merely the purchasers from others--its legislature
-being prohibited from interfering with the trade.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-About the year 1610, trading posts were established by the Dutch within
-the present limits of New York, and the name of New Netherland was given
-to the territory claimed, including that of New York, New Jersey, or the
-Jersey, and some other. Actual colonization began within the present
-limits of New York, under the authority of the Dutch government in the
-year 1629, the traders located in those limits having been previously
-engaged only in trade with the Indians. Slavery was introduced with the
-first settlers and was recognized and protected by law. In the year
-1664, New Netherland was conquered from its Dutch rulers, by an English
-expedition under the authority of the Duke of York, subsequently James
-II, to whom a royal grant of the territory had been made. The province of
-New York was then created out of New Netherland, though it came again,
-temporarily, under the Dutch for portions of the years 1673 and 1674.
-
-Slavery was continued as it before existed until after the Revolution.
-Vessels were fitted out in the port of New York (first called New
-Amsterdam), for the slave trade at an early period, and the merchants of
-that city engaged in it without scruple; some of them continued to be so
-engaged until the traffic was prohibited by Congressional enactment.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-The settlement next in point of time was that of Plymouth, in the year
-1620, within the present limits of the State of Massachusetts. Slavery
-of the Indians and also of negroes existed in this province from the
-beginning. The settlement at Plymouth by the passengers of the May Flower,
-though first in point of time, was not by any means, the leading one
-in Massachusetts, and the Province of Plymouth played comparatively an
-unimportant part in the history of Massachusetts. The main settlement in
-that colony was made in the year 1629, by John Winthrop and his followers,
-Puritans emigrating directly from England, professedly for the purpose of
-securing to themselves, and their posterity, religious freedom. It was
-this settlement which gave tone and character to Massachusetts, as well as
-to all the other New England provinces, which were chiefly offshoots from
-Massachusetts.
-
-Though professing to be seeking a home in this wilderness for the
-purpose of enjoying and establishing religious liberty, the settlers of
-Massachusetts established as proscriptive and despotic a theocracy as
-the world has ever seen. A celebrated humorist has aptly said that their
-idea of religious liberty consisted in enjoying their own opinions to the
-fullest extent and preventing any body else from enjoying theirs.
-
-Under their charter a government was established by the colonists at
-Massachusetts Bay, which was entirely theocratic in form and substance.
-To be a freeman, that is a citizen and voter, it was necessary to be a
-member of the established church, which was the Congregational, and was
-supported at the public expense. The members of that church claimed to be
-God's elect, and they showed no mercy to any other sect and allowed of no
-dissent whatever; all others were heretics or heathens.
-
-From the beginning, the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, as well as those
-at Plymouth, regarded the "heathen around them" and all their possessions
-as fit spoil for the "Saints." Accordingly they began at a very early
-period to help themselves. In the year 1637, in a war begun against the
-Piquods, that tribe of Indians was exterminated by slaughter and capture.
-Of several hundred prisoners taken, the adult males, constituting but a
-small portion of the captives, were sent to the West Indies and sold into
-slavery, while the women and children were distributed among the colonists
-as slaves also; this was done by the constituted authorities.
-
-These colonists commenced the building of ships in the year 1634, and
-engaged in commerce, the African slave trade, being, from the beginning,
-a part of that commerce. By the year 1640, six large vessels had been
-built, and fitted out by the Boston merchants, which were sent on voyages
-to Spain, Madeira and the Canaries with cargoes of fish and staves, and
-brought back, among other things, cargoes of negroes from the coast of
-Africa for sale at Barbadoes and the other British West India Islands.
-
-It was not a great while before the religious persecution in Massachusetts
-drove off a number of dissenters from the established faith, among them
-being the celebrated Roger Williams, the founder of the Baptists in
-America. These "heretics," as they were called, took refuge within the
-present limits of Rhode Island, where they established, at different
-points, separate governments for themselves, all of which were
-subsequently merged in that of Rhode Island. Emigrants from Massachusetts
-also established themselves at different points in the present limits of
-Connecticut and formed two separate governments, one called New Haven
-and the other Connecticut, which were afterwards united under that of
-Connecticut. Massachusetts set up a claim of jurisdiction over all of
-these settlements, but finally had to abandon it.
-
-In the year 1641, the general court of Massachusetts, in which the
-legislative power was vested, adopted a code of fundamental laws called
-"Fundamentals" or "Body of Liberties," which were compiled from two
-separate drafts reported by those "Godly ministers," "the great Cotton" as
-he was called, and Nathaniel Ward, who had been appointed commissioners
-for that purpose. One of the "Liberties" provided that "There shall never
-be any bond-slavery, villanage nor captivity among us, unless it be
-lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell
-themselves or are sold unto us, and these shall have all the liberties
-and Christian usages which the law of God, established in Israel,
-requires. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by
-authority." This surely was a one-sided idea of religious liberty; the
-"elect" gave themselves abundant liberty to do as they pleased in the
-matter. This "Fundamental" was twenty years in advance of any legislative
-enactment in Virginia recognizing the existence of slavery.
-
-A confederacy was formed, in the year 1643, between the colonies of
-Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, called the "United
-Colonies of New England" into which the "heretics" of Rhode Island were
-not permitted to enter. Slavery existed by law everywhere now in New
-England, including Rhode Island, and one of the stipulations of the
-compact, by which the United Colonies were bound, was that fugitive
-servants or slaves should be delivered up when fleeing from one province
-to another. The stipulation was almost in the identical terms of that long
-afterwards incorporated into the United States Constitution upon the same
-subject.
-
-The harsh treatment pursued towards dissenters, including the most
-delicate females, who were sometimes stripped naked and whipped through
-the streets, and the trials and execution of persons as witches, furnish
-revolting details of the conduct of the "elect," but it is not intended
-to refer more particularly to that here. One fact, however, in regard to
-the history of Virginia and Massachusetts may be properly mentioned--as
-descendants of the latter's colonists have arraigned at the bar of public
-opinion, the people of Virginia, as well as the whole South upon the
-subject of slavery--and that fact is very suggestive.
-
-In the year 1644, the Indians in Virginia, under the instigation of
-Opechancanough, successor of Powhatan, undertook to exterminate the
-colonists in that province, when five hundred persons, who were engaged
-in celebrating a victory of the king over the Parliamentary army in the
-war then raging, were massacred at the first surprise. A ship was sent to
-Boston to procure powder for the defence of the colony, but the general
-court declined to furnish it. This refusal was owing to the fact that the
-people of Virginia sympathized with the king in the pending struggle, and
-to the further fact that three ministers sent out from New England at the
-instance of some of the "elect," who had found their way into Virginia,
-were sent out of the province by Governor Berkeley for violating the
-law--Governor Winthrop declaring that the massacre of the Virginians was a
-punishment "for their reviling the Gospel and those faithful ministers."
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-A law was adopted in Connecticut, 1650, for selling debtors for debt,
-which remained in force more than a century and a half; and at the same
-time a law was adopted, upon the recommendation of the commissioners for
-the United Colonies of New England, providing that Indians refusing or
-neglecting satisfaction for injuries might be seized and delivered to the
-party injured "either to serve, or to be shipped out and exchanged for
-negroes, as the case will justly bear." About this time, the "heretics"
-at Warwick, one of the settlements in Rhode Island, complained that
-the authorities of Massachusetts had instigated the Indians to commit
-depredations upon them, and Easton, subsequently governor of Rhode Island,
-was reported to have said of the people of Massachusetts, that "the
-elect had the Holy Ghost and the devil indwelling." Upon hearing of the
-execution of two persons for witchcraft, the people of Warwick exclaimed
-"There are no witches on earth, nor devils, but the ministers of New
-England and such as they."
-
-In 1676, a large number of captives, taken in the war against King Philip,
-in which all of New England was united, were made slaves of, many of them
-were sent from Boston to Bermuda and sold, including the infant son of
-King Philip, who, some of the most prominent ministers insisted, should
-be slain for his father's sins, though the more remunerative expedient of
-selling him was adopted. The captives who fell into the hands of the Rhode
-Islanders were distributed as slaves, and Roger Williams, the expelled
-"heretic" from Massachusetts, received a boy for his share. A large body
-of Indians assembled at Dover, at the conclusion of the war, to make
-peace, were treacherously captured and some two hundred of them were sent
-to Boston, where some were hung and the rest shipped off to be sold as
-slaves.
-
-In the reign of James II, the charter of Massachusetts was vacated
-by legal proceedings, and in the year 1691, a new charter was issued
-providing for the appointment of the governor by the crown and for
-toleration to all religious sects. This gave great dissatisfaction to
-the ruling church; and the theocratic power was in a great measure
-destroyed, but the controlling influence of the old religious party still
-prevailed in the general court, though restrained by the royal governor.
-By this charter the province of Plymouth was incorporated with that of
-Massachusetts, as was the district of Maine, but New Hampshire, previously
-under the government of Massachusetts, was soon created into a separate
-province.
-
-In 1701, the town of Boston instructed its representatives to propose
-"putting a period to negroes being slaves," but no action was taken, and
-these scruples were very short lived, the enslaving of Indians and the
-prosecution of the slave trade being still continued. The manufacture of
-New England rum, which was in progress, furnished a very easy means of
-prosecuting the trade, as that article was freely exchanged on the coast
-of Africa with the natives for slaves. One part of the inhabitants being
-imbruited by the detestable liquor, while the other was carried off into
-bondage. The traders of New England, composed of all classes, including
-church dignitaries, participated largely in the profits resulting from the
-impulse given to the slave trade in 1698, and it was sustained by public
-sentiment in those colonies as well as in the mother country.
-
-In 1704, in the intercolonial war with Canada, Massachusetts offered a
-reward of $66 per head for Indian prisoners under ten years of age and
-double as much for older prisoners or for scalps.
-
-In 1712, Massachusetts passed an act prohibiting the further importation
-of Indian slaves on pain of the forfeiture of the slaves, but this
-prohibition did not arise from feelings of humanity for the Indians;
-the reasons given for it were, that the Indians were "of a surly and
-revengeful spirit, rude and insolent in their behavior, and very
-ungovernable" and because "this province being differently circumstanced
-from the plantations in the islands, and having great numbers of the
-Indian natives of the country within and about them and at this time under
-the sorrowful effects of their rebellion and hostilities."
-
-The merchants of England having complained that the New Englanders were
-infringing upon their rights by engaging in the slave trade, which the
-New England traders now mainly carried on with rum, for the manufacture
-of which molasses was imported from elsewhere than the British West India
-Islands, an act of Parliament was passed in 1733, imposing a duty on
-molasses, sugar and rum imported from the French and Dutch West Indies.
-This act was called the "Molasses Act," and was the first of the series
-of Acts bringing about the discontent which led to the Revolution. The
-traders of New England managed to elude this act as they had done the
-restrictions put upon the slave trade for the benefit of the English
-merchants. The manufacture of rum and the trade from all the ports of New
-England still continued with great activity up to the commencement of the
-Revolution, and served to build up the commerce of that section, as the
-same trade had built up the commerce of the mother country.
-
-Some slaves were imported into all the New England colonies, but as there
-was not very profitable employment for them there, and it was vastly
-more remunerative to sell than to work them, the former was preferred to
-the latter mode of dealing with the subject and in it they found a rich
-reward. The markets for the slaves were found in the West Indies and in
-the Southern colonies, where the soil, climate and productions were
-much more suitable for African slave labor, than in the cold regions of
-the north. There were, however, in the year 1754, 2,448 negro slaves in
-Massachusetts over 16 years of age, 1,000 of them being in Boston, and
-the whole number exceeded 4,000, while in Connecticut and Rhode Island
-the proportion of slaves to the white population was greater than in
-Massachusetts.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-Maryland was settled under the proprietorship of Lord Baltimore in the
-year 1634, and slavery was introduced into that colony also, the laws
-recognizing and regulating it being very similar to those of Virginia. In
-1649, an act was passed by which the kidnapping of Indians to make them
-slaves, was made felony, and in 1663, the first act recognizing slavery
-was passed, being similar in its features to that of Virginia. The people
-of Maryland did not engage in the slave trade and were merely purchasers.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-The first settlement in the Carolinas was within the limits of what became
-South Carolina, and was made in the latter half of the 16th century by
-French Huguenots, but that settlement proved a failure. An attempt to make
-a settlement in North Carolina under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh
-also proved abortive. The first permanent settlement in North Carolina
-was by Virginia emigrants to the northern part of it, some years previous
-to the charter, which was granted to some English noblemen and others
-for both of the Carolinas. In 1665, North Carolina was taken possession
-of under this charter, and a government was established therefor. In
-1670, South Carolina was permanently settled. Though embraced in the same
-charter, North and South Carolina now became separate provinces with
-distinct governments. Slavery was introduced into both provinces and was
-recognized by law; the number of slaves continuing to increase as the
-population increased and the capacities of the soil became known, which
-proved to be very suitable for slave labor. There was nothing special in
-the history of slavery in these provinces during the colonial state. The
-people did not engage in the slave trade, but were merely purchasers from
-English and New England traders; nor did they make slaves of the Indians
-by whom they were surrounded.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-The first settlers within the limits of New Jersey were Swedes, who came
-over prior to 1630. New Jersey, or East and West Jersey as it was called
-then, was settled in 1665 by English emigrants, and two governments
-were organized therefor under grants from the Duke of York, which were
-subsequently consolidated into one. Slavery was introduced into that
-province as it had been in all of the others, but the number of slaves did
-not become as numerous as in the more Southern colonies, because the soil
-and climate were not as suitable for slave labor.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-Pennsylvania was settled in 1682 under the proprietorship of William Penn,
-and the government was organized by him, including within its jurisdiction
-Delaware also. Slavery was introduced into this colony, and slaves were
-held without scruple by the Quaker followers of Penn. In 1692, George
-Keith, a Scotch Quaker who had been the champion of the Quakers against
-their persecutors--the Reverend Cotton Mather of witch notoriety, and the
-other Massachusetts divines--attacked negro slavery as inconsistent with
-Quaker principles. For this he was "_disavowed_" by the yearly meeting
-of the Quakers of Pennsylvania, as a schismatic, and he instituted a
-meeting of his own called "Christian Quakers." For publishing a reply
-to a publication against him, he was fined by the Quaker magistrates of
-Philadelphia and he subsequently became disgusted with the whole sect,
-turned Episcopalian, went to England and took orders there, and was one of
-the first missionaries sent to the American colonies by the "Society for
-propagating the gospel in foreign parts."
-
-In 1699, Penn proposed to provide by law for the marriage, religious
-instruction and kind treatment of slaves, but he met with no response from
-the Quaker legislature of Pennsylvania. The "spirit" had not then moved
-the Quakers to "bear their testimony" against slavery and consequently
-they did not "testify." In 1712, the legislature imposed a duty of £20
-on all negroes and Indians brought into the province by land or water, a
-drawback to be allowed in case of re-exportation within twenty days, and
-slaves brought in and concealed were to be sold. This act did not owe its
-origin to abhorrence of slavery itself, but was passed in a fright at some
-alleged plots for insurrections, which were apprehended in consequence
-of one which had been discovered in New York. The act was disallowed by
-Queen Anne, and the same legislature replied to a petition in favor of
-emancipating the negroes, "That it was neither just nor expedient to set
-them at liberty." This was the only "testimony" borne by the Quakers of
-Pennsylvania against slavery prior to the war of the Revolution.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-Delaware was originally settled by Swedes at the same time the settlement
-was made in New Jersey, and it had been embraced under the same government
-with Pennsylvania at the time of Penn's settlement, but it was made a
-separate province, by his consent, in the year 1691. Delaware is entitled
-to the credit of being not only the first of the provinces but the first
-country in the world to adopt an express enactment prohibiting the
-introduction of slaves within its limits. This it did in the year 1771,
-but the act was vetoed by Governor Penn, the grandson of Wm. Penn, and
-the representative of the crown. The prohibition was incorporated into the
-first State Constitution adopted in the year 1776. Delaware was, however,
-a slave colony and remained a slave State.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-The first permanent settlement within the limits of the territory of
-Louisiana, which embraced a very large tract of country, was made under
-the auspices of D'Ibberville, a French Canadian, at Mobile, within the
-limits of the present State of Alabama in the year 1702. Bienville,
-governor of Louisiana, located New Orleans, the first permanent settlement
-within the limits of the State of Louisiana, in the year 1718. Slavery
-was introduced into the province of Louisiana under the direction of the
-French government, a contract being made for that purpose with Anthony
-Crozat, a French merchant, to whom the province and a monopoly of its
-trade were granted. Crozat resigned his patent in 1717, and a monopoly
-of the trade for twenty-five years was granted to "the company of the
-West," commonly called "The Mississippi Company," with which the famous
-Law was connected. By its contract, the company undertook to introduce
-6,000 whites and half as many negro slaves into the province. Slavery
-thus became established in Louisiana under the express stipulation of
-the French government, and continued to exist under its authority. In
-1763, by the treaty made between England, France and Spain, at the close
-of the war in which all three nations had been engaged, France ceded to
-England, Canada and all of the territory east of the Mississippi river,
-except the island of Orleans, and to Spain all of Louisiana which had not
-been ceded to England, while Spain ceded Florida to England. In 1783,
-England re-ceded Florida to Spain, and at the same time ceded to the same
-power that part of Louisiana north of the 31st degree of latitude which
-had been acquired from France. The parts of the original province of
-Louisiana thus re-united, remained a Spanish province until the year 1801,
-when it was re-ceded to France, and in 1803 it was ceded to the United
-States. Slavery had continued to exist in the province, and the different
-parts of it, and to be recognized as legal, during all of these changes.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-In 1733, Georgia was settled under the patronage of General Oglethorpe,
-of the British Army, and it was intended as a humanitarian scheme for
-furnishing refuge to impoverished meritorious persons, and persecuted
-Continental Protestants. The territory, together with the power to
-legislate for twenty-one years, was granted to trustees resident in
-England. The trustees at first prohibited the introduction of slaves,
-but under the humanitarian ideas with which the colony was begun, it
-languished and proved a miserable failure until the year 1749. The
-trustees were then induced to permit the introduction of slaves, at
-the instance, among others, of the celebrated preacher, Whitfield,
-and his follower, Habersham, who earnestly interceded for the
-permission--Habersham stating as a reason for the introduction of slavery
-that "Many of the poor slaves in America have already been made freemen of
-the Heavenly Jerusalem."
