Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 by Various

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This was said without the intonation of fierceness or malignity, but
with great decision and the vigor of high spirit.

It was taking, of course, with considerable emphasis, a side in a
famous Constitutional question, familiar to all readers of American
Congressional Debates, once supported by Mr. Calhoun, and rather
strangely, too, with that philosophical leader, confusing the absurdly
asserted State right of seceding at will with the undoubted right,
when there exists no peaceful remedy, of seceding from intolerable
oppression: an entire position which Mr. Webster especially, and
subsequent statesmen, in arguments elucidating the nature and powers of
the General Government, to say nothing of the respect due to a moral
sentiment concerning slavery, which, permeating more than a majority
of the people, has the force, when properly expressed, wherever the
Constitution has jurisdiction, of supreme law, are thought by most men,
once and forever, to have satisfactorily answered. It was a complaint,
certainly, which the South had had ever since the Constitution was
formed, and which could with no plausibility be brought forward as a
justification of war, while there existed a Constitutional tribunal for
adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it
was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan
presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that the Rebellion was utterly
causeless, and as the writer was therefore exceedingly anxious to
obtain, concerning their grievances, the latest opinions of the Southern
leaders, as stated by themselves, he ventured to propose, in a pause of
Mr. Toombs's somewhat rapid rhetoric, a question which, at that moment,
seemed of central importance to the candid philosophical inquirer into
the moving forces of the times:--

"Are we, then, Sir, to consider Mr. Calhoun's old complaint--the
non-recognition of slave-property under the Federal Constitution--as
constituting now the _chief grievance_ of the South?"

"Undoubtedly," was Mr. Toombs's instant reply, "_it all turns on that.
What you tax you must protect_."

This is the very strongest argument of the Southern side. But the
alleged slave-property is protected, though only under municipal law, by
the Constitution. To protect it elsewhere is against its whole spirit,
and, in the present state of public sentiment, against its very letter.
Originally, as is well known, it was not proposed to protect at all,
_under the General Government_, property so monstrous, except as it
became necessary as a compromise, in order to secure a union. But the
provision of the Constitution that the slave-trade should be abolished,
the absolute power given to Congress to make all laws for the
Territories, the spirit of the preamble, the principles of the
Declaration, indeed, the whole history of the origin and adoption of the
fundamental law, prove that its principle and its expectation were, if
not absolutely to place slavery in the States in process of extinction,
at least never to recognize it except indirectly and remotely
under municipal law, not even by admitting the word _slave_ to its
phraseology.

"Even in the Northern States themselves, to say nothing of the
Territories, I am not safe with my property. I can travel through
France or England and be safe; but if I happen to lose my servant up in
_Vairmount_,"--Mr. Toombs pronounced the word with a somewhat marked
accent of derision,--"and undertake to recover him, I get jugged.
Besides, your Northern statesmen are far from being honest. Here is
Billy Seward, for instance,"--with a gesture toward his neighbor's
house,--"who says slavery is contrary to the Higher Law, and that he is
bound as a Christian to obey the Higher Law; but yet he takes an oath to
uphold the Constitution, which protects slavery. This inconsistency runs
through most of the Northern platforms. How can we live with such
men? They will not be true even to a compact which they themselves
acknowledge."

"You would think, then, Wendell Phillips, for instance, more consistent
in his political opinions than Mr. Seward?"

"Certainly. I can understand his position. 'Slavery,' he says, 'is
wrong. The Constitution protects slavery; therefore I will have nothing
to do with the Constitution, and cannot become a citizen.' This is
logical and consistent. I can respect such a position as that."

Here Mr. Toombs--ejecting, as perhaps the writer ought not to relate, a
competent mass of tobacco-saliva into the blazing coal--paused somewhat
reflectively, perhaps unpleasantly revolving certain possible indirect
influences of the position he had characterized.

"Upon which side, Sir, do you think there is usually the most
misunderstanding,--on the part of the North concerning the South? or on
the part of the South concerning the North?"

