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 THE 
 
 IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 LABOR AND CAPITAL: 
 
 A BRIEF SUMMARY OF SOME OF THE CHIEF CAUSES AND 
 
 RESULTS OF THE LATE CIVIL WAR IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES, 
 
 AS PRESENTED IM 
 
 THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 TO 
 
 ADOLPHE GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC'S 
 HISTORY OF THE WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES, 
 
 IN WHICH THE 
 ORIGIN, NATURE, AND OBJECTS OF THE MUCH CALUMNIATED 
 
 FRENCH COMMUNE 
 
 ARE HISTORICALLY EXPLAINED. ^^^-TTrTT" 
 
 . •> 
 'COPYRIGHT 
 
 ^fsm^p- ' 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 
 
 819 & 821 MARKET STREET, 
 
 1872. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
 
 CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 
 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 STBRBOTVPBD BV J. PAGAN & SON, PHIIJIDBU>HIA. 
 
 07- h^i^s 
 
^ran$Ial^r'$ |)diali<rtt. 
 
 TO THE 
 WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES OF AMERICA, 
 
 UNDER WHICH DESIGNATION I INCLUDE, NOT ONLY "LABORERS, MECHANICS, 
 
 HUSBANDMEN, AND MERCHANTS IN GENERAL," BUT ALSO LAWYERS, 
 
 PHYSICIANS, MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL, AND ALL OTHERS 
 
 OF THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS, — ALL, WHO LIVE, 
 
 AND SEEK TO GROW RICH, BY THE FRUITS 
 
 OF THEIR OWN LABOR AND 
 
 INDUSTRY, 
 
 WHETHER OF THE HEAD, 
 
 OR OF THE HAND; AND NOT BY THE 
 
 "SUBTLE AND ARTFUL FISCAL CONTRIVANCES" 
 
 OF MODERN CLASS LEGISLATION, NOR BY PUBLIC OFFICE 
 
 AND PUBLIC PLUNDER, — THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY 
 
 timteS. 
 
 By the translator. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 FOR several years prior to the Civil War in America, the 
 late Stephen Colwell, of Philadelphia, withdrawinfj 
 from active business, had shut himself up in his library, devot- 
 ing himself principally to the study of Political Economy, on 
 which subject his work on " The Ways and Means of Pay- 
 ment " is, perhaps, one of the ablest ever given to the public. 
 Absorbed in this study from his own personal standpoint, 
 that of a retired merchant and manufacturer, he gave little 
 attention to matters of general politics occurring around him. 
 
 The news of the " Gt^ii Rebellion " reached him in the 
 privacy of his library, and he again emerged into active lite. 
 lielieving, like many other able and good men at the North, 
 that the war was a " slaveholders' rebellion." and that every- 
 thing should be sacrificed to the preservation of the Union, 
 lie took an active part in su.staining the Government. By 
 degrees he became, under the excitements of the war, a thor- 
 ough-going Abolitionist. He took great interest, and was 
 one of the most active agents and liberal contributors, in 
 sending teachers South to instruct the negroes. 
 
 When the war was over, he went to Paris, and again shut 
 himself up in the libraries of that city. There he found De 
 Cassagnac's " History of the Laboring and Burgher Classes." 
 Struck with the great erudition of the work, and its peculiar 
 views, he went to a book-dealer, and gave orders for the pur- 
 chase of every copy that could be found for sale in Paris. It 
 was out of print, and he could only secure three copies. 
 
VJll TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 I met him in Philadelphia in 1868. In a brief interview, i^^ 
 which I gave him my views of the causes and results of the 
 war, he paid me the compliment of saying that I had studied 
 and understood the subject better than any one whom he 
 had met ; that he had brought this book from Paris to have 
 it translated and published in the United States ; that he was 
 too old to do it himself, and had been looking for some one 
 qualified for the task. He urged me to do it, and gave me 
 the book. • 
 
 Perhaps it is due to myself, and to my old preceptors 
 of Georgetown College and the University of Virginia, to 
 whose thorough training I am indebted for whatever merit 
 there may be in the translation, that I should disarm the 
 critics in advance, by an apology for any errors. Most of 
 this work has been done hurriedly, under the pressure of 
 much business and many cares, of my own and of others, at 
 my home in Georgia, without access to dictionaries or books 
 of reference, to compensate for twenty years' disuse of the 
 Latin and Greek, and fifteen years' disuse of the French lan- 
 guage ; and I have sought always to give the author's exact 
 meaning, sometimes perhaps sacrificing classic English to the 
 exigencies of a close translation from the French. 
 
 This History was published in Paris in 1838, and is now for 
 the first time offered to the American public. Heretofore it 
 has been accessible to a very few only of the very few Amer- 
 ican readers of this class of French works. But through these 
 few, some of the author's ideas, very soon after their publica- 
 tion in Paris, began to permeate into the American mind, and 
 in course of time they became part of the political creed of a 
 great party in the United States, resulting in the greatest and 
 bloodiest civil war of recorded time. 
 
 De Cassagnac starts out with the declaration that his book 
 is one of history, and not of politics. Evidently he was a 
 student; poring over musty tomes ; delighting in books, old 
 and new ; absorbed in the solution of the facts and philosophy 
 
translator's preface. ix 
 
 of history. Certainly, so far as depends on ancient and mod- 
 ern law, history, and literature, he has in his seven years of 
 preparatory study treated his subject exhaustively, and, as an 
 historian, faithfully. But he probably little dreamed that in 
 less than a quarter of a century, and on another continent, 
 his ideas would take a new form of expression in the dogma 
 that " free labor is cheaper than slave labor," and drench that 
 continent in blood. 
 
 De Cassagnac dedicates his work to M. Guizot. Guizot 
 M^as not a mere closet student. He was a statesman, intent 
 on giving to the facts of history a gloss to suit the political 
 purposes of the royal master, whose throne he sought to 
 establish. He was the trusted minister of King Louis Phi- 
 lippe, whose every thought was directed to the perpetuation 
 of his dynasty, and the repression of the "fierce democracie" 
 of France. A translation of Guizot's Lectures on the History 
 of Civilization was published in this country in 1838, about 
 the time that De Cassagnac's book appeared in Paris. Those 
 lectures were prepared for a special purpose : to strengthen 
 the throne of Louis Philippe, by presenting to PVance cen- 
 tralization and monarchy, as represented by the Orleans dyn- 
 asty, in their most attractive lights and colors. Guizot taxed 
 his great abilities to the utmost to prove that " zvJicncvcr the 
 reflection or the imagination of men has especially turned toward 
 the contemplation or study of legitimate sovereignty, and of its 
 essential qualities, it has inclined tozvard monarchy" and that 
 " republicanism, tmder the most favorable circumstances, does not 
 contain the principles of progress, duration, and extension." 
 
 Perhaps for the reason that the Americans are a more 
 book-reading people than the French, it is probable that M. 
 Guizot had more readers — and it is not going too far to say, 
 more converts — in the United States than in France; and 
 what was written with special reference to a political effect 
 in France, exerted a potent influence in bringing about the 
 civil war in America. M. Guizot has lived to see a great 
 2 
 
X TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 party in the United States, under the name of that repub- 
 licanism which he sought to disparage in France, preparing 
 the way for that centralization, which, to use his language, 
 " naturally and as if by instinct," inclines the minds of men 
 to monarchy. Lest any of my readers should be startled at 
 this assertion, and a prejudice be thereby aroused to hinder 
 a dispassionate reception of what more I have to say, I ask, 
 have they ever heard Mr. Sumner's lecture on "Are we a 
 Nation?" and read M. Guizot's Lecture XL, on the " Central- 
 ization of Nations and Governments ? " 
 
 Lest any of my readers may have fought under Grant or 
 Sherman, and should throw down this book in disgust at the 
 bare intimation that they carried fire and sword and famine 
 into the South, in the interests of centralization and mon- 
 archy, let me here quote briefly from M. Guizot's eleventh 
 lecture : 
 
 " Europe, however, was then (at the close of the fourteenth 
 century) very far from understanding her own state, such as 
 I have now endeavored to explain it to you. She did not 
 know distinctly what she required, or what she was in search 
 of, yet .set about endeavoring to supply her wants as if she 
 knew perfectly what they were. When the fourteenth cen- 
 tury had expired, after the failure of every attempt at political 
 organization, Europe entered, naturally and as if by instinct, 
 into the path of centralization. It is the characteristic of the 
 fifteenth century that it constantly tended to this result ; that 
 it endeavored to create general interests and general ideas ; 
 to raise the minds of men to more enlarged views; and to 
 create, in short, what had not, till then, existed on a great 
 scale — nations and governments. 
 
