LIBRARY OF CONGRESS i| QDDD3SD5t,37 (fi •. %.^^ .'M^« \/ .^:i^\ %..*^ ,V "*i ,v*^ ' *^^*^ f -^oV* ^^. ;T* A y ..^'J. ^- ^ot^ ♦ ^> i^*^ Vt^ ^*'* .A o ^^ 9^ ^sT^. ciV ^ %^.^^iid com- passion. We have told it, much too often, that its Confederacy was easy to found. To found, yes ; to make lasting, no. Here, it is not the first step that costs — it is the second, it is the third. The South- ern Confederacy is not viable. Let us suppose that, PEOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. I5l to its misfortune, it has succeeded in all that it lias just undertaken : Charleston is free, the border States are drawn in, there is a new federal compact and a new President, the Northern States have of ne- cessity abandoned the suppression of the insurrec- tion by force, Europe has surmounted its repugnance and received the envoys of the great Slave republic. xVll questions seem resolved ; but no, not a single one has attained its solution. The policy of the South must have its applica- tion. Its first article, wdiether it declares it or not, exacts conquests, the absorption of Mexico, for ex- ample. The fillibusters of Walker are still ready to set out, and the first moment past, when the ques- tion is to appear discreet, it is scarcely probable that the}^ v/ill meet with much restraint, now that the prudence of the Xorth is no longer at hand to counterbalance the passions of Slavery. Admit that this enterj^rise bring no difficult complications. For these new territories, the ques- tion wdll be to procure negroes. The second article of the Southern j^olicy will find then nolens volens^ its inevitable application : the African slave trade will be re-established. The richest planter of Georgia, Mr. Goulden, has taken care to set forth its necessity ; mark the language which he held 152 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. lately: "You have hardly negroes en o ugh for the existing States ; obtain the opening of the slave trade, then you can undertake to increase the num- ber of slave States." Will the official re-opening of the slave trade be some day effected without bringing on a storm which will destroy the new Confederacy ? I can- not say. In any case, I know one thing: that the value of the slaves, and consequently that of South- ern property, will experience a decline greatly ex- ceeding that by which it is now threatened, as it is said, by the abolition tendencies of the ^N'orth. Al- ready, through the mere fact of secession, the price of neirroes has diminished one-half; and more than one intelligent planter foresees the time when this price shall have diminished three-fourths, perhaps nine- tenths. Southern fortunes are falling off, therefore, with extreme rapidity, and this arises not only from the anticipated effects of the slave trade, but also from the certainty of being unable henceforth to put a stop to the escape of the slaves. These escapes, taken all in all, remained insignificant, so long as the Union was maintained ; there are not more than fifty thousand free negroes in Canada. But hence- forth the Southern Confederacy will have a Canada everywhere on its frontiers. How retain that slavery PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 153 tliat will escape simultaneously on the North and the South? The Southern republic will be as it were the common enemy, and no one assuredly will aid it to keep its slaves. It must not be believed, moreover, that it will succeed long in preserving itself from intestine divisions — divisions among the whites. If, at the first moment, when every thing is easy, unanimity is far from appearing as complete as had been fore- told, it will, later, be much worse. We shall then perceive how prophetic, if I may dare say so, were the often-quoted words of Washington's farewell ad- dress : "It is necessary that you should accustom yourselves to regard the Union as the palladium of your happiness and your security ; that you should watch over it with a jealous eye ; that you should impose silence on any who shall ever dare coimsel you to renounce it ; that you should give vent to all your indignation on the first efibrt that shall be attempted to detach from the whole any part of the Confederation." A very difierent voice, that of Jefferson, spoke the same language. A Southern man, addressing himself to the South, which talked already of se- ceding, he described in thrilling words the inevi- table consequences of such an act : "If, to rid our- 154 PEOBAOiLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. selves of the present supremacy of Massaclmsetts and Connecticut, we were to break up tlie Union, would tlie trouble stop there? . . . "We should soon see a Pennsylvanian party and a Yirginian party forming in what remained of the Confedera- tion, and the same party spirit would agitate public opinion. By what new weapons would these par- ties be armed, if they had power to threaten each other continually with joining their I^orthern neigh- bors, in case things did not go on in such or such a manner ! If we were to reduce our Union to ]N"ortli Carolina and Virginia, the conflict would break out again directly between the representatives of these two States ; we should end by being reduced to simple unities." Is not this the anticipated history of what is about to happen in the Southern Confederacy, sup- posing it to succeed in uniting with a part of the border States ? The opening programme will last as long as programmes usually do. AVhen the true plan of the South, veiled for a moment, shall reappear, (and it must indeed reappear, un- less it perishes before it has begun to exist ;) when the question shall be to increase and be peo- pled, to make conquests and to reestablish the Af- rican slave trade ; when the serious purpose, in a PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CEISIS. 155 word, shall have replaced the pm*pose of circum- stance, what will take place between the border States and the cotton States? The profound dis- tinction which exists between them will then man- ifest itself, even if it does not break forth before. A new South and a new North will be formed, as hostile perhaps as the old, and less forgiving tow- ards each other of their mutual faults, inasmuch as they will be embittered by misfortune. Nothing divides peoj)le like a bad cause that turns out badly. They think themselves united, they call themselves united, until the moment when they discover that they have neither the same end nor the same mind. I do not see why the victory of Mr. Lincoln will have transformed the South, and suppressed the divergencies which separated it into two groups : that of the Gulf States voting for Mr. Breckenridge, that of the border States voting for Mr. Douglas or Mr. Bell, and even casting ballots for Mr. Lincoln. Not only will the Gulf States, the only true se- cessionists, never act in concert with the border States, but they will not be long in seeing parties spring up in their own bosom, which will be little disposed to come to terms. A sort of feudal ques- tion, as is well known, is near obtaining a position 156 PKOBABLE CONSEQUEKCES OF THE CRISIS. in the South ; the foor whites there are two or three times as numerous as the planters. The struggle of classes may, therefore, break out as soon as the effected secession shall have banished to the second rank the struggle against the adver- saries of slavery. The impoverishment of the South will not aid in calming its intestine quarrels. European immi- gration, already so meagre in the slave States, (Charleston is the only large American city whose population has decreased, according to the last cen- sus,) European immigration, I say, will evidently diminish still more when the South shall have taken an independent and hostile position op2)osite the Northern" States. Who will go then to expose him- self lightly to the fearful chances which the first war with any country, American or European, may bring in its train ? And credit will go the same way as immigration : to lend money to planters, whose entire property is continually menaced with destruction, is one of those hazardous oj)erations from which commerce is accustomed to recoil. Dejn-ived of the capital furnished it by ITew York, obtaining only with great difficulty a few onerous and precarious advances in Euroj)e, the South will see itself smitten at once in all its means of produc- PKOBABLE COXSEQUEXCES Oi' THE CRISIS. 157 tion ; and, after tlie harvest of 1860, wliicli secures oui' supplies of cotton for a year, it is difficult to divine how it will set about continuing its culti- vation. At the same time that it will produce less cotton, and' that we shall lose the habit of buying of it, the cotton culture will become accli- mated elsewhere ; the future will thus be destroyed like the present ; final ruin will approach with hasty strides. They tell us of a loan that the new Confeder- acy designs to contract ! Unless it be transformed into a forced loan, I have little faith in its chance. Tliey add that it will be only necessary to estab- lish on exported cotton a duty of a few cents per pound, and the coffers of the South will be filled. But, in the first place, to export cotton, they must produce it — they must have money ; it is almost impossible that the State should be rich w^hen all its citizens are in distress ; then the exportation itself will be exposed to some difficulties if the United States organize a blockade. And I say nothing of the bad effect that will be produced by this tax d la Turqiie — this tax on exportation in the very midst of plans of commercial freedom. Neither do I speak of the effect which this extra charge, which is termed trifling, but which is, in 158 PKOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. fact, considerable, will liave on the sale of American cotton, already so defective, when compared with the average price of other cottons. Poor country, which blind passion, and, above all, indomitable pride, precipitates into the path of crime and misery ! Poor, excommnnicated nation, whose tonch will be dreaded, wdiose flag will be suspected, whose continually increasing humilia- tions will not even be compensated by a few mea- gre profits ! The heart is oj)pressed at the thought of the clear, certain, inevitable future, which awaits so many men, less guilty than erring. Between them and the rest of the world there will be noth- ing longer in common ; they will establish on their frontier a police over books and journals, essaying to prevent the fatal introduction of an idea of lib- erty : the rest of the world will have for them nei- ther political sympathies, nor moral sympathies, nor religious sympathies. Will they at least have the consolation of having killed the United States ? Will a glorious confed- eration have perished by their retreat? No, a thousand times no. Even though they should suc- ceed in drawing the border States into the Southern Confederacy, the United States, thank God ! will keep their rank among nations. Where will the PKOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CKISIS. 159 United States be after secession ? Where thej were before ; for a long time the gravitation of their power has been tending towards the Northwest. The true America is there, that of ancient traditions, and that of present reality. If any serious fears might have been conceived as to its duration, they disappeared on the day of the election of Mr. Lin- coln. On that day, we all learned that the United States w^ould subsist, and that their malady was not mortal. Great news was this ! Did yon ever ask your- self how much would be missing here on earth if such a people should disappear? It lives and it will live. Loolv at the calm and confident air of the l^orth, and compare it with the noisy violence of the South. The Xorth is so sure of itself that it does not deign either to become angered, or to has- ten ; it even carries this last to extremes. It has the air of knowing that, in spite of the apparent successes which may mark the first efforts of the South, the final success must be elsewhere. Let the South take care ! to have against it both right and might is twice as much as is needed to be beaten. The !N'orth supported Mr. Buchanan be- cause it was awaiting Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln came, the ITorth still has patience, but will end 160 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. by falling into line, and the serious struggle will begin, in case of need. Tlie issue of this struggle can scarcely be doubt- ful. On one side, I see a confederacy divided, im- poverished, bending under the weight of a crushing social problem, seeing constantly on its horizon the menace of insurrections and of massacres, unable either to negotiate, or to draw the sword, or to re- solve any of the difficulties from without, without thinking of the still more formidable difficulties from within ; on the other side, I see the United States, masters of themselves, mianimous, knowing what they want, and placing at the service of a noble cause, a power which is continually increasing. The match will not be equal. I cannot help believing, therefore, that the triumph of the N^orth will be even much more complete than we imagine to-day. I do not know what is to happen, but this I know : the North is more populous, richer, more united; European immigration goes only to t];c North, European capital goes only to the North. Of what elements is the population of the South composed? The first six States that proclaimed their separation number exactly as many slaves as freemen. What a position ! Is it probable indeed that this confederation contrary to nature, in which PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 161 each white will be charged with guarding a black, can afford a long career? The South, divided, weakened, bearing in its side the continually bleed- ing wound of slavery, reduced to choose in the end between the direful plans which must destroy after having dishonored it, and the Union which consoli- dates its interests while thwarting its passions — is it possible that the South will not return to the Union ? Something tells me that if the Union be dis- solved, it will be formed again. A lasting separation is more difficult than is imagined. Face to face with Europe, face to face with the United States, the great republic of the South would find it too difficult to live. To live at peace is impossible ; to live without peace is not to be thought of. The great Southern republic must perish surely by its failure, and still more surely by its success, for this monstrous success will draw down its destruc- tion. There is in America a necessity, as it were, of union. Unity is at the foundation, diversity is only on the surface ; unity is bound up with the national life itself, with race, origin, belief, common destiny, a like degree of civilization, in a word, with pro- found and permanent causes ; diversity proceeds from the accidents of institutions. 162 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. Looking only at the province of interests, is it easy to imagine an irremediable rupture between JSTew York and Charleston, between the valley of the Mississippi and 'New Orleans ? What would the valley of the Mississippi be without l!