-
-Slavery was thus introduced into Georgia, and the Colony began at once to
-prosper and advanced with rapid strides.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-The institution of slavery, it will thus be perceived, existed at the time
-of the Revolution, not only in all of the revolting colonies, acknowledged
-by law and sustained by public sentiment at home and in the mother
-country, but it existed in all of the territories, which afterwards became
-a part of the United States, and was sanctioned by the sentiment of all of
-the Christian world.
-
-But before this review of the slave trade and of slavery in the British
-colonies in North America, is closed, it is proper that England should
-receive credit for one incident in her judicial history in regard to the
-subject. In the year 1763, the celebrated case of Somerset, a slave who
-had been carried to England by his master from one of the British West
-India Islands, came up before Lord Mansfield in Westminster Hall on a writ
-of _habeas corpus_, and that distinguished Chief Justice of the King's
-Bench, in delivering his opinion discharging the petition, said: "The air
-of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man who breathes
-it is free."
-
-This declaration is the source of much pride to Englishmen and Lord
-Campbell in his "Lives of the Chief Justices" goes into ecstasies over
-it. It is regarded as the enunciation of the great principle that the
-common law of England establishes universal freedom, and that wherever
-it prevails it knocks the shackles from the slave and turns him loose,
-a free man. Yet it was most probable that Somerset himself, and it was
-certain that his ancestor, if not himself, had been carried from Africa,
-in a ship that had been fitted out under the protection of that very
-common law by men breathing that same pure air, and sold into slavery in a
-colony to which the same law under which he was released, had followed the
-colonists. Was ever so absurd a farce enacted as that which was enacted
-by the Chief Justice of England, when he announced in Westminster Hall
-before the assembled bar of London, that the air breathed by a nation of
-slave-traders was too pure for the slave himself. None but an Englishman
-would have failed to discover its absurdity. Where then, was that "genius
-of universal emancipation" referred to at a later period at the Irish Bar
-by Curran, in such eloquent language, that it did not waft these words on
-the wings of that pure air across the channel to the Emerald Isle, to the
-coasts of Africa, to the plantations of America and the West Indies, or to
-the banks of the Ganges? Could not a breath of that pure air be afforded
-at least for the ships of the British Navy, then so sedulously guarding
-English slave ships through the horrors of the "Middle Passage" from
-French cruisers? No! that pure air was "fixed air" which could not extend
-beyond the shores of England, and the wings of the "genius of universal
-emancipation" were so clipped that it was a more clumsy domestic bird than
-the barnyard fowl.
-
-At the same time that these celebrated words were uttered in Westminster
-Hall, the ministers of State, and king, lords and commons in Parliament,
-were cherishing with a fostering hand that very trade which had consigned
-Somerset to slavery, and was then consigning thousands upon thousands
-of his native countrymen to the same fate while the boasted navy of the
-"Mistress of the Seas" was escorting the human cargoes in safety and
-triumph to their destination, and in the colonies writs and executions
-were being issued, according to forms framed in Westminster Hall, to
-enforce from the sale of the bodies of human beings, the collection of
-debts, due to men who breathed the "pure air of England," and prided
-themselves on the liberties of the common law.
-
-This decision of Lord Mansfield was one of those acts of judicial
-legislation for which he was so famous, and it was not the law. Quite as
-able judges as himself had previously decided the validity and legality
-of slavery even in England, and Lord Stowell, as able a judge and purer
-man than he was, subsequently ruled very differently from the decision in
-the Somerset case. England had no use for slaves at home, as her toiling
-millions supplied every demand for labor or service. Had it been to her
-interest to have had African slaves within her own limits, her pure air
-would have accommodated itself to their constitution. She never sacrificed
-her material interests to her philanthropy. Notwithstanding the decision
-of Lord Mansfield, it was twenty-five years before the prime minister of
-England (the younger Pitt) ventured to go even so far, as to bring in a
-bill to mitigate the horrors "of the Middle Passage," by limiting the
-number of slaves to be taken on board a ship--it was forty-five years
-before another prime minister ventured to advocate the abolition of the
-slave trade, and seventy-one years before slavery was abolished in the
-limited slave colonies left to England after the American Revolution, and
-that was not done until this small interest was so far overshadowed by
-other interests as to make it of no importance to her.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-=Legislation on the Question of State Establishment=
-
-
-In order to understand the status of the slave trade and slavery in the
-United States after their independence was achieved, it is necessary to
-glance at the progress of the Revolution and the adoption of the new form
-of government after its close.
-
-In 1774, the contest between the mother country and the English Colonies
-of North America approached a crisis, and the first Continental Congress
-of delegates from the thirteen colonies assembled at Philadelphia on
-the 5th of September of that year. Fifteen articles, as the basis of an
-"American Association," were adopted and signed on the 20th of October,
-in which, among other things the slave trade was denounced, and entire
-abstinence from it and from any trade with those engaged in it, was
-enjoined. This had been preceded by the Virginia resolution on the same
-subject more than two months, but the war which ensued put an end to the
-trade during its continuance, much more effectually than any resolutions
-or laws could have done.
-
-The "Declaration of Colonial Rights" adopted by this Congress enumerated
-eleven acts of Parliament as having been passed in derogation of the
-rights of the colonies since the accession of George III to the throne,
-to-wit:
-
-1. "The Sugar Act."--This act was a modification of the "Molasses Act," by
-which the duties on molasses and sugar were lowered and a few unimportant
-articles were added to the list of those taxed.
-
-2. "The Stamp Act."--This act never had been executed and had been
-repealed.
-
-3 and 4. "The Two Quartering Acts."--The first of these acts had been
-passed in 1765, after the close of the war against the French in Canada,
-which resulted in the conquest of that country from France, greatly
-to the advantage of the northern colonies. It was intended to quarter
-troops on the colonies for their protection against the Indians and was
-in accordance with the views of the elder Pitt, who intimated that the
-colonies ought to bear a portion of the burthen of a war made for their
-benefit. By the terms of this act, the colonial authorities were required
-to furnish quarters, firewood, bedding, drink, soap, and candles to the
-troops sent into the colonies. It had been resisted or evaded and had been
-allowed to expire.
-
-The second of these acts was a re-enactment of the first, in consequence
-of the disturbance at Boston.
-
-5. "The Tea Act."--This act imposed a duty of three pence a pound on
-tea imported into the colonies, and allowed a drawback of the duty of a
-shilling a pound on the tea imported into England, when re-shipped to the
-colonies; the practical effect of which was to lower the duties paid by
-the colonists.
-
-6. "The Act Suspending the New York Legislature."--This act was passed in
-consequence of the continued refusal of that legislature to comply with
-the terms of the quartering acts.
-
-7 and 8. "The Acts For the Trials in Great Britain of Offences Committed
-in America."--These acts were passed in consequence of the resistance of
-all British authority at Boston.
-
-9. "The Boston Port Bill."--This act was passed in consequence of the
-forcible destruction of tea in Boston Harbor.
-
-10. "The Act For Regulating the Government of Massachusetts."--This Act
-was passed in consequence of the continuous disturbances by the people of
-that colony.
-
-11. "The Quebec Act."--This act was for the government of Canada, and the
-other colonies had no right to complain, except so far as it extended to
-the country south of the lakes and west of those colonies.
-
-It is well to keep these causes of complaint in mind, when considering the
-causes for the secession of the Southern States previous to the late war,
-and the course pursued towards those States.
-
-In the war which resulted from the resistance to the acts specified,
-was involved a great principle of self-government, which the British
-government has since fully acknowledged in the treatment of all her
-other colonies, but it must be confessed that there was a good deal of
-turbulence and violence exhibited by American colonists in the first
-stages of the contest. Without depreciating the public spirit displayed by
-the people of Massachusetts during the war which ensued, there can be no
-question but that by violence and rashness the conflict was precipitated,
-and that much forbearance was show by some of the British military
-officials. A candid review of the history of the difficulties preceding
-actual hostilities must lead any honest mind to the conclusion that while
-the British ministers acted unconstitutionally and unwisely, as the
-quarrel approached its crisis, the people of Massachusetts, with whom the
-conflict began, exhibited a very turbulent spirit and often acted with
-unwarranted violence.
-
-The settlers of Massachusetts, on account of their peculiar religious
-theories, had from the very beginning, been impatient of all control from
-the mother country and anxious to thrown it off. They had hailed the
-Commonwealth with joy, had been greatly chagrined at the restoration of
-the royal authority and had been very much embittered by the vacation
-of their charter and the loss of the theocratic form of government, and
-their ministry kept alive the fires of discontent and fanned them into a
-flame on all occasions. The same feeling existed throughout New England.
-Virginia on the contrary had been always a loyal colony and had not
-acknowledged the Parliament or the Commonwealth in Cromwell's time, until
-compelled to do so by a force sent for its conquest. Its people had hailed
-the restoration with delight and there was no sentiment in the colony
-demanding a separation from the mother country which was not engendered
-by actual or supposed infringement of their rights as British subjects.
-Though the people of that colony had little direct interest in the
-grievances complained of against the British government, as the articles
-taxed entered very little into their consumption, and no troops had been
-quartered among them in an offensive manner since the Parliamentary
-expedition, they made common cause with the people of Massachusetts, as
-it was a question of power which involved the rights of all the colonies.
-The difference was that the people of Massachusetts and New England were
-anxious to bring on a separation, while those of Virginia were not, unless
-it was necessary for the protection of the rights of all of the colonies.
-The statesmen of Virginia entered warmly into the dispute both by speaking
-and writing, and when the actual collision took place the people sprang to
-arms and sent to Massachusetts aid in both men and provisions.
-
-It was the attempt to coerce the people of Massachusetts, in an
-unconstitutional manner, to compliance with unconstitutional laws, on the
-part of the British government, more than any actual grievances of their
-own, that aroused the people of Virginia to action, as that coercion if
-successfully applied to one colony, might be used for the destruction of
-all self-government in the others. This became the traditional policy of
-Virginia as a sovereign State. After the struggle began, she gave a leader
-to the continental army, her wisest and best statesmen to the colonial
-councils, her arms-bearing citizens to the ranks, and her resources to the
-prosecution of the war. That war which was begun in Massachusetts, long
-after it ceased to exist within the limits of that State, was finally,
-practically, ended on the soil of Virginia, after that soil had been
-terribly ravaged by the invading armies of Great Britain.
-
-Motives similar to those which actuated Virginia, prompted the action of
-all of the other Southern colonies, and none suffered greater losses in
-war for the common defence than South Carolina. This statement is not made
-in order to claim for Virginia and the other Southern States more than
-their due share of credit for services in the war of the Revolution, nor
-to depreciate the valuable services rendered by the more northern states
-of the confederation.
-
-The war was prosecuted by the colonies as a confederacy of sovereign
-States. The Continental Congress was in fact but a congress of
-commissioners or embassadors, whose acts derived their validity from the
-tacit adoption and sanction of the several States, and the delegates
-were at all times subject to recall and substitution, by the appointment
-of others--a power which was repeatedly exercised. The Declaration
-of Independence itself, was made in accordance with powers expressly
-delegated for that purpose to the representatives of the several
-appointing powers, and derived its force not from the action of Congress,
-but from the adoption of that action by those represented in that body.
-
-In the case of Virginia, her independence had been declared by a
-convention of her own, and a State Government had been actually organized
-in advance of the action of Congress, and she was the first thus to
-assert her sovereignty. On the 15th of May, 1776, the Virginia convention
-resolved to adopt a bill of rights and frame a State government, and on
-the 29th of June following, the government was put into operation by the
-election of a governor and other officers--a Bill of Rights and State
-Constitution having been framed and adopted in the meantime.
-
-Articles of confederation were proposed in 1777, more than a year after
-the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, for ratification by
-the thirteen sovereign States. These articles required the unanimous
-ratification of all of the States, and as Maryland withheld her consent
-to this, until the 1st of March, 1781, they did not go into effect until
-that time. In the meanwhile the Congress had continued to exercise its
-permissive powers in the prosecution of the war, but it had no means of
-enforcing its edicts except in the voluntary compliance of the several
-States.
-
-The first three articles were as follows:
-
-Article I. The style of this confederacy shall be "The United States of
-America."
-
-Art. II. "Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence,
-and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this
-confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress
-assembled."
-
-Art. III. "The several States hereby severally enter into a firm league of
-friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their
-liabilities and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to
-assist each other against all force opposed to, or attacks made upon them,
-or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade or any other
-pretence whatever."
-
-The other articles of confederation conferred upon Congress very little
-more power than it had been exercising. All important measures required
-the concurrence of nine States, the votes being given by the delegates
-from each State as a unit, and not in their individual capacity.
-
-The right of the States to recall their delegates and to appoint others
-was expressly reserved, so that five States acting together, could at any
-time block the government, and the latter had no means of enforcing its
-decrees when made, but had to rely upon the voluntary compliance of the
-States as before. It will thus be seen that the government organized under
-the articles of confederation remained still a mere confederacy of several
-independent States. When peace was finally made with Great Britain, that
-power recognized the sovereignty and independence of the several States
-of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New
-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South
-Carolina and Georgia by name, and not the sovereignty and independence of
-the United States.
-
-After the treaty of peace, under the navigation laws of Great Britain,
-American vessels trading with that country, were restricted to the
-importation of products of the several States to which they belonged,
-which put those States upon the footing of so many separate nations.
-
-The action of the several States upon the subject of slavery and the slave
-trade during the war and afterwards to the time of the adoption of the
-Constitution of the United States was as follows:
-
-Delaware, as before stated, by her constitution adopted in 1776,
-prohibited the further introduction of slaves.
-
-Virginia did the same thing by her law adopted in 1778.
-
-Pennsylvania, whose legislature had ceased to be under the control of the
-Quakers, as they refused to take part in the Revolution, adopted a law in
-1780, prohibiting the further introduction of slaves and giving freedom to
-all children of slave mothers born after its passage.
-
-Massachusetts incorporated a declaration in her bill of rights adopted in
-1780, that "all men are born free and equal," and under that declaration
-it was decided by the Supreme Court of that State in 1783, that slavery
-was prohibited. It cannot be claimed that this declaration was intended
-to have that effect, for if such had been the case it would not have been
-left to judicial interpretation to give it, but an express provision
-would have been incorporated on the subject. It was a species of judicial
-legislation which was submitted to because no important interest was at
-stake. There were a little over 6,000 slaves in Massachusetts at the
-date of the Revolution, distributed in small numbers among the owners
-and employed mostly as household servants. The population was largely
-engaged in commerce, fisheries, manufactures, etc., and the character
-of the agriculture was not at all adapted to slave labor. Nothing of
-consequence therefore, was to be gained by contesting the validity of the
-decision, and it was the easiest way of getting rid of the matter by quiet
-submission.
-
-New Hampshire adopted a similar clause in her second constitution in 1783,
-and under that it was held that freedom was guaranteed to all children
-born after its adoption.
-
-Maryland adopted in 1783, laws in regard to the introduction of slaves
-similar to those of Virginia.
-
-Connecticut and Rhode Island, in 1784, adopted laws on the subject of
-slavery similar to those of Pennsylvania.
-
-The effect of these laws and decisions was to put an end to the slave
-trade in all of the states but North and South Carolina and Georgia; to
-abolish it in Massachusetts and provide for its gradual extinction in New
-Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, while it still
-remained as before in the other states. It has been alleged, and probably
-was true, that a large number of the slaves in the northern states were
-carried to the South and sold there, to avoid the operation of the
-emancipation measures which were initiated. This allegation receives very
-strong confirmation from a comparison of the free colonies' population
-at the north at different periods, with the number of slaves known to be
-there at the date of the institution of emancipation measures, when taken
-in connection with the increase to that colored population, from freed
-slaves and runaways from the South.
-
-Notwithstanding the provisions for abolishing slavery in the New England
-states, the merchants and traders of those states resumed the importation
-of slaves from Africa to the Carolinas and Georgia immediately after the
-close of the war. North Carolina, however, had denounced the trade as
-impolitic, and imposed a duty on future importations which furnished an
-impediment to it, so far as that state was concerned.
-
-The confederation which, during the war, under the pressure of the public
-danger, had answered the purpose, was found to work very badly when
-peace ensued and the states were no longer stimulated to comply with
-the requisitions of Congress by immediate necessity. Though the states
-were all vested with full powers to regulate their domestic affairs,
-yet there was a large debt contracted in common which it was necessary
-to provide for, and as the states were forbidden by the Articles of
-Confederation to make treaties, and Congress had no power to impose taxes
-or duties on imports or exports, which power rested entirely in the state
-legislatures, there was a very great derangement of the finances, commerce
-and business of the country, entailing very ruinous consequences upon
-all classes and interests. It became, therefore, necessary to provide a
-remedy for existing evils, and a convention of delegates from the states
-assembled at Philadelphia in the year 1787, for the purpose of revising
-the Federal system. This convention was assembled in accordance with the
-recommendation of a previous one, that had assembled at Annapolis on the
-invitation of Virginia, but found its powers inadequate.
-
-The deliberations of the Philadelphia convention, which were presided over
-by General Washington, resulted in the adoption of the Constitution of the
-United States, for recommendation to the states for their ratification,
-and by the terms of the Constitution, it was provided that it should go
-into effect when ratified by nine states, as to the states ratifying it.
-
-There were many difficulties in the way of the formation of the
-Constitution by reason of conflicting views and interests, and the
-instrument as framed by the convention was the result of a compromise
-of those views and interests. The only questions arising in regard to
-slavery was in relation to the basis of representation in Congress and
-taxation, the foreign slave trade and the restoration of fugitive slaves.