 "The actual accomplishment of this change belongs to the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though it was in the fif- 
 teenth that it was prepared. It is this preparation, this silent 
 and hidden process of centralization, both in the social rela- 
 tions and in the opinions of men — a process accomplished, 
 
translator's preface. xi 
 
 without premeditation or design, by the natural course of 
 events — that we have now to make the subject of our inquiry. 
 
 " It is thus that man advances in the execution of a plan 
 which he has not conceived, and of which he is not even 
 aware. He is the free, intelligent artificer of a work, which is 
 not his own. He does not perceive or comprehend it till it 
 manifests itself by external appearances and real results; and 
 even then he comprehends it very imperfectly. It is through 
 his means, however, and by the development of his intelli- 
 gence and freedom, that it is accomplished. Conceive a 
 great machine, the design of which is centred in a single 
 mind, though its various parts are intrusted to different work- 
 men, separated from and strangers to each other. No one of 
 them understands the work as a whole, nor the general re- 
 sults, which he concurs in producing; but every one executes, 
 with intelligence and freedom, by rational and voluntary acts, 
 the particular task assigned to him. It is thus that by the 
 hand of man the designs of Providence are wrought out in 
 the government of the world. It is thus that the two great 
 facts, which are apparent in the history of civilization, come 
 to co-exist; on the one hand, those portions of it, which mar 
 be considered as fated, or which happen without the control 
 of human knowledge or will ; on the other hand, the part 
 played in it by the freedom and intelligence of man, and what 
 he contributes to it by means of his own judgment and will." 
 
 When the true history of yet recent events shall have been 
 written, many, who have been accustomed to believe that 
 President Lincoln was the author and father of emancipation. 
 will be surprised to learn that to the very last he was averse 
 to it, and anxious to prevent the adoption of the Thirteenth 
 Amendment to the Constitution, which was carried, not only 
 without the concurrence of, but in direct opposition to, his 
 judgment and will. When he visited Richmond, immediately 
 after the evacuation in 1865, a message from my father. 
 General Duff Green, asking an inter\-icw, reached him after 
 
Xii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 he had re-embarked and the command had already been 
 given to go ahead on the return to Washington. He imme- 
 diately stopped the steamer, and waited for my father to come 
 aboard. When they met, Mr. Lincoln said, " My dear old 
 friend, how are you, and what can I do for you ? " My father 
 replied : " Mr. President, I went to see you at Springfield in 
 December, i860, at the instance of Mr. Buchanah, and with 
 the concurrence of Mr. (Jefferson) Davis, to ask what you were 
 willing to do to avert the war. {a) I come now on my own ac- 
 count, to ask on what terms you are willing to grant us peace." 
 To this Mr. Lincoln said : " If the South want peace, all they 
 have to do is to lay down their arms and acknowledge the 
 authority of the Government of the United States. I cannot 
 recall my Emancipation Proclamations, but I am perfectly will- 
 ing that the Supreme Court shall decide them to have been 
 unconstitutional, null, and void. If the South do not wish to 
 give up their slaves, .let them call their Legislatures together, 
 and vote down the Thirteenth Amendment." The result of 
 this interview between my father and Mr. Lincoln, followed 
 up by another, in which Judge Campbell participated, was 
 that General Weitzel was authorized to call the Virginia 
 Legislature together, for the twofold purpose — first, of repeal- 
 ing the Act of Secession and recognizing the authority of 
 the General Government ; and, secondly, of voting down the 
 Thirteenth Amendment. On Mr. Lincoln's return to Wash- 
 ington, a pressure was brought to bear on him, that forced 
 him very reluctantly to cancel the authority given to Gen- 
 eral Weitzel to convene the Legislature. It is well known to 
 many that Mr. Lincoln was with great difficulty induced to 
 -tign the Emancipation Proclamations. Perhaps no disputed 
 fact in history is susceptible of clearer proof But few know 
 the historical fact that he was avowedly willing, and secretly 
 desired, that the Thirteenth Amendment should be defeated. 
 
 {a) See .iccount of General Dufif Green's visit to Mr. Lincoln, in the New York 
 Herald, of 8tli January, 1861. 
 
translator's preface. xiii 
 
 Much has been already, and ably, written on the causes 
 that led to the late civil v/ar. The ablest, who have written 
 on the subject, are probably the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, 
 and Judge Nicholas, of Kentucky, whose views were con- 
 densed in a correspondence between them, published in the 
 National Intelligencer, in the summer of 1868. Mr. Stephens 
 said : 
 
 " Slavery so called, or that legal subordination of the black 
 race to the white, which existed in all but one of the States 
 when the Union was formed, and in fifteen of them when the 
 war began, was unquestionably the occasion of the war, the 
 main exciting proximate cause on both sides. But it was not 
 the real cause, the causa causans, of it. 
 
 "The war grew out of different and directly opposite views 
 as to the nature of the Government of the United States, and 
 where, under our system, ultimate sovereign power, or para- 
 mount authority, properly resides." 
 
 "The truth is well established that the seceding States 
 did not desire war. Very few of the public men in these 
 States even expected war." 
 
 The gist of Judge Nicholas's rejoinder was that the ques- 
 tion of the right of secession was the real cause of the war ; 
 that even a distinct recognition of rights in the Constitution 
 could never be used for any available purpose ; because, if at 
 any time attempted to be exercised by a weaker portion of 
 the country, the only result would be giving the Government 
 the trouble of declaring war against and conquering it ; that, 
 as a remedy, the right of secession proved unavailable, and 
 had to be abandoned ; and that, therefore, expediency and 
 policy required that the South should, by a total abnegation, 
 deny that there was ever any legitimacy in their assertion of 
 that right. 
 
 Mr. Stephens is, and Judge Nicholas was, a man of great 
 force and ability. The former writes always in the spirit of 
 a great constitutional lawyer and statesman. The argument 
 
xiv TRANSLATOR S PREFACE, 
 
 of the latter on this occasion amounts simply to an assertion 
 of the utter worthlessness of all constitutional guarantees ; 
 that might makes right; and that the weaker party, to avoid 
 worse punishment, should always submit to whatever condi- 
 tions the stronger thought proper to impose. On this occa- 
 sion he sank far below himself; for on others he was unques- 
 tionably able. But with all deference to such authority, it 
 must be said that neither have gone far enough back to dis- 
 cover the real causes of the war. Both agree that secession 
 was adopted as a peaceful remedy — as a bloodless solution 
 of pre-existing questions, involving the alternatives of civil 
 war on the one hand, or submission to, what the weaker 
 party believed to be, intolerable wrong on the other. How 
 then can that be said to have been .the real cause of the war, 
 which was only resorted to as a peaceful remedy to prevent 
 war? 
 
 We do not understand Mr. Stephens to mean that so many 
 valuable lives were sacrificed, such heavy burdens imposed 
 on both sections, merely to decide an abstract question of 
 constitutional law ; but only that the war would not have 
 taken place when it did, if the North, under the lead of Mas- 
 sachusetts, had acquiesced //^tv/ in the doctrine of State rights, 
 including the right of secession, which Massachusetts asserted 
 in the war of 1812, and on the acquisition of Louisiana. 
 
 The real causes of the war existed long before the right of 
 secession was thought of in the South ; long before it was 
 asserted by Massachusetts ; long before the Constitution or 
 the Union was formed ; long before New England began to 
 grow rich by the importation and sale of negro slaves ; and 
 they still exist in full force, now that slavery has been abol- 
 ished and the right of secession suppressed. They were — 
 
 1st. The irrepressible conflict between monarchy and de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 2d. The irrepressible desire of capital to cheapen labor. 
 
 From the beginning, the New England mind inclined to 
 
translator's preface. XV 
 
 monarchy, with established orders of nobility. Shortly be- 
 fore the adoption of the Constitution, John Adams, their 
 greatest and favorite leader, with as much ability, with more 
 zeal, and with less disguise than M. Guizot, published a de- 
 fence of the New England ideas of government, from which 
 the following are extracts : 
 
 " The people in all nations are naturally divided into two 
 sorts, the gentlemen and the simple men, a word which is 
 here chosen to signify the common people. By the common 
 people we mean laborers, mechanics, husbandmen, and mer- 
 chants in general, who pursue their occupations and industry 
 without any knowledge in liberal arts and sciences, or in any- 
 thing but their own trades and pursuits." (See John Adams's 
 Defence of the Constitution, vol. iii., p. 458.) 
 
 "The distinctions. of poor and rich afe as necessary in 
 states of considerable extent (such as the United States) as 
 labor and good government : the poor are destined to labor, 
 and the rich, by the advantages of education, independence, 
 and leisure, are qualified for superior stations." (Ibid., p. 360.) 
 
