Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 by Various

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If, however, any one still doubts that this system develops itself
logically and naturally, and tramples down the resistance offered by the
better sentiments of human nature, let him look at the legislation which
defines and protects it,--a legislation which, as expressing the average
sense and purpose of the community, is to be quoted as conclusive
against the testimony of any of its individual members. This legislation
evinces the dominion of a malignant principle. You can hear the crack
of the whip and the clank of the chain in all its enactments. Yet these
laws, which cannot be read in any civilized country without mingled
horror and derision, indicate a mastery of the whole theory and practice
of oppression, are admirably adapted to the end they have in view, and
bear the unmistakable marks of being the work of practical men,--of men
who know their sin, and "knowing, dare maintain." They do not, it
is true, enrich the science of jurisprudence with any large or wise
additions, but we do not look for such luxuries as justice, reason, and
beneficence in ordinances devised to prop up iniquity, falsehood, and
tyranny. Ghastly caricatures of justice as these offshoots of Slavery
are, they are still dictated by the nature and necessities of the
system. They have the flavor of the rank soil whence they spring.

If we desire any stronger evidence that slaveholders constitute a
general Slave Power, that this Slave Power acts as a unit, the unity of
a great interest impelled by powerful passions, and that the virtues of
individual slaveholders have little effect in checking the vices of the
system, we can find that evidence in the zeal and audacity with which
this power engaged in extending its dominion. Seemingly aggressive in
this, it was really acting on the defensive,--on the defensive, however,
not against the assaults of men, but against the immutable decrees of
God. The world is so constituted, that wrong and oppression are not, in
a large view, politic. They heavily mortgage the future, when they
glut the avarice of the present. The avenging Providence, which the
slaveholder cannot find in the New Testament, or in the teachings of
conscience, he is at last compelled to find in political economy; and
however indifferent to the Gospel according to Saint John, he must give
heed to the gospel according to Adam Smith and Malthus. He discovers, no
doubt to his surprise, and somewhat to his indignation, that there is an
intimate relation between industrial success and justice; and however
much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract principles which
declare Slavery a nonsensical enormity, he cannot fail to read its
nature, when it slowly, but legibly, writes itself out in curses on the
land. He finds how true is the old proverb, that, "if God moves with
leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." The law of Slavery is, that,
to be lucrative, it must have a scanty population diffused over large
areas. To limit it is therefore to doom it to come to an end by the laws
of population. To limit it is to force the planters, in the end, to free
their slaves, from an inability to support them, and to force the slaves
into more energy and intelligence in labor, in order that they may
subsist as freemen. People prattle about the necessity of compulsory
labor; but the true compulsory labor, the labor which has produced the
miracles of modern industry, is the labor to which a man is compelled by
the necessity of saving himself, and those who are dearer to him than
self, from ignominy and want. It was by this policy of territorial
limitation, that Henry Clay, before the annexation of Texas, declared
that Slavery must eventually expire. The way was gradual, it was
prudent, it was safe, it was distant, it was sure, it was according to
the nature of things. It would have been accepted, had there been any
general truth in the assertion that the slaveholders were honestly
desirous of reconverting, at any time, and on any practicable plan,
their chattels into men. But true to the malignant principles of their
system, they accepted the law of its existence, but determined to evade
the law of its extinction. As Slavery required large areas and scanty
population, large areas and scanty population it should at all times
have. New markets should be opened for the surplus slave-population;
to open new markets was to acquire new territory; and to acquire new
territory was to gain additional political strength. The expansive
tendencies of freedom would thus be checked by the tendencies no less
expansive of bondage. To acquire Texas was not merely to acquire an
additional Slave State, but it was to keep up a demand for slaves which
would prevent Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Kentucky from
becoming Free States. As soon as old soils were worn out, new soils were
to be ready to receive the curse; and where slave-labor ceased to be
profitable, slave-breeding was to take its place.

This purpose was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it
was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the
declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient
heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless
to seek for the causes of actions in extraneous sources, when they
are plainly but steps in the development of principles already known.
Slave-breeding and Slavery-extension are necessities of the system. Like
Romulus and Remus, "they are both suckled from one wolf."