-The questions in regard to representation and taxation were settled
-by compromise, as was that in regard to the slave trade. Virginia and
-Maryland were in favor of an absolute and immediate prohibition of
-the foreign slave trade, while South Carolina and Georgia opposed any
-interference with it. With the two latter states some of the New England
-delegates sided, and after much discussion a compromise was finally
-effected, by adopting a provision prohibiting Congress from preventing,
-prior to the year 1808, the importation of any persons the states might
-think proper to admit, but giving the power to impose a duty on such
-persons in the meantime, not to exceed $10 per head. This compromise was
-effected by an arrangement between the delegates of South Carolina and
-Georgia on the one side and the New England delegates on the other, by
-which it was agreed to insert a provision vesting Congress with the power
-to pass navigation laws by a majority vote--which was earnestly desired by
-New England but was opposed by some of the other states--and to adopt the
-restriction prohibiting any interference with the slave trade until the
-time designated.
-
-For the provision in regard to the slave trade as adopted, Massachusetts,
-New Hampshire and Connecticut, the only New England States represented,
-voted, while Virginia voted with some of the other states against it
-in all its stages--the final vote being, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
-Connecticut, Maryland, North and South Carolina in the affirmative, and
-New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia in the negative; absent or
-not voting, New York, Rhode Island and Georgia.
-
-The clause in regard to the restoration of fugitive slaves was adopted
-without any objection from any quarter, and it was worded in almost the
-identical language of the provision on the same subject contained in
-the old compact of "The United Colonies of New England." Without the
-provision for the return of slaves escaping into any of the states or the
-public territory, not a solitary Southern State would have accepted the
-Constitution, and its necessity, propriety and justice were conceded on
-all sides without question. When the Constitution was submitted to the
-states for ratification, it met with a good deal of opposition because
-it was thought to impose too great restrictions on the rights of the
-states, but it was finally ratified by the end of July, 1788, by eleven
-states, and steps were taken to organize the government under it, which
-was done in April, 1789, by the meeting of the first Congress under the
-Constitution and the inauguration of General Washington as President.
-
-North Carolina did not ratify the Constitution until November, 1789,
-nor Rhode Island until May, 1790, and until they did ratify it they
-remained as foreign nations to the other states. When the ratification
-was under consideration, there was much discussion as to the construction
-of various clauses, and most of the states were induced to give their
-assent by the hope of adoption of amendments explaining all ambiguities
-and objectionable clauses, and the ratification was accompanied with the
-recommendation of such amendments as were desired.
-
-In passing the ordinance ratifying the Constitution, the Virginia
-convention adopted an explanatory preamble, declaring that when the
-powers delegated should be abused they would be resumed, and the New
-York convention accompanied the ratification with a declaration of the
-right to withdraw it. It is curious in view of subsequent events, that
-Massachusetts proposed as an amendment "That all powers not expressly
-delegated to Congress should be reserved to the states," and another "That
-no person be tried for any crime (cases in the military and naval service
-excepted) without previous indictment by a grand jury; and that in civil
-cases the right of trial by jury be preserved." The first of these was
-recommended by Virginia and South Carolina also, and the last by Virginia,
-and both were subsequently adopted as amendments to the Constitution
-on the recommendation of the first Congress, with only a change of
-phraseology not at all effecting their import. Massachusetts has changed
-her views since she asserted these doctrines of states' rights and civil
-liberty.
-
-The Constitution of the United States left slavery in the states precisely
-where it was before, the only provision having any reference to it
-whatever being that which fixed the ratio of representation in the House
-of Representatives and direct taxation; that in reference to the foreign
-slave trade, and that guaranteeing the return of fugitive slaves. Had it
-been proposed to insert any provision giving Congress any power over the
-subject in the states, it would have been resisted, and the insertion of
-such provision would have insured the rejection of the Constitution. The
-government framed under this Constitution being one of delegated powers
-entirely, those powers were necessarily limited to the objects for which
-they were granted, but to prevent all misconception, the 9th and 10th
-amendments were adopted, the first providing that "The enumeration in the
-Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage
-others retained by the people," and the other that: "The powers not
-delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
-to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-It has now been shown how slavery originated in the United States and that
-the Federal Constitution left its regulation in every particular, where
-it belonged, that is to the several states where it existed, save only
-in regard to the foreign slave trade and the guarantee for the return of
-fugitive slaves as mentioned.
-
-State action had already provided for the removal of slavery from several
-of the northern states, and this was followed, later, by a law adopted in
-New York in 1799, providing that all children of slaves born after the
-4th of July of that year should be free, males at 28 and females at 25
-years of age, and a law adopted in New Jersey in 1804, providing that all
-children of slaves born after the 4th of July of that year should be free,
-the males at 25 and the females at 21 years of age. This was the last of
-the acts for the emancipation of slavery where it previously existed and
-therefore, so far as regarded the original thirteen states, slavery was
-confined to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and
-Georgia, except as to the remnants left in the other states by the acts
-for gradual emancipation, which lingered in some of them for a long time.
-
-If African slavery was a crime, who was responsible for it? Did the sole
-guilt or the greater part of it rest upon the shoulders of the colonists
-who purchased the slaves already ravished from their homes in the plains
-and wilds of Africa, or on the shoulders of the descendants of the
-original purchasers who found the institution already established as a
-settled policy, or did it rest with those who procured the enslavement of
-these ignorant and degraded barbarians and reaped the enormous profits
-resulting from their sale in their persons?
-
-Treating it as national or individual sin, where does the guilt lie? The
-mercantile marines of Great Britain and New England are monuments to the
-African slave trade, upon the profits of which they were mainly built up.
-
-It has been often said that the assertion contained in the Declaration
-of Independence "That all men are created equal, etc.," was entirely
-inconsistent with the continuation of slavery in any of the United
-States; and that the states which continued it were guilty of a great
-inconsistency. Who had then a right to make this criticism? Was it the
-Englishman, with Lord Mansfield's decision staring him in the face, and
-his boast of liberty under the common law on his tongue, while his heel
-was upon the neck of Ireland, his ships ploughing the main, freighted
-with human merchandise packed to suffocation, and his writs of execution
-levied upon the bodies of human beings to satisfy his demands? Was it the
-Frenchman, who, equally guilty in the traffic in human flesh, in the name
-of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" glutted the guillotine with the
-blood of his brethren, until he himself was forced to take refuge from
-his own "Liberty" under the protection of a despotism that kept watch
-upon his very thoughts? Was it the Dutchman, whose ships had carried the
-traffic in slaves to every clime and who landed the first cargo within the
-limits of the United States? Was it the Russian, who had bleeding Poland
-under his feet and caused order to reign in Warsaw, while he peopled
-Siberia with every age and sex, and his ears were gladdened by the sound
-of the well-plied knout? Was it the Prussian, the Austrian, the Dane, the
-Swede, or the Italian? The Portuguese, the Spaniard and the Turk have not
-troubled themselves about the matter.
-
-The fact is that the assertion of independence was made by the Continental
-Congress, by a resolution adopted on the 2d of July, 1776, in the
-following words:
-
-"_Resolved_, That these United Colonies are, and, of right, ought to be,
-Free and Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to
-the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the
-state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
-
-That was the authoritative assertion of the independence of the colonies,
-and the Declaration of Independence adopted afterwards was merely a
-manifesto put forth to the world to show the reasons which impelled them
-to the step and to justify it. The assertion that "all men are created
-equal," was no more enacted by that declaration as a settled principle
-than that other which defined George III to be "a tyrant and unfit to be
-the ruler of a free people." The Declaration of Independence contained a
-number of undoubtedly correct principles and some abstract generalities
-uttered under the enthusiasm and excitement of a struggle for the right of
-self-government.
-
-The portion of it in question was not designed for the wide application
-which is sought to be made of it, nor is it capable of that application.
-The intention of it was to assert the right of the people, on whose
-part the declaration was made, to equality under the law with all other
-British subjects, and to maintain their right to set up a new government
-for themselves, when the one under which they had been living had been
-perverted to their oppression. If it was intended to assert the absolute
-equality of all men, it was false in principle and in fact.
-
-Taken in its literal sense, it might be construed to mean that all men
-are created equal in every respect, but does any one believe, or will any
-one ever believe, that the native Congo, the Hottentot or the Australian
-negro, is the equal, mentally, physically and morally, of the Caucasian?
-
-Whatever construction the words quoted and those following them may admit
-of, let it be borne in mind, that they belong to the argument and not to
-the fact. The separation and independence were asserted by the resolution
-adopted on the 2d of July, and not by the declaration adopted on the 4th,
-and the latter was no more a part of what was authoritatively established,
-than the _obitur dictum_ of a judge is a part of his decision.
-
-The truth is, that several of the statesmen of the South and especially of
-Virginia, deplored slavery as an evil and expressed the hope that at some
-future time, in some way that might be desired, the institution might be
-abolished in such manner as to secure the welfare of both races, but none
-of them could suggest any mode for doing so, and though perfectly sincere,
-they contented themselves with expressing the hope that the way might be
-discovered.
-
-Slavery was a fixed fact, fastened upon the colonies by the mother
-country, and in the South, the slaves bore such a proportion to the white
-population and the whole business of the country was so identified with
-their labor, that it was impossible to emancipate them, without entailing
-on both races evils far greater than those supposed to result from the
-existence of slavery itself. It was a practical question with which the
-statesmen of the country had to deal as practical men, and all they could
-do, was to allow the system to remain, as the best for all parties under
-the circumstances, without reverting to the dangerous experiment of the
-ideal schemes of a false philanthropy.
-
-As to the slave trade, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland had already put
-an end to it as soon as they were vested with the power to do so, and
-North Carolina followed suit very shortly after the adoption of the
-Constitution, and the prohibition would probably have been made general,
-but for the combination of the New England states with the two southern
-states that were in favor of having the trade continued.
-
-It would not be amiss to notice what was transpiring in England on this
-subject at the time the Federal Constitution was being adopted. Clarkson,
-Wilberforce and others were agitating the question of the slave trade at
-this time, and the utmost that the younger Pitt, then at the head of the
-government, would venture to do, was to procure the passage of an act of
-Parliament, for the mitigation of the atrocities of the "Middle Passage"
-by which it was provided that slave ships should not carry beyond a
-certain number of slaves in proportion to the tonnage.
-
-Even this bill met with strong opposition and among others, from Lord
-Chancellor Thurlow "the Ruler of the King's conscience." In opposing
-the bill he said: "It appears that the French have offered premiums to
-encourage the African trade, and that they have succeeded. The natural
-presumption therefore is, that we ought to do the same." He further said:
-"One witness has come to your Lordship's bar with a face of woe, his eyes
-full of tears and his countenance fraught with horror, and said 'My Lords,
-I am ruined if you pass this bill! I have risked £30,000 on the trade
-of this year! It is all I have been able to gain by my industry, and if
-I lose it, I must go to the hospital! I desire of you to think of such
-things, my Lords, in your humane frenzy and to show some humanity to the
-whites as well as the negroes.'"
-
-The bill, however, passed with amendments to grant compensation for
-losses, and this was as far as English statesmanship would venture to go
-at that time. Was it to be expected that American statesmen should be
-better, wiser and more philanthropic than English statesmen?
-
-Shortly after the close of the war, Virginia had ceded to the
-Confederation for the common benefit of all the states, the territory
-northwest of the Ohio river; and Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut
-had ceded their rights. (?) The claim of Connecticut skipped over
-Pennsylvania and that state made a very good bargain for herself by
-securing the title to the lands in what has since been known as the
-"Western Reserve," though no officer or soldier or, so far as is known,
-citizen of hers, had even been in the northwestern territory.
-
-Virginia's original charter, the oldest of all covered the country, but
-independent of that, it had been conquered from the Indians and British by
-the forces of Virginia under George Rogers Clarke. It was a magnificent
-empire which Virginia thus surrendered for the common good and for the
-cause of the Union of the states, and the only compensation she asked was,
-that the land grants pledged her own soldiers should be ratified.
-
-During the sitting of the convention which framed the Constitution, the
-Congress, which was in session, adopted the celebrated ordinance of 1787,
-for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio river, in
-which ordinance was contained a prohibition of slavery in that territory
-forever, and also a provision for the recovery of slaves escaping into the
-territory similar to that incorporated into the Constitution.
-
-At the first session of the first Congress, under the new Constitution, an
-act was passed for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio
-river, by which the ordinance of 1787 was recognized and confirmed.
-
-In 1787, South Carolina had surrendered her claim to all territory west
-of the present limits, and in 1790, North Carolina ceded to the United
-States that part of her territory which subsequently became the state of
-Tennessee, with a stipulation, "that no regulation made or to be made by
-Congress shall tend to the emancipation of slaves."
-
-In 1791, Vermont, formed out of part of the territory of New York, with
-the consent of the legislature of that state, was admitted into the Union
-as one of the states and came in without slavery, which was forbidden by
-her constitution.
-
-Kentucky (formed out of the territory of Virginia, south of the Ohio
-river, with the assent of her legislature) in 1792 was admitted into the
-Union, and came in with slavery as it existed in Virginia and with similar
-laws on the subject.
-
-In 1793, Congress passed an act to carry into effect the provision of
-the Constitution for the restitution of fugitive slaves, providing for
-their delivery to the owners by order of any United States judge, or any
-magistrate of the city, town or county where they might be arrested, on
-due proofs of ownership, etc.
-
-In 1796, Tennessee, formed out of the territory which had been ceded by
-North Carolina, was admitted into the Union, and came in with slavery as
-it existed in North Carolina and with similar laws in regard to it.
-
-In 1798, Georgia adopted a new Constitution, in which was a clause
-forbidding the importation of slaves from "Africa or any foreign country."
-In this same year Congress passed an act for the establishment of the
-Mississippi territory out of the territory acquired from Great Britain,
-which constituted that part of British West Florida lying between a line
-drawn due east from the mouth of the Yazoo to the Chattahoochie river
-and the 31st degree of latitude. The act provided for the government and
-organization of the Mississippi territory in every respect like the North
-Western territory, except that slavery was not to be prohibited, but an
-amendment was incorporated into the act without opposition, on motion of a
-representative from South Carolina, prohibiting the introduction of slaves
-into the territory from without the United States.
-
-Immediately after the adoption of the Constitution, South Carolina had
-passed a law prohibiting the introduction of slaves from foreign countries
-for a limited period, which was continued by renewal from time to time,
-and as North Carolina had adopted a permanent law on the subject, the
-foreign slave trade was now prohibited in all of the states as well as
-in the public territories, but it continued to be carried on by English,
-New England and New York traders within the limits of South Carolina and
-Georgia despite the laws.
-
-In 1802, Georgia ceded to the United States all of her territory west of
-her present limits, including her claim to the Mississippi territory.
-This cession including in it the Mississippi territory, embraced all of
-the states of Mississippi and Alabama which was north of the 31st degree
-of latitude and the compact made with Georgia stipulated that when the
-population reached the number of 60,000, the ceded territory should be
-erected into a state on the conditions contained in the ordinance of 1787,
-"That article only excepted which prohibits slavery."
-
-In 1803, on the complaint of South Carolina of the importation, in
-violation of her laws, of slaves from Africa, as well as of free persons
-from the French West Indies, Congress passed an act imposing a fine of
-$1,000 on the captain of a vessel for the importation of such persons in
-violation of the laws of a state, with forfeiture of the vessel. Next
-year, however, South Carolina repealed her laws against the African slave
-trade, and it continued to be lawful there until 1808.
-
-In the same year Ohio, erected out of part of the northwestern territory,
-was admitted into the Union and came in without slavery.
-
-In this year Louisiana, which had been re-ceded to France by Spain, was
-ceded to the United States by the French government, with a stipulation
-in the treaty of cession that the inhabitants should be secure in their
-liberty, property and religion and should be admitted, as soon as
-possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution to the
-enjoyment of the rights of citizens of the United States. The territory
-thus ceded, embraced as claimed by the United States, all of the territory
-west of the Mississippi and south of the 31st degree of latitude to the
-western boundary of the old Spanish province of Florida. Slavery existed
-in Louisiana at the time of its acquisition, having been established there
-by the French government, and there could be no question as to the meaning
-of the guarantee to the inhabitants of security in their property, as the
-right of property in slaves was universally acknowledged in all of the
-civilized world, and both of the contracting parties recognized it.
-
-In 1804, Congress passed an act organizing the ceded province of Louisiana
-into the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana, the former
-to embrace all of the territory south of the 33rd degree of latitude; the
-latter to embrace that part north of the same degree. A provision was
-embraced in the act that no slaves should be carried into the Territory
-of Orleans or the District of Louisiana, except from some part of the
-United States by citizens removing thither as actual settlers, and this
-permission was not to extend to negroes brought into the United States
-since 1798. This was a direct admission of the right of the people to
-remove into the territory with all of their property, including slaves,
-and the restriction as to negroes brought into the United States since
-1798 was in consequence of the fact that, from that time to the passage of
-the act, the introduction of such persons was prohibited by the laws of
-all of the States, showing that the right to introduce slaves was regarded
-as resulting under the constitution from the rights under the laws of the
-several States and from no other.
-
-By an act passed at the same session, all of the territory ceded by
-Georgia was included in the territory of Mississippi.
-
-In 1805, by Act of Congress, the Territory of Orleans was given a similar
-government to that of Mississippi, and the District of Louisiana was made
-a territory of the second class, that is with the power of legislation
-vested in the governor and judges of the territory. Settlements had been
-previously made within the limits of the District of Louisiana on the
-Arkansas River and within the present limits of Missouri, and slavery had
-been carried there by settlers from the slave States. The act organizing
-the territory of Louisiana provided for continuing in force all of the
-existing laws and regulations until repealed by the legislature, and
-thereby gave direct recognition of the system of slavery, as it had not
-only been protected by the law organizing the District of Louisiana, but
-existed by operation of the old French and Spanish laws still in force.