 " A nobility must and will exist. . . . Descent from certain 
 parents and inheritance of certain houses, lands, and other 
 visible objects (titles) will eternally have such an influence 
 over the affections and imaginations of the people, as no arts 
 and institutions will control. Time zvill come, if it is not mnu, 
 that these circumstances will have more influence over great 
 numbers of minds than any considerations of virtue and tal- 
 ents." (Vol. iii., p. 377.) 
 
 " The whole history of Rome shows that corruption began 
 with the people sooner than the Senate." (Vol. iii., p. 327.) 
 
 " Powerful and crafty underminers have nowhere such rare 
 sport as in a simple democracy, or single popular assembly. 
 Nowhere, not in the completest despotism, does human na- 
 ture show itself so completely depraved, so nearly approach- 
 ing an equal mixture of brutality and devilishism, as in the 
 
Xvi TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 last stages of such a democracy, and in the beginning of des- 
 potism, which always succeeds it." (Ibid., vol. ii., p. 329.) 
 
 " It is the true policy of the common people to place the 
 whole executive power in the hands of one man." (Vol. iii., 
 p. 460.) 
 
 " By kings and kingly power is meant the executive power 
 in a single person." (Vol. iii., p. 461.) 
 
 " There is not in the whole Roman history so happy a 
 period as this under their kings ; ... in short, Rome was 
 never so well governed or so happy." (Vol. iii., p. 305.) 
 
 " I only contend that the English Constitution is, in theory, 
 the most stupendous fabric of human invention. ... In future 
 ages, if the present States become a great nation, their own 
 feelings and good sense will dictate to them what to do ; they 
 may make transitit^s to a nearer resemblance of the British 
 Constitution." (Vol. i., pp. 70, 71.) 
 
 " It (the aristocracy) is a body of men which contains the 
 greatest collection of virtue and character in a free govern- 
 ment; is the brightest ornament and glory of the nation, and 
 may always be made the greatest blessing of society, if it be 
 judiciously managed in the Constitution." (Vol. iii., p. 1 16.) 
 
 " Mankind have universally discovered that chance was 
 preferable to a corrupt choice, and have trusted Providence 
 rather than themselves. First magistrates and senators had 
 better be made hereditary at once, than that the people should 
 be universally debauched and bribed." (Vol. iii., p. 283.) 
 
 Such were the ideas to which the reflection and imagina- 
 tion of the leading men of New England inclined them at the 
 time of the adoption of that democratic form of government, 
 the denunciation of which as " a league with death and cove- 
 nant with hell," has been in vogue in New England down to 
 the time when that trausition period, anticipated by their great 
 leader, commenced by amending the Constitution. 
 
 That these ideas have not lost ground in New England, 
 but have been spreading to the Middle and Western States, 
 
translator's preface. xvii 
 
 appears by the following extract from the Monthly Gossip of 
 Lippincott's Magazine for February, 1868: 
 
 " The Revue de Quinzame, of October last, has a paper on 
 Harvard University and Yale College, which shows a con- 
 siderable knowledge of the subject. The writer says, that 
 while the system and the division of studies are, in the main, 
 the same as those of the English universities, yet important 
 improvements have been introduced from time to time ; and 
 he truly remarks that, while Harvard has a certain aristo- 
 cratic tone, in Yale the forms and the prevailing ideas are 
 democratic, [a] 
 
 " The proposition recently made in Congress to tax the use 
 of armorial bearings on carriages and household furniture is 
 an eminently proper one, though it may perhaps cause some 
 amusement at our expense in monarchical countries. If 
 enacted into a law, the impost ought to yield a handsome 
 return from New England, if one may judge from the fact 
 that the Heraldic Journal, published by Wiggin & Lunt. Bos- 
 ton, has completed its third volume. A similar periodical in 
 England, the Herald and Genealogist, edited by John Gough 
 NichoUs, has also just completed its third volume, in the 
 course of which there are five articles on ' Anglo-American 
 genealogy and coat-armor.' The New England Historical and 
 Genealogical Register has just issued its twenty-first volume, 
 having started in 1847 ; and it is a curious fact that the New 
 England Historic-Genealogical Society is the first one, par- 
 ticularly devoted to the pedigrees of families, ever formed. 
 The interest which Americans take in this subject is also 
 evinced by the increasing number of family histories which 
 are issuing from the press. Heretofore these works were 
 
 {a) The truth of this statement, as to Harvard, is unquestionable ; but if it be 
 true that any democratic ideas prevail at Yale, the explanation of that phenome- 
 non is to be found in the fact that, until recently, Yale has been mainly supported 
 by students from the South and West, while Han-ard was altogether sustained 
 by New England. 
 
XVUl TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 mainly confined to New England and New York, which were 
 settled before Pennsylvania and the Western States ; but they 
 are now appearing in other parts of the Union. Histories of 
 the Sharpless, Darlington, Levering, Du Bois, Cope, Mont- 
 gomery, Shippen, Wolfe, Coleman, and Hill families have 
 been printed in this State, and those of the Buchanan and 
 Sill families in Ohio. We hear that the pedigree of the Went- 
 worth family is about to be published in Chicago ; and that 
 Mr. D. Williams Patterson, of Pittston, Pennsylvania, has in 
 preparation the genealogy of the Grant family, which will 
 include the pedigree of General Ulysses S. Grant. It appears 
 that his ancestor was Matthew Grant, whose name first occurs 
 on the town records of Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 3, 
 1633. Noah, the grandfather of the General, born in Con- 
 necticut, June 20, 1748, and the sixth generation in descent 
 from the Dorchester emigrant, came from Coventry, Connec- 
 ticut, to Pennsylvania, after the Revolutionary War, and set- 
 tled here. The Rev. Mr. Headley's statement, that the ances- 
 tor of Grant settled in Pennsylvania on his arrival in this 
 country, is therefore erroneous. Although very frequently 
 indeed these pedigrees are fit subjects of ridicule, some link 
 in a chain being assumed without proof, or some sign of van- 
 ity being exhibited by the degenerate offspring of worthy 
 sires ; yet at the bottom of all this there is, on the whole, 
 a healthy family-pride, which benefits society, and to which 
 no one, who comes of virtuous and honorable parentage, is 
 insensible." 
 
 Speaking of an elective chief-magistrate, Mr. Adams said, 
 " This hazardous experiment the Americans have tried, and 
 if elections are soberly made, it may answer very well ; but 
 if parties, factions, drunkenness, bribes, armies, and delirium 
 come in, as they have always done, sooner or later, to embroil 
 and decide everything, the people must again have recourse 
 to conventions, and find a remedy for this ' hazardous experi- 
 ment.' Neither philosophy nor policy has yet discovered any 
 
translator's preface. xix 
 
 other cure than by prolonging the duration of the first magis- 
 trate and senators. The evil may be lessened and postponed 
 by elections for longer periods of years, until they become 
 for life ; and if this is not found an adequate remedy, there 
 will remain no other but to make them hereditar}'." (Vol. 
 iii., p. 296.) 
 
 Observe that Mr. Adams also said, " The time zvill come, if 
 it is not now ; " and among the signs of the time he enumer- 
 ated " bribes, armies, and delirium." In this connection, the 
 organization of the " Grand Army of the Republic," and the 
 establishment of the Imperialist newspaper in New York, 
 just after the war, to test whether the time had come for the 
 realization of these views, by making General Grant emperor, 
 are signs of the time not to be overlooked. The " Grand 
 Army of the Republic," with all its commanderies and com- 
 manders, has so far only served to strengthen the Democratic 
 vote, by a reaction from the delirium of the war; and the 
 Imperialist newspaper expired with the death of General Raw- 
 lings, Grant's Secretary of War. (a) This, however, does not 
 prove that the monarchical and aristocratic spirit of New Eng- 
 land is dead, but only that the time has not yet come. 
 
 But there were in New England then, as now, some 
 
 {a) Of all the converts to the logic of Adams and Guizot, General Rawlings 
 was perhaps the most sincere, the purest, the least influenced by selfish considera- 
 tions. He had come to believe that Rome was never so well governed or so 
 happy as under her kings, and that the good government and happiness of this 
 vast country required that it should be centralized into a nation and governed by 
 an empeior. There is reason to believe that his death was hastened by chagrin at 
 finding out that General Grant, whom he had selected as the instrument for that 
 transition, was not the right man. Bribes and armies are potent for the subvei'- 
 sion of democratic government and the establishment of empires ; but the former 
 must be given, not received, by the aspirant for imperial sway. Plutarch relates 
 of Syllathat, while prstor, he happened to be provoked at (Sextus Julius) Csesar, 
 and said to him, angrily, " I will use my authority against you." Caesar answered, 
 laughing, " You do well to call it yotirs, for you bought it." Whether true or 
 false, it soon came to be believed of General Giant that he was more ready to 
 sell than to buy his authority. 
 