"Oh, by all odds," he replied, instantly, "we understand you best. We
send fifty thousand travellers, more or less, North every summer to
your watering-places. Hot down in Mobile,"--his style taking somewhat
unpleasantly the intonation as well as the negligence of the
bar-room,--"can't live in Mobile in the summer. Then your papers
circulate more among us than ours among you. Our daughters are educated
at Northern boarding-schools, our sons at Northern colleges: both my
colleague and myself were educated at Northern colleges. For these
reasons, by all odds, we have a better opportunity for understanding you
than you have for understanding us."

"In case of general secession and war," the writer ventured next to
inquire, "would there probably, in your opinion, be danger of a slave
insurrection?"

"None at all. Certainly far less than of 'Bread or Blood' riots at the
North."

The writer was surprised to find, notwithstanding Mr. Toombs's eulogy of
Southern opportunities, his understanding of the North so imperfect, and
still more surprised at the political and social principles involved in
the spirit of what followed.

"Your poor population can hold ward-meetings, and can vote. But _we_
know better how to take care of ours. They are in the fields, and
under the eye of their overseers. There can be little danger of an
insurrection under our system."

The subject and the manner of the man, in spite of his better qualities,
were becoming painful, and the writer ventured only one more remark.

"An ugly time, certainly, if war comes between North and South."

"Ugly time? _Oh, no!_"

The writer will never forget the tone of utter carelessness and
_nonchalance_ with which the last round-toned exclamation was uttered.

"Oh, no! War is nothing. Never more than a tenth part of the adult
population of a country in the field. We have four million voters. Say
a tenth of them, or four hundred thousand men, are in the field on both
sides. A tenth of them would be killed or die of camp diseases. But
_they_ would die, _any way_. War is nothing."

The tone perfectly proved this belief, not badinage.

"Some property would be destroyed, towns injured, fences overturned, and
the Devil raised generally; but then all that would have a good effect.
Only yaller-covered-literature men and editors make a noise about war.
Wars are to history what storms are to the atmosphere,--purifiers. We
shall meet, as we ought, whoever invades our rights, with the bayonet.
We are the gentlemen of this land, and gentlemen always make revolutions
in history."

This was said in the tone of an injured, but haughty man, with perfect
intellectual poise and earnestness, yet with a fervor of feeling that
brought the speaker erect in his chair.

The significance of the last remarks, which the writer can make oath he
has preserved _verbatim_, being somewhat calculated to draw on a debate,
of course wholly unfitted to the time and place, the writer, apologizing
for having taken so much time at a formal interview, and receiving, of
course, a most courteous invitation to renew the call, found himself,
after but twenty minutes' conversation, on the street, in the lonely
December evening, with a mind full of reflections.

The utter recklessness concerning life and property with which the
splendid intellect, under the lead of the ungovernable passions of this
man, was plunging the nation into a civil war of which no one could
foresee the end, was the thought uppermost. Certainly, the abstract
manliness of asserting rights supposed to be infringed it was in itself
impossible not to respect. But the man seemed to love war for its own
sake, as pugnacious schoolboys love sham-fights, with a sort of glee in
the smell of the smoke of battle. The judicial calmness of statesmanship
had entirely disappeared in the violence of sectional passion. Perhaps
he might be capable of ruining his country from pure love of turbulence
and power, could he but find a pretext of force sufficient to blind
first himself and then others. Yet Robert Toombs, in the Senate Chamber,
takes little children in his arms, and is one of the kindest of the
noblemen of Nature in the sphere of his unpolitical sympathies. The
reader who is familiar with Mr. Toombs's speeches will need no assurance
that he spoke frankly.[A]

[Footnote A: Ten days later, in the Senate, with a face full of the
combined erubescence of revolutionary enthusiasm and unstatesmanlike
anger, Mr. Toombs closed a speech to the Northern Senators in the
following amazing words, (_Congressional Globe_, 1860-61, p. 271,)
which justify, it will be seen, every syllable of the report of the
conversation upon the same points:--