But it was just here that the question became to the Free States a
practical question. There could be no "fanaticism" in meeting it at this
stage. What usually goes under the name of fanaticism is the habit of
uncompromising assault on a thing because its principles are absurd
or wicked; what usually goes under the name of common sense is the
disposition to assail it at that point where, in the development of its
principles, it has become immediately and pressingly dangerous. Now by
no sophistry could we of the Free States evade the responsibility of
being the extenders of Slavery, if we allowed Slavery to be extended. If
we did not oppose it from a sense of right, we were bound to oppose it
from a sense of decency. It may be said that we had nothing to do with
Slavery at the South; but we had something to do with rescuing the
national character from infamy, and unhappily we could not have anything
to do with rescuing the national character from infamy without having
something to do with Slavery at the South. The question with us was,
whether we would allow the whole force of the National Government to be
employed in upholding, extending, and perpetuating this detestable and
nonsensical enormity?--especially, whether we would be guilty of that
last and foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate planting of
slave institutions on virgin soil? If this question had been put to
any despot of Europe,--we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,--his
answer would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. Yet the South
confidently expected so to wheedle or bully us into dragging our common
sense through the mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we should
connive at the commission of this execrable crime!

There can be no doubt, that, if the question had been fairly put to the
inhabitants of the Free States, their answer would have been at once
decisive for freedom. Even the strongest conservatives would have been
"Free-Soilers,"--not only those who are conservatives in virtue of
their prudence, moderation, sagacity, and temper, but prejudiced
conservatives, conservatives who are tolerant of all iniquity which is
decorous, inert, long-established, and disposed to die when its time
comes, conservatives as thorough in their hatred of change as Lamennais
himself. "What a noise," says Paul Louis Courier, "Lamennais would have
made on the day of creation, could he have witnessed it. His first cry
to the Divinity would have been to respect that ancient chaos." But even
to conservatives of this class, the attempt to extend Slavery, though
really in the order of its natural development, must still have appeared
a monstrous innovation, and they were bound to oppose the Marats and
Robespierres of despotism who were busy in the bad work. Indeed, in our
country, conservatism, through the presence of Slavery, has inverted
its usual order. In other countries, the radical of one century is the
conservative of the next; in ours, the conservative of one generation
is the radical of the next. The American conservative of 1790 is the
so-called fanatic of 1820; the conservative of 1820 is the fanatic
of 1856. The American conservative, indeed, descended the stairs of
compromise until his descent into utter abnegation of all that civilized
humanity holds dear was arrested by the Rebellion. And the reason of
this strange inversion of conservative principles was, that the movement
of Slavery is towards barbarism, while the movement of all countries
in which labor is not positively chattellized is towards freedom and
civilization. True conservatism, it must never be forgotten, is the
refusal to give up a positive, though imperfect good, for a possible,
but uncertain improvement: in the United States it has been misused to
denote the cowardly surrender of a positive good from a fear to resist
the innovations of an advancing evil and wrong.

There was, therefore, little danger that Slavery would be extended
through the conscious thought and will of the people, but there
was danger that its extension might, somehow or other, _occur_.
Misconception of the question, devotion to party or the memory of
party, prejudice against the men who more immediately represented the
Anti-Slavery principle, might make the people unconsciously slide into
this crime. And it must be said that for the divisions in the Free
States as to the mode in which the free sentiment of the people should
operate the strictly Anti-Slavery men were to some extent responsible.
It is difficult to convince an ardent reformer that the principle
for which he contends, being impersonal, should be purified from the
passions and whims of his own personality. The more fervid he is, the
more he is identified in the public mind with his cause; and, in a large
view, he is bound not merely to defend his cause, but to see that the
cause, through him, does not become offensive. Men are ever ready to
dodge disagreeable duties by converting questions of principles into
criticisms on the men who represent principles; and the men who
represent principles should therefore look to it that they make no
needless enemies and give no needless shock to public opinion for
the purpose of pushing pet opinions, wreaking personal grudges, or
gratifying individual antipathies. The artillery of the North has
heretofore played altogether too much on Northerners.