-
-In 1807, at the second session of the 9th Congress, on the recommendation
-of Mr. Jefferson, then President, an act was passed for the prohibition
-of the slave trade from foreign countries to the United States, to take
-effect on the 1st day of January, 1808. Up to that time the trade had
-been continued by English, New England, and New York traders to South
-Carolina and Georgia by evading the laws against it, when such were in
-force, but it ceased after the United States law went into effect; many
-slaves were introduced into the port of Charleston within the last four
-years prior to the time when the law went into effect, brought in by
-English and Northern vessels.
-
-In the same year and about the same time that the United States law was
-passed, under the brief ministry of Lord Grenville, the Parliament of
-Great Britain passed the act to abolish the trade on the part of British
-subjects, though not without serious opposition. Among the opponents of
-the measure was another Lord Chancellor of England, Lord Eldon, at that
-time for a short period out of the office which he had held for many
-years, and to which he returned in about two months after the passage of
-the bill to continue in it until the year 1827. In opposing the bill, Lord
-Eldon said: "I do not believe the measure now proposed would diminish the
-transport of negroes, or that a single individual would be preserved by
-it, at the same time, that it would be utterly destructive of the British
-interests involved in that commerce." He asked "was it right because
-there was a change of men and of public measures in consequence, that the
-interests of those who petitioned against the bill should be disregarded
-and what was before considered fit matter of enquiry should now be
-rejected as immaterial and inapplicable?"
-
-In the argument of Wilberforce and others, in favor of the measure, it
-was shown that there had never been any natural increase of the slaves in
-the British and West India Islands--the excess of deaths over births in
-Jamaica being as follows:
-
-  From 1698 to 1730, 3 1/2 per cent.
-    "  1730  " 1755, 2 1/2  "    "
-    "  1755  " 1769, 1 3/4  "    "
-    "  1769  " 1780,   3/5  "    "
-    "  1780  " 1800,   1/24 "    "
-
-The supply had therefore been kept up by constant importations to meet
-the growing demands and the advocates of the measure urged the following
-reasons for its adoption:
-
-"The grand, the decisive advantage which recommends the abolition of
-the slave trade is, that by closing the supply of foreign negroes to
-which the planters have hitherto been accustomed to trust for all of
-their undertakings, we will compel them to promote the multiplication
-of the slaves on their estates; and it is obvious that this cannot be
-done without improving their physical and moral condition. Thus not only
-will the inhuman traffic itself be prevented in so far at least as the
-inhabitants of this country are concerned, but a provision will be made
-for the progressive amelioration of the black population in the West
-Indies, and that too on the securest of all foundations, the interests and
-selfish desires of the masters in whose hands they are placed."
-
-It seems from this that "slave breeding" was not considered a crime by the
-philanthropists of that day but this discovery was reserved for those of a
-later time.
-
-Slavery in the United States has now been brought down to the time of the
-abolition of the slave trade by both the United States and Great Britain,
-and it will be seen that the former government had no jurisdiction over
-the matter in any way, except to give protection to that species of
-property in the states where it existed, in the same way that it was
-bound to protect every other species of property within the scope of its
-delegated powers. Slavery existed in the states prior to the creation
-of the government and independent of it, and the states in forming that
-government as sovereign states, reserved to themselves the exclusive power
-of continuing or discontinuing it at their option. Not only was this so
-with regard to the original states, but by express stipulation with the
-states of North Carolina and Georgia at the time of their cession of
-territory. Congress had bound itself not to interfere with slavery in that
-territory.
-
-Kentucky had been formed out of part of Virginia and was admitted into
-the Union upon the same footing as that state, and by the treaty with
-France upon the acquisition of Louisiana, the faith of the United States
-was pledged to respect and protect the right of property in slaves within
-the limits of the acquired territory in the same way that it was pledged
-to respect and protect the right of property in every thing else. This
-embraced all of the territory within the limits of the United States
-except the northwestern territory, and to that the prohibition against
-slavery had been extended by the ordinance of 1787, prior to the adoption
-of the Federal Constitution. The validity of that ordinance has been
-disputed, and certainly if it had any validity, that was given by the
-assent of Virginia from whom the territory was acquired. The act for the
-organization of the government of the Northwestern territory recognized
-the validity of the restriction contained in the ordinance, and did not
-create it.
-
-The states which had thought proper to abolish or exclude slavery because
-it was not to their interests to have it, had no right to complain of
-its existence in other states. If they did not desire to be allied to
-states which tolerated slavery, then they should have refused to ratify
-the Constitution. Having ratified it, the faith of those states became
-pledged by every consideration that can bind states as communities, or
-men as individuals, to respect the institutions, rights and property of
-the other states and to faithfully abide by all of the compromises and
-guaranties of the Constitution. They were bound to respect and abide
-by them not only in the capacity of states, but they were bound by the
-exercise of their just powers of legislation and restraint, to compel
-their citizens to respect and abide by them. This obligation extended not
-merely to abstaining from all violent interference and active measures
-of wrong, but from all agitation or incitement to others to do wrong, by
-disturbing the peace, property or rights of other states and the citizens
-thereof.
-
-The Constitution did not make the general government censors over the
-morals or domestic institutions of the several states, nor did it make
-the states or the citizens thereof censors of the moral or domestic
-institutions of each other. It was merely a compact formed between
-sovereign states for the common defence and protection of each other in
-their rights and liberties, as they existed before its formation.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-=Causes Leading to Secession--Secession of the Cotton States=
-
-
-Very shortly after the organization of the government under the new
-Constitution, petitions upon the subject of the slave trade began to be
-presented to Congress, mostly from the Quakers of Pennsylvania, that
-"non-resisting" sect "conscientiously opposed to all war." Some of the
-petitions were very inflammatory in their character, and caused much
-excited debate in the early Congresses, and one presented by Warren
-Mifflin, a Quaker of Delaware, urging the injustice of slavery and the
-necessity for its abolition, was returned to him by order of the House at
-the second session of the second Congress on account of its incendiary and
-mischievous character.
-
-In January, 1805, the first proposition for the abolition of slavery in
-the District of Columbia was made. It was made by Sloan, a democratic
-representative from New Jersey, and was "that all children born after the
-ensuing 4th of July should be free at certain ages," but it was refused a
-reference to a committee and was then rejected by a vote of 77 to 31. It
-is a little remarkable in view of subsequent events that 26 of the 31 were
-Northern Democrats, and that only 5 constituting the remainder of the vote
-for the proposition were Northern Federalists.
-
-After the passage of the acts in the United States and Great Britain
-abolishing the slave trade, the agitation on the subject of slavery abated
-very considerably for a number of years, only, however, to be revived at a
-later period in a more virulent form.
-
-In the year 1812, the state of Louisiana, erected out of the territory
-of Orleans, was admitted into the Union as a slave state, and that part
-of the territory east of the Pearl river and bordering on the Gulf of
-Mexico, was added to the territory of Mississippi. The name of Mississippi
-was then given to the territory of Louisiana.
-
-In 1816, Indiana was admitted into the Union as a free state, and in 1817,
-Mississippi was admitted as a slave state, the residue of the territory of
-that name taking the name of Alabama.
-
-In 1818, Illinois was admitted as a free state and in 1819, Alabama came
-in as a slave state. This increase of the number of slave states did not
-increase the number of slaves, as the slaves introduced into them came
-from the older slave states. If any slaves were introduced from Africa or
-any foreign country, it was by such evasion of the laws as will take place
-under any government, and they were not so introduced to any appreciable
-extent.
-
-In 1819, towards the close of the 15th Congress, a bill was introduced
-into the House of Representatives to authorize the erection of the state
-of Missouri out of part of the territory of that name, and on motion of
-Tallmadge, of New York, a clause was inserted in the bill prohibiting
-the further introduction of slaves and granting freedom to the afterborn
-children of those already there, on arriving at the age of twenty-five,
-the proposition being carried by a vote of 87 to 76. This proposed
-restriction caused a very excited debate, in the course of which Cobb, of
-Georgia, said that "a fire had been kindled which all the water of the
-ocean could not put out, and which only seas of blood could extinguish;"
-he did not "hesitate to declare that if the northern members persisted,
-the Union would be dissolved." The bill, however, passed the House with
-the restriction, but in the Senate, the latter was stricken out, the
-clause prohibiting the further introduction of slaves by a vote of 24 to
-16, and the one freeing the children by a larger vote, there being only 7
-votes for retaining it. The House refused to concur with the Senate and
-the bill was lost.
-
-At the same time the Missouri bill was introduced, another bill was
-presented for establishing Arkansas territory out of that part of the
-Missouri territory south of 36° 30´, and a clause was inserted into it
-granting freedom to all afterborn children of slaves, at the age of
-twenty-five, but a clause prohibiting the further introduction of slaves
-was defeated by a vote of 70 to 71 and the clause for freeing the children
-of those already in the territory was stricken out. Taylor of New York
-then proposed to add a proviso to the bill that neither slavery nor
-involuntary servitude should exist in any of the territories of the United
-States north of 36° 30´, but his motion was defeated and the bill for
-organizing Arkansas Territory passed both houses without any restriction.
-
-Before the meeting of the next Congress, Massachusetts authorized the
-formation of the District of Maine into a state and a Constitution was
-adopted by the people in that district for that purpose. In the meantime
-there was much agitation in the North upon the subject of excluding
-slavery from the territory west of the Mississippi. Upon the meeting
-of the 16th Congress, a bill was introduced to authorize the people of
-Missouri to frame a State Constitution, but on motion of Taylor, the
-author of the proposed proviso excluding slavery from the territories
-north of 36° 30´, a committee was appointed to consider the subject of
-prohibiting slavery west of the Mississippi, and the Missouri bill was
-postponed to await the action of the committee.
-
-A bill had been introduced for the admission of Maine--and after the
-defeat of a motion to postpone it until the Missouri bill came up--was
-passed. When this bill came up in the Senate, a clause for the admission
-of Missouri, was attached to it, after the defeat of a motion to insert
-in the latter a proviso for the prohibition of slavery, and Thomas,
-a senator from Illinois, then proposed an amendment prohibiting the
-introduction of slavery into any of the remaining territory north of 36°
-30´, which was adopted by a vote of 34 to 10; the senators from Virginia,
-South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and one senator from North Carolina and
-Mississippi each voting in the negative. The bill was then passed by a
-vote of 24 to 20, all the senators from the slave states and the two from
-Illinois voting in the affirmative, and those voting in the negative being
-from the free states.
-
-The House refused to concur in the Senate's amendment, and the Senate
-adhered, therefore a committee of conference was appointed. In the
-meantime, the House had been debating the Missouri bill, and pending the
-conference it was passed by a vote of 93 to 84 with a clause prohibiting
-the further introduction of slaves. When this bill went to the Senate,
-the prohibition was stricken out and the Thomas proviso attached, and it
-was then passed and returned to the House. The Committee of Conference
-at the same time reported recommending that the Senate recede from its
-amendment to the Maine bill and that the House pass the Missouri bill as
-amended by the Senate. The House agreed to the amendment to the Missouri
-bill, striking out the clause for prohibiting slavery, by a vote of 90
-to 87, and to that inserting the Thomas proviso, by a vote of 134 to 42,
-35 of the latter being Southern members who objected to the proviso as
-unconstitutional, and 5 being Northern men who objected because it did not
-go far enough. The Senate receded from its amendment to the Maine bill and
-both bills were thus passed.
-
-President Monroe signed the Missouri bill after much hesitation, upon
-having his scruples as to the constitutionality of the proviso removed,
-and upon being assured that the restriction as to the territories extended
-to them only while in the territorial condition.
-
-The bill in relation to Maine admitted that state into the Union at once,
-but that in regard to Missouri was a mere act enabling the people to frame
-a Constitution, and a joint resolution for the admission of the state
-after the formation of the Constitution was still necessary.
-
-When the Constitution was presented at the next session of Congress, it
-was found to contain a clause requiring the legislature to pass laws to
-prevent free persons of color from settling in the state, and as the
-admission of Maine was complete, the Northern members took occasion to
-object to the admission of Missouri because of this clause, though Ohio
-and Indiana had passed laws forbidding the settling of free persons of
-color in those states, and there was an old law of Massachusetts to the
-same effect, still unrepealed. A resolution offered in the House for the
-admission of Missouri, with its Constitution as it stood, was defeated by
-a vote of 78 to 93, those voting in the negative being Northern members.
-After much discussion and excitement and the defeat in the House of
-an effort to compromise the question, on motion of Mr. Clay, a joint
-committee was appointed to take the subject into consideration, and this
-committee reported a joint resolution for the admission of Missouri,
-after the state legislature should have given a solemn pledge, that
-the Constitution should not be construed to authorize any act and that
-no act should be passed "by which any of the citizens of either of the
-states should be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and
-immunities to which they are entitled under the Constitution of the United
-States." The President being authorized to announce by proclamation, the
-adoption of the pledge, and Missouri then to become a state in the Union,
-this resolution was adopted, the vote being 86 to 52 in the House, all the
-votes in the negative, excepting four, being given by Northern members and
-the four Southern members not being willing to submit to the concession.
-Since the rejection of the proposition for compromise in the House on the
-same basis, news had been received of the final ratification by Spain of
-the treaty for the cession of Florida, and as by that treaty the United
-States relinquished all claim to Texas, thus reducing the whole of the
-territory south of 36° 30´ and west of the Mississippi to the Territory of
-Arkansas, comprising the present state of Arkansas and the small tract of
-Indian country west of it, while there remained an immense domain north
-of that parallel, stretching across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific,
-a few Northern members were induced to cast their votes for the last
-proposition, thus securing its passage.
-
-The required pledge was given by the legislature of Missouri, and that
-state was thus admitted into the Union in 1821. For a long time, the
-arrangement by which the passage of the enabling act for Missouri was
-secured, was called _compromise_, and the line of 36° 30´ was called "The
-Missouri Compromise Line." The subject was fully explained by Mr. Clay
-in the Senate in 1850, and it will be seen that the arrangement was no
-compromise at all, but was merely one of those legislative expedients
-often adopted to secure the passage of a measure. As it passed, the
-restriction was merely a legislative enactment, liable to repeal at any
-time like any other law. But few of the Northern members agreed to the
-arrangement, and at the very next session of Congress, the great mass of
-them repudiated the idea of its being a compromise by voting against the
-admission of Missouri, upon a mere pretext.
-
-The only compromise made at all was that made with the state of Missouri
-about the construction of her Constitution. Nevertheless, the Southern
-States were always to regard this legislative adoption of the line 36° 30´
-as a settlement of the question of slavery in the territories, provided it
-was adhered to as such in principle and spirit, but it was not accepted by
-the Northern people in that light and was made by them the ground-work for
-new demands and encroachments.
-
-The proposition for the prohibition of slavery in the territories, was
-not one in favor of the freedom of the slaves themselves, as their
-introduction into those territories would not increase the number of
-slaves, but would expand them on a wider sphere, thus rendering it easier
-to adopt measures for emancipation, at least in some of the states if that
-was desirable, and making the condition of the slaves more comfortable if
-emancipation did not take place; while the restriction of the institution
-to the states where it existed, would forever close the door on any steps
-for its voluntary abolition and render the condition of the slaves much
-less desirable. Diffusion was much the best policy for both masters and
-slaves, and the opposition to the introduction of the latter into the
-territories was only a political manoeuvre for the purpose of obtaining
-a sectional preponderance of power, and in all of the debates, the views
-expressed by the advocates of the restriction tended to the furtherance of
-that object.
-
-By the final ratification of the treaty between the United States and
-Spain in the year 1821, Florida became a territory of the United States
-and a territorial government was soon formed therefor.
-
-After the admission of Missouri into the Union, there was a subsidence in
-the agitation upon the subject of slavery for a number of years, though
-every now and then a petition from some Quaker meeting was received and
-quietly disposed of.
-
-In the year 1834, the British parliament passed an act for the abolition
-of slavery in the British West Indies, her colonies in those islands
-being all of the slave colonies left to Great Britain. These colonies
-had dwindled into insignificance and formed but a very inconsiderable
-part of her gigantic colonial system. Canada, Australia, New Zealand
-and her possessions in the East Indies furnished an ample field for
-British settlement and colonial trade, which dwarfed into very diminutive
-proportions the British interests in the West Indies. Great Britain could
-therefore afford to be philanthropic and at the cost of £20,000,000 (about
-$96,000,000) she gave liberty to a very few more than 600,000 slaves,
-who were placed in a condition of apprenticeship for several years to
-enable the planters to accommodate themselves to the new order of things
-by degrees. She had abandoned the slave trade after, by the loss of the
-American colonies, she had ceased to have a large interest in the subject
-of slavery, and this grant of £20,000,000 for the freedom of all of the
-negro slaves left in her dominions, was the final atonement she made for
-the millions she had consigned to slavery, and the millions who had been
-cast overboard, to meet a watery grave, on their route to slavery.
-
-To make her own gracious act more conspicuous, she turned propagandist
-and commenced denouncing the system of slavery which she had been so
-instrumental in fixing upon the world, as un-Christian, inhuman and
-barbarous. Having, as she considered, cast the beam out of her own eye,
-she could see more distinctly the mote in that of others, but she made
-no restitution of the hundreds of millions she derived from the profits
-of the inhuman traffic as she now styled it, and which had assisted in
-building up her marine, manufactures and commerce. Having thus washed
-her hands of the sin, as she imagined, she became most intolerant in
-her opinions and denunciations of those upon whom she had entailed the
-institution of slavery by her avarice and power, furnishing another
-example of those,
-
-    "Who compound for sins they're inclined to,
-     By damning those they have no mind to."
-
-Emissaries soon came out from Great Britain to the United States and began
-the agitation of the abolition of slavery there. The preponderance of
-women in the New England States caused them to be selected as proselytes
-for the new crusade. There was also a class of men in that section,
-offshoots of the old persecuting theocracy who furnished recruits to the
-agitators. There were doubtless many who really believed slavery to be a
-great sin and wrong, who joined in the crusade from conscientious motives.