^ew Orleans, and "New Orleans, isolated from the vast country of which it is the natural market ? Can you fancy 'New York renouncing half her commerce, ceasing to be the broker of cotton, the necessary medium between the South and Europe? Can you fancy the South deprived of the intervention and credit which New York assures her ? The dependence of the Korth and the South is reciprocal ; if the South produces the cotton, it is the North which furnishes the advances, then purchases on its own account or on commission, and expedites the traffic with Europe. In the United States, every part has need of the whole ; agricultural States, manufac- turing States, commercial States, they form together one of the most homogeneous countries of which I know. I should be surprised if such a country were destined to become forever dismembered, and that, too, at an epoch less favorable to the dismem- berment of great nations than to the absorption of small ones. Shall I say all that I think? When Anglo- PEOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 163 Saxons are in question, we Latins are apt to deceive ourselves terribly ; one wonlcl not risk much, per- haps, in supposing that events would take place precisely in the reverse of our hypothesis. We have loudly predicted in Europe the end of the United States, the birth and progress of a rival Confederacy, an irremediable separation : is not this a reason for supposing that there will be ul- timately neither a prolonged separation, nor a rival Confederacy worthy of consideration ? Free coun- tries, especially those of the English race, have a habit of which we know little : their words are exceedingly violent, and their actions exceedingly circumspect. They make a great noise : one would say that every thing was going to destruction ; but it is prudent to look at them more closely, for these countries of discussion are also countries of com- promise, the victors are accustomed to terminate political crises by yielding something of their vic- tory ; in appearance, it is true, rather than in reality. Fully decided at heart, they consent willingly to appear less positive in form. Here, I know that the extreme violence of the South renders a compromise very difficult, at least a present compromise. As it is accustomed to rule, and will be content with no less, as it knows that 164 PEOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. the ]N"ort]i, decidedly emancipated, will not replace its head beneath the yoke, it seems resolved to in- cur all risks rather than renounce its fixed idea. For two months, the probabilities of compromise have been becoming constantly weaker. But if we have scarcely a right to count on them now, so far as the Gulf States are concerned, we must remember that the border States are at hand, that they are hesitating between the North and the South, and that certain concessions may be made to them, to prevent their separation. Such is the true character of the discussions relating to compromise. Confined to these limits, they nevertheless possess a vast interest, for the party which the border States are abont to choose, and that to which they will perhaps attach them- selves afterwards, will have a great influence over the general course of the crisis. The point in ques- tion is no longer, doubtless, to retain Virginia, whose well-known passions impel her to the side of Charleston, but to induce the other States to take an attitude in conformity with their interests and their duties. It will not, therefore, be useless to give an account of the disposition that prevails among many Americans with respect to com- promise. PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CKISIS. 165 What was produced by that Peace Conference, convoked with so much noise by Yirginia, the ancient political State, the country of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe ? Nothing worth the trouble of mentioning. A considerable number of States refused to be present at this conference, which, had it been general, would have become transformed into a convention, and have annulled Congress, in point of fact, then in session in the same city ? Its plan, accepted with great difficulty by a factitious majority, never appeared to have much chance of adoption. The point in question, above all, was to decide that, below a fixed latitude, the majority of the inhabitants of a Territory could not prohibit the introduction of slavery, (disguised, rt is true, un- der the euphuistic expression, *' involuntary servi- tude ; " ) this measure was to be declared irrevo- cable, unless by the unanimous consent of the States. Despite the support of Mr. Buchanan, and that of the higher branches of trade in 'New York, seconded, as usual, by some fashionable circles of Boston, the almost unanimous public opinion of the North forbade all belief in the success of such an amendment to the Constitution, which, in accord- ance with the Constitution itself, could be adopted only on condition of uniting two-thirds of the votes 166 PEOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. of Congress to the affirmative votes of three-fourths of the States composing the Confederation. Another project was pnt forward : all the mem- bers of Congress were to tender their resignation, and the new elections were to manifest the defini- tive will of the country on the question of slavery. That is, from the intense excitement of the country, were to be demanded some final elements of reac- tion, some means of disavowing the election of Mr. Lincoln. In either case, it would have been thus proved by an exceptional act that an election which is not ratified by the South may rightfully demand extraordinary measures. ]^ow, there is nothing but what is customary, simple, and right, i the conduct of the North ; it knows it, and will not, I think, permit such an advantage to be gained over it. To allow talking, to allow propositions, and to go its own way, this is the programme to which it is bound to remain faithful. "What makes its honor makes also its strength : this is the privilege of good causes. ^ The North has not sought bases for a compro- mise. They are all laid down, and I dare affirm, whatever may happen, that these bases, constantly the same, are those to which it will not fail to re- turn. To speak truly, it has but one declaration to PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 167 make : to proclaim anew the constitutional law, by virtue of wliicli each State sovereignly decides its own affairs, and consequently excludes all interfer- ence of Congress in the matter of slavery. Perhaps it will join, if need be, to this declaration, which it has never refused, the promise to respect to the ut- most of its power, the principle of the restitution of fugitive slaves, which, unhappily, is also based upon the Constitution. But, on this point, promises are worth what they will fetch, for doubtless no one will imagine that it is easier to constrain the free States to accomplish an odious deed which is revolt- ing to their conscience since they have verified their strength by electing Mr. Lincoln. Lastly, upon the ruling question, that of the Territories, the theory of the l^orth evinces justice and clearness ; between the ultra abolitionists, who wish Congress to interfere to close by force all the Territories to slavery, and the South, which wishes Congress to interfere to open by force all the Territories to sla- very, it adopts this middle position : all the inhab- itants of the Territojies shall open or close them to slavery, according to their will. It is the right of the majority, recognized there as elsewhere. I am not ignorant that Mr. Seward has gone much farther in the path of concession, and it is 168 PKOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. not absolutely impossible that these counsels of weakness may prevail. We must be prepared for any thing in this respect. l!^evertheless, the Presi- dent has by no means confirmed the imprudent words of his future prime minister. The language of Mr. Lincoln has been remarkably clear. In his inaugural speech, to go no further back, he indi- cates expressly the true, the great concession that will be made to the South : "■ Those who elected me placed in the platform presented for my accept- ance, as a law for them and for me, the clear and explicit resolution which I am about to read to you : ' The maintenance intact of the right of the States, and especially of the right which each State possesses to regulate and exclusively control its institutions according to its own views, is essential to that balance of power, on which depend the perfection and duration of our political structure ; and we denounce the invasion in contempt of the law by an armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, upon whatever pretext it may be, as the greatest of crimes.' " Mr. Lincoln adds further ; " Congress has adopted an amendment to the Con- stitution, which, however, I have not seen, tlie purpose of which is to provide that the Federal Gov- ernment shall never interfere in the domestic insti- PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CKISIS. 169 tutioiis of tlie States, including those which relate to persons held in service. In order to avoid all misunderstanding concerning what I have said, I depart from my intention of not speaking of any amendment in particular, to say that, considering this clause henceforth as a constitutional law, I have no objection that it be rendered explicit and irrevocable." Concerning fugitive slaves, the inaugural dis- course cites the text of the federal Constitution, which decides the question for the present ; but he does not ignore the fact that this constitutional de- cision is as well executed as it can be, " the moral sense of the people lending only an imperfect sup- port to the law." As to the Territories, Mr. Lincoln declares clearly that the minority must submit to the ma- jority, under penalty of falling into complete anar- chy. IN'either does he hesitate on the subject of the decisions of the Supreme Court ; these decrees, in his eyes, are merely special decisions rendered in particular cases, and detracting nothing from the right which the Confederation possesses to reg- ulate its institutions and its policy. All this is very firm, without being provoking. The limit of concessions is marked out, and a con- 8 170 PEOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. ciliatory spirit is maintained. It is above all in disclosing his line of condnct towards the rebellions States, that Mr. Lincoln happily resolves the prob- lem of abandoning none of the rights of the Con- federation, while manifesting the mosi pacific disposition, and leaving to others the odium of aggression. His doctrine on this point may be summed up in this wise : in the first place, the separation is unconstitutional, it should be, it will be combated, nothing on earth can bring the Pres- ident to accede to the destruction of the Union ; in the second place, he will not be the aggressor, he will endeavor to shun a war which exposes the South to fearful j^erils ; in the third place, he will fulfill the duty of preserving federal property and collecting federal taxes in the South. In other terms, he will employ the means which should have been employed on the first day, and which would have then been more efficacious. He will attempt the establishment of a maritime blockade, in order to reduce the rebellion of the whites without pro- voking the insurrection of the negroes. Already, the vessels of war have been recalled from distant stations. Alas ! I have little hope that the pre- cautions dictated to Mr. Lincoln by prudence and humanity will bear their fruits. The South raises PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 171 an army and is about to attack Fort Sumter, knowing that it will thus expose itself to a for- midable retribution. Mr. Lincoln, in fact, has not left it in ignorance of this : " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-citizens, in yours and not mine, is found the terrible question of civil w^ar. The Government will not attack you ; you will have no conflict, if you are not the aggressors. You have not, on your part, an oath registered in heaven to- destroy the Government ; whilst I, on m.y side, am about to take the most solemn oath to maintain, to protect and defend it." Such is the respective position. Men will agi- tate, are agitating already, about the new President, to take away from his thoughts and designs this resolute character which makes their force. They attempt to demonstrate to him, not only that Fort Sumter, so easy to revictual under Mr. Buchanan, has now become inaccessible to aid, and that no other course remains than to authorize its surrender; but that Fort Pickens itself should be surrendered to the South, in order to reserve every chance of reconciliation and in no degree to assume the re- sponsibility of civil war ! I hope that Mr. Lincoln will know how to resist these enfeebling influences. After having demonstrated to him that it is neces- 172 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. sary to deliver np the forts, they will demonstrate to him that it is necessary to renounce the block- ade, which is not tenable without the forts; then, who knows? they will demonstrate to him finally that it is necessary to sign some disgraceful com- promise, and submit almost to the law of the rebels. Once more, it is prudent to foresee every thing, and it is for this that I mention such things. I count, moreover, on their not being realized. In electing Mr. Lincoln, the United States decided thus : Slavery will make no more conquests. What they have decided, they will ultimately maintain, even though they should have the air of abandoning it. They have respected and they will respect the sovereignty of the States ; upon this point they will give all the guarantees that may be desired, and Congress, we have seen, has already voted an amendment to the Constitution, designed to offer this basis of compromise. But it is improbable that they will go beyond this ; the North must feel that, of all ways of terminating the present crisis, the most fatal would be the disavowal of principles and the desertion of the flag. The compromises that promise any thing more than respect for the sovereignty of the States in the PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 173 matter of slavery, promise more than they could perform ; every one feels this, in the South as in the I^orth. The policy of the South forms a whole of which nothing subsists if any thing be re- trenched, and above all if the complicity of the Government ceases to be assured to it. On the day that the South accepts any compromise whatever, it will have renounced, not the maintenance doubt- less, but the propagation of slavery ; it will have renounced its rule. Compromises, (there w^ill be such, perhaps, let us swear to nothing ; before or after the war, with the entire South, or with a part of it,) compromises will be signed henceforth with- out any delusion. The South knows, marvellously well, that these compromises will bear little resem- blance to those signed in former times. Those marked, by their constantly increasing pretension, the upward march of the South ; these will mark the phases of its decline. How many changes which can never be retraced ! 