But to return. The South expected to fool the North into a compliance
with its designs, by availing itself of the divisions among its
professed opponents, and by dazzling away the attention of the people
from the real nature of the wickedness to be perpetrated. Slavery was to
be extended, and the North was to be an accomplice in the business; but
the Slave Power did not expect that we should be active and enthusiastic
in this work of self-degradation. It did not ask us to extend Slavery,
but simply to allow its extension to occur; and in this appeal to our
moral timidity and moral laziness, it contemptuously tossed us a few
fig-leaves of fallacy and false statement to save appearances.

We were informed, for instance, that by the equality of men is meant the
equality of those whom Providence has made equal. But this is exactly
the sense in which no sane man ever understood the doctrine of equality;
for Providence has palpably made men unequal, white men as well as
black.

Then we were told that the white and black races could dwell together
only in the relation of masters and slaves,--and, in the same breath,
that in this relation the slaves were steadily advancing in civilization
and Christianity. But, if steadily advancing in civilization and
Christianity, the time must inevitably come when they would not submit
to be slaves; and then what becomes of the statement that the white
and black races cannot dwell together as freemen? Why boast of their
improvement, when you are improving them only that you may exterminate
them, or they _you?_

Then, with a composure of face which touches the exquisite in
effrontery, we were assured that this antithesis of master and slave, of
tyrant and abject natures, is really a perfect harmony. Slavery--so said
these logicians of liberticide--has solved the great social problem of
the working-classes, comfortably for capital, happily for labor; and has
effected this by an ingenious expedient which could have occurred only
to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the expedient, namely,
of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle
between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue
until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But
Slavery exhibits this struggle in its earliest and most savage stage,
a stage answering to the rude energies and still ruder conceptions of
barbarians. The issue of the struggle, it is plain, will not be that
capital will own labor, but that labor will own capital, and no _man_ be
owned.

Still we were vehemently told, that, though the slaves, for their own
good, were deprived of their rights as men, they were in a fine state
of physical comfort. This was not and could not be true; but even if it
were, it only represented the slaveholder as addressing his slave in
some such words of derisive scorn as Byron hurls at Duke Alphonso,--

"Thou! born to eat, and be despised, and die, Even as the brutes that
perish,"--

though we doubt if he could truly add,--

"save that thou Hast a more splendid trough and wider sty."

Then we were solemnly warned of our patriotic duty to "know no North and
no South." This was the very impudence of ingratitude; for we had long
known no North, and unhappily had known altogether too much South.

Then we were most plaintively adjured to to comply with the demands of
the Slave Power, in order to save the Union. But how save the Union?
Why, by violating the principles on which the Union was formed, and
scouting the objects it was intended to serve.

But lastly came the question, on which the South confidently relied as
a decisive argument, "What could we do with our slaves, provided we
emancipated them?" The peculiarity which distinguished this question
from all other interrogatories ever addressed to human beings was this,
that it was asked for the purpose of not being answered. The moment a
reply was begun, the ground was swiftly shifted, and we were overwhelmed
with a torrent of words about State Rights and the duty of minding our
own business.