-Knaves there were in plentiful supply, gowned and ungowned, who were ready
-for anything which would tend to their personal advancement in position or
-their pecuniary profit. Out of these materials abolition societies were
-formed and petitions began to pour into Congress for the abolition of
-slavery in the District of Columbia and other places within the Federal
-jurisdiction, while the mails were filled with incendiary publications
-calculated to stir up insurrections. John Quincy Adams, who had held
-political office from his earliest manhood, until he became President,
-obtained a return to political life by his election to the lower House of
-Congress. Shortly after his return there, in presenting one of the chronic
-petitions of the Quakers for the abolition of slavery in the District of
-Columbia, he had taken occasion to notify the House and the country that
-he had no sympathy with the views of the politicians, yet he joined the
-new agitators.
-
-This new agitation in Congress began about 1834-5 and was continued with
-great violence for several years, a petition being presented by Mr.
-Adams, during the time, for the dissolution of the Union. After much
-exasperation of feeling growing out of the presentation of the petitions
-in both Houses of Congress and the circulation of incendiary publications,
-some respite from the excitement in Congress was obtained by the adoption
-of a rule in the lower House for laying petitions on the table on their
-presentation, without debate, and by the conservative action of the
-Senate. The agitation, however was continued at the North and began
-to have an important influence upon the canvass for the presidential
-elections. The law for the recovery of fugitive slaves, always inefficient
-because of the refusal or failure of the states' officers to enforce it,
-had now become a dead letter by the resistance to its execution by mobs
-and the still more mischievous action of several of the legislatures of
-the free states. The circulation of incendiary publications through the
-mails had been forbidden by Congress, but the Northern press was prolific
-in the production of gross libels upon the character of the people of the
-Southern states and misrepresentations of the institution of slavery as it
-existed there; even the Constitution of the United States was denounced by
-the new lights as "a league with hell and a covenant with death."
-
-Arkansas had been admitted as a slave state in the year 1836 and Michigan
-as a free state in 1837; and in 1845 Florida was admitted as a slave
-state, the same act providing for the admission of Iowa, which was a free
-state, but did not come in until 1846.
-
-On the 29th of December, the independent Republic of Texas was admitted
-into the Union as a state, and came in with slavery already established
-there. This admission, or annexation as it was called, of Texas, resulted
-in the war with Mexico and the establishment, at the close of the war
-in 1848, of the Rio Grande as the southern boundary of Texas and the
-acquisition of the provinces or territories of New Mexico and upper
-California as United States territory.
-
-The admission of Texas gave a new impulse to the antislavery agitation,
-and the acquisition, by the war, of the new territory brought it again
-prominently before Congress. Even before the close of the war with
-Mexico, the old proposition for the exclusion of slavery from the public
-territories was revived, with a view to its application to any territory
-that might be acquired as a result of the war, and it was then designated
-as the "Wilmot Proviso" from the name of the member re-introducing it. On
-all propositions to establish governments of the newly acquired territory,
-after the close of the war, the "Wilmot Proviso" was pressed with great
-vehemence by Northern politicians, and was strenuously resisted by those
-of the South.
-
-The most extreme of the Southern politicians were willing to extend the
-so-called Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30´ to the Pacific ocean,
-and regard it as a final settlement of the question, but the Northern
-advocates of the proviso would listen to no terms for an adjustment, and
-thus again repudiated the principle and spirit of the settlement made by
-the Missouri bill. Southern statesmen, while willing to accept the line of
-36° 30´ for the sake of peace, did not claim the right to foster slavery
-even upon the territory south of that line, by the action of Congress,
-but they claimed that the question should be left where the Constitution
-of the United States left it, that is, that the people settling in the
-territories should be allowed freedom to adopt their own institutions when
-they came to form state governments, and that Congress in the meantime
-should adopt no measures to forestall their action. They urged that
-the territory was acquired by the common blood and treasure, and that
-Congress, therefore, in its action, should not give preference to one
-section over another and thus virtually exclude the people of the South
-from the newly acquired domain. This was a reasonable and just view of
-the subject, and did not look to the increase of the number of slaves,
-but merely to their expansion over a wider area, and the older states
-from the rapidly increasing slave population. Nor was the proposition to
-exclude slavery ever in the interest of freedom, for it sought merely to
-confine slavery to the country where it already existed, and thus surround
-the slave states with a cordon of free states, so as to increase year
-by year, the difficulties of prospective emancipation, and render any
-but a subversion of the institution by violence an impossibility. It was
-as injurious to the slaves themselves as to the white population of the
-states.
-
-Had the would-be philanthropists been governed by an enlightened regard
-for the welfare or freedom of the slaves, they would not have objected to
-their introduction, either into the territory north of 36° 30´ or that
-acquired from Mexico, for with the greater eagerness existing at the North
-for emigration, as well as that from foreign countries and the want of
-adaptation of the soil and climate of the greater part of the territory,
-old and new, to the staples in the production of which slave labor could
-be profitably employed, it was certain that much the larger population
-settling in that territory would be from the free states and foreign
-countries, and it was equally certain that, when the people came to form
-new states, slavery would be prohibited and freedom given to the slaves
-within the limits of most, if not all of those states.
-
-But fanaticism of no kind, whether political or religious, listens to
-reason, and among the pseudo-philanthropists there was much of the leaven
-of that old spirit, which had prompted the hanging, burning and scourging
-of "heretics and witches."
-
-There were many politicians by trade, whose aspirations had been
-unsuccessful and who cared nothing for the negro or the cause of freedom,
-but who fell in with the "free-soil" movement, as it was called with the
-selfish hope of building up a great sectional party under the auspices of
-which they could obtain and retain that power which they had failed to
-acquire otherwise. A very large mass of men rarely think for themselves
-and among this class the leaders of the "free-soil" operated extensively
-by impassioned appeals to their prejudices and passions, inducing them
-to believe that their vital interests required that slavery should be
-excluded by law from the territories. One of the shrewdest and most
-far-seeing of the "free-soil" leaders boldly declared that there was a
-"higher law" than the Constitution and that there was "an _impassable_
-conflict between slavery and freedom."
-
-It cannot be denied that there were extreme men at the South on the other
-side, but they were made so mostly by the hostile attitude assumed by
-their opponents.
-
-The result of the agitation was that for some time no government could
-be formed for any part of the new territory. The exasperation of feeling
-between the two sections of the Union, and the danger to that Union
-itself, became so great that in 1850 the more moderate of the leading
-statesmen of the country, with Clay and Webster at their head, devoted
-themselves to the adjustment of the threatening questions and their
-efforts resulted in the adoption of certain measures commonly called
-the "Compromise Measures of 1850." These measures consisted of a bill
-for the admission of California into the Union, under a constitution
-excluding slavery, which had been irregularly adopted a bill to establish
-a territorial government for Utah and a bill to establish the northern
-and western boundaries of Texas with her assent, and to establish
-a territorial government for New Mexico, it being provided in the
-territorial bills that states created out of the two territories organized
-when the population should be sufficient, should be admitted into the
-Union with or without slavery, as the people themselves might decide.
-
-Along with these bills another was passed for enforcing the provision of
-the Constitution in regard to the return of fugitive slaves, as the former
-one could not be executed because most of the free states had prohibited
-their officers from acting under it. These measures as a whole were not
-acceptable to the extreme men of either section, but the more moderate
-portion of the two leading political parties hoped that they would put
-an end to the agitation and restore peace and concord to the country.
-Such appeared to be their first effect, and both of the great political
-parties, into which the country had been divided, without reference
-to sections for many years--Democrat and Whig--in their platforms of
-principles adopted in the canvass for President in 1852, gave their
-adhesion to the "Compromise Measures of 1850" as a final settlement of the
-questions embraced by them.
-
-In 1848, a portion of the "free-soilers" had run Martin Van Buren, a
-former President and a defeated candidate for the Democratic nomination,
-as their candidate for the Presidency, but the party did not have
-cohesiveness enough to give him its whole vote, and in 1852 the
-"free-soil" party had no candidate, the members of it voting with the
-parties to which they had previously been attached according to their
-predilections, though there was still much muttering by the leaders.
-
-The abolition party proper, however, had a candidate for form's sake.
-
-In 1848, Wisconsin had been added to the Union as a free state, and there
-were now in the Union sixteen free states and fifteen slave states, giving
-to the free states the preponderance in the Senate, as they had long had
-in the lower House. Neither Utah nor New Mexico was fitted at all for
-slave labor, and there was no territory out of which it was likely that
-another slave state could be formed, except by the sub-division of Texas,
-while there was a prospect for the formation of several more free states,
-at no distant day, out of the territory west of the Mississippi and north
-of 36° 30´ and on the Pacific coast, the territories of Minnesota and
-Oregon having already been organized.
-
-By what was called the Compromise of 1850, the South had gained nothing
-whatever, except the abstract principle inserted in the Utah and New
-Mexico bills, of non-interference by Congress with the question of
-slavery and the submission of the decision of the question to the people
-of the territories when they came to frame their state governments,
-while the North had gained the rich and growing state of California. The
-bill for the restoration of fugitive slaves was in accordance with an
-express stipulation in the Constitution, without which it would never
-have been adopted. Yet the execution of this law was resisted from the
-very beginning and very soon most of the free states passed laws, called
-"personal liberty bills" which virtually nullified the act of Congress.
-Several collisions ensued between the United States officers in their
-efforts to execute the law and mobs in the free states who resisted its
-execution, and even members on the floor of Congress denounced the law
-and counselled resistance to it. This served to prevent that harmonious
-feeling which had been expected from the adoption of the measures of
-adjustment, and the new fugitive slave act became soon a dead letter
-from the danger, difficulty and expense attending its execution. Not
-only was the guaranty contained in the Constitution, and the act of
-Congress to enforce it, thus rendered nugatory, but for many years slaves
-had been enticed by agents from the North to make their escape and aid
-had been furnished them while doing so, under a system which obtained
-the designation of "The underground railroad." This was not confined
-to citizens merely but was participated in by state officers who were
-sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and instead of
-compelling their citizens and officers to comply with the Constitution and
-law, many of the free states passed laws to make it a felony for the owner
-to arrest his slave or for any one to assist him.
-
-At the session of Congress for 1853-54 in the introduction of a bill
-for the establishment of governments for the territories of Kansas and
-Nebraska, both north of 36° 30´, a proposition was made by Mr. Douglas,
-a senator from Illinois, to incorporate a provision in regard to slavery
-similar to that contained in the Utah and New Mexico bills. When the
-measure was offered by a Northern man, it was supported by nearly all
-of the Southern representatives as correct in principle, though it met
-with the opposition of a few Southern representatives and statesmen,
-who deprecated it as tending to arouse again the excitement which had
-partially subsided.
-
-The question was not one of any great practical importance, as the climate
-and soil of Kansas and Nebraska furnished a more formidable barrier to
-the introduction of slaves than any legal enactment. The proposition to
-repeal the enactment as to the line of 36° 30´ violated no compromise, as
-has been shown, and it violated no right of any of the Northern states or
-people, but merely asserted a principle deducible from the Constitution
-and right in itself; though in this case it was an abstract one.
-
-The measure was passed with the assistance of some of the Northern
-Democrats, and it had the effect so much dreaded by the conservative
-men who opposed it, of reviving with new intensity the fires of the
-former agitation and of giving new life to the languishing free-soil
-or Republican party. Though they had never acceded to or complied with
-the compromise in regard to Missouri or that of 1850, or even those of
-the Constitution itself, the leaders of the free-soil party raised a
-tremendous clamor about the violation of plighted faith, and soon the
-agitation spread over the whole North with ten fold force.
-
-The Puritan ministers of New England, successors of the Cotton-Mathers
-of religious persecution and witches-killing notoriety, abandoned the
-gospel of peace for dissertations upon the merits of Sharp's rifles, and
-under their auspices a considerable number of armed emigrants were sent
-to Kansas. In consequence of this movement some hot heads from the South
-imprudently went to Kansas for the purpose of disputing the settlement
-of that territory with the emissaries of the New England parsons. The
-result was that a very disorderly condition of things ensued in the new
-territories, as is always the case where reason gives way to passion.
-Many wrongs and acts of violence were committed on both sides and there
-was a tremendous howl about "bleeding Kansas" by the Northern parsons and
-agitators, but not one slave was carried into Kansas and no one thought of
-carrying any there.
-
-The result of the agitation consequent on the theoretic extension of
-slavery to Kansas and Nebraska, and of the troubles in Kansas, was the
-appearance of John C. Fremont as the Republican free-soil candidate for
-the presidency in 1856. He was beaten, but his vote showed the existence
-of a formidable sectional party, in all of the free states, based on a
-solitary idea. The strength of this party was still further increased
-by an attempt to secure the admission of Kansas into the Union, under a
-Constitution liberating slavery and adopted by a convention held during
-the prevalence of the bitter feud there, but the most important result of
-the Kansas troubles was the development of the character of John Brown, a
-bold, desperate and fanatical Northern man, who made his appearance on the
-scene of action, and participated largely in the outrages committed by the
-free-soilers and abolitionists.
-
-What gave the crowning stroke to the already over-heated animosity
-between the two sections, was the appearance of John Brown on a new
-theatre of action. The political parsons and the agitators of the North
-did not confine themselves to the denunciation of the Southern people
-and of slavery, but they lavished their anathemas upon the Constitution
-which tolerated slavery and the Union which gave it, as they alleged,
-protection. Nor were the denunciations confined to Northern pulpits and
-abolition or free-soil papers, but were heard in the Senate Chamber and
-on the floor of the House of Representatives, and were accompanied with
-the most atrocious libels on the Southern people, in which they were
-represented as barbarians who delighted in inflicting upon their slaves
-the most revolting cruelties, and who engaged in the most debasing
-immoralities. Encouraged by these open denunciations of the Constitution
-and the Union, and stimulated by the picture of Southern wrongs and
-cruelty to the slaves, which were constantly placed before his eyes, John
-Brown gave way to the wild conceptions of a fanatical mind and undertook
-to subvert the government of the United States and to redress the wrongs
-of the slaves by deluging the Southern states in blood.
-
-In the year 1858, he held a secret meeting or convention of reckless
-fanatics like himself at Chatham, in Canada West, and devised a scheme
-for a provisional government of the United States, of which he was to be
-the head, with a cabinet appointed by himself, and he concocted a plan
-for putting his government in operation by raising a rebellion among the
-slaves and freeing them. All of these proceedings were kept from the
-public until the month of October, 1859, when John Brown, with a band of
-followers, made his appearance suddenly at Harper's Ferry, within the
-limits of Virginia, surprised and captured the United States arsenal at
-that place, which was without a guard; killed several citizens; captured
-and imprisoned others, and committed a number of depredations and
-robberies in the neighborhood. His pretended provisional government was
-proclaimed and the object of the movement declared, but failing to receive
-some expected re-inforcements, and not meeting with co-operation on the
-part of the slaves for whom he brought a supply of arms and expected to
-get others from the arsenal, he and his band of desperadoes were soon
-surrounded and the greater part captured or killed. John Brown himself was
-made a prisoner in a wounded condition and he and several of his followers
-were tried under the laws of Virginia, convicted and executed for treason
-and murder.
-
-His plan of operations contemplated a servile insurrection in all of the
-Southern states with all of the horrors of blood and rapine, and his
-acts amounted to treason, not only against the state of Virginia, but
-against the United States; yet there was reason to suspect that some of
-the leaders of the Republican or free-soil party, were cognizant of his
-designs if they did not secretly favor them. Certain it is that very
-great sympathy was openly expressed for him by many individuals and by
-public meetings at the North, and that the legislature of Massachusetts,
-by an almost unanimous vote, adjourned over so as not to be in session on
-the day of his execution, avowedly as a mark of respect for him, and of
-condemnation at his execution.
-
-When this desperate undertaking of John Brown to deluge the South with
-fire and sword, and the marked sympathy for him expressed at the North,
-were added to the failure of the Northern states to comply with their
-plighted faith in regard to the restoration of fugitive slaves--to their
-interference with the institutions of those states, the persistent libels
-upon the Southern people, the encouragement given to the slaves to revolt
-by incendiary publications, the attitude of hostility assumed by a great
-number of the Northern representatives to the South on every occasion in
-which anything had been proposed or done in regard to slavery, and to the
-rapid growth of the party now coming into the ascendency on the ground of
-enmity to the South and her institutions--it may be well conceived that a
-profound sensation was created in the latter section.
-
-South Carolina then proposed some agreement between the Southern states,
-for the purpose of withdrawing from a compact, the obligations of which
-had been so disregarded, but Virginia discouraged this proposition, as she
-was exceedingly loth to take any step looking to the severance of a Union
-which she had done so much to establish, and for which she had made so
-many sacrifices.
-
-By the commencement of the canvass for the Presidency in 1860, the
-Democratic party had become divided on the question of the construction
-of the slavery clause in the Kansas-Nebraska bill: that is whether the
-power to exclude or adopt slavery could be exercised by the people of
-the territories while in the territorial condition. Mr. Douglas and the
-greater portion of the Northern Democrats contended for the former view,
-while nearly all of the Southern Democrats advocated the latter. It was
-contended by the Southern Democrats with great force and justice that if
-Congress did not have the power to exclude slavery, the legislatures of
-the territories, which derived their powers from the acts organizing the
-territories could not have that power. This view was conclusive, for the
-territorial legislatures, being now temporary bodies deriving their sole
-powers from the acts of Congress, could not exercise greater powers than
-the body which created them, while the people, when they came to form
-constitutions, under that clause of the Constitution of the United States
-providing for the admission of new states on the same footing with the
-old, were necessarily vested with that sovereign power over this subject
-and all others which belonged to the original states.
-
-The Northern Democrats contended for what was called "Squatter
-Sovereignty," that is, that this sovereign power of legislation vested
-in the settlers of the territories from the beginning, and to propitiate
-the free-soil sentiment, many of them contended that the clause in the
-Kansas-Nebraska bill secured the territories to the north and free-soil
-more effectually than could be done by Congressional legislation, as
-settlers from the North could more readily take possession of the
-territories and exclude slavery from them, than settlers from the
-South could introduce slavery there, while in Congress the Southern
-Representatives especially in the Senate where the sections were more
-nearly equal, could, with the aid of a few Northern men, prevent any
-interference with slavery. This view of the subject made the doctrine of
-squatter sovereignty even more offensive than what was called the Wilmot
-proviso, and Southern men contended that it was a trap to entrap them.