'No more conquests to promote slavery, no more reopening of the Afri- can slave trade, no more impunity secured to those numerous slave-ships which daily, to the knowledge and in the sight of all, for years past, have quitted the ports of the Confederation ; no more chance of equalling, by the creation and popu- 174 PKOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CKISIS. lation of new Sta-tes, tlie rapid development of the JSTortli ; liencefortli the question is ended, the South must he resigned to it: the majority of the free States will become such that it can be contested neither in the House of Representatives, nor in the Senate, nor in the presidential election; the su- premacy resides at the JN'orth, the programme of the South is rent in a thousand pieces. Against this, all the compromises in the world can do nothing. If Mr. Lincoln is the first Presi- dent opposed to slavery, Mr. Buchanan is the last President favorable to slavery ; the American poli- cy is henceforth fixed. Peflect, in fact, on what these four years of government will produce. The result is so enormous, that, unhappily, one might be tempted to say at Washington : " We will do all that is wished, provided we preserve the handling of aff'airs." Tlie power of a President is doubtless inconsid- erable, but his advent is that of a party. This party is about to renew all administrations, great and small ; the same majority which has elected him will modify before long the tendencies of the courts ; in fine, the general affairs of the Union will be managed in a new spirit. It was advancing in one direction, it is about to move in the opposite. PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 175 Mr. Lincoln is not one to shut his eyes on filibus- tering attempts to strive to take Cuba for the sla- very party, to permit States to be carved out of Mexico, and others to be made ready by subdi- viding Texas. The process which is about to be accomplished reminds me of the measures taken to combat a vast conflagration : the first thing done is to circumscribe its locality. At the end of the four years t>f Mr. Lincoln's administration, the flames which threatened to de- vour the Union will be completely hemmed in. Considering the United States as a whole, and in- dependently of the incidents of separation, we are justified in believing that the respective number of free and of slave States will leave no chance for the ulterior extension of a great scourge. Do we delude ourselves by thinking that the prog- ress already begun in the border States will have been accelerated in its course, and that many of them w^ill have freely passed over to the side of liberty? Is it certain, moreover, that the hesitation of some of the churches w^ill have ceased, and that the infiuence of the Gospel, so decisive in America, will have finally placed itself entire at the service of the good cause ? Let there be a compromise or not, let the great 176 PBOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CEISI8. secession of the Soutli be prevented or not, one fact remains settled from this time : the United States were tottering on their base, they have regained their equilibrium ; the deadly perils which they lately incurred from the plans of conquest of tlie South and the indefinite extension of slavery, are at length conjured down ; they have no longer to ask whether, some day, the South having grown be- yond measure, secession must not be eifected by the !N"orth, leaving in the hands of the slaveholders the glorious name and the starry banner of the Union. I think that I have gone over the whole series of hypotheses which offer any probability. I have been careful to adopt none of them, for I make no pretension, thank God, to read the future. It would be puerile to prognosticate what will hap- pen, and not less puerile, perhaps, to describe it from what has happened. In the face of the acci- dents in different directions which are attracting public attention and filling the columns of newspa- pers, I have attempted to make a distinction be- tween what may happen and what must endure. Tlie lasting consequences of the present crisis are what I proposed to investigate faithfully. The reader knows what are my conclusions. It may be that it will end in the adoption of some blamable PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 177 compromise ; but whatever may be inscribed in it, tlie election of Mr. Lincoln has just written in the margin a note that will annul the text. Tiie time for certain concessions is past, and the South has no more doubts of it than the North. It may ])e that the slave States will succeed in founding ilieir deplorable Confederacy, but it is impossible tiiat they should succeed in making it live ; they will perceive that it is easier to adopt a compact or to elect a President, than to create, in truth, in the face of the nineteenth century, the national- ity of slavery. I have, therefore, the right to affirm that, what- ever may be the appearances and incidents of the moment, one fact has been accomplished and will subsist : the United States were perishing, and are saved. Yes, whatever may be the hypothesis on which we pause, three new and decisive facts ap- pear to our eyes : we know that the North hence- forth has the mastery ; we know that the perils which threaten the Union came from the South and not from the North ; we know that the days of the " patriarchal institution" are numbered. Beneath these three facts, it is not difficult to perceive the uprising of a great people. The victory of the North, the consciousness 8* 178 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. which it has of its strength and of its fixed resohi- tion, whatever may be the appearances to the con- trary, to circumscribe an evil which was ready to overflow on every side, is the first fact ; there is no need to return to it. As to the second, Carolina and Georgia have charged themselves with bringing it to light. They have proved by their acts that abolitionism had been calumniated in accusing it of menacing the unity of the United States. The secessionist pas- sions have shown themselves in the other camp ; there, upon the mere news of a regular election, have been sacrificed unhesitatingly the greatness,- and, it would seem, the very existence of the country. The proclamations from Charleston, and the shots fired on the Federal flag, have apprised us of what intelligent observers suspected already : that the States for which slavery had become a passion and almost a mission, must some day experience the need of procuring to such a cause the security of isolation. And in acting in this wise, these States, strange to say, have themselves stated the problem of abo- lition. No one thought of it, it may be said ; every one respected the constitutional limits of their sovereignty. They would not have it thus ; they PEOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 179 carried the question into tlie territory of Federal right and Federal relations ; they exclaimed : "Se- cure the extension of slavery, and perish the United States ! " If the United States had per- ished, there would not have been maledictions deep enough for those who had committed such a crime. The United States will not perish ; but they will long remember with gratitude what they owe to the secessionists of 1860. When the hour of eman- cipation shall have struck, and it will strike some day, the secessionists of 1860 will not j)robably speak of their rights to indemnity ; they have just given a quittance of it in cannon balls. The third fact remains : Is it true that, in all the hypotheses, the cause of the negroes has just real- ized such progress that the ultimate issue of the contention can no longer be doubtful ^ This is most obvious. Let there be separation or not, sla- very has just entered upon the road which leads to abolition, more or less rapid, but infallible. If there be no separation, this immense progress will be effected with more wisdom and slowness ; vio- lent means will be averted, the benevolent influence of the Gospel will pave the way for progressive and peaceful transformation by preaching, to the shaves as to the masters, more of their duties than 180 PROBAJBLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. of their rights. If there be separation, emancipa- tion will be accomplished much more qnickly and more calamitously. Servile war will break out ; ultra abolitionism, to which hitherto the prudence of the North has refused all real credit, will be no longer restrained by the prudence of a people desi- rous of shunning bloody catastrophes ; sustained by the increasing animosity which will inflame the two Confederacies against each other, it will find means of introducing into the South appeals to revolt, and will multiply expeditions like that of John Brown. But let us leave these generalities, and examine nearer by, from the stand-point of emancipation, the four or five hypotheses which we have signalled out most plainly, and between which seem to lie the chances of the future. I shall examine first of all the one whose realiza- tion is evidently pursued by the able men of the ex- treme South. The question is, after having speedily gained over the l^orth, thanks to Mr. Buchanan, to arrive as quickly as possible at something which shall have the appearance and authority of a fact accomplished. Audacity, and again audacity ; upon this point, the politic and the violent meet in unison to-day. Tt has seceded, it has invaded the Federal PEOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 181 property, it lias trumped up a government, it has given itself a President, it is about to have an army, it is already attempting to represent itself officially at the courts of the great powers. By the side of audacity, prudence has played its part. It has taken good care not to unfurl its flag, it has made itself small, modest, moderate, as much so, at least, as the passions of the mob would per- mit ; it asked nothing, in truth, but to live honestly in a corner of the globe. Who speaks, then, of conquests ? Who would wish to re-establish the African slave trade on a large scale ? Far from be- ing retrogrades, the men of the South' are cham- pions of progress ; witness their programme of commercial freedom ! Are there no honest men to be found in the Is'orth, to restrain Mr. Lincoln, and to prevent him from oppressing them ? Are there no governments in Europe that can interpose, and recommend the maintenance of peace ? Is not this peace, which prevents the insurrections of negroes, and the destruction of cotton, for the interest of all ? Why should there not be two Confederacies, living side by side, as good friends ? It is evident that the able party tend to this, and that the violent have allowed them to give, for the common interest, this subdued tone to the insurrec- 182 PKOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. tiouaiy movement. The able party know too well what war would be to desire it. They prepare for it in the hope, if not to avoid it, at least to postpone it for the present, and to obtain in behalf of Southern secession, that species of security which is confer- red in our times by the deed accomplished. Per- haps the United States, yielding to a sentiment which certainly has something honorable in it, wdll allow the Confederacy of the Gulf States to subsist, rather than crush it, which would be but too easy, by bringing upon it a war which would be accompanied by slave insurrections. Let us not be in haste to blame such a course ; let us remember that the w^hole world is prompting in this direction, that all the counsels given to Mr. Lincoln, in the Old World as in the New, begin invariably w^ith the words : " Strive to avoid civil war ; " let us remember also that, to solve the American problem, much more time w^ill be needed than we imagine in Europe ; let us en- deavor to put ourselves in the place of those who see things as they are, and who find themselves in a struggle with the difficulties. Patience will doubtless have here its great in- conveniencies ; the Confederacy of the cotton States, if tolerated, will seem the living proof of the right of separation ; it will be an asylum all prepared, in PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 183 which the discontented border States can take refuge at need. J^'evertheless the question is to tolerate this Confederacy, but by no means to recog- nize the legitimacy of the act which gave it birth ; the question is to make use of a generous forbear- ance, to which new threats of secession will neces- sarily put an end. Then, is it nothing to manifest a spirit of peace fitted to touch the most jDrejudiced, to bind the majority of the border States to the destinies of the Union, to give evidence of the dis- tinction which exists between them and the extreme South, to force them, in fine, to declare themselves ? If they surmount the present temptation, (and they will never encounter a stronger one,) if they consent to sacrifice their immediate interests, and to re- nounce the traffic in slaves, which is in danger of ceasing from day to day in case they do not join the " Confederate States ; " is such a resolution nothing ? does it contain no guarantees for the fu- ture ? We do not set foot in the right path with impunity ; honorable resolves always carry us fur- ther, thank God ! than we counted on going. Sup- pose even that the border States which refuse to unite with the South design to impose on the North certain vexatious conditions, they will be none the less turned from their former alliances, they will 184: PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CEISIS. have none the less begun to move in a new direc- tion. We should do wrong if we did not recognize how honorable is the conduct of several among them; in watching over their legislatures, in enacting that the vote of secession shall be submitted to the rati- fication of the whole people, certain frontier States seem to have already shown themselves resolved to foil the intrigues at Charleston. The cause of emancipation takes, therefore, a very important step in advance, in the hypothesis of a Southern Confederacy reduced, or nearly so, to the Gulf States alone. Limited secession is perhaps of all combinations, the one most favorable to the suppression of slavery. Picture to yourself, in fact, what this Southern Confederacy will be. It will be an impossible, short-lived republic, the separation of which will one day cease, and which, meanwhile, will be incapable of realizing any of its favorite projects. From the first hour, the extreme South found itself brought to face a dilemma : either to draw in all the slave States, and then to await the 'Moment favorable to the execution of its grandilo- quent plans, to hasten towards its destiny, its ideal, to conquer territories, to people them with negroes, and to perish through the accomplishment of an impious work ; or, to remain alone and undertake PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 185 nothing, and still perish, but this time through im- potence to exist. What is to be done when there is only the miserable Confederacv of some tlK)usand whites, the owners and keepers of some hundred thousand blacks ? Make conquests ? Tliey dare not. Open the slave trade ? It would draw down destruction upon them. !N^ow, mark that, in the bosom of a Confederacy morally isolated from the entire world, receiving aid neither from immigrants nor capital, deprived, in a large part at least, of the fresh supply of negroes which it formerly drew from the North, unable even to incur the risk of imitating Spain, which buys free negroes from the slave-hunters of the African continent, not in a condition to stop the escapes which will take place on all her frontiers, the question of slavery will proceed necessarily towards its solution. The extreme South, strange to say, will find itself placed ]3rovidentially as an obstacle between the United States and the coun- tries of which it lately meditated the acquisition. The United States will have the advantage of being unable even to think of Cuba, or Central America, or Mexico ; they will be delivered for a time from these baleful temptations, and from the States in which they met the warmest support. And, during 186 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. this time, the extreme South will be forced, in some sort, to look at the problem of slavery under an as- pect before unknown to it. Later will come the shock, the postponed but inevitable conflict. Blockaded at the South, blockaded at the JSTorth, blockaded on the African side, undermined and torn by its intestine divi- sions, the extreme South will have to face, at one time or another, the irresistible power of the United States. Does any one imagine by chance that the latter will forever relinquish "New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico ? The more they become elevated and strengthened, the more they will be led, say rather, forced, to absorb again the portions of their former domain which have attempted to exist with- out them. From this time, the discussion relative to slavery will assume in the United States a simple and de- cided bearing. The extreme South, in quitting them, will have given them every facility ; it will have endowed them with political homogeneousness and liberal majorities. By the mere effect of the departure of the senators and representatives of the extreme South, the party opposed to slavery will have acquired, at the outset, the numerical ma- jority which it lacked in Congress ; it will be in a PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CKISIS. 