"You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard
constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What am I to
do? Am I a freeman? Is my State, a free State, to lie down and submit
because political fossils raise the cry of 'The Glorious Union'? Too
long already have we listened to this delusive song. We are freemen. We
have rights: I have stated them. We have wrongs: I have recounted them.
I have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has declared
us outlaws, and is determined to exclude four thousand millions of our
property from the common territories,--that it has declared us under the
ban of the empire and out of the protection of the laws of the United
States, everywhere. They have refused to protect us from invasion and
insurrection by the Federal power, and the Constitution denies to us
in the Union the right either to raise fleets or armies for our own
defence. All these charges I have proven by the record, and I put
them before the civilized world, and demand the judgment of to-day, of
to-morrow, of distant ages, and of Heaven itself, upon these causes. I
am content, whatever it be, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause.
We have appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights.
You have refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we
had them, as your court adjudges them to be, just as all our people have
said they are, redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it
will restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them,
and what then? We shall then ask you to 'let us depart in peace.' Refuse
that, and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our
banners the glorious words, 'Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to
the blood of the brave and the God of battles for security and
tranquillity."

Sincere, but undoubtedly mistaken, Mr. Toombs! To this philippic, let
the words of another Southern, but not sectional Senator, reply, and
that from a golden age:--

"But if, unhappily, we should be involved in war, in civil war, between
the two parts of this Confederacy, in which the effort upon the one
side should be to restrain the introduction of slavery into the new
territories, and upon the other side to force its introduction there,
what a spectacle should we present to the astonishment of mankind, in an
effort, not to propagate right, but--I must say it, though I trust it
will be understood to be said with no design to excite feeling--a war to
propagate wrong in the territories thus acquired from Mexico. It would
be a war in which we should have no sympathies, no good wishes, in which
all mankind would be against us; for, from the commencement of the
Revolution down to the present time, we have constantly reproached
our British ancestors for the introduction of slavery into this
country."--HENRY CLAY, _Congressional Globe_, Part II., Vol. 22, p.
117.]

Sick at heart, as the future of the nation stood to his dim vision
through the present, the writer found his way to his hotel. At this
time the North was silent, apparently apathetic, unbelieving, almost
criminally allowed to be undeceived by its presses and by public men who
had means of information, while this volcano continued to prepare itself
thus defiantly beneath the very feet of a President sworn to support the
laws!

* * * * *

The formal interview with the Honorable R.M.T. Hunter was sought in
company with two other students of New-England colleges. We had hoped to
meet Mr. Mason at the same apartments, but were disappointed. The great
contrast of personal character between Mr. Hunter and Mr. Toombs made
the concurrence of the former in the chief views presented by the
latter the more significant. The careful habits of thought, the
unostentatiousness, and the practical common sense for which the
Virginian farmer is esteemed, and which had made his name a prominent
one for President of a Central Confederacy, in case of the separate
secession of the Border States, were curiously manifested both in
his apartments and his manner. The chamber was apparently at a
boarding-house, but very plainly furnished with red cotton serge
curtains and common hair-cloth chairs and sofa. The Senator's manner of
speech was slow, considerate,--indeed, sometimes approaching awkwardness
in its plain, farmer-like simplicity. One of the first questions was the
central one, concerning the chief grievance of the South, which had been
presented to Mr. Toombs.

"Yes," was Mr. Hunter's reply, somewhat less promptly given, "it may be
said to come chiefly from that,--the non-recognition of our property
under the Constitution. We wish our property recognized, as we think the
Constitution provides. We should like to remain with the North."

He spoke without a particle of expressed passion or ardor, though by
no means incapable, when aroused, as those who have seen his plethoric
countenance and figure can testify, of both.

"We are mutually helpful to each other. _We want to use your navy and
your factories. You want our cotton. The North to manufacture, and the
South to produce, would make the strongest nation_. But, if we separate,
we shall try to do more in Virginia than we do now. We shall make mills
on our streams."

His language was chiefly Saxon monosyllables.

"The climate is not as severe, the nights are not as long with us as
with you. I think we can do well at manufacturing in Virginia. The
Chesapeake Bay and our rivers should aid commerce. As for the slaves,
I think there is little danger of any trouble. There may be some," he
said, with a frankness that surprised us slightly, but in the same
moderate, honest way, his hands clasped upon his breast, and the
extended feet rubbing together slowly, "in the Cotton States, where they
are very thick together; but I think that there is very little danger in
Virginia. The way they take to rise in never shows much skill. The last
time they rose in our State, I think the attempt was brought on by some
sign in an eclipse of the moon."