XX TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 earnest and able advocates of free government, as, for in- 
 stance, Samuel Adams. The sentiment against monarchy- 
 was so strong in other portions of the Union, and espe- 
 cially in the slaveholding States of the South, that after the 
 adoption of the Constitution, the monarchical party deemed 
 it prudent to assume the name of Federalists, as being less 
 unpopular than one more indicative of their peculiar ideas 
 and theories of government. In the Boston Monthly An- 
 thology, for March, 1807, the curious reader will find some 
 verses (<2:) denunciatory of the Republican party, in which 
 this policy of assuming a name for political purposes is thus 
 referred to : 
 
 "And if we cannot alter things, 
 
 By G — , we '11 change their names, sir 1 
 
 True, Tom and Joel now no more 
 
 Can overturn a nation : 
 And work by butcheiy and blood, 
 
 A great regeneration, — 
 Yet, still we can turn inside out 
 
 Old nature's constitution. 
 And bring a Babel back of names, — 
 
 Huzza! for Revolution." 
 
 The advocates of the Constitution as adopted were, and 
 called themselves. Republicans ; but their opponents in New 
 England called them Democrats in derision. In course of 
 time they accepted this name, as indicative of their theory 
 that legitimate sovereignty resides in the whole body of the 
 people, and not in a king and nobility ; and, as soon as they 
 dropped the name of Republicans for that of Democrats, their 
 opponents, the monarchists, took it up, and assumed it as their 
 own party appellation. 
 
 During the session of Congress of 1807-8, Mr. John Q. 
 
 (a) The authorship of these verses was attributed, and no doubt correctly, to 
 John Quincy Adams. By Tom and Joel, Tom Paine and Joel Barlow, anti- 
 monarchists, were referred to. 
 
translator's preface. xxi 
 
 Adams surprised his former political opponents as well as 
 his own party friends, by what Governor Giles, of Virginia, 
 in an address to the public, dated February 28, 1828, calls " a 
 complete political somerset from the Federal (or monarchical) 
 to the Republican (or democratic) party." In explanation of 
 his course, Mr. Adams told Governor Giles and Mr. Jefferson 
 that the object of the Federal (or monarchical) party in New 
 England " had been for several years the dissolution of the 
 Union and the establishment of a separate confederacy ; 
 that he knew this from unequivocal evidence, although not 
 provable in a court of justice; and that, in case of a civil 
 war, the aid of Great Britain to effect that purpose would be 
 as surely resorted to as it would be indispensably necessary 
 to the design." {a) 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter from Mr. Jefferson 
 to Governor Giles, dated Monticello, December 26, 1825 : 
 
 " You ask my opinion of the propriety of giving publicity 
 to what is stated in your letter, as having passed between 
 John Q. Adams and yourself Of this no one can judge but 
 yourself It is one of those questions which belong to the 
 forum of feeling. This alone can decide on the degree of 
 confidence implied in the disclosure : whether, under no cir- 
 cumstances, it was to be communicable to others. It does 
 not seem to be of that character, or at all to meet that aspect. 
 They are historical facts, which belong to the present as well 
 as future time. I doubt whether a single fact, known to the 
 world, will carry as clear a conviction to it, of the correctness 
 of our knowledge of the treasonable views of the Federal 
 party of that day, as that disclosed by this most nefarious 
 and daring attempt to dissever the Union, of which the Hart- 
 ford Convention was a subsequent chapter; and both of these 
 having failed, consolidation becomes the first book of their 
 history. But this opens with a vast accession of strength, 
 
 (a) See Mr. Adams's own statement in National Intelligencer, October 21, 
 1828. 
 
XXll TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 from their younger recruits, who, having nothing in them of 
 the feelings or principles of '76, now look to a single and 
 splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking 
 institutions and moneyed incorporations, under the guise and 
 cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce, 
 and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered plough- 
 man and beggared yeomanry. This will be to them a next 
 best blessing to the monarchy of their first aim, and perhaps 
 the surest stepping-stone to it." 
 
 When it was made known that Mr. John Quincy Adams, 
 in explaining to Governor Giles and Mr. Jefferson his reasons 
 for joining the Republican or Democratic party, had charged 
 these treasonable views upon the Federal party of New Eng- 
 land, some of his late political associates, who claimed to be 
 patriots, while conscientiously believing the monarchical form 
 of government the best, retorted on him, by charging that 
 he was still a monarchist at heart, and that his conversion 
 to democracy was only pretended. They asserted that " in 
 1807, at the table of an illustrious citizen now no more, he 
 (Mr. Ada.ms) /amented the fearful progress of the Democratic 
 party and of its principles, and declared that 'he had long 
 meditated the subject, and had become convinced that the only 
 vtethod, by ivhich the Democratic party coidd be destroyed, was 
 by joining with it, and urging it on zvith the utmost energy to the 
 completion of its viezvs: whereby the residt ivould prove so ridi- 
 culous, and so ruinous to the country, that the people would be led 
 to despise the principles and to condemn the effects of Democratic 
 policy ; and then,' said he, ' we may have a form of govern- 
 ment BETTER SUITED TO THE GENIUS AND DISPOSITION OF OUR 
 COUNTRY THAN OUR PRESENT CONSTITUTION." («) 
 
 This charge made against Mr. John Quincy Adams by his 
 
 then late associates was denied ; and the attempt was made 
 
 to prove it by the affidavits of Messrs. Townsend and Derby, 
 
 of the monarchical party, both men of high standing in Mas- 
 
 (a) See Boston Statesman, November, 1824. 
 
translator's preface. xxin 
 
 sachusetts. The case made by these affidavits against Mr. 
 Adams was strong, but not conclusive, although they after- 
 ward acquired much additional force from Mr. Adams's subse- 
 quent reaffiliation with the party whom his father, John Adams, 
 in one of his letters to Cunningham, styles the "Absolute Oli- 
 garchy',' and by the bitterness of his hatred of Democracy, 
 and of its stronghold, the Southern slaveholding States. 
 
 But whether the charge was true or false — whether this 
 idea originated with John Quincy Adams, or with the mon- 
 archical party, who brought the charge of having originated 
 it against him, certain it is that they have since then pushed 
 it vigorously and successfully. For what can be more or 
 better calculated to " lead the people to despise the principles 
 and to condemn the effects of Democratic policy," than to see a 
 parcel of ignorant negroes, recently slaves, with no knowledge 
 of history or jurisprudence, controlling the destinies of States 
 like Virginia and South Carolina, in the place of such men 
 as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Sumter, 
 Marion, and Calhoun ? 
 
 New England was not only monarchical. She was also a^ ^ 
 negro-slave trader ; and it was not until it was discovered 
 that the effect of negro slavery was to strengthen the dem- 
 ocratic principle of equality among the whites, that negro 
 slavery became odious to New England, In course of time, 
 it was seen that the ownership of negro slaves carried with it 
 the necessity of making color and good conduct (not wealth 
 and poverty) the only basis for distinction. In the presence 
 of their black slaves and of the poor white men, whom they 
 employed as overseers, and whose authority it was necessary 
 to maintain, the slave-owners found themselves compelled to 
 treat the poor white man as an equal, because he was white, 
 and the negro slave as an inferior, because he was black. In 
 no other way could they teach the negroes lessons of obedi- 
 ence to their poor white overseers, or keep up the personal 
 pride, self-respect, and character of the overseers, which wa^s^ 
 
XXIV translator's preface. 
 
 indispensable, that they might more easily control the slaves. 
 When, at a later period, the Southern slaveholders learned 
 that Old England was seeking to abolish slavery in the United 
 States, as a means of securing for her own East-India pos- 
 sessions a monopoly of the production of cotton and sugar, 
 and that the monarchists and aristocrats of New England had 
 united with Old England against them, they found it more 
 than ever necessary to strengthen themselves by inculcating 
 upon their children and neighbors that color and good con- 
 duct were the only proper foundation for castes. 
 / It was this necessity of the slave-owners — the necessity of 
 / employing poor white men as overseers, and of treating them 
 with respect in the presence of the negro slaves, so as to secure 
 respect and obedience to them from the slaves— which, perhaps 
 more than all else, led to the marked contrast between the 
 social relations and distinctions in the non-slaveholding and 
 in the slaveholding States. In the former, if a laboring man 
 had occasion to call at the house of a rich man, he was kept 
 standing at the front door, or at best in the passage-way, 
 until his business was accomplished. In the latter, he was 
 invited to be seated in the parlor ; was offered a glass of wine, 
 y or whisky and water; was asked to dinner, if that hour was 
 ^4iigh ; his family and business affairs, the weather, the crops 
 and politics were discussed, as between equals and friends. 
 M. Guizot, in his History of Civilization, comments on, and 
 attaches great importance to, an analogous effect of the Cru- 
 sades on the social relations of Europe. He says : 
 
 " During the Crusades, small proprietors found it necessary 
 to place themselves in the train of some rich and powerful 
 chief, from whom they received assistance and support. They 
 lived with him, shared his fortune, and passed through the 
 same adventures that he did. When the Crusaders returned 
 home, tJiis social spirit^ this habit of living in intercourse with 
 superiors, continued to subsist, and had its influence on the 
 manners of the age. . . . 
 
translator's preface. XXV 
 
 "Such, in my opinion, are the real effects of the Crusades: 
 on the one hand, the extension of ideas and the emancipation 
 of thought; on the other, a general enlargement of the social 
 sphere, and an opening of a wider field for every sort of 
 activity ; they produced, at the same time, more individual 
 freedom and more political unity." 
 