18T position to ensure the passage of its bills, to form its administration, to constitute by degrees courts in every respect favorable to its principles. Next, the border States who shall not have followed the fortunes of the extreme South will find themselves bound to those of the North, associated with its in- terests, open to its ideas ; and it is a fixed fact that several will not be long in completing the work of liberty already begun among them, and thus be- coming, with their rich and extensive Territories, of the number of those fortunate States in which the suppression of slavery gives the signal for the fruit- ful invasion of immigrants, for agricultural prog- ress, for wealth, and for credit. In this manner the " patriarchal institution " will disappear peace- ably from the intermediate region, while it will be threatened by more terrible shocks in the tropical region. This is a chance which is common to limited and to total secession, but which is still more una- voidable in the last. Face to face with the miser- able Confederacy of the extreme South, the United States can afford to be patient ; face to face with the Confederacy comprising all the slave States, (or, which means the same, face to face with two distinct Confederacies, comprising, the one the cotton States, 188 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. the other the border States, yet united against the North through an old instinct of complicity,) the attitude of the United States, as every one foresees, will inevitably be more hostile. Total secession it- self can be born only from a sentiment of declared hostility ; it amounts to a declaration of war. Sup- pose that Mr. Lincoln rejects the advice of those of his cabinet Avho wish him to accept the fact of secession ; suppose that, while treating the South with gentle- ness, and striving to spare it the horrors of an armed strife, he persists in protecting the rights of the Confederation, and securing to it, by a maritime blockade, the collection of taxes ; suppose that the blockade is organized from South Carolina to the Kio Grande, supported by Forts Pickens, Jefferson, and Taylor, which will have been revictualled at all costs after the forced evacuation of Fort Sumter ; suppose that, in this manner, watch is kept over the ports of Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and 'New Orleans, may it not happen that the insurrectional government at Montgomery will decide to effect a march on Washington ? Is it not probable that North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland will allow themselves to be crossed without saying a word ? More than this, are we not justified in believing that these States, and with them a considerable PKOB^iBLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CKISIS. 189 number of the central ones, rallied around their an- cient banner by the very approach of peril, will make common cause with the slave Confederacy ? In such a case, how avert the chances of a direful conflict ? Will the United States carry patience with respect to the aggressors, the fear of giving a signal of ruin, deference to the counsels lavished on them perhaps, so far as to refuse to return a violent attack, and to consent to the ravishment of their capital ? It is hard to believe. If the South make the attack, the war will break out, negro revolts will commence, and the border States will be exposed to the first blow. But admit that they succeed in preventing an immediate explosion, the mere fact of a total seces- sion, and of the formation of tv/o Confederacies, almost equal, (in appearance at least,) will permit no one to count on the prolonged preservation of peace. What repulsion, what grievances will be found in all relations, in all questions ! And from a grievance to war, from war to negro insurrections, what will be the distance, I ask ? The South will be then an immense powder magazine, to which the first spark will set fire. And the South will not lose its habits of arrogance, it will be quarrelsome as always. Has it not already announced in its journals that, on 190 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. the first encouragement given to its fugitive slaves, it will draw the sword ? ]^ow, such encouragement certainly will not be wanting. The South does not know at the present time how much the ISTorth, of which it complains, contributes to prevent the es- capes which it fears. The Federal Government is at hand to oppose them, in some measure at least. "When the preventive obstacle shall have disappear- ed, the South w^ill see with what rapidity its slavery will glide away on every point of its frontier; it will see its Jiapjpij negroes ready to brave a thou- sand perils rather than remain under its law. Alas I it will see many other j^i'oofs of their devotion to servitude. I do not like to bring bloody images, at which I shudder, too often before the eyes of the reader ; it must be said, notwithstanding, while it is yet time, that the general Confederacy of the South, intoxicated with its projects, resolved to increase its possessions, forced to demand from the African slave trade the means of repeopling its States, de- populated by escape, and to install slaver}^ into new territories, will draw upon it, not only the wrath of the United States, but the indignation of the entire world. And what misery, what ruin will ensue from the first conflict ! I like better to fix my thoughts on the third PKOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 191 hypothesis — that of a return to the now broken Union. Taught by experience, seeing how little w^eight it has in the world since its separation from the United States, poor, weak, divided, compre- hending the impossibility of realizing its true plans without exposing itself to calamities, los-ing its re- sources, one after another, even to the cultivation of cotton, which also demands credit and security, incapable of preventing the flight of its slaves, and not daring to brave that great power of public opinion which will interdict it the African trade, the Southern Confederacy, exhausted and dismayed, will perhaps one day prefer returning to the bosom of the Union, to plunging into the extremity of mis- fortune. In this case, again, the question of affran- chisement will have made vast strides. The United States will have taken a decided position in the absence of the South, which its return cannot de- stroy ; convictions will be fixed, the final impulse will have been given, and to this impulse, the South, come to repentance, will know that nothing is left it but to submit. Finally comes a last hypothesis, which I mention because it is necessary to foresee every possibility. Under the combined influence of the border States and the States of the North, equally desirous of 192 PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. maintaining the Union, the attempts of the extreme South will have failed, its secession will have lasted only a few months, and a compromise will have served to cover its retreat. But what compromise could compensate for a fact so important as the election of Mr. Lincoln? It has a deep significance which no compromise will remove ; it signifies that the conquests of slavery are ended. This proven, the future is easy to foresee: increasing majorities in the North, increasing disproportion of the two parts of the Confederation. At the end of the four years of a Lincoln administration, the slave States will have lost all hope of struggling, with their eight thousand whites charged with keeping four millions of blacks, against the twenty millions of citizens that inhabit the free States. Let us add that, the future once fixed and the question of preponderance once resolved, many passions will moderate by de- grees. The number of free States will increase, not only by the settling of new territories, but also by the affranchisement of the thinly scattered slaves, becoming continually more thinly scattered, of Mary- land, of Delaware, or of Missouri. We can even now describe this affranchisement, so well is the Ameri- can method known. It consists, as every one knows, in emancipating the children that are to be born. PEOBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS. 193 This is the method which has been uniformly ap- plied in the Northern States, and which will be doubtless applied some day in the border States, provided, however, civil war does not come to ac- complish a very different emancipation — emancipa- tion by the rising of the slaves. There will be nothing of this, I hope ; pacific progress will have its way. "We shall then see these intermediate States, one after the other, regaining life in the same time as liberty : they will become transformed as if touched by the wand of a fairy. Such are the future prospects which offer them- selves to us. If we remember, besides, the move- ment which is beginning to be wrought in the religious societies and the churches — a movement which cannot fail to be soon complete, we shall know on what to rely concerning the fate which awaits a social iniquity against which are at once conspiring the follies of its friends, and the indigna- tion of its foes. CHAPTEE IX. COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO KACES AFTER EMANCIPATION". Something more difficult to foresee than the suppression, henceforth certain, of slavery, is the consequence of this suppression. The problem of the coexistence of the two races rests at the present hour with a crushing weight on the thoughts of all ; it mingles poignant doubts with the hopes of some, it exasperates the resistance of others. Is it true that emancipation would be the signal of a struggle for extermination ? Is there not room upon Amer- ican soil for free blacks by the side of free whites ? I do not conceal from myself that there is here an accredited prejudice, an admitted opinion which, perhaps more than any thing else, trammels the progress of the United States. Let us attempt to estimate it. M. de Tocqueville, who has judged America with so sure an eye, has been, notwithstanding, THE TWO RACES AFl^EK EMANCIPATION. 195 mistaken upon some points ; his warmest admirers must admit it. Writing at an epoch when the great results of English emancipation had not jet been produced, he was led to frame that formi- dable judgment of which so much advantage has been taken : " Hitherto, wherever the whites have been the more powerful, they have held the negroes in degradation and slavery ; wherever the negroes have been the more powerful, they have destroyed the whites. This is the only account which can ever be opened between the two races." Another account is opened, thank God, and no one will rejoice at it more sincerely than M. de Tocqueville — he who is so generous, and whose abolition sentiments are certainly no mystery to any of his colleagues of the Chamber. But his opinion remains in his book, and every one re- peats after him, tliat the blacks and the whites can- not live together on the same soil, unless the latter be subject to the former. I repeat, that at the time at which he wrote, he had reason, or at least known facts gave him reason, to say this ; the liberty of the blacks had then but one name — St. Domingo. To-day, the victories of Christian emancipation have come, to contrast Avith the catastrophes provoked by impenitent despotism. 196 COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO RACES The English Colonies bear a striking analogy to the Southern States of the Union. The blacks there are numerous, more numerous even in pro- portion to the whites than in the Carolinas or Florida. The climate is even more scorching, and the cultures demand still more imperiously the la- bor of the blacks. As to the prejudices of the mas- ters, I dare affirm that the planters of the Continent and those of the Antilles have not long had any thing with which to reproach each other. Not- withstanding, what has happened in the Antilles ? Not only has liberty been proclaimed — this was the act of the metropolis — but the coexistence of races has subsisted. It is to this point that I claim at- tention. They, the whites and the blacks, alike free, invested with the same privileges, exercising the same rights, encountering each other in the ranks of the militia, in the magistracy, and even in the seats of the colonial assemblies, admirably ac- cept this life in common. And the whites there, observe, are Anglo-Saxons ; that is, they belong to that race which is declared incapable of enduring free blacks in its neighborhood. It is necessary to appeal sometimes from those axioms so boldly laid down, which serve us to make inflexible laws for that which must be subject in an AFTER EMANCIPATION. 197 infinite measure to the mobility of circumstances and influences. Tlie influence of the Gospel, especially, is a fact, the scope of which is never sufficiently measured. It has created in the Antilles a neo^ro population which maintains its equality face to face with the whites, yet which does not entirely reject their patronage ; a dependent population which is also a free population, free in the most absolute sense of the w^ord. The blacks of the Antilles la- bor on the plantations, and secure the success of large plantations ; but, at the same time, they them- selves become landholders, forming by degrees one of the happiest and most remarkable classes of peasants that ever existed. Their little fields, their pretty villages, manifest real prosperity ; and there is something among them that is worth more than prosperity, there is moral progress, the development of intellect, and the elevation of souls. It will be demanded of us if, in the midst of so much progress, the production of sugar has not sufiered. I answer that, on the contrary, it has in- creased. It had been predicted that emancipation would be a death-blow to the British colonies. I suspect that many people are even yet persuaded of it ; now, in spite of the faults committed by the planters, who have neglected nothing to disgust 198 COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO it ACES the neerroes with labor and to drive them from their old mills, thej are found to return to them, contenting themselves with wages that scarcely rise above an average of a shilling a day. If we com- pare the two last censuses of liberty with the two last years of slavery, we shall discover that the total production of sugar has increased in the colo- nies in which emancipation was effected in 1834. And they have not only had to endure this crisis of emancipation, but also another crisis still more formidable, that of the sudden introduction of free' trade in 1834. The colonial sugars, exposed to com- petition with the sugar produced at Havana and elsewhere by slave labor, experienced a prodigious decline. There was cause to believe that the pro- duction was about to be destroyed ; it has risen again, notwithstanding, and the English Antilles, with their free negroes and their unprotected sugar, forced to face entire liberty in all its forms, import to-day into the metropolis nearly a million more hogsheads than at the moment when the crisis of free trade broke forth. Liberty w^orks miracles. We always distrust her, and she replies to our suspicions by benefits. The English Antilles, which, during the last thirty years, have had to surmount, besides the two crises AFTEJS EMANCIPATION. 