But it is needless to continue the examination of these substitutes and
apologies for fact and reason, especially as their chief characteristic
consisted in their having nothing to do with the practical question
before the people. They were thrown out by the interested defenders of
Slavery, North and South, to divert attention from the main issue. In
the fine felicity of their in appropriateness to the actual condition of
the struggle between the Free and Slave States, they were almost a match
for that renowned sermon, preached by a metropolitan bishop before an
asylum for the blind, the halt, and the legless, on "The Moral Dangers
of Foreign Travel." But still they were infinitely mischievous,
considered as pretences under which Northern men could skulk from their
duties, and as sophistries to lull into a sleepy acquiescence the
consciences of those political adventurers who are always seeking
occasions for being tempted and reasons for being rogues. They were all
the more influential from the circumstance that their show of argument
was backed by the solid substance of patronage. These false facts and
bad reasons were the keys to many fat offices. The South had succeeded
in instituting a new political test, namely, that no man is qualified
serve the United States unless he is the champion or the sycophant of
the Slave Power. Proscription to the friends of American freedom, honors
and emoluments to the friends of American slavery,--adopt that creed,
or you did not belong to any "healthy" political organization! Now we
have heard of civil disabilities for opinion's sake before. In some
countries no Catholics are allowed to hold office, in others no
Protestants, in others no Jews. But it is not, we believe, in Protestant
countries that Protestants are proscribed; it is not in Catholic
countries that Catholics are incompetent to serve the State. It was left
for a free country to establish, practically, civil disabilities against
freemen,--for Republican America to proscribe Republicans! Think of
it,--that no American, whatever his worth, talents, or patriotism,--could
two years ago serve his country in any branch of its executive
administration, unless he was unfortunate enough to agree with the
slaveholders, or base enough to sham an agreement with them! The test,
at Washington, of political orthodoxy was modelled on the pattern of
the test of religious orthodoxy established by Napoleon's minister of
police. "You are not orthodox," he said to a priest "In what," inquired
the astonished ecclesiastic, "have I sinned against orthodoxy?"
"You have not pronounced the eulogium of the Emperor, or proved the
righteousness of the conscription."

Now we had been often warned of the danger of sectional parties, on
account of their tendency to break up the Government. The people gave
heed to this warning; for here was a sectional party in possession
of the Government. We had been often advised not to form political
combinations on one idea. The people gave heed to this advice; for here
was a triumphant political combination, formed not only on one idea, but
that the worst idea that ever animated any political combination. Here
was an association of three hundred and fifty thousand persons, spread
over some nine hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory, and
wielding its whole political power, engaged in the work of turning the
United States into a sort of slave plantation, of which they were to be
overseers. We opposed them by argument, passion, and numerical power;
and they read us long homilies on the beauty of law and order,--order
sustained by Border Ruffians, law which was but the legalizing of
criminal instincts,--law and order which, judged by the code established
for Kansas, seemed based on legislative ideas imported from the Fegee
Islands. We opposed them again, and they talked to us about the
necessity of preserving the Union;--as if, in the Free States, the love
of the Union had not been a principle and a passion, proof against many
losses, and insensible to many humiliations; as if, with our teachers,
disunion had not been for half a century a stereotyped menace to scare
us into compliance with their rascalities; as if it were not known that
only so long as they could wield the powers of the National Government
to accomplish their designs, were they loyal to the Union! We opposed
them again, and they clamored about their Constitutional rights and our
Constitutional obligations; but they adopted for themselves a theory of
the Constitution which made each State the judge of the Constitution in
the last resort, while they held us to that view of it which made the
Supreme Court the judge in the last resort. Written constitutions, by a
process of interpretation, are always made to follow the drift of great
forces; they are twisted and tortured into conformity with the views
of the power dominant in the State; and our Constitution, originally
a charter of freedom, was converted into an instrument which the
slaveholders seemed to possess by right of squatter sovereignty and
eminent domain.

Did any one suppose that we could retard the ever-onward movement of
their unscrupulous force and defiant wills by timely compromises and
concessions? Every compromise we made with them only stimulated their
rapacity, heightened their arrogance, increased their demands. Every
concession we made to their insolent threats was only a step downwards
to a deeper abasement; and we parted with our most cherished convictions
of duty to purchase, not their gratitude, but their contempt. Every
concession, too, weakened us and strengthened them for the inevitable
struggle, into which the Free States were eventually goaded, to preserve
what remained of their dignity, their honor, and their self-respect. In
1850 we conceded the application of the Wilmot Proviso; in 1856 we were
compelled to concede the principle of the Wilmot Proviso. In 1850 we had
no fears that slaves would enter New Mexico; in 1861 we were threatened
with a view of the flag of the rattlesnake floating over Faneuil Hall.
If any principle has been established by events, with the certainty of
mathematical demonstration, it is this, that concession to the Slave
Power is the suicide of Freedom. We are purchasing this fact at the
expense of arming five hundred thousand men and spending a thousand
millions of dollars. More than this, if any concessions were to be made,
they ought, on all principles of concession, to have been made to the
North. Concessions, historically, are not made by freedom to privilege,
but by privilege to freedom. Thus King John conceded Magna Charta; thus
King Charles conceded the Petition of Right; thus Protestant England
conceded Catholic Emancipation to Ireland; thus aristocratic England
conceded the Reform Bill to the English middle class. And had not we,
the misgoverned many, a right to demand from the slaveholders, the
governing few, some concessions to our sense of justice and our
prejudices for freedom? Concession indeed! If any class of men hold in
their grasp one of the dear-bought chartered "rights of man," it is
infamous to concede it.