 Such was the effect of negro slavery in the South on the 
 social relations of the rich and poor whites, 
 
 I remember, when a boy, hearing the striking contrast 
 between the social relations of the rich and poor whites at the 
 South and at the North, commented upon by my father. It 
 was before the days of railroads, when travelling was by stage 
 coach, and before the Abolition agitation had begun to attract 
 attention. He had always lived in the South, and was accus- 
 tomed to the social equality among the whites there prev\ail- 
 ing. In a tour through the Northern States, he rode gener- 
 ally with the stage-driver, to see the country. At the first 
 meal- stand in Pennsylvania, he was struck with the fact, that 
 the white stage-driver was not permitted to take his scat at 
 the same table with the passengers ; and, as he progressed 
 northward, he found the rule universal that, in the non-slave- 
 holding States, the driver was required to eat at a separate 
 and inferior table. He was long enough in the Northern and 
 Eastern States to become somewhat familiarized with this dis- 
 tinction there made between the rich passengers and the poor 
 drivers ; and as he passed through Maryland on his return, he 
 did not notice whether the driver was permitted to cat at the 
 passengers' table or not. From Washington City he started 
 on a similar tour through the Southern States. The first day 
 out in Virginia, he reached the meal-stand with a traveller's 
 appetite, and, seeing dinner ready, he was about to take his 
 seat ; but was stopped and told by the waiter that the pas- 
 sengers must wait until the driver — a white man — who was 
 washing his hands, was ready to take his scat with them. 
 This little circumstance caused him to be more observant of 
 3 
 
XXVI TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 the absence of the New-England social distinction between 
 the poor and the rich, and of this social equaHty among the 
 whites, which he found everywhere a prominent character- 
 istic of the slaveholding States. 
 
 From having heard my father speak of this, now nearly 
 thirty years ago, and often since, my own attention was called 
 to it, and in a very extensive observation in all the slave- 
 holding States, I have found it universal, and more strongly 
 developed as the Abolition agitation progressed. Shortly 
 before the war, I was visiting one of the largest slavehold- 
 ers, (a) a truly representative man of his class, who had a poor 
 white neighbor employed digging a well. When the first 
 bell rang for the ladies to dress for dinner, this well-digger 
 came out of his hole in the ground, washed and dressed him- 
 self, took his seat at the table with the family and guests, and 
 seemed as much at his ease as if he had been governor of the 
 State. 
 
 This privilege of color could be forfeited by bad conduct, 
 and by bad conduct only ; and when so lost, the negro slaves 
 despised the losers, and spoke of them contemptuously as 
 " mean white trash ; " sometimes as " poor white trash ; " not 
 because they were poor, but because, being white, they had 
 forfeited by misconduct the respect due to them by virtue of 
 their white skins. 
 
 This tendency of negro slavery, as it existed in the South, 
 to break down " the distinctions of rich and poor " whites, 
 which the monarchical - aristocratic party of New England 
 held to be " as necessaiy in states of considerable extent 
 (such as the United States) as labor and good government," 
 gave a great impulse to the agitation against negro slavery, 
 which had been originally set on foot by paid agents of Old 
 England, with a view of securing a monopoly of the pro- 
 fa) The planter here alluded to was the late Colonel Andrew P. Calhoun, eldest 
 son of John C. Calhoun ; and the well-digger's name was, I think, Boggs, of 
 Pickens District, South Carolina. 
 
translator's preface. xxvii 
 
 duction of cotton and sugar for the British East-India pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 But there was another remarkable tendency of negro slave- 
 ry, which made it still more odious to those who desired a 
 transition to a nearer resemblance of the " British Constitu- 
 tion," and therefore " lamented the fearful progress of the 
 Democratic party and of its principles." This was its polit- 
 ical effect on the character of the poor whites, or " common 
 people," of the South. Their social elevation, the more respect- 
 ful treatment secured to them by the necessity of the slave- 
 owners, as above explained, increased their self-respect, and 
 caused them to value more highly their political franchises, 
 which, at the same time, made them the superiors of the 
 negroes, and the political, as well as social, equals of their 
 rich white neighbors. For this reason bribery at elections 
 was a thing almost unknown at the South. Even the mos 
 abject of those, whom the very negro slaves despised as 
 " poor white trash," recoiled from that lower depth of degra- 
 dation — selling his vote. This was strikingly illustrated 
 by the testimony elicited by the Covode Investigating Com- 
 mittee, ist Session, 36th Congress, vol. v., p. 490. It there 
 appears that bribery at elections had grown to be a custom- 
 ary thing with all parties in the free States. The witness, 
 a Northern man, being asked, "Have all your contributions 
 been in Northern States ?" replied, " Yes, sir; I do not remem- 
 ber spending a dollar politically in Southern States. I have 
 tendered contributions there, but they allowed they did not 
 use money as we use itin the Northern States." 
 
 In course of time, another remarkable result of negro 
 slavery was developed and came to be understood by the 
 master minds of W. H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and a few 
 others, although the great majority of the free and intelligent 
 artificers of the work, which they designed, did not perceive 
 or comprehend it, while executing the particular tasks as- 
 signed to them, and even now comprehend it very incom- 
 
XXVlll TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 pletely. Mr. Seward misled the productive classes of the 
 free States by the specious dogma of " an irrepressible conflict 
 between free labor and slave labor," when in fact there was 
 no such conflict; the interests of all labor, whether free or 
 slave, being identical, viz., to keep up wages and keep down 
 the cost of living. The real conflict was — not between free 
 and slave labor — but it was between the capital that hired 
 free labor, and the capital that owned slave labor. The 
 interests of the former required a system of legislation that 
 would put down wages and put up the cost of living. The 
 interests of the latter required a diametrically opposite system. 
 Wages went into, and the cost of living came out of, the 
 pockets of the capital that owned slave labor. Wages came 
 out of, and the cost of living went into, the pockets of the 
 capital, that hired free labor. Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase 
 were not long in discovering that herein consisted the phi- 
 losophy of Mr. Jefferson's celebrated aphorism, " The De- 
 mocracy of the North are the natural allies of the Repub- 
 licans of the South." They were not slow to see that, while 
 the interests and inclination of the capital that hired free labor 
 called for a system of taxation imposing heavy burdens on 
 the laboring classes, the interests and inclination of the 
 capital that owned slave labor required a system of light 
 taxes, high wages, fair prices for the products of labor, and 
 cheap Irving. While many of their less discerning "work- 
 men " were surprised to see the Southern slaveholders voting 
 and exerting their influence to shape the legislation of the 
 country to this end, and were astonished that those whom 
 they were taught to consider as the " slave aristocracy," 
 should thus act against the interests of those whom they 
 were taught to consider the true aristocracy, and /"^r the in- 
 terests of the " common people," (the laboring and produc- 
 tive classes of the North,) Mr. Seward's astute mind solved 
 the mystery. He saw that one peculiar result of negro 
 slavery was to identify the interests of the Southern slave- 
 
translator's preface. xxix 
 
 holders and of the northern working-men ; that it gave to 
 Northern labor in its conflict with Northern capital — to the 
 " laborers, mechanics, husbandmen, and merchants in gen- 
 eral " of the North in their conflict with the aristocracy — a 
 potent ally in the slaveholders of the South; that it joined 
 them together, as the priest joins man and wife, and that to 
 abolish slavery would be to divorce Southern capital from 
 Northern labor. 
 