199 of emancipation and free trade, the earthquake of 1840 and six consecutive years of drought ; the English Antilles, which have had to liquidate their old debts, and to repair the ruin accruing from the failure of the bank of Jamaica, are now in an atti- tude which proves that they have no fears for the future and scarcely regret the past. Under slavery, the Antilles were hastening to their ruin ; with liberty, they have become one of the richest channels of exportation which England possesses ; under slavery, they could not have sup- ported the shock of free trade ; with liberty, they have gained this new battle : such are the net pro- ceeds of experience. If we still have doubts, let us compare Dutch Guiana, which holds slaves, to Eng- lish Guiana, which has emancipated them. The resources of these two countries are almost equal ; English Guiana is progressing, while the cultures of Surinam are forsaken ; three-fourths of its plan- tations are already abandoned, and the rest will follow. But the question of i^roiits and losses is not the only one here, I think, and after having computed the proceeds of sugar, after having shown that in this respect English emancipation is in rule, it is allowable to mention also another kind of result. 200 COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO KACES Look at these pretty cottages, this neat and almost elegant furniture, these gardens, this general air of comfort and civilization ; question these blachs, whose i^hysical appearance has become modified already under the influence of liberty, these blacks, who decreased rapidly in numbers during the epoch of slavery, and who have begun to increase, on the contrary, since their affranchisement ; they will tell us that they are happy. Some have be- come landowners, and labor on their own account, (this is not a crime, I imagine ;) others unite to strengthen large plantations, or perhaps to carry to the works of rich planters the canes gathered by them on their own grounds ; some are merchants, many hire themselves out as farmers. Whatever may be the faults of some individuals, the ensemble of free negroes has merited the testimony rendered in 1857 by the Governor of Tobago : '' I deny that our blacks of the country are of indolent habits. So industrious a class of inhabitants does not exist in the world." An admirable spectacle, and one which the his- tory of mankind presents to us too rarely, is that of a degraded population elevating itself more and more, and placing itself on a level with those who before despised it. Concubinage, so general in AFTEK EMAJS'CirATION. 201 times of servitude as to give rise to the famous axiom, ^' Negroes abhor marriage," is now replaced by regular unions. In becoming free, the negroes have learned to respect themselves : the unanimous reports of the governors mark the progress of their habits of sobriety. Crimes have greatly diminished among them. They are polite and well brought up, falling, even into the excess of exaggerated cour- tesy. They respect the aged : if an old man passes through the streets, the children rise and cease their play. These children are assiduously sent to schools, the support of which depends, in a great part, upon the voluntary gifts of the negroes. Grateful to the Gospel which has set them free, the former slaves have become passionately attached to their pastors ; their first resources are consecrated to churches, to schools, and sometimes, also, to distant missions, to the evangelization of that Africa which they re- member to do it good. We should be at once sur- prised and humiliated, were we to compare the much-vaunted gifts of our charity with those of these poor people, these freed men of yesterday, whom we think that we may rightfully treat with disdain. Thanks to the Gospel, and it is to this that I 9* 202 COEXISTEi^UE OF THE TWO RACES return, the j)roblem of the coexisteuce of races is resolved in the most pacific manner in the Antilles. Among freemen, however little these freemen may be Christianized, specific inequalities become speed- ily efiaced, and the prejudice of skin is not found to be ultimately as insurmountable as we have been told. In these English colonies, which are true republics, governing themselves, and which also remind us, through this feature, of the Southern States, the blacks have come to be accepted as fel- low-citizens. They practise the liberal professions ; they are electors and often elected, for they form of themselves alone one-fifth of the Colonial Assem- bly at Jamaica ; they are officers of the police and the militia, and their authority never fails to be recognized by all. I named Jamaica just now. Some may seek to bring it as an argument against me. The fact is, that this great island has seemed to form an exception to the general prosperity ; considerable fortunes have been sunk there, and the transformation has been slower and more pain- ful there than elsewhere. But, when they ami themselves with these circumstances, they forget two things : first, that the causes of the malady were anterior to emancipation ; next, that the cure has come from emancipation itself. Before eman- AFTER EMANCIPAllOiS'. 203 cipation, Jamaica was insolvent, lier plantations were mortgaged bejond their value, and its plant- ing was threatened in other ways far more than now. Do you know what has since happened? Difficulties which appeared insoluble have been resolved; to-day, the cape is doubled, and men navigate in peace. At the present time, Jamaica comprises two or three hundred villages, inhabited by free negroes ; the latter are willing to work ; for, according to the latest information, (February, 1861,) the price of daily labor decreases instead of rising. Among these free negroes, there are not less than ten thousand landholders, and three-eighths of the cultivated soil is in their hands. They have established sugar- mills everywhere, imperfect, rude, yet working in a passable manner ; and mills of this sort are numbered by thousands. The middle class of color thus grows richer day by day ; the families that compose it all own a horse or a mule ; they have their bank books and their accounts with the savings banks. Lastly, which is of more value than all else, the free negroes of Jamaica have built more than two hundred chapels, and as many schools. At the very moment when I write these lines, an enthusiastic religious movement is prevailing among them ; the rum-shops are aban- 204 COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO RACES doned, the most degraded classes enter in their turn the path of reformation. I should have been glad to cite our own colonies instead of confining myself to the English islands. I have been prevented from this, not only by the memory of the conflagrations of 1859 at Martinique, and of the state of siege which it became necessary to proclaim there, but, above all, by the circum- stance that the liberty of our former slaves has been too often restrained by means of the vagabond regulations, that labor has continued to be imposed on them to a certain point ; that the parcelling out of property has been trammelled by fiscal meas- ures ; that, moreover, it is less the labor of our for- mer slgives than of the Coolies and others employed, which has secured the success of our experiment ; whence it follows that this success is far from being as conclusive as that which has been obtained else- where under the system of full liberty. !N^everthe- less, our success, which is no less real, signifies something also. If we haA^e not yet those little free villages, that class of small negro landholders of which I just spoke, we have, like the English, free negroes in our militia and in our marine ; like them, we have had our elections, and all classes of the population have taken part in them ; like them, AFTER EMANCIPATION. 205 and perhaps in a greater degree, we have increased our sugar production since emancipation. It is true that the crisis of free trade has not yet passed among us, and that we cannot know how this would be supported by our colonial sugars. But it will not be long before we shall be informed on this point : by an act which we cannot but applaud, and which continues the work it has undertaken, the French government has just suppressed the protection con- tinued hitherto to our planters. If, ere long, as it is justifiable to hope, they are delivered from the charges of the colonial system, whose advantages they have lost, we shall see them struggle, and suc- cessfully, I am convinced, against the Spanish sugars produced by slave labor. It will be, perhaps, maintained, that the anti- pathy of race is stronger in the United States than elsewhere, and that the Americans, in this respect, are inferior to the English. I am as conscious as any one else of thosje infamous proceedings tow- ards free negroes which are the crime of the I^orth, a crime no less odious than that of the South. What conscience is not aroused at the thought of those prejudices of skin which do not permit blacks to sit by the side of whites, in schools, churches, or public vehicles ? Only the other day, nothing less 206 COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO KACES than a denunciation in open parliament was needed to begin the destruction, by a public rebuke, of the classification which is being made on the English steamers themselves between Liverpool and New York. There are some new States which purely and simply exclude free negroes from their Terri- tory ; those which do not exclude them from the Territory, repulse them from the ballot-box. The injustice, in fine, is as gross, as crying, as it is pos- sible to imagine. Must we conclude from this that the co-exist- ence of races, possible elsewhere, is impossible in the United States ? I distrust those sweeping assertions which resolve problems at one stroke ; I refuse, above all, to admit so easily that iniquity must be maintained for the sole reason that it exists, and that it suffices to say : "I am thus made ; what would you have ? I cannot change myself," to abstract one's self from the accomplishment of the most elementary duty. To endure negroes at one's side, to respect their independence, to abstain from wrongs towards them, to consent to the full exercise of their rights, is an elementary duty ; Christian duty, I need not say, demands something better. Does this mean that we are to set ourselves up as judges, and brand as wretches all those who thus AFTER EMANCIPATION. 207 mistake the laws of cliarity and justice ? I fear much that, in their place, we would do precisely as they. Living in the South, we would have slaves, and would defend slavery to the last ; living in the JS'orth, we would tread under foot the free colored class. Is there then neither the true, nor the false, nor justice, nor injustice ? God forbid ! The just aud the true remain ; iniquity should be condemned without pity ; but we are bound to be more indul- gent towards men than towards things. We are bound to remember that the influence of surround- ings is enormous, and that, if crimes are always without excuse, there are many excusable criminals. AVhen we examine men by the prejudice of skin, such as prevails in the United States, we are not long in discovering that it rests in great part on a misunderstanding : men mistake coexistence for amalgamation. I do not fear to affirm that the sec- ond would be as undesirable as the first would be de- sirable. Why dream of -blending or of assimilating the two races ? Why pursue as an ideal frequent marriages between them, and the formation of a third race : that of mulattoes ? America does right to resist such ideas, and to inscribe her testimony against such a future, evidently very little in con- formity with the designs of God. 208 COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO RACES But coexistence by no means draws amalgama- tion in its train. On this point, also, experience has spoken. In tlie English colonies, the liberty of the blacks is entire, the legal equality of the two races is not contested, public manners have shaped themselves to that mutual consideration without which they could not live together ; yet neither amalgamation nor assimilation is in question, and the aristocracy of skin remains what it should be, a lasting distinction, accepted on both sides, between races which are not designed to mingle together. I do not know that many marriages are contracted between the whites and the negresses of Jamaica, and I believe that the class of mulattoes increases much more rapidly under slavery than with liberty. Look in this respect at what takes j^lace even now in the United States : as quadroons sell better than blacks, mixtures of white or almost white slaves abound there, and the unhaj)py women who refuse to lend themselves to certain combinations are often whipped in punishment. With liberty, each race can at least remain by it- self; with it, there can be co-existence without amalga- mation ; both mingling and hostility can be prevent- ed. This is the more easy, inasmuch as the negroes, with the gentleness of their race, willingly accept I AFTEE EMAKCIPATION. 209 the second place, and by no means demand what we insist on refusing tliem. Let their liberty be com- plete, let legal equality and friendly relations be maintained, and they will ask no more. But they will ask no less, and they are right. I do not understand, in truth, why so harmless a co- existence should be so long repulsed by the en- lightened people of the United States. There are negroes in Spanish America who have reached the highest grades of the army, and who show as much intelligence, decorum, and dignity in command as white men could do. I myself have seen at Paris, a clergyman of ebony blackness, wdio was really the most distinguished, unexceptionable man that it was possible to meet ; he was a remarkable scholar, and had received the title of doctor from several European universities. In fact, the negroes are our fellows and our equals much more than we imagine; they adapt themselves better than the Indians to our civiliza- tion. They seek to be instructed, and not only do the free blacks of the English islands hasten, as we have seen, to provide themselves with teachers, but even those of the United States, crushed as they are by contemptuous treatment, neglect no means of introducing their children into the schools, where 210 COEXISTENUiC OF THE TWO KACES is found one-nintli of their total number. In Li- beria, they have shown themselves hitherto very capable of ruling. In Hayti, since their deliverance from the ridiculous and odious yoke of Soulouque, they have advanced rapidly, it is affirmed, in the way of true progress ; legal marriages increase, popular instruction is becoming established, relig- ious liberty is respected. Lastly, in the negro colony of Buxton, in Canada, the fugitive slaves have become industrious landholders, and are respected by all. Let us not say that prejudice of skin is inde- structible ; the suppression of slavery may modify it profoundly. What degrades the free negro to- day, is the existence of the negro slave. To be respectable, we all need to be respected. The poor, free negro is ashamed of himself ; he dares not as- pire to any thing noble and great ; he preserves, be- sides, as the legacy of slavery, the idea that labor is dishonoring, that idleness is a sign of independence. This is enough to make him remain a stranger to honorable occupations, and confine himself to the practice of vile trades. When slavery shall have disappeared, the situation of the free blacks wdll be- come quite different : they will be numerous ; they w^ill have an appreciable share in the regulation of AFTEK EMANCIPATION. ' 211 national affairs ; their vote will count, and, tlience- forth, we may be tranquil, no one will be afraid to