"Make it the darling of your precious eye!
_To lose or give 't away_ were such perdition
As nothing else could match."

Considerations so obvious as these could not, by any ingenuity of
party-contrivance, be prevented from forcing themselves by degrees into
the minds of the great body of the voters of the Free States. The common
sense, the "large roundabout common sense" of the people, slowly, and
somewhat reluctantly, came up to the demands of the occasion. The
sophistries and fallacies of the Northern defenders of the pretensions
of the slave-holding sectional minority were gradually exposed, and were
repudiated in the lump. The conviction was implanted in the minds of the
people of the Free States, that the Slave Power, representing only a
thirtieth part of the population of the Slave States, and a ninth part
of the property of the country, was bent on governing the nation, and
on subordinating all principles and all interests to its own. Not being
ambitious of having the United States converted into a Western Congo,
with the traffic in "niggers" as its fundamental idea, the people
elected Abraham Lincoln, in a perfectly Constitutional way, President.
As the majority of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of
the Supreme Court was still left, by this election, on the side of the
"rights of the South," (humorously so styled,) and as the President
could do little to advance Republican principles with all the other
branches of the Government opposed to him, the people naturally imagined
that the slaveholders would acquiesce in their decision.

But such was not the result. The election was in November. The new
President could not assume office until March. The triumphs of the Slave
Power had been heretofore owing to its willingness and readiness to
peril everything on each question as it arose, and each event as it
occurred. South Carolina, perhaps the only one of the Slave States that
was thoroughly in earnest, at once "seceded." The "Gulf States" and
others followed its example, not so much from any fixed intention of
forming a Southern Confederacy as for the purpose of intimidating the
Free States into compliance with the extreme demands of the South. The
Border Slave States were avowedly neutral between the "belligerents,"
but indicated their purpose to stand by their "Southern brethren," in
case the Government of the United States attempted to carry out the
Constitution and the laws in the seceded States by the process of
"coercion."

The combination was perfect. The heart of the Rebellion was in South
Carolina, a State whose free population was about equal to that of the
city of Brooklyn, and whose annual productions were exceeded by those
of Essex County, in the State of Massachusetts. Around this centre was
congregated as base a set of politicians as ever disgraced human nature.
A conspiracy was formed to compel a first-class power, representing
thirty millions of people, to submit to the dictation of about three
hundred thousand of its citizens. The conspirators did not dream of
failure. They were sure, as they thought, of the Gulf States and of the
Border States, of the whole Slave Power, in fact. They also felt sure
of that large minority in the Free States which had formerly acted with
them, and obeyed their most humiliating behests. They therefore entered
the Congress of the nation with a confident front, knowing that
President Buchanan and the majority of his Cabinet were practically on
their side. Before Mr. Lincoln could be inaugurated they imagined they
could accomplish all their designs, and make the Government of the
United States a Pro-Slavery power in the eyes of all the nations of the
world. Mr. Calhoun's paradoxes had heretofore been indorsed only by
majorities in the national legislature and by the Supreme Court. What a
victory it would be, if, by threatening rebellion, they could induce
the people of the United States to incorporate those paradoxes into
the fundamental law of the nation, dominant over both Congress and the
Court! All their previous "compromises" had been merely legislative
compromises, which, as their cause advanced, they had themselves
annulled. They now seized the occasion, when the "people" had risen
against them, to compel the people to sanction their most extreme
demands. They determined to convert defeat, sustained at the polls, into
a victory which would have far transcended any victory they might have
gained by electing their candidate, Breckinridge, as President.

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