 [Since the foregoing was written, Mr. Attorney-General 
 Akerman has been to Washington City, and was initiated 
 into the counsels of those, in whose minds the designs of the 
 Government machine are centred. Returning to Georgia, 
 he made a speech in Representatives' Hall, Atlanta, ist Sep- 
 tember, 1870, by which it clearly appears that, among other 
 things learned by him in the Cabinet councils, was this fact : 
 that one of the main objects and results of the war was to 
 divorce Southern capital from Northern labor. His speech, 
 whether prepared by him or for him, evinces much adroitness 
 in view of the objects to be accomplished by it. They were, 
 first, to call the attention of Southern capital to the fact, that 
 it is no longer interested in opposing high taxes, low wages 
 and prodigal Government expenditures ; that it has no longer 
 any interests in common with the laboring classes, the "com- 
 mon people," of the North ; secondly, to prepare the way for 
 an election bill, by which the ignorant negroes of Georgia, 
 voting early and often, on several different days and in several 
 different counties, could be used to neutralize the votes of 
 intelligent white Democratic workmen in Ohio or Pennsyl- 
 vania. He said : 
 
 " My friends, I am touching now a serious topic. ... In the 
 United States, looking at the white population alone, the cry 
 of a conflict between capital and labor has generally been 
 the cry of the demagogue, for the reason that capital has 
 seldom been organized against labor, and labor has seldom, 
 
XXX TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 except in the small way of trades' unions, been organized 
 against capital. . . . 
 
 " Hozv is the problem affected by the elevation of colored men 
 to freedo7n ? Labor and capital were in the same hands here in 
 the South. They have now become divorced by emancipation^^ 
 
 In a speech, at Boston, shortly before the inauguration 
 of President Lincoln, Mr. Seward avowed that, in his theo- 
 ries of government, he was a disciple pf John Adams. The 
 quotations we have given from Mr. Adams's book show 
 what those theories were. Mr. Seward, then, believed that 
 "a nobility must and will exist;" t!hat "the aristocracy is the 
 brightest ornament and glory of the nation ; " that " first- 
 magistrates and senators had better be made hereditary at 
 once, than that the people should be universally debauched 
 and bribed ; " that " the distinctions of poor and rich are as 
 necessary in states of considerable extent (such as the United 
 States) as labor and good government;" and that these 
 States, having become a great nation, should " make transi- 
 tions to a nearer resemblance of the British Constitution." {a) 
 But a thorough, statesman-like, philosophic investigation of 
 the social and political effects of negro slavery in the South 
 also disclosed to him the fact, that its tendencies were all 
 anti-monarchical and anti-aristocratic ; that the slaveholder 
 was surrounded by necessities, which, in his social treatment 
 of his poor white neighbor, forced him to become what John 
 Adams would call a "vulgar democrat," {b^ and in his political 
 action forced him to vote with the "common people," and 
 against the monarchical aristocracy of the North, for light 
 taxes, high wages, and cheap living ; and, seeing this, he 
 declared that "these States must become all free;" that negro 
 slavery must be abolished, and capital divorced from labor. 
 
 M. Guizot says : 
 
 " The struggle of classes constitutes the very fact of 
 
 (fl) Query : Russian ? 
 
 (^) See John Adams's Letters to Cunrilingham. 
 
translator's preface. xxxI 
 
 modern history, of which it is full. Modern Europe, in- 
 deed, is born of this struggle between the different classes 
 of society." (a) 
 
 The same is true of the United States. We see this strug- 
 gle of classes in Mr. Adams's book ; we see it in the dogma 
 of the political party that elected Mr. Lincoln and made war 
 on the South to abolish slavery, that "free labor might be 
 made cheaper than slave labor;" we see it in Chief-Justice 
 Chase's son-in-law's declaration at the Memphis Commercial 
 Convention that labor must be cheapened ; {^) we see it in 
 the substitution of negro for white printers in the Govern- 
 ment printing-office at Washington City; we see it in the 
 attempt to cheapen the labor of shoemakers in Massachusetts 
 and negroes in the South by the substitution and competition 
 of the "heathen Chinese;" we see it in the trades' unions 
 of the North, and in the National Labor Union of the United 
 States. 
 
 It has long been held by a certain class of statesmen that 
 the United States could never take that rank among nations, 
 to which their vast territory and great resources entitle them, 
 without manufactures ; and that they cannot compete with 
 Europe in manufactures without reducing the wages of labor 
 in the United States to the standard of wages in Europe. 
 Among the living advocates of cheap labor, we again find 
 Mr. Seward and Chief-Justice Chase the ablest. The only 
 difference between them, in this respect, is that Mr.^Seward, 
 residing in the East, was a high-tariff man, seeking to cheapen 
 labor, by taxing labor for the benefit of the capital that em- 
 'ployed labor, as well as by abolishing slavery; while Mr. 
 Chase, though born and educated in New England, moved in 
 early life to the West, where the protection theories were 
 
 (a) See Guizot's History of Civilization, D. Appleton & Co., New York, 
 1837, p. 184. 
 
 (b) See Senator Sprague's speech at tlie Memphis Conrention. 
 
XXXU TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 unpopular, and therefore relied mainly on abolition to cheapen 
 labor. 
 
 In searching for the origin of the dogma that " free labor 
 may be made cheaper than slave labor," I find it in M. de 
 Cassagnac's book. He proves, demonstratively, that all 
 voluntary emancipations on a large scale have been made 
 for the benefit of the master, to get rid of the care and ex- 
 pense of supporting the slaves ; and that the invariable result 
 of all emancipations has been to produce four classes, viz., 
 hirelings, beggars, prostitutes, and thieves. The corollary is 
 that pauperism increases competition in the struggle for the 
 means of existence, and increased competition tends to a 
 further reduction of wages, below the cost of feeding and 
 clothing a slave, and taking care of him in infancy, sickness, 
 and old age. 
 
 About the same time, viz., in 1837, Mr. Calhoun, in his 
 speech on the reception of Abolition petitions, threw out, with 
 less elaboration, similar ideas : that the tendency of negro 
 slavery in the South was to strengthen the principle of re- 
 publican equality among the whites, and that no laboring 
 class in any part of the world were so well treated and cared 
 for, or received so large a share of the products of their labor, 
 as the negro slaves of the South. He said: 
 ^,^ " I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of 
 
 Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, 
 I attained a position so civilized and so improved, not only 
 
 physically, but morally and intellectually. It came among 
 ' us in a low, degraded, and savage condition ; and, in the 
 
 course of a few generations, it has grown up under the fos- 
 • tering care of our institutions, as reviled as they have been, 
 
 ' to its present comparative civilized condition. This, with the 
 
 rapid increase of numbers, is conclusive proof of the general 
 happiness of the race, in spite of all the exaggerated tales to 
 the contrary. 
 
 " In the mean time, the white or European race has not 
 
translator's preface. xxxiii 
 
 degenerated. It has kept pace with its brethren in other sec- 
 tions of the Union, where slavery does not exist. It is odious 
 to make comparisons ; but I appeal to all sides whether the 
 South is not equal in virtue, intelligence, patriotism, courage, 
 disinterestedness, and all the high qualities, which adorn our 
 nature, I ask whether we have not contributed our full share 
 of talents and political wisdom in forming and sustaining this 
 political fabric? and ivhctlier xve have not co)ista)itly inclined 
 most strongly to the side of liberty, and been tJie first to see, and 
 first to resist the encroacJinients of pozver. In one thing only- 
 are we inferior — the arts of gain : we acknowledge that we 
 are less wealthy than the Northern section of this Union ; but 
 I trace this mainly to the fiscal action of this Government, 
 which has extracted much from and spent little among us. 
 Had it been the reverse — if the exaction had been from the 
 other section, and the expenditure with us — this point of 
 superiority would not be against us now, as it was not at the 
 formation of this Government. 
 
 " But I take higher ground, I hold that, in the present state 
 of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distin- 
 guished by color and other physical differences, as well as 
 intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing 
 in the slave-holding States between the two is, instead of an 
 evil, a good — a positive good. I feel myself called upon to 
 speak freely upon the subject, where the honor and interests 
 of those I represent are involved. I hold, then, that there 
 never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which 
 one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live 
 on the labor of the other. Broad and general as is this as- 
 sertion, it is fully borne out by history. This is not the pro- 
 per occasion ; but if it were, it would not be difficult to trace 
 the various devices, by which the wealth of all civilized com- 
 munities has been so unequally divided, and to show by what 
 means so small a share has been allotted to those, by whose 
 labor it was produced, and so large a share given to the non- 
 
XXXIV TRANSLATOR S PREFA.CF 
 
 producing class. The devices are almost innumerable, from 
 the brute force and gross superstition of ancient times to the 
 subtle and artful fiscal contrivances of modern. I might well 
 challenge a comparison between them and the more direct, 
 simple, and patriarchal mode, by which the labor of the Afri- 
 can race is among us commanded by the European. I may 
 say, with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the 
 share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where 
 there is more kind attention to him in sickness or infirmities 
 of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor- 
 houses in the most civilized portions of Europe. Look at the 
 sick, and the old and infirm slave, on the one hand, in the 
 midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintend- 
 ing care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the 
 forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poor- 
 house. But I will not dwell on this aspect of the question. 
 I turn to the political ; and here I fearlessly assert, that the 
 existing relation between the two races in the South, against 
 which those blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most 
 solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable 
 political institutions. It is useless to disguise the fact. There 
 is and always has been, in an advanced stage of wealth and 
 civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condi- 
 tion of society in the South exempts us from the disorders 
 and dangers resulting from this conflict ; and this explains 
 why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding 
 States has been so much more stable and quiet than the 
 North. The advantages of the former in this respect will 
 become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by inter- 
 ference from without, as the country advances in wealth and 
 numbers. We have, in fact, but just entered that condition of 
 society where the strength and durability of our political in- 
 stitutions are to be tested ; and I venture nothing in predict- 
 ing that the experience of the next generation will fully test 
 how vastly more favorable our condition of society is to that 
 
translator's preface. XXXV 
 
 of other sections for free and stable institutions, provided we 
 are not disturbed by the interference of others, or shall have 
 sufficient intelligence and spirit to resist promptly and suc- 
 cessfully such interferences. It rests with ourselves to meet 
 and repel them. 
 