treat them with respect, and perhaps to pay court to them. The law of New York, as well as the Supreme Court of that State, has already admitted that color exercises no influence over the rights of citizens. The time draws near when the I^orth will no longer contest the intervention of free negroes at the ballot- box. This will be a great step in advance. Let us remark, moreover, tliat, after general emancipa- tion, the black population, while exercising its share of influence, will never be able, through the number of suffrages at its disposal, to alarm the jealous sus- ceptibility of the whites ; the latter, in fact, will be continually recruited by European immigration, and the day will come when the few negroes of the United States will be scarcely perceptible in the heart of a gigantic nation. The honor of the North is at stake ; it belongs to it to give an example at this time, and to show, by the reform of its own habits, that it has the right to combat the crime of the South. It must set to work seriously, resolutely, to resolve the problem of the coexistence of races, while the South re- solves, willing or unwilling, the problem of eman- 212 COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO RACES cipation. Liberty in the South, equality in the K'orth ; the one is no less necessary than the other ; it may even be said that one great obstacle to the idea of emancipation is this other idea that blacks and whites cannot live together, but that one must some day exterminate the other. Why suffer the establishment of this lying axiom which checks all progress? Why not cast our eyes on the neighboring colonies where the prejudice of color reigned supremely before eman- cipation, and where it has since become rapidly effaced. The United States have a lofty end to at- tain ; let them beware how they take too low an aim ! They will not have more than they need, with the efforts of all, the charity of all, the sacri- fices of all, the earnest endeavors by which all can elevate themselves above vulgar prejudices, to ac- complish a task at once the most difficult and most glorious that has ever been proposed to a great people. The ISTorth, I repeat, is bound to give a noble ex- ample by obtaining a shining victory over itself. Let it say to itself that coexistence is not amalgama- tion ; the question is not to marry negroes, but to treat them with.justice. The fear of amalgamation once vanished, many things will change in appearance. AFTEK EMANCIPATION. 213 Why, in fact, is the prejudice of race stronger in the free States than in the slave States ? Because the latter know that slavery is a sufficient line of demarcation, and because they have not to dread amalgamation. Now, this is and will be nowhere to be dreaded ; the instinct of both races will prevent such mingling, and the blacks are as anxious to re- main separate from the whites as the whites are to avoid alliance with the blacks. As I have said, nothing but slavery, and the perverse habits that it engenders, could have succeeded in some sort in breaking down this barrier. If the class of mul- lattoes thus formed rule in some republics of South America, it proceeds from the absence of a nu- merous and powerful white race, like that which is covering the United States with its continually in- creasing population. Decidedly, fears of amalgamation are puerile in such a country ; and decidedly also, any other solu- tion than the coexistence of races would be wrong. Doubtless, a natural concentration of the emancipa- ted negroes will be some day effected ; they will flock to those States where their relative number will ensure to them the ,most influence. Perhaps we may even obtain a glimpse of the time when, by the result of a providential compensation, the coun- 214 COEXISTENCE OF THE RACES tries which have been the witnesses of their suffer- ings, and which they have watered with their tears, these countries where thev, better than any others, can devote themselves to labor, will belong to them in great part. Are the Antilles and the regions q? the Gulf of Mexico destined to become the refuge and almost the empire of Africans torn from their own continent ? It is possible, but not certain. In any case, this geographical repartition of the races would be wrought peaceably ; the effort to effect it by violent measures would justly arouse the con- science of the human race. So long as we talk of transporting the blacks to Africa, to St. Domingo, or elsewhere, so long as the peaceable coexistence of the races be not accepted, the barbarous pro- ceedings which dishonor America will not cease, the E'orthern States will maltreat their free negroes, and the South will cling to slavery as to the only means of preventing a struggle for extermination. At the North as well as the South, men need to accustom themselves in fine to the idea of coexist- ence. Yes, there will be whites and free blacks in various parts of the Union ; yes, it is certain that in some parts, the black population will be possessed of influence ; it may even happen that, in one or two points of the extreme South, it will come to AFTER EMANCIPATION. 215 rule. If this hypothesis, imp'obable in my opinion, shonld ever be realized, it wonld not be a cause of shame, but of glory, to the Union. It is said that the great Indian tribes of the Southwest think of forming a State, which will demand admission into the Union, and which has a chance to obtain it. "Why should there not be, at need, a negro State by the side of an Indian State ? This reparation would be fully due to the oppressed race, and America would be honored in treading her repugnance under foot, and in showing to the whole world that her so much vaunted liberty is not a vain word. She would show, at the same time, that her Christian faith is not a vain formality. If the de- sire of avoiding amalgamation has legitimate grounds, the antipathy of race is simply abomina- ble. Words cannot be found severe enough to cen- sure the conduct of those Christians who, pursuing with their indignation the slavery of the South, re- fuse to fulfil the simplest duties of kindness, or even of common equity, towards the free negroes of the ;N"orth. But I hope that the Gospel, accustomed to work miracles, will also work this. Let us be just ; we have already seen the pious ladies of Philadelphia lavishing their cares on black and white without 216 COEXISTENCE OF THE KACES distinction at the time of the cholera invasion. Thej washed and dressed with their own hands, in the hospital which they had founded, the children rendered orphans by the scourge, without taking account of the, differences of color. This is a sign of progress, and I could cite several others ; I could name cities, Chicago, for instance, where the schools are opened by law to the blacks as well as the whites. There is a power in the United States which will overthrow the obstacle of the North as well as that of the South, which will abolish both slavery and prejudice of skin. This power has shown in the Antilles what it can do. There, pastors and missionaries, schools, works of charity pursued in common, have placed on a level the blacks and the whites, devoted to the same cause, and ransomed by the same Saviour. In the United States, likewise, the Christian faith will raise up the one, and will teach the others to hum- ble themselves ; it will destroy the vices of the negro, and will break the detestable pride of the Anglo-Saxon. The real influence of faith on both — this is the true solution, this is the true bond of the races. Through this, will be established relations of mutual love and respect. What a mission is re- served for the churches of the United States! I AFTER i:mancipation. 21 T Checked hitherto by enormous difficulties, which it would be unjust not to take into account, they have not acted the part in the recent struggle against slavery wliich reverted to them of right. They have done a great deal, whatever may be said ; they are disposed to do still more, and their attitude has improved visibly within a year. But this can- not suffice ; there are tv/o problems to resolve in- stead of one ; the question is now, to approach both face to face. True equality is founded, under the eye of God, through the community of hopes and of repentance, through close association in worship, in prayer, in action ; and this equality has nothing in common with the jealous spirit of levelling which suffers old grievances to subsist, and continually in- vents new ; it is peaceable, forgetful of evil, confid- ing, truly fraternal. I do not dream, of course, of the universal conversion of the population of the United States, both black and wliite ; I know only that the Gospel, though it deeply penetrates com- paratively few hearts, extends its influence much further, and acts on those that it has not won. Let the Christians of America set to work, let them re- ject, for it is time, the scandals still presented here and there by their apologists for slavery, let them forbear to spare that whicli is culpable, to call good 218 COEXISTENCE OF THE RACES evil, or evil good, and they will render to their country a service which they alone can render it, and to which nothing on earth can be compared. The United States do not know how great will be the transformation of their internal condition, and the increase of their good renown abroad, when their churches, their schools, their public vehicles, their ballot-boxes, shall be widely accessible to per- sons of color, when equality and liberty shall have become realities on their soil ; they do not know how great will be their peace and tlieir prosperity. Let the two inseparable problems of slavery and the coexistence of races be resolved among them under the ruling influence of the Gospel, and they will witness the birth of a future far better than the past. 'No more fears, no more rivalries, no more separations in perspective, their conquests will be- come accomplished of themselves ; and, no longer destined to swell the domain of servitude, they will win the applause of the entire world. And all this will not be purchased, as men seem to believe, by the sacrifice of the cotton culture. At the present time, this culture incurs but one serious risk : the momentary triumph of a party that dreams of a slavery propaganda; it will be saved alone by the progress of liberty. On the day when AFTER EMANCIPATION. 219 emancipation shall be acliieYed, if wrought by the action of moral agents and social necessities, instead of b J that of civil wars and insurrections, the culti- vation of cotton in the Southern States will receive the imj)etus to a magnificent development. The emancipated negroes make large quantities of sugar in the Antilles ; why should they not make cotton on firm ground ? If aff'ranchisement produced the destruction of planting in St. Domingo, we know now the reason. It is a proved fact that negroes who do not owe their liberty to insurrection, re- main disposed to devote themselves to labor in the fields. With slavery, observe, disappear, one after tlie other, the obstacles in the way of agricultural pro- gress. The capital which no one dares risk to-day in the Southern States, will flow into them emu- lously as soon as slavery shall be abolished ; I say more : as soon as its progressive abolition shall be no longer doubtful in the sight of all. European im- migration, the current of which- turn-s aside with so much circumspection, avoiding a territory accursed and given over to calamities, will flock towards those countries more beautiful, more fertile, and broader than those of the Far West. Machinery will come, to more than fill up the void caused by 220 COEXISTENCE OF THE KACES the passing diminution of the number of laborers. The slaves can be intrusted with none but the sim- plest implements : every one knows that the plough, introduced originally into our French colonies, disappeared to make room for the hoe as soon as Colbert had authorized the slave trade. Ploughs have reappeared there since emancipation. Their agricultural and industrial progress date from the same epoch : to-day, our colonists understand the use of manures, and make improvements in manu- facture. A new era is dawning, in fine ; w^hat will it be in the United States, among that people which seems destined to surpass all others in the application of mechanics to agriculture ? Still, I have made one concession too much in admitting the diminution of the number of laborers. Supposing that a few negroes quit the field, many whites will come to take their place. White labor is fully possible in the majority of the slave States, and immigrants from Europe will not hesitate to engage in it. "Wherever slavery reigns, it is that, and not the climate, that must be arraigned if the whites fold their hands ; labor has become there a servile act — it is blighted, as it were, in its essence. A competent writer said the other day : " If Alge- ria had been subjected to the sway of slavery, cul- AFTEK EMANCIPATION. 221 tivation there would have been reputed impracti- cable for the French, and examples of mortality would not have been wanting." The whites have labored in the Antilles ; the whites can labor, not only in all the slave States of the intermediate re- gion, but in Louisiana. Cotton is already produced in Texas, thanks to its German settlers. The ques- tion is only, to go on in this way. Slavery once abolished, the small proprietors, wdio at present carry all the criminal extravagancies of the South further than any others, will be compelled to set their hands to work. This will be an advantage both to the country and themselves. Who will not pray for the coming of the time when so con- siderable a part of the population will cease to pos- sess slaves which it is incapable of feeding, when it w411 be transformed into the middle class, and thus escape the real servitude which embitters it ? Moreover, let us not forget new cultures, that of the vine among others, which are fitted to be- come introduced into these new countries, or to de- velop there, and which lack nothing but liberty in order to flourish. The arts and manufactures also have their place ; independently of the tillers of the soil, properly called, the Southern States will have need of workmen in manufactories, and of 222 COEXISTENCE OF THE RACES managers of agricultural machines ; large planta- tions will often become divided, as lias happened in the Antilles, and we shall witness the appearance of the small estate, that essential basis of social order. There will be employment for all, and the rich Southern cultures will be less neglected than before. Whoever has descended the Ohio has involun- tarily compared its two banks : here, the State of Ohio, whose prosperity advances with rapid strides ; there, the State of Kentucky, no less favored by Nature, yet which languishes as if abandoned. Why ? Because slavery blights all that it touches. Could not the whites of Kentucky and Yirginia labor as well as those of Ohio ? The comparative poverty of these slave States reminds me of the destitution of our colonies and those of England before emancipation : mortgaged estates, planta- tions burdened with expenses, the complete destruc- tion of credit — such was their position. We must read American statistics to form an idea of the truly unheard-of extent of this fact — impoverish- ment by slavery. With a larger extent and much richer lands, the slave States possess neither agri- cultural growth, nor industrial growth, nor advance of population, which can be compared far or near AFTER EMANCIPATION. 