-
-It was in fact not a question of construction of the clause in the
-Kansas-Nebraska bill but of the Constitution itself. If Congress had no
-power to legislate on the subject, then it could delegate none, and if
-there was such a thing as "squatter sovereignty" it extended to all other
-subjects as well as to slavery, and the settlers in the territories
-might set up for themselves without any authority from Congress, which
-would involve some very extraordinary consequences, including that even
-of disposing of the public lands. The squatter sovereignty view of the
-question was one not to be tolerated; and it applied to the Utah and New
-Mexico bills as well as to that in regard to Kansas and Nebraska.
-
-The great mass of Southern Whigs agreed with the Southern Democrats in
-their way of interpreting the principle, but they did not regard the
-question as one of sufficient practical importance to make a fight over,
-and old party divisions and feuds prevented a coalescence of all of the
-Southern men.
-
-Though considered by many an abstract question, as it certainly was so far
-as it applied to Kansas and Nebraska, it seemed to divide the Democratic
-party into two wings, a Northern and a Southern one, with some adherents
-to either wing from the opposite section. This division resulted in the
-nomination of two sets of candidates by the Democratic party--Douglas of
-Illinois and Johnson of Georgia by the Northern wing, and Breckenridge of
-Kentucky and Lane of Oregon by the Southern wing. The Republican free-soil
-or abolition party nominated Lincoln of Illinois and Hamlin of Maine,
-while the Southern Whigs and a remnant of Northern Whigs, who had not
-fused with the free-soilers and abolitionists, nominated Bell of Tennessee
-and Everett of Massachusetts. The advocates of this latter ticket proposed
-to sink every other issue and stand for "The Union, the Constitution, and
-the enforcement of the Laws."
-
-At the election in 1860, Lincoln and Hamlin received the majority of the
-popular vote in nearly all of the Northern states and by that vote alone
-secured a majority of the votes of the electoral colleges, but they lacked
-very nearly 1,000,000 votes of receiving a majority of the combined
-popular vote of the United States. In this election the Southern people
-were unanimous in their opposition to Lincoln and Hamlin though divided as
-to the other candidates, the few thousands of votes given on the border
-for the Republican ticket, being given by Northern men who had emigrated
-across the line, and amounting to a very inconsiderable fraction.
-
-It was the first time in the history of the Government that a mere
-sectional candidate had been elected and this was done upon sectional
-issues alone. This result presented an alarming state of things and
-developed the fact that under a Republican form of Federal Government,
-with suffrage nearly universal, it was perfectly practicable for a
-minority to get possession of the government on sectional issues and
-perhaps control it permanently. There had been, before, presidents elected
-by a minority popular vote, but this was on National issues and the
-support of the successful candidate was confined to no particular section.
-Of the thirteen presidents elected, seven had been elected from Southern
-states, and all of them received majorities of the popular vote except Mr.
-Polk of Tennessee, and his principal opponent was Mr. Clay of Kentucky, a
-Southern man.
-
-Six had been selected from Northern states, and but one of them, Harrison
-of Ohio, but a native of Virginia, received a majority of the popular
-votes.
-
-Of the Southern presidents, Washington's electoral vote was unanimous.
-Jefferson received twenty Northern electoral votes at his first election,
-and all but nine of them at his second. Madison received a majority of
-Northern electoral votes at his first election and forty of them at his
-second. Monroe received a very large majority of Northern electoral votes
-at his first election and all but one at his last, that being the only
-vote cast against him. Jackson received 73 Northern and Northwestern
-electoral votes out of 147 cast, at his first election and a very large
-majority at his second election. Polk received 103 of the same vote to 58
-cast for Mr. Clay and Taylor received a large majority of the same vote.
-
-Of the Northern presidents, John Adams received 12 electoral votes from
-the South. John Quincy Adams received six electoral votes from the slave
-states and was elected by the House of Representatives, receiving the
-votes of several slave states. Van Buren received 61 out of 126 votes cast
-by the slave states, 28 of the rest being cast for Harrison. Harrison
-received a large majority of Southern electoral votes, as did Pierce and
-Buchanan and in every election the majority of Northern electoral votes
-had been cast for the successful candidates, except at Jefferson's first
-election, Madison's second, Jackson's first and Buchanan's election and in
-this the majority of that vote had been cast for Fremont, the sectional
-Republican candidate. Two vice-presidents, Tyler from Virginia and
-Fillmore of New York, had succeeded to the presidency by the deaths of the
-incumbents and both of them had received majorities of the popular vote as
-well as of the Northern electoral vote.
-
-Lincoln's election therefore was the first instance of the election of a
-mere sectional president. It was very evident that if the party electing
-him continued in possession of the government for any length of time,
-there would inevitably follow a subversion of the rights of the states
-and a consolidation of all power in the Federal government under the
-control of a sectional majority, not a majority of the whole. This form of
-consolidation promised to be infinitely worse than an entire obliteration
-of all state lines and a concentration of power in the hands of the entire
-people.
-
-Under the circumstances attending the election of Lincoln, those of the
-Southern states which are usually designated the "Cotton States" deemed
-that their own safety required their withdrawal from the Union, and they
-consequently withdrew. The legislature of South Carolina was in session
-for the purpose of appointing electors for president, and when the
-result was ascertained, a convention for that state was called, which
-adopted an ordinance of secession on the 20th of December, 1860. Georgia,
-Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana soon followed the example of
-South Carolina, and a Congress of the seceding states met at Montgomery,
-Alabama, early in February, 1861, and organized a provisional government
-under the style of the "Confederate States of America," of which the
-Honorable Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was appointed President, and
-the Honorable A. H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President.
-
-Texas had previously adopted an ordinance of secession which went into
-effect when it was certified by the popular vote and that state soon
-afterwards became also one of the Confederate States.
-
-A permanent constitution was adopted for the Confederate States to go
-into effect on the 22d of February, 1862, modelled after that of the
-United States, but containing some changes in the details and the powers
-delegated, with more ample recognition of states rights and a prohibition
-of the introduction of slaves from any other than the slave-holding states
-and territories of the United States.
-
-The secession of these states had been without violence, except to
-take possession of some forts and arsenals of the United States within
-the limits of the seceding states, which had been accomplished without
-bloodshed. Commissioners were appointed to the United States government,
-to effect a peaceful settlement of all questions between the two
-governments in regard to the public debt, territory, etc.
-
-This change in the relations of the seceding states to the United
-States resulted in no change whatever in the domestic affairs of those
-states, but they continued to be regulated as before under the laws and
-constitutions of the several states.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-=Action of the Border Slave States--Convention of Virginia=
-
-
-The "Border Slave States," as they were called, including North Carolina,
-Tennessee and Arkansas, which immediately joined the "Cotton States" on
-the south, though equally appreciating the outrages upon their rights and
-the dangers to be apprehended in the future, were not at first disposed
-to secede, as they had cherished such an habitual attachment to the Union
-that they were exceedingly loth to give it up, being governed by that
-sentiment described in the Declaration of Independence in the assertion
-"that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than
-to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
-
-The majority of the people of those states were actuated by hope that the
-party which was about to obtain possession of the government would not
-long hold together, and they trusted that the sober second thought of the
-people of the North would keep the dominant party within bounds until it
-could be ejected from power, and that in the meantime guaranties might be
-obtained for the rights of the states, so as to bring the government back
-to a conformity with its original designs, and effect a restoration of the
-Union. This was especially the case with the State of Virginia, which had
-made so many sacrifices to establish and perpetuate the Union, which in
-great part had been the work of her own hands. The legislature of Virginia
-was in session when the secession of the "Cotton States" began, and the
-crisis was of such a threatening nature that an act was passed, providing
-for the assemblage of a convention, vested with the sovereign power of
-the state, but directing at the same time, that a vote should be taken
-upon the question of any ordinance of secession which might be adopted,
-and that it should be submitted to the popular vote for ratification
-before it should be effectual. The legislature also by resolution, invited
-a convention of commissioners from all of the non-seceding states, North
-and South, to assemble at Washington for the purpose of consulting upon
-and devising some plan for adjusting the pending difficulties with a view
-to a restoration of the Union. This latter convention assembled and was
-known as the "Peace Convention."
-
-The election for members of the Virginia convention took place on the
-first Monday in February, 1861, and a large majority of the delegates
-elected were opposed to secession. The convention assembled at the Capitol
-in Richmond, on the 13th of February, and a decided union man, Mr. John
-Janney, of Loudoun, was chosen President. A deliberative body containing
-more general talent and worth had rarely, if ever, assembled in the state,
-and all of the members seemed to be impressed with the momentous character
-of the crisis. This convention contained one distinguished gentleman who
-had been President of the United States, another who had been governor of
-the state, a number who had filled seats in the Federal Congress, two who
-had been heads of departments in the Cabinet at Washington, besides many
-others among the most talented and distinguished statesmen and lawyers of
-the state.
-
-There was a variety of sentiment among the Union members as to the terms
-upon which it would be safe for the state to remain in the Union, but a
-very large majority were earnestly in favor of some adjustment in the
-way of amendments to the Constitution of the United States, by which the
-seceded states could be induced to return, while the members favoring
-immediate secession constituted a very small minority. A committee was at
-once appointed, which after considerable deliberation reported a plan of
-adjustment for submission to the other states through Congress, after its
-adoption by the convention. In the meantime the Peace Convention which
-assembled at Washington, had adopted a proposition for adjustment which
-met with no favor at the hands of the Republican members of Congress, and
-was not entirely satisfactory to a majority of the Virginia Convention.
-Propositions of compromise in Congress had also failed.
-
-The Virginia Convention engaged earnestly in the discussion of the
-report of its committee and counter propositions, and continued it until
-the month of April, having in the meantime voted down, by a very large
-majority, a direct proposition for secession.
-
-It is difficult to describe the intense anxiety felt by most of the
-members of the convention to preserve the peace of the country and effect
-an amicable settlement of the troubles. Lincoln had been inaugurated
-president on the 4th of March, and had delivered an inaugural address that
-was enigmatical in its terms. During the whole of the discussion which was
-progressing in the Virginia convention, the members engaged in the effort
-to preserve peace and restore the Union, received no offer whatever of
-co-operation from the occupant of the White House, and no direct answer
-ever reached them as coming from him to persons who approached him on the
-questions engrossing all hearts and minds in the state.
-
-In the early part of April, the convention had become very anxious in
-regard to the uncertain condition of things, and appointed a committee of
-three of its members, of great ability and experience to wait upon Mr.
-Lincoln and ascertain from him, in a respectful manner, what course he
-proposed to take in regard to the seceded states. This committee reached
-Washington a little before the attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor,
-and had an interview with Mr. Lincoln, receiving very little encouragement
-from him. While the committee was awaiting a formal answer, which was
-promised, the news of the commencement of the bombardment of Fort Sumter
-was received, and the reply from Mr. Lincoln appeared in extra issues from
-the press without having been communicated to the committee.
-
-This reply was enigmatical in its terms like the inaugural, but was rather
-stronger on the question of coercion. The committee at once returned and
-reported to the convention the result of its mission, and Fort Sumter
-having fallen, a proclamation from Lincoln soon followed, on the 15th of
-April, calling on the states, Virginia included, for 75,000 troops "to
-repossess the forts, places and property which have been seized from the
-Union."
-
-There was no mistaking that this meant war on the seceded states, and
-the Virginia convention went into secret session, when an ordinance
-of secession was introduced by Mr. Ballard Preston, Chairman of the
-Committee, which had waited on Lincoln, and up to that time an opponent of
-secession. After a very earnest discussion, that ordinance was adopted on
-the 17th day of April.
-
-A number of members of the convention, including myself, who afterwards
-fully sustained the action of the state, voted against the passage of
-this ordinance with the hope, even in that stage of the controversy, that
-the people of the North would not respond to the call of Lincoln for
-troops, and that a disruption of the Union and the horrors of war might
-still be avoided. The scenes which occurred during the discussion which
-ensued after the convention went into secret session, were characterized
-by a solemnity rarely witnessed in a deliberative body and several
-members while speaking were unable to restrain their tears. As for
-myself, it was exceedingly difficult to surrender the attachment of a
-lifetime to that Union which had been cemented by the blood of so many
-patriots, and which I had been accustomed to look upon (in the language
-of Washington) as the palladium of the political safety and prosperity
-of the country, and therefore I had hoped even against hope, but I soon
-became convinced fully that the action of the convention was right, and
-that it could have pursued no other course, consistently with the honor
-and dignity of Virginia, and in this opinion I have remained firmly fixed,
-notwithstanding the result of the war which ensued.
-
-After the passage of the ordinance of secession, provision was made for
-submitting it to the popular vote for ratification, at the elections to
-be held on the fourth Thursday in May. In the meantime steps were taken
-for placing the state in a condition of defence, and an ordinance was
-passed directing the governor to call into service of the state as many
-volunteers as might be necessary to defend it against invasion. Colonel
-Robert E. Lee, a native and citizen of Virginia, who had resigned his
-commission in the United States Army on hearing the action of his state,
-was appointed by the governor, with the consent of the convention,
-commander-in-chief of all of the forces of the state with the rank of
-Major General.
-
-In the meantime an arrangement was made with the Confederate Government
-for assistance in defending the state, in the event of an attempt by the
-government at Washington to march troops into or through it with a view to
-an invasion of any of the seceded states, and the Confederate Government
-was invited to remove to the City of Richmond.
-
-The convention remained in session until the first day of May, when it
-adjourned over to the second week in June to await the result of the
-popular vote on the ordinance of secession. The ratification was given by
-an overwhelming majority of the popular vote, and upon the re-assembling
-of the convention the ordinance was duly signed by the greater part of
-the members. I had voted for the ratification at the polls and now put my
-signature to the ordinance.
-
-Virginia now had fully and completely dissolved her connection with
-the United States, and resumed the powers she had delegated when she
-ratified the Constitution. To this step she had been impelled against her
-previous inclinations, by the course of the government at Washington,
-to avoid being dragged into an unholy war against the Cotton States,
-and to maintain the cherished principles for which she had fought, and
-which she had uniformly asserted since the adoption of the United States
-Constitution. When the act of secession was complete, she adopted the
-Constitution of the Confederate States, both provisional and permanent,
-and was fully admitted into the Confederacy.
-
-North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas likewise withdrew from the
-Union and became members of the Confederacy for the same reasons which
-influenced Virginia. Missouri subsequently passed an ordinance of
-secession and joined the Confederacy, but that state was soon overrun
-by United States troops, and the regular government was subverted and
-another substituted in its place by the force of Federal bayonets.
-Kentucky undertook to occupy a neutral position until the greater part
-of that state was in the power of the Federal troops, when an irregular
-government was formed which passed an ordinance of secession and joined
-the Confederacy. The situation of Maryland was such that she was soon
-overrun by troops and prevented any legislative expression of opinion, the
-members of her legislature being seized and imprisoned. Little Delaware
-was so situated that its voice was never heard at all.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-=The Right to Withdraw=
-
-
-The causes which led to the secession of the Southern States have never
-been given, and when they are compared with those which led to the
-American Revolution as given by the First Continental Congress, the latter
-sink into comparative insignificance. A large portion of the wrongs
-complained of in the Declaration of Independence were acts committed after
-the commencement of the collisions between the British troops and the
-Colonists, and if these were compared with those committed by the Federal
-troops in the beginning of the war, in Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, to
-say nothing of the long list of outrages perpetrated during its progress,
-the indictment against King George contained in the eloquent language of
-the Declaration of Independence, would be a very tame affair in comparison
-with that which could be preferred against the Government at Washington.
-
-The third article of the Confederation had specified the object for which
-it had been formed, and that it was "A firm league of friendship" for
-the common defence, the security of the liberties and the mutual and
-general welfare, and that the states bound themselves to assist each
-other against all force offered to or attacks made upon them or any of
-them "on account of religion, sovereignty, trade or any other pretense
-whatever." The preamble to the Constitution recites that it was made "to
-form a more perfect union." More perfect how? To the subversion of the
-liberties and sovereignty of the states? Had the conduct of the Northern
-States been that of the members of "a firm league and friendship?" And
-when they had so flagrantly violated and neglected the plain stipulations
-of the Constitution, did not the Southern States have the same right to
-withdraw from the connection with them, that the colonies had to withdraw
-from the connection with Great Britain, because the government which had
-been instituted for "the common defence and general welfare" had become
-"destructive of those ends?"
-
-Who was to judge of whether there was a necessity for severing the
-connection, the oppressor or the oppressed? If the former, then the
-decision would have been against the colonies. If colonies, the mere
-offshoots from the mother country, could undertake to judge the
-sufficiency of the grievances and the mode and measure of redress, could
-not sovereign states which had framed the government of which they
-complained, do the same thing? In seceding from the Union, the Cotton
-States had acted as states, and not as factious individuals resisting
-the laws or authority of the government. The right of no one had been
-violated, and it was not proposed to violate the rights of any individuals
-or states, but merely to dissolve a compact, the terms of which had been
-violated. To undertake to coerce those states by military force was
-subversive of the whole spirit and purpose of the Constitution, and made
-the government the master, instead of the agent, of the powers which had
-created it. This doctrine of coercion had never been asserted by any
-respectable statesman since the foundation of the government, and was at
-war with all of its principles and aims. When therefore the other states
-were called upon to engage in this war of coercion against the Cotton
-States, it was not only their right but their duty to resist. By the very
-terms of the Constitution, it was made the duty of the Federal Government
-to protect the states against invasion. Did that government have the right
-to invade the state it was bound to protect? It was not authorized even
-to protect the states against domestic violence except upon invitation
-of the legislature or of the executive, when the legislature was not in
-session. Was it authorized to create that domestic violence? The power
-of coercion involved the anomalous consequence of reducing the states to
-conquered provinces when exercised, and this involved the self-destruction
-of the government itself.