 " Be assured that emancipation itself would not satisfy these 
 fanatics ; that gained, the next step would be to raise the 
 negroes to a social and political equality with the whites ; 
 and that being effected, we would soon find the present con- 
 dition of the two races reversed. They and their Northern 
 allies would be the masters, and we the slaves; the condition 
 of the white race in the British West Indies, as bad as it is, 
 would be happiness to ours. There the mother country is 
 interested in sustaining the supremacy of the European race. 
 It is true that the authority of the former master is destroyed, 
 but the African will there be a slave, not to individuals, but 
 to the community; forced to labor, not by the authority of 
 the overseer, but by the bayonet of the soldiery and the rod 
 of the civil magistrate." 
 
 Mr. Calhoun was an ardent, a passionate devotee of the 
 Union under the Constitution ; and it is questionable whether 
 Governor Joseph E, Brown, of Georgia, could have succeeded 
 in hurrying the Southern States into secession in i86i, if 
 Mr. Calhoun had then been living. Entering public life in 
 l8ii, he was one of the ablest and most zealous supporters 
 of the war of 1812 with Great Britain, in defence of the rights 
 and interests of the seamen of New England; and his earnest 
 nature was soon shocked by discovering that the object of 
 the so-called Federal party in New England "had been, for 
 several years, the dissolution of the Union and the establish- 
 ment of a separate confederacy," by the co-operation of Great 
 Britain. (^) The study of his life, therefore, was to find in the 
 Constitution some balance-wheel, or regulator, which would 
 
 (a) See statement of John Quincy Adams in the National Intelligencer, October 
 tl, 182S. 
 
XXXVl TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 guard against the danger of secession on the one hand, or 
 centralization and despotism on the other. Hence his modi- 
 fication of Mr. Jefferson's doctrine of nullification, as an anti- 
 dote to the New England doctrine of the right of secession, (^) 
 
 («) The doctrine of nullification, as laid down in the Virginia and Kentucky 
 Resolutions, and as maintained by Jefferson, Madison, and others, made each 
 State, T^r itself and separately, the judge of any alleged infraction of the Constitu- 
 tion, and of the " mode and measicre of redress.^'' 
 
 Mr. Calhoun's modification of that doctrine proposed to make " all the States 
 in convention assembled'''' the judge ; and meanwhile, until such a convention of 
 all the States could be called together for the decision of the question, to give to 
 each State the right to nullify, or suspend the execution of an obnoxious and 
 unconstitutional law temporarily within her borders. By this State right of tem- 
 porary suspension, analogous to the Presidential veto, Calhoun sought to protect 
 the weaker States from hasty and unjust legislation ; while he relied on the calm 
 deliberations of a convention of all the States to effectually suppress the spirit 
 of secession. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Ritchie, of the Richmond Enquirer, Mr. Francis P. Blair, of 
 the Washington Globe, the National Intelligencer, and others, admitting the 
 right of secession, opposed Mr. Calhoun's modification of the doctrine of the 
 Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, on the ground that its effect would be to 
 place a State in the Union and out ^the Union at the same time. See Calhoun's 
 address to the people of South Carolina. (Jenkins's Life of Calhoun, pp. 172- 
 173.) He said : 
 
 " How the States are to exercise this high power of interposition, which con- 
 stitutes so essential a portion of their reserved rights that it cannot be delegated 
 without an entire surrender of their sovereignty, and converting our system from a 
 federal into a consolidated government, is a question that the States only are 
 competent to determine. The arguments, which prove that they possess the 
 power, equally prove that they are, in the language of Jefferson, ' the rightful 
 judges of the mode and measure of redress.' But the spirit of forbearance, as well 
 as the nature of the right itself, forbids a recourse to it, except in cases of dan- 
 gerous infractions of the Constitution ; and then only in the last resort, when all 
 reasonable hope of relief from the ordinary action of the Government has failed; 
 when, if the right to interpose did not exist, the alternative would be submission 
 and oppression on one side, or resistance by force on the other. That our system 
 should afford, in such extreme cases, an intermediate point between these dire 
 alternatives, by which the Government may be brought to a pause, and thereby 
 an interval obtained to compromise differences, or, if impracticable, be compelled 
 to sul:imit the question to a constitutional adjustment, through an appeal to the 
 States themselves, is an evidence of its high wisdom ; an element, not, as is sup- 
 posed by some, of weakness, but of strength: not of anarchy or revolution, bat 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XXXvii 
 
 and to the New England spirit of centralization and monarchy. 
 His last words in the Senate of the United States, when the 
 hand of death was upon him; — when the ambition of this 
 world was over; — were a plea for the Union under the Con- 
 stitution. His speech of 1837, from which we have just 
 "quoted, was an earnest and able appeal to the justice, good 
 sense, and self-interests of the laboring and productive classes 
 of the North, for the Union under the Constitution, against 
 the Abolitionists, then few in number and generally regarded 
 
 of peace and safety. Its general recognition would, in a great measure, if not 
 altogether, supersede the necessity of its exercise, by impressing on the movements of 
 the Government that moderation and justice so essential to harmony and peace, in 
 a country of such vast extent and diversity of interests as ours ; and would, if con- 
 troversy should come, turn the resentment of the aggrieved from the system to 
 those who had abused its powers, (a point all-important,) and cause them to seek 
 redress, not in revolution or overthrow, but in reformation. It is, in fact, properly 
 understood, a substitute, where the alternative would be force, tending to prevent, 
 and, if that fails, to correct peaceably the aberrations, to which all systems arc lia- 
 ble, and ivhich, if permitted to accumulate, 7uithout correction, must finally end in 
 a general catastrophe.'''' 
 
 See also Calhoun's letter to Governor Hamilton, of 28th August, 1832, in wliich 
 he said : 
 
 " If the views presented be correct, it follows that on the interposition of a 
 State in favor of the reserved rights, it would be the duty of the General Govern- 
 ment to abandon the contested power, or to apply to the States themselves, the 
 source of all political authority, for the power, in one of the two modes prescribed 
 by the Constitution. If the case be a simple one, embracing a single power, and 
 that in its nature easily adjusted, the more ready and appropriate mode would be' 
 an amendment in the ordhiary form, on a proposition of two-thirds of both houses 
 of Congress, to be ratified by three-fourths of the States : but, on the contrary, 
 should the derangement of the system be great, embracing many points difficult 
 to adjust, the States ought to be convened in a general convention, the most 
 august of all assemblies, representing the united sovereignty of the confederated 
 States, and having power and authority to correct every error, and to repair every 
 dilapidation or injury, whether caused by time or accident, or the conflicting 
 movements of the bodies, which compose the system. 
 
 "With institutions every way so fortunate, possessed of means so well cilci- 
 lated to prevent disorders, and so admirable to correct them, when they cannot 
 be prevented, he, who would prescribe for our political disease, disunion on the 
 one side, or coercion of a State in the assertion of its rights on the other, rvould 
 deserve and will receive the execrations of this and all future generations." 
 
XXXviii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 with contempt, as being either pafd agents of Great Britain 
 or crazy fanatics. 
 