223 with that which is found in the free States. A book by Mr. Hinton Kowan Helper, The Imijend- ing Crisis of the South^ expresses these differences in figures so significant that it is impossible to con- test them. The Southern States, therefore, are certain to increase their cultures, and' to found their lasting prosperity by entering the path that leads to eman- cipation. But if they take the contrary road, they will hasten to their destruction, and with strange rapidity. Already, their violent acts of secession, and the monstrous plans which are necessarily at- tached to them, have had the first eftect, easily foreseen, of dealing a most dangerous blow to American cotton. In a few weeks, they liave done themselves more harm than the JSTorth, supposing its hostility as great as it is little, could have done them in twenty years. The meeting of Manchester lias replied to the manifestoes of Charleston ; Eng- land has said to herself, that, from men so deter- mined to destroy themselves, she should count on nothing ; and, having taken her resolution, she will proceed with it speedily ; let the Southern States take care. English India can produce as much cotton as America ; before long, if the Carolinians persist, they will have obtained the glorious result 224 COEXISTENCE OF THE KACES of despoiling their country of its chief resonrce ; they will have killed the hen that laid the golden eggs. The matter is serious ; I ask them to reflect on it. As England, nnder pain of falling into want and riots, cannot dispense with cotton for a single day, she w^ill act energetically. Cotton grows marvellously in inany coimtries ; in the An- tilles, where it has been produced already ; in Al- geria, where the plantations are about to be in- creased ; on the whole continent of Africa, in fine, where it enters perhaps into the plans of God. thus to make a breach in indigenous slavery by the faults committed by slaveholders in America. CHAPTER X. THE PEESENT CRISIS WILL EEGENEEATE THE INSTITU- TIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. It remains for me to inquire what influence the present crisis may exert on the institutions of the United States. It is at the expense of these insti- tutions that the slave States, inferior in strength, in numbers, in progress of every kind, would reestab- lish their fatal and growing preponderance. Here again, therefore, my thesis subsists : the victories ot the South had compromised every thing, the resist- ance of the North is about to save every thing ; the election of Mr. Lincoln is a painful but salutary crisis, it is the first effort of a great people rising. The party of slavery had introduced into the heart of American democracy, a permanent cause of debasement and corruption. In this respect, also, it was leading the Coniederation to its death by the most direct and speedy way. I wish to show 10- 226 THE PKESENT CKISIS WILL EEGENEKATE how it developed tlie worst sides of tlie democratic systera. I hope to be impartial towards this sys- tem ; although persuaded that the govermnent of which England offers ns the model is better suited to guaranty public liberties and to second true prog- ress in every thing, I am not of those who place the shadow before the substance, and who condemn democracy without appeal. Are we destined some day to pass into its hands ? Have w^e already begun to glide down the descent that leads to it 'i It is possible. In any case, it would be unjust to hate America on account of it, as is too often done. America has had no choice ; in virtue of its origin and its history, it could be nothing else than a de- mocracy. If it has the faults of democracy, the unamiable rudeness, the violent proceedings, the levelling passions, I am scarcely surprised at it. I ask myself rather if it has known how to find a basis of support against the temptations of such a sys- tem, ii it has prevented the. subjugation of individ- uals by the mass, the absorption of consciences by the State, the substitution of the sovereignty of the end for that of the people. These are the shoals of democracy ; have they been shunned by the United States ? Have they been able to avoid transforming it either into tyranny or socialism ? We shall see THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 227 that, if it has not succumbed to the temptation, this has not been the fault of the party of slavery. Thanks to it, the corruption of democratic institu- tions was rapidly advancing ; a single adversary, constantly the same, has combated the progress of this work of destruction. "We shall encounter again, upon the ground of political institutions, the fundamental antagonism of the Gospel and slavery. I say first, that it is rarely that names are alto- gether fortuitous, and do not correspond to things. It has often given rise to astonishment that the party of slavery should have taken the name of the •democratic party ; notwithstanding, nothing was more natural. How could slavery have been de- fended if not by exaggerating democracy ? It was necessary, in such a cause, to deny the notions of right, of truth, and of justice ; it was necessary that the greater number should become right, truth, and justice. Something more even was needed. The sover- eignty of the end must yield, if necessary, before the sovereignty of number^. A cause like that of slavery is only defended in the heart of a demo- cratic nation, by teaching it contempt of scruples, and the stifling of the conscience. Every thing is allowable, every thing is good, provided that we 228 THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL REGENERATE succeed in our ends! This is tlie rule wliicli it designs sliall prevail in political contests. A single question, seeing nothing but itself, determined to spare nothing, offering itself to parties, whoever they may be, who seek a change, creating factitious ma- jorities to effect the ends of base ambition, taking account neither of honor nor country, and attaining its end through every thing — this is enough to vi- tiate profoundly institutions and morals. The sov- ereignty of the idea, when it has laid hands on the sovereignty of the people, is in a position to go to great lengths, and to sink very low. Moral maxims and written laws are trodden under foot, a struggle w^ithout j)ity or remorse begins, a strug- gle of life and death. Social passions easily acquire a degree of perversity which political passions do not possess ; the former are without conscience and without compassion ; they will be satisfied, cost what it may ; triumph is in their eyes an absolute, an inexorable necessity. Katlier than not conquer, they will rend the country. What the regular working of institutions . be- comes under such a pressure, every one can divine. For some years past, in proportion as the preten- sions of the slavery party had increased, we had seen public morals become tainted in the United States. THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 229 Indifference to means had made alarming progress, and Lad been felt even in the habits of commerce, and the relations of private life. The spirit of en- terprise had come to be exalted even in its most dishonorable acts ; respect for bankrupts seemed almost to be propagated. It is a fact, that men like Mr. Jefferson Davis, the present President of the revolted South, were not afraid to recommend the repudiation of debts. In the school of slavery, a disembarrassed and miscrnpnlous manner of acting had given its stamp to the general manner of the nation. Affairs were going on rapidly, the liberties of America were on the high road to ruin ; it was time that the reaction of liberal and honorable sen- timents should make itself felt. The election of 1860 marked the stopping-]3lace. I wonder that they could have stopped ; such a fact demands an explanation, for ordinarily the de- clivities of democratic decline are never remounted. The natural tendency there being to deny the right of the minority, (the most precious of all,) to sink the man entire in the ballot, to lay violent hands on the private portion of his life, and to force even his conscience into the social contract, it follows that governments arise in w^hich the question of limita- tion becomes effaced by the question of origin. In 230 THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL REGENERATE tlie face of siicli a power, notliing is left standing ; no more rights, no more principles, no more of those solid and resisting blocks winch serve to stem the popular current ; the province of the State becomes indefinite. And how much more irresistible and more per- verse is this tendency, when a profound cause of corruption, such as slavery, adds its action to the strength of such democracies ! It is no longer, in such cases, the sovereign majority alone before w^Iiich the right may be forced to bow, it is a party determined to attain its ends, which penetrates with violence into that domain of conscience where human laws should not enter ; a party which sets about regulating sometimes the belief, sometimes the thought, sometimes the speech. Such has been the iiiiliience exercised in the United States by the institution of slavery ; it has forbidden authors to write, clergymen to preach, and almost individuals to think any thing that displeased it ; it has invented the right of secession, in order to have at its disposal a formidable means of intimidation, and to place a threat behind each of its demands. To yield, to descend, to descend still further, to obey a contin- ued impulse of democratic debasement, such is the course to which it has impelled the whole Confede- ration. THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 231 Notwitlistaiiding, tlie United States have resist- ed. I sliall tell why ; I shall show by virtue of what marvellous force Americans have escaped the absolute levelling which seemed destined to be pro- duced by a complicated democracy of slavery. But I wish first to finish depicting the natural efi'ects of such a system. Suppose for a moment a nation (and such are not wanting) modelled after the antique. The Pa- gan principle reigns there supremely, the State ab- sorbs every thing, souls are banded together and governed ; a centralized power, a visible Providence, is substituted for individual action ; creeds have es- sentially the hereditary and national form ; each one believes what the rest believe, each one does what the rest do, each one holds the opinions which are found in the ancient traditions of the country ; truth is no longer a personal conviction, ^acquired at the price of earnest struggles, and worth much because it has cost much ; it descends to the rank of customs to which it is fitting to conform, it has its marked place among social obligations, and forms part of the duties of the citizen. Let democracy come to establish its empire in the heart of such a nation, and you will see with what rapidity every thing will disappear that bears the 232 THE PEESENT CRISIS WILL REGENEEATE slightest resemblance to individual independence. The niore effectual the levelling, the greater will seem the community ; and the smaller the individual, the more, too, in face of the privileges of the whole, will the very idea of personal rights become effaced. The majority is held infallible, and the minority appears criminal if it takes the liberty of refusing to subject its thoughts (yes, its very thoughts) to that of the majority. In this innumerable host of like beings, no one is authorized to possess any thing in private ; of all aristocracies, that of the conscience appears then least endurable. Men believe in the majority, in the mass, in the nation. We have no idea of the intellectual despotism of a democracy which fails to encounter on its road the obstacle of personal con- victions ; it disposes of the human soul, it creates an unlimited confidence in the judgment of public opinion, it lieacJs a school of ]3opular courtiers, and teaches each one the art of setting his watch by the clock of the market-place. Intelligence, conscience, convictions — all bend, and what does not bend is broken. This hap- pens, above all, we repeat without wearying, when a detestable cause like that of slavery j)erverls the working of democratic institutions. Then, the tyr- anny of the majorities has no bounds; the major- THE INSTITUTIONS S OF THE UNITED STATES. 233 ities themselves are formed by means of ignoble contracts and monstrous alliances. In the midst of lower passions let loose, through banded parties, imperative mandates, and factitious organizations, which no longer leave the smallest outlet for the flight of the least independent wish, the j)erversities of corrupt and misled democracy have full scope. In writing these pages, have I described Amer- ican democracy ? Yes and no. Yes, for such are really the temptations to which America has been exposed, such are really the vices with which it might have often been reproached ; no, for a j^rin- ciple of resistance has always revealed itself in the darkest moments, an irrepressible something has always remained. In vain the heavy roller has passed and repassed over the ground ; it has always encountered blocks of granite that would not be broken. This is the point which I had at heart to signal out in closing this study, knowing that it forms its most essential part, and that whoever has not given it his attention cannot comprehend the United States. The extraordinary fact, much more extraordinary than is supposed, that, under the sys- tem of democracy ruled by slavery, meu have been able to pause and retrace their steps, is only ex- plained by the peculiar form which religious belief 234 THJE PKESENT CRISIS WILL KEGENEKATE lias put on ill tlie United States. We have not be- fore our ejes a Latin nation, a nation clad in the vestments of Greece or Rome, a nation having, according to the ancient mode, its religion and its usages universally but indolentlj admitted. This republic of the j^ew World is by no means one of those slave republics of ancient times, in which the citizens took delight in conversing on public affairs, but ill which no one had the bad taste to question his conscience with respect to the public creeds. The pagan life, with its obligatory worship, its com- mon education, its suppression of the family and the individual in behalf of the State, its existence transported to the Forum ; the pagan life, in which the citizen absorbs the individual, and in which the calm and serene uniformity of indifferent centuries ends, by giving to each one the national physiog- nomy, bears no resemblance to the moral and social life of the United States. Among them, not the smallest trace is found of that system wdiich seeks to make nations, and which forgets to make men. They were born, as we may say, of a protestation of the human conscience. A noble origin, which explains many things ! It is, in fact, the revindication of religious independence against religious uniformity, and the established THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 235 churcli whicli created it two hundred years ago. Of course, I have not to examine here the intrinsic value of the Puritan doctrines. I content myself with affirming that they landed in America in the name of liberty, that they were destined to establish liberty there, that they were destined to build there the true rampart against democratic tyranny. From the first day, the State was deprived of the direction of the intellectual and moral man. Despite that inevitable mixture of inconsistencies and hesitation which marks our first efi'orts in all things, the Puritan colonies, destined one day to be- come the United States, set out on the road which led to hberty of belief, of thoughts, of speech, of the press, of assemblage, of instruction. The most consider- able, most important rights were abstracted at the outset from the domain of democratic deliberations ; insuperable bounds were set to the sovereignty of numbers ; the right of minorities, that of the indi- vidual, the right of remaining alone against all others, the right of being of one's own opinion, was reserved. Furthermore, they did not delay to break the bonds between the Church and the State entirely, in such a manner as to deprive the