Nearly all that passed of political interest is contained in the
foregoing sentences, except one honest reply to a question concerning
his opinion of the probability of the North's attempting coercion.

"If only three States go out, they may coerce," said Mr. Hunter; "but if
fifteen go, I guess they won't try."

At the present period of the Rebellion, this indication of the
anticipations of its leaders in engaging in it must be of interest.

It must be understood that the writer and his companions presented
themselves simply as students, with no fixed exclusive predilections for
either of the public parties in politics,--which, in the writer's case
at least, was certainly a statement wholly true,--and that this evident
freedom from political bias secured perhaps an unusual share of the
confidence of the Southern Senators. It will be remembered, also, that
in every conversation, however startling the revelation of criminal
purpose or absurd motive, the manner of these Senators was always
totally devoid of any approach to that vulgar intellectual levity which
too often, in treating of public affairs, painfully characterizes
the fifth-rate men whom the North sometimes chooses to make its
representatives. The manner of the Southern leaders was to us a
sufficient proof of their sincerity.

* * * * *

At the house of the Honorable Jefferson Davis, now in the world's
gaze President of the then nascent Confederacy, the writer, in the
intelligent and genial company of the graduate of Harvard and the
student of Amherst before mentioned, called formally, on the evening
of the New Year's reception-day. A representative from one of the
Southwestern States was present, but we were soon admitted to the front
of the open blazing grate of the reception-parlor. We had before seen
Mr. Davis busy in the Senate.

The urbanity, the intellectual energy, and the intensely shrewd
watchfulness and ambition, combined with a covertly expressed, but
powerful native instinct for strategy and command, which have made Mr.
Davis a public leader, were evident at the first glance. The Senator
seemed compact of ambition, will, intellect, activity, and shrewdness.
A high and broad, but square forehead; the aquiline nose; the square,
fighting chin; the thin, compressed, but flexible lips; the almost
haggardly sunken cheek; the piercing, not wholly uncovered eye; the
dark, somewhat thinning hair; the clear, slightly browned, nervous
complexion, all well given in the best current photographs, were united
to a figure slightly bent in the shoulders, of more respiratory than
digestive breadth, in outlines almost equally balancing ruggedness and
grace, of compactness wrought by the pressure of perhaps few more than
fifty summers, not above medium height, but composed throughout of silk
and steel. A certain similarity between the decorations of the parlor
and the character of the owner, perhaps more fanciful than real, at once
attracted attention. Everything was simple, graceful, and rich, without
being tropically luxuriant; the paintings appeared to be often of airy,
winged, or white-robed figures, that suggested a reflective and not
unimaginative mind in the one who had chosen them. This was the leader
whom Mr. Calhoun's fervent political metaphysics and his own ambition
for place and power had misled. His conversation was remarkable in
manner for perfect unostentatiousness, clearness, and self-control, and
in matter for breadth and minuteness of political information. In the
whole conversation, he never uttered a broken or awkwardly constructed
sentence, nor wavered, while stating facts, by a single intonation. This
considerable intellectual energy, combined with courtesy, was his
chief fascination. Yet, underneath all lay an atmosphere of covert
haughtiness, and, at times, even of audacious remorselessness, which,
under stimulative circumstances, were to be feared. Undoubtedly, passion
and ambition were natively stronger in the countenance than reason,
conscience, and general sympathy,--an observation best felt to be true
when the face was compared in imagination with the faces of some of the
world's chief benefactors; but culture, native urbanity, and a powerful
reflective tendency had evidently so wrought, that, though conscience
might be imperilled frequently by great adroitness in the casuistry of
self-excuse, justice could not be consciously opposed for any length of
time without powerful silent reaction. The quantity of being, however,
though superior, was not of so high a measure as the quality, and the
principal deficiencies, though perhaps almost the sole ones, were
plainly moral. In his presence, no man could deny to him something of
that dignity, of a kind superior to that of intellect and will, which
must be possessed by every leader as a basis of confidence. But mournful
severe truth would testify that there was yet, at times, palpably
something of the treacherous serpent in the eye, and it could not
readily be told where it would strike.