-
-In regard to this question of the right of the states to withdraw, and
-the power of coercion, it is not inappropriate to call attention to the
-following views expressed by Mr. Horace Greeley, one of the ablest writers
-and firmest supporters of the Republican or abolition party. In an article
-published in the _New York Tribune_ a few days after the election of
-Lincoln in 1860, and reproduced in his work styled "The American Conflict"
-he says:
-
-"That was a base and hypocritic row that was once raised at Southern
-dictation about the ears of John Quincy Adams, because he presented a
-petition for the dissolution of the Union. The petitioner had a right to
-make the request; it was the member's duty to present it. And now if the
-Cotton States consider the value of the Union debatable, we maintain their
-perfect right to discuss it. Nay! we hold, with Mr. Jefferson, to the
-inalienable right of communities to alter or abolish forms of government
-that have become injurious or oppressive, and if the Cotton States shall
-decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist upon
-letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one
-but it exists nevertheless, and we do not see how one party can have a
-right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist
-the asserted right of any state to coercion in the Union, and nullify and
-defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is quite another matter.
-And whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately
-resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures to keep it in.
-We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to
-another by bayonets.
-
-"But while we uphold the practical liberty, if not the abstract right of
-secession, we must insist that the step be taken, if ever it shall be,
-with the deliberation and gravity becoming so momentous an issue.
-
-"Let ample time be given for reflection, let the subject be fully
-canvassed before the people, and let a popular vote be taken in every case
-before secession is decreed. Let the people be told just why they are
-asked to break up the Confederation; let them reflect, deliberate, then
-vote; and let the act of secession be the echo of an unmistakable popular
-fiat. A judgment thus rendered, a demand for separation so backed, would
-either be acquiesced in without effusion of blood, or those who rushed
-upon carnage to defy or defeat it, would place themselves clearly in the
-wrong."
-
-It would be hard to conceive language more forcible for defining the
-right of the states to withdraw and the wrong and criminality of the
-attempt to coerce them when they had exercised that right, than this of
-Mr. Greeley's. It derives additional force as coming from him, when it
-is recollected that he had ever been inimical to the institutions of the
-South, and it announced principles which had been previously asserted
-in all questions of the Union, and underlay the whole superstructure of
-a government which itself was founded on the right of revolution. It is
-difficult to realize the fact that the man who uttered language like
-that quoted, subsequently became one of the most strenuous advocates of
-the war of coercion, which was waged on the Southern states. Mr. Greeley
-cannot avoid the effect of his statement of the principles asserted in
-his article, by contending that the act of separation was not "the echo
-of an unmistakeable popular fiat," and that the Southern people were
-precipitated into secession without due deliberation.
-
-When the right to discuss, deliberate and decide, exists, those possessing
-it, must necessarily be the sole judges of how it is to be exercised.
-The Southern states did deliberate and did decide that they could no
-longer remain in the Union with safety, and therefore they determined to
-withdraw from it. If the Southern people had been hurried into secession
-by their leaders, they are the parties to complain and to hold the guilty
-ones responsible. They have not done so, and what right had Mr. Greeley
-and his party to become their champions against their wishes? He and his
-party are estopped from denying that the Southern people, did with almost
-entire unanimity, adopt secession and willingly gave their support to the
-cause of separation; for since their country was overrun by a superior
-military force, their state governments overthrown; military despotisms
-established over them; and in the effort to reconstruct the Union, the
-great mass of the people disfranchised, and the right of suffrage given
-to the freed slaves, because it was alleged that the Southern people were
-still rebellious, and so wedded to the idea of secession, notwithstanding
-the bitter experience of the war, that they could not be trusted with the
-right to vote and hold office. All of this was done with Mr. Greeley's
-full knowledge and sanction.
-
-It has been shown how long, how earnestly, and how anxiously the question
-was discussed in Virginia, and that secession was resorted to by that
-state only when a war of coercion had been proclaimed, and she had been
-required to furnish troops to carry it on. The state of Virginia believed,
-with Mr. Greeley, that it would be a grievous wrong to "rush upon carnage
-to defy and defeat" the right of the Cotton States to withdraw from the
-Union; and she determined to do what he had declared his purpose of doing:
-that is "resist all coercive measures." The ordinance of secession
-was submitted to the popular vote at an election held more than one
-month after its adoption by the convention, and it was ratified by an
-overwhelming majority, thus showing beyond dispute that it was "the echo
-of an unmistakable popular fiat." Did not "those who rushed upon carnage
-to defy and defeat" "a judgment thus rendered, a separation so backed,"
-"place themselves clearly in the wrong?"
-
-Yet Virginia was the first of the seceding states invaded by the Federal
-army; her towns and plains were devastated by a long and cruel war; her
-people plundered, imprisoned and murdered; her territory severed, and a
-new state erected within her limits, in violation of the Constitution
-of the United States. Subsequently a military despotism was thrust upon
-them, and the freed slaves were vested with the right of suffrage and the
-capacity to hold office, while such wide measures of disfranchisement were
-adopted that enough men competent to fill the petty offices of state,
-even with those whose fears and cupidity led them to apostatize and the
-influx of adventurers could not be found in all the limits of that old
-commonwealth which has been designated "the mother of states and of
-statesmen."
-
-In the case of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, the people were overrun by
-Federal troops owing to the peculiar nature of their situation, and they
-were deprived of the opportunity of freely discussing and deliberating
-upon the questions involved, though the legislature of Missouri did pass
-an ordinance of secession. Did not those people, under such circumstances,
-have the right individually to resist so flagrant an outrage upon their
-rights and liberties? They were not only deprived of the liberty of
-peaceably assembling to discuss their grievances, but it was sought to
-deprive them of the right "to keep and bear arms," as expressly guaranteed
-by the second amendment to the Constitution, in order that they might
-have the means always of defending their liberties and rights, and the
-only resource they had was to unite as individuals in the defence of the
-common cause, and of their own violated homes and liberties.
-
-It has been said that the Confederate states began the war by firing upon
-Fort Sumter. If those states had the right to withdraw from the Union and
-the United States had no right to resist or coerce them then the attempt
-to maintain a garrisoned fort in one of the most important harbors of the
-Confederacy, was an act of war. This had, nevertheless, been patiently
-borne with, for nearly three months after the secession of South Carolina,
-in whose principal harbor the Fort was situated, and it was only when
-the Government of the United States had given notice of its intention
-to supply Fort Sumter "peaceably, if possible, otherwise by force,"
-and the vessels for that purpose had appeared off the harbor, that the
-attack began. The commissioners sent to Washington to effect a peaceable
-settlement of all questions had then been denied an audience, and informed
-that the authorities at Washington would hold no intercourse with them.
-
-The war was thus inevitable, and the Federal authorities were quietly
-preparing for it, in order to entrap the border states. The threat to
-supply Fort Sumter indicated a purpose of war; was then the Confederate
-Government to wait until the measures of the Government at Washington
-had been so completely taken that the former would find itself helpless
-in the hands of its enemy? The port of Charleston was necessary to it
-as an inlet for obtaining supplies and arms for its defence, was it
-then to allow the port, which could block the entrance to that harbor,
-to be placed in a condition to render the blockade complete, the harbor
-worthless and Charleston untenable?
-
-There can be no question of the right of the Confederate Government to
-force a surrender of the fort, which had been refused, and that it was
-fully warranted in pursuing the course it did. I must confess that, at
-the time, I deeply deplored and condemned the attack on Fort Sumter, on
-the score of policy, because I regarded the threat of the Washington
-Government as designed to provoke a commencement of the conflict by the
-firing of the first shot, and not intended really to be carried into
-effect. It is now manifest that war had already been resolved upon, and
-the firing of the first gun on Fort Sumter was not its commencement. The
-war was begun by the attempt to hold the forts in the Confederate harbors.
-
-It has been alleged that the Southern States had previously controlled
-the policy of the government, and that they seceded because they had now
-lost that power. There had never been a president elected from any of
-the Cotton States, which established the Confederate Government except
-from Louisiana, of which state General Taylor was a nominal resident, but
-really a native of Virginia, and an officer in the army, and he lived
-but a little over a year after his inauguration. These Cotton States had
-furnished comparatively few cabinet ministers, and they had in the main
-been opposed to the policy pursued by the government in regard to the
-most important branches of legislation, such as internal improvements,
-the public lands, tariff, etc. Their leading interest, the culture of
-cotton, had received no fostering care whatever from the government, and
-South Carolina had been complaining for more than thirty years that her
-interest had been sacrificed to Northern cupidity by high tariff and at
-one time she had taken steps to nullify the laws on that subject. In no
-sense could the state which initiated secession, be said to be actuated by
-disappointment at the loss of Federal power.
-
-It is true that they had lost the power to protect themselves in the
-Union, as the Constitution had been so flagrantly violated and were now
-threatened with submission--and for this they seceded.
-
-The state of Virginia had given four of the Southern presidents to the
-Union, and Tennessee the other two. Washington had been the unanimous
-choice of all of the states; Jefferson, Madison and Munroe had been
-national men in their policy and had received the support of a large
-majority of the Northern vote; Munroe being accepted without opposition
-at his last election and receiving all of the votes, North and South, but
-one northern electoral vote. Munroe was the last Virginian elected or
-nominated as President. It is true Tyler had succeeded to the office by
-the death of Harrison, but he had not received the vote of Virginia even
-as vice-president.
-
-Virginia had voted against Clay, Harrison, Taylor and Scott, all natives
-of the state, when they were candidates for the presidency, and she had
-cast her vote three times against Mr. Clay, and in the cases of Harrison,
-Taylor and Scott, her vote had been cast for Northern men against them.
-All of the presidents she had given had been re-elected, because there was
-nothing sectional or local in their policy, while no Northern president
-had been re-elected, though three out of the six had been candidates
-again. In the election of 1860, the state of Virginia cast its vote for
-Bell and Everett, by a plurality vote over Breckenridge and Lane, and
-Douglas and Johnson, showing that in this election she was not liable to
-the charge of sectionalism, even if that charge could be brought against
-the supporters of Breckenridge and Lane, which is by no means admitted.
-No interest of Virginia had at any time been fostered by the action of
-the government, in any stage of its history, and the government had not
-even taken steps to obtain from foreign countries a diminution of the
-enormous duties placed on her leading staple, tobacco, but her statesmen,
-when in office, had pursued a policy looking to the general welfare and
-prosperity. If she had furnished many statesmen to the common councils,
-it was because of the general confidence in their patriotism, and freedom
-from all selfish ambition and narrow-minded notions of policy.
-
-Her history from the beginning of the controversy with Great Britain had
-been one of sacrifices for the benefit of all of the states. She had
-promptly sent troops to Massachusetts on the commencement of the war of
-the Revolution in that state, all of its battlefields were red with the
-blood of her sons; and that war had been terminated on her own soil. With
-a territory larger than that of all of the other states at the conclusion
-of peace, she had surrendered an empire beyond the Ohio river, for the
-sake of Union and for the common benefit; and subsequently, she had
-consented to the erection of the state of Kentucky within her remaining
-territory.
-
-As the acknowledgement of the independence of the states had left her, she
-would have been amply able to take care of herself, and erect a powerful
-government of her own, yet she had contracted her power and narrowed her
-limits for what she considered the common good.[A]
-
-  [Footnote A: Note--The following extract is from the "History of
-  the American Civil War" by Professor Draper, a Northern Union man,
-  which shows the nature of Virginia's sacrifices: "At the time of the
-  Declaration of Independence, Virginia was the most powerful of the
-  colonies; she occupied a central position and had in Norfolk one of
-  the best harbors on the Atlantic. She had a vast western territory,
-  an imposing commerce, and in the production and export of tobacco
-  not only a source of wealth, but from the mercantile connections
-  it gave her in Europe, a means of refinement. It was through this
-  circumstance that so many of her young men were educated abroad. When
-  the epoch of separation from the mother country had come, and the
-  question of Confederation arose, she might have asserted her colonial
-  supremacy; she might have been the central power. Many of her ablest
-  men subsequently thought that in her voluntary equalization with the
-  feeblest colonies, the spontaneous surrender of her vast domain, the
-  self-abnegation with which she sacrificed all her privileges on the
-  altar of the Union, she had made a fatal mistake. In her action there
-  was something very noble."]
-
-The Union had not advanced her pecuniary or material interests, yet, in
-all of its trials, she had been its firmest supporter and her blood had
-been freely shed in all of its wars and upon all of its battlefields. It
-was only where that Union was to be perverted from its original designs
-and made the means of humiliating and degrading the Southern states,
-herself included, that Virginia resolved upon severing the connection.
-
-On the other hand, New England had made no sacrifices for the Union, and
-had received only benefits from it. To that section the Union had been a
-"paying operation" in every way: its fisheries, commerce and factories
-had been fostered and protected by high bounties and duties until its
-comparatively sterile soil bloomed as a garden, while its surplus
-population found homes in the fertile region surrendered by Virginia.
-Descendants of the Puritans did not undertake to become "philanthropists"
-until the slave trade with the South ceased to be profitable.
-
-Notwithstanding the benefits received by the New England states from the
-Union, the first proposition for its dissolution came from those states
-when the country was engaged in a foreign war--the war of 1812 with Great
-Britain--because that war was caused by a temporary suspension of their
-commerce. Most of these states refused to permit their militia to be
-marched beyond their limits for the common defence and the question of a
-separate peace with the public enemy was mooted, notwithstanding the fact
-that the war had been undertaken in defence of commercial rights in which
-New England was principally interested. Such was the spirit manifested in
-that section that the British government in declaring a blockade for the
-coast of the United States, for some time exempted the New England coast
-from that blockade and did not invade those states.
-
-Upon the passage of an act for a general embargo in 1814, so as to put
-a stop to the contraband trade from New England, the Massachusetts
-legislature was flooded with petitions for redress and protection against
-the act of the Federal government in enforcing the embargo, and a
-committee to which the petitions were referred, made a report in which the
-following views, among others, were expressed:
-
-"The sovereignty reserved to the states, was reserved to protect the
-citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for
-the purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free,
-sovereign and independent State of Massachusetts is reduced to a mere
-municipal corporation, without the power to protect its people or to
-defend them from oppression from whatever quarter it comes. Whenever the
-national compact is violated and the citizens of this state are oppressed
-by cruel and unauthorized enactments, this legislature is bound to
-interpose its power and to wrest from the oppressor its victim."
-
-To show the spirit animating the people of Massachusetts in the assertion
-of these doctrines--however true they might be in principle--when the news
-was received of the abdication of Buonaparte and the restoration of the
-Bourbons in 1814--thus leaving the British government at liberty to employ
-all of its forces against the United States, the people of Massachusetts
-as well as of all New England hailed the news with joy and exultation,
-"as the harbinger of peace and the renewal of commerce;" and the event
-was celebrated at Boston by a religious ceremony and a sermon from the
-celebrated Dr. Channing.
-
-In the fall of 1814, the legislature of Massachusetts invited a convention
-of the New England states, which assembled in Hartford in December of
-that year and adopted a series of resolutions in which it was declared,
-among other things, that, "In cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable
-violations of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a state and
-the liberties of a people, it was not only the right but the duty also
-of that state, to interpose its authority for their protection, when
-emergencies occur, either beyond the reach of the judicial tribunal or too
-pressing to admit of delay incident to their forms; states which have no
-common umpire must be their own judges and execute their own decisions."
-The danger to the Union from these steps on the part of Massachusetts and
-the other New England states, in a time of public war, was put to an end
-by the unexpected arrival of the news of a treaty of peace; this perhaps
-prevented the former state from proceeding to assert her sovereignty and
-making a separate peace with Great Britain.
-
-In fact in 1809, during the existence of the troubles growing out of
-the embargo passed before the close of Mr. Jefferson's administration,
-John Quincy Adams had communicated to the government at Washington that
-the object of the dominant party in Massachusetts was, and had been for
-several years, the establishment of a separate confederacy, as he knew
-from unequivocal evidence; and that in case of a civil war, the aid of
-Great Britain to affect that purpose would be assuredly resorted to, as it
-would be indispensably necessary to the design.
-
-There was strong reason to suspect that during the war some secret
-arrangement existed with the enemy, by which New England withheld from
-the country the support of her troops and her soil was kept free from
-invasion. In all the measures then resorted to in order to embarrass the
-government, Massachusetts took the lead, yet when a war of invasion and
-subjugation against the Southern states was waged, Massachusetts found no
-constitutional difficulties, had no scruples about sending her troops into
-the South.
-
-The idea that any of the Southern states resorted to secession because of
-the loss of the power and patronage of the government is not founded on
-fact, as neither had ever been used for their special benefit even when
-in the hands of Southern men, but it was the Northern states whose trade
-and factories had grown up under the fostering care of the government
-throughout its whole history, while the schools of the Northwest had been
-richly endowed from the public lands and the gigantic system of railroads
-in the same quarter had been built up mainly from grants of this common
-property.
-
-It has been further alleged that it was the slave power which attempted to
-break up the government, because of its defeat, and that that power had
-hitherto controlled the government in its interest. In the first place, it
-is as well to state that as far as the executive branch of the government
-was concerned, there had been nothing of which to complain on the part of
-the Southern people. The great difficulty had been with the legislative
-department, which always manifested a disposition, more or less, to be
-aggressive on the subject of slavery, and the Southern people looked to
-the executive to interpose its conservative influence. The preponderance
-of Northern men in Congress, already increased by the admission of Oregon
-and Minnesota, and soon further to be increased by the admission of
-Kansas, had become so great, that the only hope of the South was in the
-executive, and when that branch of the government was also sectionalized,
-there was no safety for the weaker section. The people of the South had
-never asked the government to protect slavery; they had merely asked that
-it should be let alone, and left where the Constitution left it.