official superintendence of belief of its last pretext. Self- government was founded, that is, the most formal 236 THE PKESENT CKISIS WILL KEGENEKATE negation of subjugation by the democracy. While the latter tends to the maximum of government, the American Government tends to the minimum of government, that form 2?aT excellence of liberalism. And it does not tend thither, as in the Middle Ages, by anarchy, by the absence of national ties, and moreover by despoiling the individual of his rights of conscience and thought, confiscated then more entirely for the benefit of a sovereign church than they have been- since for the benefit of the State ; no, American individualism proceeds difierently : if it restrains with salutary vigor the province of gov- ernments, it is to enlarge that of the human soul. This is a great conquest; the whole future of the modern world is contained in it. Destined as we are to submit, in a measure at least, to the action of democracy, the question whether we shall be slaves or free men is resolved in this : shall we, after the example of America, have our reserved tribunal, our closed domain in which the public power shall be permitted to see nothing? Shall there be things among us (the most important of all) which shall not be put to the vote? Shall our democracy have its boundaries, and beyond these boundaries shall a vast country be seen to extend — that of free belief, of free worship, of free thought, of the free home? THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 237 It is because American democracy lias boimda- ries that its worst excesses have finally found chas- tisement. It is not installed alone in the United States ; opposite it, another power which knows no fear, is occupied with resisting it. The entire history of America is explained by this double fact: the falling and the rising again, the servitudes and the liberties, the too long triumph of the slavery party, and the recent victory of Mr. Lincoln, the deadly peril so lately incurred, and the noble future that opens to-day. Individualism is not isolation, individual con- victions are not sectarian convictions ; they found on the contrary the most powerful of the unities, moral unity. The thing which most actively dis- solves societies while seeming to unite them, is the uniformity of national dogmas which, accepted as an inheritance, remain without action over the heart. What are, in fact, the great bonds on earth, if not duty and affection ? E"ow, nothing but per- sonal convictions, earnestly acquired by the sweat of our brow, can destroy selfishness in us. Without this strong cement of convictions at once individual and common, you will build nothing that will en- dure. The United States have in their heart strong convictions, which are also common convictions; 238 THE PKESENT OKISIS WILL EEGENEKATE through external diversities, we have seen that fnii- daniental conformity is real, and all earnest appeal to Christian truths agitates this country, so divided in appearance, from one end to the other. ^National life is here a reality. I do not think that Socialism, which excuses us from believing ourselves, which places our soul under responsible administration, and preserves us, it is said, from the baleful dis- ruptions engendered by individualism, succeeds as well in destroying selfishness and in diffusing ideas of devotion and duty. When democracy becomes socialistic, (and it never has been able to become so in the United States,) it grinds down and reduces souls to such a degree that nothing is left but a fine dust, a sort of intellectual and moral powder which, it is true, is an obstacle to nothing, but which creates nothing either. To build an edifice, stones are needed, sand will not suffice. Christian individualism makes the stones, and the democratic party has just perceived it. In a country where independence of soul has acclimated independence in all its forms, men may indeed bow the head sometimes to democracy allied to slavery ; but this debasement has a limit, and the time is coming when they will raise their heads. Strong beliefs are a strong rampart, the slaves of truth are THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 239 free men, and true independence begins in tlie heart. To have convictions in order to have char- acters, to have believers in order to have citizens, to have energetic minds in order to have powerful nations, to have resistance in order to have support — such is the programme of individualism. Show me a country where men are proud enough not to bow before the majority, where they do not think themselves lost when they depart from the beaten track, and jostle of received opinions; and I will admit that there it will be possible to practise democracy without falling into servitude. There is but one country of individual belief, that could attempt the alliance, hitherto deemed impossible, of democracy and liberty. The theory in accordance with which the public liberties of England have the aristocracy for their essential basis, is admitted as an axiom ; without contemning this element of social organization, it is advisable to mine deeper than this to discover the true foun- dation of liberty. Individual belief — this is the foundation. The more we reflect, the more we discover that the essential thing is not the forms of government, or even the relations of the differ- ent classes, but the moral state of the community. Are men there ? Have souls become masters of 240 THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL III'.GLNEKATE themselves ? Are cliaracters formed ? Has the force of resistance appeared ? Whoever shall have replied to these questions will have decided, know- ingly or unknowingly, wdi ether liberty be possible. I do not know that any people should be ex- cluded from liberty ; only all are bound to pursue it by the path that leads to it, by earnestness of convictions, by internal affranchisement, which sig- nifies by the Gospel. We may seek in vain, we shall find no means comparable to this (I speak in the political point of view) when the question is to make citizens. To place one's self under the abso- lute authority of God and his w^ord, is to acquire in the face of mere parties, majorities, general opinions, an independence that nothing can supply. Tlie independence within is always translated without ; he who is independent of men, in the domain of beliefs and of thoughts, will be equally so in the domain of public afi"airs. Thus democracy itself will not degenerate into socialism. ISTo one has been able to point out the slightest symptom of socialism in the United States. Notwithstanding, democracy is fidly complete there, and the election of Mr. Lincoln, once drover, once flatboatman, once rail-splitter, once clerk — of Mr. Lincoln, the Bon of his works, who has succeeded by his own THE mSTlTUTlOJS'b OF THE U:SITED STATES. 241 powers in becoming a well-informed man and an orator, this election proves certainly tliat American equality is not menaced by the success of the re- publican party. It menaces only the evil democra- cy, which, under the guidance of the slavery party, sought to force the nation into the path of socialism. But it will not succeed in this ; the question has just been decided. Between these two systems, which are to contend for contemporaneous commu- nities, between socialism and individualism, the choice of the United States is made. Before witnessing the affranchisement of the slaves, we shall, therefore, witness the affranchise- ment of American politics. They have endured a shameful yoke, and received sad lessons. Since Jef- ferson, the born enemy of true liberalism, founded the Democratic party, the United States had con- tinued to descend the declivity of radicalism; a work of relentless levelling was thenceforth pur- sued, and the domain of the conscience became gradually invaded. The democratic party found its fulcrum in the South. The slave States forced the enclosure of the private tribunal, and confiscated in behalf of the State the inviolable rights of the individual : neither thought, the press, nor the pulpit, were free among them ; the fundamental 11 242 THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL KEGENEKATE maxims of Puritan tradition were sacrificed by them one after the other. They did more : thanks to them, men were beginning to learn in the free States how to set to work to pervert their own consciences, and to substitute for it respect for sovereign majorities. Every day, crying in- iquities were covered by the pretext : "If we were just, we should compromise the national unity, or we should risk losing the votes secured to our party." Violence, menace, brutality, and corruption, were boldly introduced into political struggles. Men became habituated to evil : the most odious crimes, the Southern laws reducing to legal slavery every free negro who should not quit the soil of the States, hardly raised a murmur of disapprobation ; the United States seemed on the point of losing that faculty which nothing can sur- vive — the faculty of indignation. Behold in what school the democratic party had placed the American people — that noble people which, despite the grave faults with which it may be reproached, represents in the main many of the lofty principles which are allied to the future of modern communities. The reign of the Democratic party would form the subject of an inglorious his- tory ; in it we should see figure the glorification THE mSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 243 0/f servitude, piracy applied to international right, and, in conclusion, those facts of corruption and waste which served to crown its last Presidency. The most consistent champions of the doctrines and practices of the democratic party, are those men who have just declared that votes are valid only on condition of giving the majority to slavery, and that a regular election is a sufficient cause for sepa- ration. COlSrCLUSION. I HAVE not sought to recount events, but to at- tempt a study, wliicli I believe to be useful to us, and whicli may, also, not be useless to the United States. We owe them the support of our sympa- thy. It is more important than people imagine to let them hear words of encouragement from us at this decisive moment. Let us not hasten to declare that the Union is destroyed, that, henceforth and forever, there will be two Confederacies existing on the same footing, that the United States of slavery will have their great role to perform here below, like the United States of liberty. This would be, in any case, immense exaggeration. Let us not forget that the Union has often before seemed lost, that the Confederation has often before seemed ready to perish. Are the men who are terrified at the present perils, ignorant of those which sur- rounded the cradle of the United States : mutinous troops, contending ambitions, threats of separation. CONCLUSION-. 245 anarchy, ruin ? This America, then so weak, is the same that has since become so strong, in spite of its own faults. At the moment when it rebelled against England, it had neither arts and manufac- tures, nor commerce, nor marine ; and its two or three millions of inhabitants were far from agreeing among themselves. Yet such is the vigor of its genius, such is its carelessness of every kind of dan- ger, such is the imjjetuosity with which it affronts and surmounts obstacles, such is the power of its national motto, " Go ahead ! " that through internal struggles, crises, and momentary exhaustion, it has attained the stature of a great people. Count the steamboats on its rivers, estimate the tonnage of its vessels, compute the amount of its internal trade, measure the length of its canals and railroads, and you w^ill still have but a faint idea of what it is capable of undertaking and accomplishing. "We must remember these things, and not inai- tate those enemies of America who sometimes feign to put on mourning for her, sometimes jest at her distress, and find in the present situation of the dis- united States (for thus they style them) an agree- able subject for pleasantry, forgetting that this dis- union has a serious cause, which is certainly of im- portance enough to make itself understood ; forget- 246 CONCLUSION. ting, too, that generous struggles for humanity and the country are worthy to obtain our fullest respect. And let us beware how we say that this crisis does not concern us — that we can do nothing in it. The selfish isolation of nations is henceforth impossible. The question to be decided here involves our own affairs, not only because a portion of our fortune is pledged to the United States, but, above all, be- cause our principles and our liberties are concerned. The victories of j ustice, wherever they may be won, are the victories of the human race. We can aid this one in some measure. Amer- ica, which affects sometimes to declare itself indif- ferent to our opinions, gathers them up, however, with jealous care. I have seen respectable Ameri- cans blush at encountering that instinctive blame which, among us, is addressed to the progress of slavery ; they suffered at seeing their country thus fallen from the esteem which it formerly enjoyed. Proud nations like America always avenge them- selves by noble impulses for the reprobation which they are conscious of having deserved. The moral intervention of Europe is not, therefore, superflu- ous ; it is the less so, in that the South insults us by counting on us. The ringleaders of Charleston and ISTew Orleans affect to say that England is ready to CONCLUSION. 247 open her arms to them, and that France promises a sympathizing reception to her envoys ! Tliese envoys themselves have been selected with care, honorable, having friends among us, — capable, in a word, of presenting the canse of slavery in an al- most seductive light. It is important, therefore, that we should not keep silence. Let governments be reserved ; let them avoid every tiling that would resemble direct action in the internal affairs of the United States, let them have recourse to the commonj)laces of speech employed by diplomacy to escape pledging their policy — this is well. But to imagine that these commonplaces promise alliance or protection, is to be credulous indeed ! A rebellion under cover of the flag of slaver}^, be sure, will find it difficult to make parti- sans among us French, whatever may be our indo- lent indifference in other respects in this matter, an indifference so great that at the present time the American question does not exist to the most of us. Moreover, we shall shake off this inertia ; and, as to the English, they will not suffer their brightest title to glory in modern times to be tarnished by any latent complicity with the Gnlf States. The brutal doctrine 1 of interest, so often professed publicly in Parliament by Mr. Bright, may indeed find organs ; 248 CONCLUSION. and Great Britain will be counselled to remember cotton and forget justice. The measure already taken by lier at Washington, and which appeal's to have been supported by France, a measure designed to declare that the blockade of the Southern ports must be effectual to be recognized, is perhaps a concession wrested from her by this detestable school of selfishness. Happily, there is another school face to face with this ; the Christian senti- ment, the sentiment of abolition, will arise and enforce obedience. E"ever was a more important work in store for it. To unveil every suspicious act of the British Government, to keep public opinion aroused, to maintain, in fine, that noble moral agita- tion which makes the success of good causes and the safety of free nations, such is the mission proffered in England to the defenders of humanity and the Gospel. If they could forget it, the popu- lace of Mobile or Savannah pursuing English con suls, would remind them to what principle th ^ • • • > ^o v^ : eP-^^. ,-i°< N^-^,^ _^'