In reply to a reference to a somewhat celebrated speech by Senator
Benjamin of Louisiana, which we had heard the day previous, he said that
we might consider it, as a whole, a very fair statement both of the
arguments and the purposes of the South. Perhaps a speech of more
horrible doctrine, upheld by equal argumentative and rhetorical power,
has never been heard in the American Senate. In reply, also, to the one
central question concerning the chief grievance of the South, he gave in
substance the same answer, uttered perhaps with more logical calmness,
that had been given by Mr. Hunter and Mr. Toombs, that it was
substantially covered by Mr. Calhoun's old complaint, the
non-recognition of slave-property under the Federal Constitution. Of
course we were as yet too well established in the belief that slavery in
the United States is upheld by the Constitution only very remotely and
indirectly, under local or municipal law, to desire, even by questions,
to draw on any debate.

In reply to a question by the gentleman from Harvard, he spoke of a
Central Confederacy as altogether improbable, and thought, if Georgia
seceded, as the telegrams for the last fortnight had indicated she
would, Maryland would be sure to go. "I think the commercial and
political interests of Maryland," he remarked, in his calm and simple,
but distinct and watchful manner, manifesting, too, at the same time,
a natural command of dignified, antithetical sentences, "would be
promoted, perhaps can be only preserved, by secession. Her territory
extends on both sides of a great inland water communication, and is at
the natural Atlantic outlet, by railway, of the Valley of the West.
Baltimore in the Union is sure to be inferior to Philadelphia and New
York: Baltimore out of the Union is sure to become a great commercial
city. In every way, whether we regard her own people or their usefulness
to other States, I think the interests of Maryland would be promoted by
secession."

"But would not Maryland lose many more slaves, as the border member of a
foreign confederacy, than she does now in the Union?"

The reply to this question we looked for with the greatest interest,
since no foreign nation, such as the North would be, in case of
the success of the attempted Confederacy, ever thinks of giving up
fugitives, and since the policy of the South upon this point, in case
she should succeed, would determine the possibility or impossibility of
peace between the two portions of the Continent.

Mr. Davis's reply was in the following words, uttered in a tone of equal
shrewdness, calmness, and decision:--

"I think, for all Maryland would lose in that way she would be more than
repaid by reprisals. While we are one nation and you steal our property,
we have little redress; _but when we become two nations, we shall say,
Two can play at this game_."

We breathed more freely after so frank an utterance. The great
importance of this reply, coming from the even then proposed political
chief of the Confederacy, as indicating the impossibility of peace, even
in case of the recognition of the South, so long as it should continue,
as it has begun, to make Slavery the chief corner-stone of the State,
will be at once perceived.

"But," the writer ventured to inquire, "what will become of the Federal
District, since its inhabitants have no 'State right of secession'?"

"Have you ever studied law?" he asked.

The gentleman from Amherst confessed our ignorance of any point covering
the case.

"There is a rule in law," continued Mr. Davis, "that, when property is
granted by one party to another for use for any specified purpose, and
ceases to be used for that purpose, it reverts by law to the donor.
Now the territory constituting at present the District of Columbia was
granted, as you well know, by Maryland to the United States for use as
the seat of the Federal capital. When it ceases to be used for that
purpose, it, with all its public fixtures, will revert by law to
Maryland. But," and his eye brightened to the hue of cold steel in a
way the writer will never forget, as he uttered, in a tone perfectly
self-poised, undaunted, and slightly defiant, the words, "_that is a
point which may be settled by force rather than by reason_."

This was January 1, 1861, only eleven days after South Carolina had
passed her Act of Secession, and shows that even then, notwithstanding
the professed desire of the South to depart in peace, the attack not
only upon the national principles of union, but upon the national
property as well, was projected. Mr. Davis, loaded with the benefits of
his country, yet occupied a seat in the Senate Chamber, under the most
solemn oath to uphold its Constitution, which, even if his grievances
had been well founded, afforded Constitutional and peaceful remedies
that he had never attempted to use. Presenting regards, very formal
indeed, sick at heart, indignant, and anxious, we left the house of the
traitor.

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