-
-In entering the Union, they had stipulated for a government for certain
-general purposes, and not one to regulate their domestic affairs; and they
-claimed that the government should be confined to the purposes for which
-it was instituted. That government had in no way acted so as to strengthen
-slavery, and it had not been able to comply with the express stipulation
-for the return of fugitive slaves. Slavery had been excluded from an
-immense territory by the action of the government, but it had not been
-carried to one foot of territory by that action. All of the new states
-east of the Mississippi, except Florida, had been formed out of territory
-originally belonging to the slave states, and they had been admitted into
-the Union under that provision of the Constitution which declared that
-such states should be admitted upon the same footing in every respect with
-the original states and to add to this obligation not to interfere with
-their domestic institutions, the states ceding the territory had expressly
-stipulated that there should be no interference with slavery.
-
-Louisiana came in by treaty as slave territory, and with a stipulation for
-the protection of the people in their property. Out of that territory,
-three slave states had been formed, and they were the last there was any
-prospect of forming; while the free states of Iowa, Oregon and Minnesota
-had already been admitted from the same territory with the prospect of the
-speedy admission of Kansas and Nebraska and the not remote prospect of
-an indefinite number of other free states from the same territory. Texas
-had come in as a state from the condition of an independent republic and
-the measures leading to her admission had resulted in the acquisition
-and admission of California as a free state with a prospect of more
-free states from the territory acquired. So that in every case of the
-introduction of new slave territory into the Union, there had been largely
-more than equivalent in territory for the formation of free states except
-in the case of the slave territory of Florida; and when that was acquired
-the vastly larger and more important slave territory of Texas had been
-surrendered. It is not a fact, then, in any sense of the term, that the
-government had been used for the protection and growth of the slave power.
-That power, if it might be called such, was relatively stronger the day
-the Constitution was formed than it was ever afterwards.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-=Injurious Effect of Misinformation=
-
-
-In connection with this claim of the slave power were the most shocking
-misrepresentations of the condition of the slaves themselves and of the
-social relations of the Southern people, in order to array the prejudices
-of the world against their cause. This course of misrepresentation had
-long been pursued before the war, and was not confined to American
-writers, but many works appeared from the British press containing libels
-upon the society of the Southern states and false views of slavery as
-established there. Such works in both countries were evidently written by
-persons with prejudiced minds or who knew little practically of slavery as
-it existed in the South. Such was the intolerance of the public sentiment
-which had been fostered in both countries upon the subject, that no candid
-and impartial account of the workings of domestic slavery as it existed
-in the Southern states would be received with the slightest favor, whilst
-the exaggerated accounts of cruelty practiced by the slave-owners, and
-consequent sufferings of the slaves were eagerly accepted as the truth.
-
-A very striking evidence of this prejudice was furnished by the reception
-given to the works of two female writers not many years since. The one,
-Miss Harriett Beecher, later Mrs. Stowe, wrote a work of fiction called
-"Uncle Tom's Cabin," containing misrepresentations of slavery and slanders
-upon Southern society. Drawing upon a fertile imagination and pandering
-to the prejudices of the uninformed, she published the book, which had a
-great run in Europe as well as America, and was translated into almost
-all of the continental languages. The incidents contained in the book
-were either erroneous in point of fact or greatly exaggerated, but the
-book itself was still more untrue as a picture of Southern society and
-slavery, and would have been a misrepresentation if every fact contained
-in it had been true in isolated cases. But the book was received as a
-true and faithful picture of society and slavery in the South, not merely
-by the agitators of abolition, but by that very considerable class of
-persons in the world who allow others to do their thinking, and when the
-authoress visited Great Britain, she was treated with great attention and
-extensively feted by the nobility, gentry and others. The view of Southern
-slavery which she drew is perhaps accepted by nine-tenths of the otherwise
-well informed persons in Europe.
-
-In remarkable contrast to Miss Beecher's case, was that of Miss Murray, a
-lady of talents and refinement, who held the position of maid of honor to
-Queen Victoria. Miss Murray visited the United States as a tourist with
-all of her predilections against slavery, but she happened to be one of
-those persons who, not satisfied with hearsay report, took the necessary
-trouble to inform herself intelligently upon the subject. In the course
-of her travels, she went into the Southern states, where she remained for
-some time as a guest on some of the plantations. She had the opportunity
-of observing the workings of domestic slavery as it actually existed and
-in all of its details, and she availed herself of that opportunity to make
-her own reflections. In letters to friends at home she gave the result
-of her actual observations and upon her return to England was induced to
-publish her letters. These letters represented slavery in the Southern
-states in a very different light from that in which it was accustomed to
-be presented to the British public, and the consequence was that Miss
-Murray was notified by the ministry that it was not desirable that she
-should longer occupy the relation she held to the Queen, as the views she
-expressed in regard to slavery were not consonant with the policy of the
-British government; so she was retired.
-
-This illustrates the difference in the reception of two works on the
-subject of slavery given by the British public: one a work of fiction from
-a prejudiced writer, the other a matter-of-fact account of an eye witness
-of what she undertook to describe.
-
-If British ministers could thus view the subject and be guilty of the
-injustice they perpetrated in Miss Murray's case, what could be expected
-of the great mass of British readers? It is hard to conceive how the
-glory or prosperity of a nation could be advanced by giving currency to
-fallacies, or suppressing the truth in regard to the actual condition of
-African slavery in the Southern states.
-
-It would seem that as Great Britain had had so much to do with fostering
-the institution in those states, it would be rather gratifying, than
-otherwise, to its ministers and its people, to know that the descendants
-of those who had been ravished from their native country by the cupidity
-of their predecessors, were in a contented and comfortable condition.
-But such was not then "the policy of the government" and perhaps the
-philanthropic disciple of Exeter Hall who callously passed by the misery,
-want and immorality at her own door in the great city of London, while she
-shed tears over the imaginary woes pictured by Miss Beecher, would have
-been equally as indignant as the British ministers with Miss Murray for
-attempting to disabuse her of the delusion which caused those tears to
-flow.
-
-Such is, and perhaps ever will be, the character of human philanthropy,
-that it troubles itself more about the sufferings which exist a long way
-off or only in imagination, than those which are before its eyes. One
-weeps over the trials of the hero or heroine in a novel or a play, while
-we pass the miserable child of want and sin in the street with perfect
-indifference. If slavery did not have its evils and its wrongs, it would
-not be a human institution, and as long as "man's inhumanity to man makes
-countless thousands mourn," so long will evils and wrongs exist in every
-relation of human society. These exist in the relation of governor and
-governed, parent and child, husband and wife, master and servant, employer
-and employed, neighbor and neighbor, and are not excluded even from the
-church.
-
-It is not pretended therefore that some masters did not abuse their
-servants, but these were rare instances, more perhaps than in any other
-relation of like, and if for no other reason, the great mass of masters
-were induced to treat their slaves well, because it was their interest
-to do so. Let any one compare the condition of the African in his native
-land, with that of the slaves of the South before the violent abolition of
-slavery, and then say whether that institution, which had produced such a
-vast improvement in his condition was so great a wrong after all.[B]
-
-  [Footnote B: Note--Professor Draper, in his "History of the American
-  Civil War" thus represents the condition of the negro in his native
-  land. "The Negro in Africa."
-
-  "On the west coast of Africa, the true negro-land, the thermometer
-  not infrequently stands at 120° in the shade. For months together
-  it remains, night and day, above 80°. The year is divided into the
-  dry and the rainy season; the latter setting in with an incessant
-  drizzle, continues until May. It culminates in the most awful
-  thunderstorms and overwhelming rains. This is particularly the case
-  in the mountains. When the dry season has fairly begun a pestiferous
-  miasm is engendered from the vast quantities of vegetable matter
-  brought down into the low lands by torrents. From the fevers thus
-  arising the negroes themselves suffer severely.
-
-  "Moisture and heat, thus so fatal in their consequences to man,
-  give to that country its amazing vegetable luxuriance. For hundreds
-  of square miles there is an impenetrable jungle, infested with
-  intolerable swarms of musquitoes. The interior is magnificently
-  wooded. The mangrove thickets that line the river banks upon the
-  coast are here replaced by a dark evergreen verdure, interspersed
-  with palms and aloes. A rank herbage obstructs the course of the
-  streams. The crocodile, hippopotamus, pelican find here a suitable
-  abode. Monkeys swarm in the woods; in the more gloomy recesses live
-  the chimpanzee, gorilla and other anthropoid apes approaching man
-  most closely in stature and habits of life. In the open land--the
-  prairie of equatorial Africa--game is infrequent; there are a few
-  antelopes and horned cattle, but no horses. Man--or perhaps more
-  truly woman--is the only beast of burden.
-
-  "Plantains, sweet potatoes, cassava, pumpkins, ground-nuts, Indian
-  corn, the flesh of the deer, antelope, bear, snake, furnish to the
-  negro, his food. He lives in a hut constructed of bamboo or flakes
-  of bark, thatched with matting or palm leaves. His villages are
-  often palisaded. Too lazy, except when severely pressed, to attend
-  to the labors of the field, he compels his wives to plant the roots
-  or seeds, and gather the scanty harvest. In hunting and in war, his
-  main occupation, he relies upon cunning and will follow his prey with
-  surprising agility, crawling like a snake prone upon the ground. He
-  has little or no idea of property in land; slaves are his currency;
-  he makes his purchase and pays his debts with them. 'A slave is
-  a note of hand that may be discounted or pawned. He is a bill of
-  exchange that carries himself to his destination, and pays a debt
-  bodily. He is a tax that walks corporeally into the chieftain's
-  treasury.'
-
-  "Ferocious in his amours, the African negro has no sentiment of
-  love. The more wives he possesses the richer he is. If he inclines
-  to traffic, each additional father-in-law is an additional trading
-  connection; if devoted to war, an ally. His animal passions too often
-  disdain all such mercenary suggestions; he brings home new wives for
-  the sake of new gratifications. Fond of ornaments, his prosperity is
-  displayed in thick bracelets and anklets of iron or brass. An old
-  European hat or a tattered dress-coat, without any other article of
-  clothing is a sufficient badge of kingship. He inclines to nocturnal
-  habits. He will spend all the night lolling with his companions on
-  the ground at a blazing fire, though the thermometer may be at more
-  than 80°, occupying himself in smoking native tobacco, drinking
-  palm wine and telling stories about witches and spirits. He is an
-  inveterate gambler, a jester and a buffoon. He knows nothing of
-  hero-worship; his religion is a worship of fetiches.
-
-  "They are such objects as the fingers and tails of monkeys, human
-  hair, skin, teeth, bones, old nails, copper chains, claws and skulls
-  of birds, seeds of plants. He believes that evil spirits walk at
-  the sunset hour by the edge of forests; he adores the devil, who
-  is thought to haunt burial-grounds and, in mortal terror of his
-  enmity, leaves food for him in the woods. He welcomes the new moon
-  by dancing in her shine. Whatever misfortune or sickness befalls
-  him, he imputes to sorcery and punishes the detected wizard or
-  witch with death. He determines guilt by the ordeal of fire: the
-  accused who can seize a red-hot copper ring without being burned is
-  innocent. His medicine-man--a wind raiser and rain-maker--pursues
-  his main business of exorcism in a head-dress of black feathers,
-  with a string of spirit-charms around his neck and a basket of
-  snake-bone incantations. The more advanced tribes have already risen
-  to idol worship; they adore grotesque figures of the human form, and
-  following the course through which intelligence in other races has
-  passed, they have wooden gods who can speak and nod and wink.
-
-  "In this deplorable, this benighted condition, the negro nevertheless
-  shows tokens of a capacity for better things. He is an eager trader,
-  and knows the value of his ebony, bar-wood, beeswax, palm oil,
-  ivory. He has learned how to cheat; nay, more, infrequently he can
-  out-cheat the white man. He can adulterate the caoutchouc and other
-  products he brings down to the coast and pass them off as pure. His
-  color secures him from the detection of a blush when he lies. Though
-  utterly ignorant of any conception of art, he is not unskillful in
-  the manufacture of cooking pots and tobacco pipes of clay; he has a
-  bellows-forge of his own invention; he can reduce iron from its ores
-  and manufacture it. He makes shields of elephants' hide, cross-bows,
-  and other weapons of war. But in the construction of musical
-  instruments his skill is chiefly displayed. From drums of goat-skins,
-  from harps and gourds, he extracts their melancholy sounds and
-  disturbs the nocturnal African forests with his plaintive melodies.
-
-  "It has been affirmed by those who have known them well, that
-  the equatorial negro tribes do not increase but tend to die out
-  spontaneously. This is attributed to infanticide and to the ravages
-  of miasmic fever, which in its most malignant form will often destroy
-  its victim in a single day. Even though quinine be taken as a
-  prophylactic no white man can enter their country with impunity. The
-  night dews are absolutely mortal."]
-
-The most conclusive answer to all the slanders against Southern slave
-owners is to be found in the rapid multiplication of the slaves by natural
-increase, which could not have taken place if such barbarities had been
-practiced or such immorality had existed, as has been represented. Our
-detractors have convicted themselves of the slanders they have uttered
-by taking the Southern slave from the Cotton fields to the ballot box
-and vested him with all the privileges of an American citizen. If the
-institution of slavery has so tutored the negro that immediately his bonds
-are loosened, he is qualified for the privileges of the ballot box, what
-a civilizing tendency that institution must have had. If on the contrary
-that institution has kept him in utter ignorance of moral and Christian
-duty and made him the cringing, degraded creature he has been represented,
-what a monster must be he who proposes to vest in the untutored savage the
-power of governing others while the white man is disfranchised. In his
-native land he has never reached the dignity of a civilized being, and he
-has never been civilized until transplanted into slavery. Even till this
-day there are native Africans who continue in a state of barbarism despite
-the civilizing influence of the British government and the efforts of
-missionaries. In the western country away from the coast and civilization,
-tribes of the "hinterland" practice cannibalistic rites, the victim being
-preferably a blood relation of the sacrificer. The unfortunates are
-kidnapped, then with ghoulish ceremony and weird incantations they are
-frightfully mutilated; while life still remains a demoniacal feast is held
-and human flesh consumed to offset the "Ju-Ju" or spell of evil omen. Then
-the victim is put out of his misery and buried so that the white man shall
-know nothing of the mysteries ages old, which the tribes of Africa revere;
-many of the victims are young women and girls, captured by members of
-secret societies and taken to some remote spot in the bush.
-
-Whatever of eminence any individual of the race has attained, is due
-directly or indirectly to the civilizing influence of the institution
-of slavery. It was the master of slaves who accomplished the greatest
-missionary success and the progress of his ward since is due to the
-training and influence of the past.
-
-Foreign people have said that if the Confederate Government had freed the
-slaves, it might have been recognized by European nations. Such persons
-should recall that when Don Quixote freed the galley slaves he had then to
-defend himself against them--they would see the absurdity of such an idea.
-What could the people of the South have done in the prosecution of the war
-if 3,000,000 slaves had been turned loose among them and the whole labor
-system of the country deranged?
-
-Our victors say that having submitted "to the arbitrament of arms," and
-having been overcome, the question of right has been decided against
-us, and that we are a conquered people who must submit to the fate of
-the conquered; but though the gordian knot was cut with the sword,
-constitutional questions cannot be solved in the same way, such a
-view would but prove the wrong of the whole doctrine of coercion. The
-Constitution created by sovereign states, whatever the powers delegated,
-could never have contemplated the possibility of one of those states
-being reduced to the condition of a conquered province. That Constitution
-was as binding in those states, which remained after the secession of
-the Southern states as before, and it was as much an outrage to make war
-upon those latter for the act of secession, as it would have been to have
-destroyed their existence as states while they remained in the Union.
-
-It is true that the South claimed to be a sovereign independent people
-after their withdrawal, and were so by every principle of right and
-justice, but that position did not authorize the making of war against
-them. A counter-claim was that the seceding states had no right to
-withdraw, and therefore those arrayed in opposition undertook to compel
-them to submission to the rule and laws of the Union: upon that ground
-alone could they justify the war. They were the aggressors and disregarded
-the Constitution and the Union and they also were the ones who violated
-the principle and precept of that Constitution, which they were sworn to
-support and defend.
-
-The doctrine has been broached that the highest law that can exist is
-that established by force of arms. That the red-handed conquerors or the
-armed robber on the highway should assert this, is not to be wondered at,
-but when it comes from the men who have been compelled to yield to force
-of arms while struggling for the right, the mantle of charity should be
-allowed to fall over the weakness which cannot resist the temptations of
-adversity.
-
-In regard to this question of submitting our rights to "the arbitrament of
-arms," much irrational language has been used and very erroneous opinions
-have been expressed as to the result. There was never a greater mistake
-of terms or perversion of language than that made in saying that the
-Southern states submitted their right to be withdrawn from the Union to
-the arbitrament of arms or having lost, that the question of right has
-been decided against them. Those states proposed to withdraw peaceably,
-tendered a peaceful solution of all of the questions which might arise out
-of their former relations to the United States government. That government
-declared a war of coercion, and the Southern states of necessity resorted
-to arms to defend their rights and homes when most wrongfully and unjustly
-invaded. In no sense can they be said to have submitted any of their
-rights to the arbitrament of arms any more than the traveller on the
-highway submits his money to the arbitrament of arms between himself and
-the robber, and the result of the war decided no question of principle,
-but simply furnished another instance of the fact that in this world, the
-truth does not always prevail and that might is often more powerful than
-right.
-
-Not only has the question of right not been decided by the arbitrament of
-arms, but the proposition that "The voice of the people is the voice of
-God" is no better established now than on that memorable occasion when the
-people cried "crucify him! crucify him!"
-
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-=ERRATA=
-
-  Page 51, line 17--
-    "obitu" should be "obitur."
-
-  Page 58, lines 15 and 19--
-    "Elden" should be "Eldon."
-
-  Page 77, line 11--
-    the letter "a" should be inserted before the word "felony."
-
-  Page 82, line 26--
-    "interferfence" should be "interference."
-
-
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-Transcriber Note
-
-Minor typos were corrected. All corrections in the ERRATA have been
-applied. Due to the length of Footnote B, the footnotes were indented.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's The Heritage of The South, by Jubal Anderson Early
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