 But here we have an illustration of the truth of M. 
 Guizot's remark that some portions of history are without 
 the control of human- judgment and will. Mr. Calhoun 
 intended to arrest the Abolition agitation by appealing to the 
 justice and reason of that portion, who were actuated by an 
 honest zealotry, hoping thereby to withdraw them from the 
 support o( the paid emissaries of the British East-India cotton 
 and sugar monopoly. His speech, however, had a directly 
 contrary effect. By it he drew attention to the republicaniz- 
 ing, levelling, democratizing influences of negro slavery, in 
 its social and political effects upon the whites. By it he 
 called attention to the peculiar influence of negro slav'ery in 
 its bearing on the irrepressible conflict between capital and 
 labor. By it, and by the cotemporary publication of M. de 
 Cassagnac's book, Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase were brought 
 to understand w/ij the influence of the South was always 
 exerted, in the legislation of the General Government, to 
 keep up wages, and keep down the cost of living — in favor of 
 light taxes, high wages, cheap living, and an economical 
 administration of the Government. From Mr. Calhoun's 
 speech and De Cassagnac's book the advocates of low 
 wages learned that Abolition would produce pauperism ; that 
 pauperism would increase competition in the struggle for 
 bread ; that increased competition would reduce wages, with 
 cheaper food and coarser clothing and fewer of the neces- 
 saries of life to the laborers. The result was, not to detach 
 the zealots from the British agents, but to bring the mon- 
 archists, the aristocrats, the capitalists, and the advocates of 
 low wages into an alliance with the British agents and the 
 zealots ; fusing them all, together with some other elements, 
 into the great party, that elected Mr. Lincoln, made war upon 
 and subjugated the South, and abolished slaveiy, that " free 
 labor might be made cheaper than slave labor;" which 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE, XXXIX 
 
 simply means a reduction* of the wages of free labor below 
 the cost of feeding and clothing a negro and taking care of 
 him in sickness and the infirmities of age. 
 
 We have referred to other elements in the fusion, that pro- 
 duced the party that elected Mr. Lincoln. The two major 
 causes that led to that fusion and the consequent war, were 
 unquestionably the conflict between despotic and free gov- 
 ernment; between the spirit of aristocracy and the spirit of 
 democracy : and between capital and labor ; the desire to 
 make transitions to a monarchical and aristocratic govern- 
 ment, and the desire to reduce wages. But there were other 
 mmor causes that deserve a passing notice. 
 
 And, first in importance, should be mentioned foreign 
 intrigue to foster division between the North and the South, 
 as shown in President Madison's message to Congress, with 
 the accompanying correspondence of John Henry, the British 
 emissary at Boston, to which the reader is referred. 
 
 In a letter from Boston, 20th March, 1809, to Sir James 
 Craig, Governor-General of British America, John Henry said: 
 
 " It should, therefore, be the peculiar care of Great Britain 
 to foster division between the North and the South ; and by suc- 
 ceeding in this, she may carry into effect her own projects in 
 Europe, with a total disregard of the resentments of the 
 democrats on this continent." 
 
 Unfortunately too many of the politicians of the United 
 States have aided to make this British policy effective, "thus 
 advancing (to use Mr. Guizot's language) in the execution 
 of a. plan, which they had not conceived, and of which they 
 were not even aware." 
 
 One great statesman, unquestionably the ablest of his party 
 now living, Mr. Seward, conceived the idea of governing 
 this country by sectional animosities, as a permanent system. 
 In a speech to the Maryland Legislature at Annapolis, shortly 
 after the war, he suggested that, the sectional conflict between 
 the North and South having been terminated, the time had 
 
xl translator's preface. 
 
 arrived for a reorganization of parties, on the basis of a com- 
 bination of the Eastern and Southern Atlantic States agai?ist 
 the West. 
 
 Another of the minor causes of the war was the personal 
 pique of disappointed aspirants for public office or patronage 
 Among these the most notable were John Quincy Adams, 
 Martin Van Buren, and Francis P. Blair. 
 
 Mr. Adams left the Federal party and joined the Demo- 
 cratic party, assigning, as his reason for so doing, that the 
 former were traitors and disunionists ; but when the Demo- 
 cratic party rejected him as a candidate for the Presidency, 
 he renewed his affiliation with his old party, and thereby gave 
 color to the charge, made by some of the old Federalists, that 
 his conversion to Democracy was pretended. The bitterness 
 of his subsequent hostility to the Democracy and to the South, 
 their stronghold, leaves no room to doubt that his views were 
 colored by the jaundice of disappointed ambition. 
 
 Mr. Van Buren, having been deserted by the Southern 
 Democracy in his second race for the Presidency, took his 
 revenge by the Free-soil Buffalo platform, and thereby gave 
 an impulse to the fusion, which finally resulted in the election 
 of Mr. Lincoln and the war. 
 
 Francis P. Blair had grown rich at Washington, as the edi- 
 tor of the Democratic newspaper, and by the public printing. 
 Mr. Thomas Ritchie had grown old as a Democratic editor at 
 Richmond, and was still poor. On the election of Mr. Polk, 
 the Virginia delegation in Congress, wishing to provide for 
 Mr. Ritchie, urged that Mr. Blair had enjoyed the public 
 patronage long enough, and ought to make room for Mr. 
 Ritchie. Mr. Polk admitted the force of the demand, and 
 required Mr. Blair to sell out the Globe to Mr. Ritchie and 
 General Armstrong of Nashville, who changed its name to 
 the Union, Mr. Blair yielded to superior force ; but held the 
 South responsible for it. He took his revenge by joining in 
 the fusion that elected Mr. Lincoln and brought on the war; 
 
translator's preface. xH 
 
 aided greatly to break down the Democratic party ; and only 
 forgave and returned to his first love, when his revenge was 
 full by the surrender to superior force at Appomattox Court 
 House.(a) 
 
 Another of the minor causes that led to the war was the 
 Pacific Railroad. That portion of the Democracy, who sup- 
 ported Breckinridge, were opposed to giving to a few indi- 
 viduals the enormous grants sought to be obtained from Con- 
 gress in aid of that road, and had defeated the bill known as 
 the Curtis Bill. Mr. Douglas himself, probably — certainly, 
 Governor Herschel V. Johnson — and very many of those, 
 who voted for them, were not aware of the plan, the execu- 
 tion of which was to be advanced by their nomination ; but 
 it was brought about by a rmg of those, who expected to be 
 the beneficiaries of some such Pacific Railroad Bill as that of 
 Mr. Curtis; — to defeat Breckinridge, who would oppose it, 
 and elect either Douglas or Lincoln, both of whom were 
 pledged to its support. But, as it is my purpose to give a full 
 history of the Pacific Railroad in another publication, I refer 
 now to Duff Green's Facts and Suggestions, chap, xxvi., p. 215, 
 for further information on this point. 
 
 In this connection, however, there was another remote, but 
 very potent, cause of the war, that ought not to be passed 
 unmentioned : the cession by the State of Virginia to the 
 United States of her great territory northwest of the Ohio 
 River. Mr. Calhoun doubtless had it in mind, when claim- 
 ing for the South, among the other high qualities that adorn 
 our nature, disinterestedness. Mr. Webster, in his speech in 
 the Senate, March 7, 1850, said of it : 
 
 " And a most magnificent act it was. I never reflect upon 
 it without a disposition to do honor and justice ; — and justice 
 would be the highest honor; — to Virginia, for the cession of her 
 Northwestern territory. I will say, sir, it is one of her fairest 
 claims to the respect and gratitude of the United States, and 
 
 (a) See note (a) to page xlul. 
 
xHi translator's preface. 
 
 that, perhaps, it is only second to that other claim that 
 attaches to her ; that, from her counsels, and from the intel- 
 ligence and patriotism of her leading statesmen, proceeded 
 the first idea put into practice of the formation of a general 
 Constitution for the United States. ... I have said that I honoi 
 Virginia for her cession of this territory. There have been 
 received into the Treasury of the United States eighty mil- 
 lions of dollars, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands 
 ceded by her. If the residue should be sold at the same 
 rate, the whole aggregate will exceed two hundred millions 
 of dollars." 
 
 In the light of more recent events, the historian may lose 
 sight of the disinterestedness and magnificence, in the prodi- 
 gality, of the gift ; for those, to whom she gave it, turned 
 upon and rent her in twain. Nay, more ; while they heaped 
 honors on those, whose boast was that they desolated the 
 fair fields of Virginia, unti| a crow flying over them had to 
 " carry his rations with him," they sought to realize Mr. Cal- 
 houn's prophecy by putting the negro slaves, as political mas- 
 ters, over the sons of those, whose intelligence and patriotism 
 called forth these expressions of respect and gratitude from 
 Mr. Webster. 
 
 I remember to have seen, shortly after the war, the idea 
 advanced in a New York paper (I think the Journal of Com- 
 merce) that the South must thank her own statesmen and 
 leaders for her defeat ; because it was wholly due to that sen- 
 timent of love for the Union, which Southern statesmen had 
 striven so hard to arouse, and which Northern leaders had 
 striven with as much earnestness to suppress. 
 
 The proofs of this truth are multitudinous, but space admits 
 only the following extracts from the resolutions adopted at a 
 convention of the (so-called) Republican party of Massachu- 
 setts, at Worcester, not long previous to the war: 
 
 " Resolved, That the necessity for disunion is written in the 
 whole existing character and conditions of the two sections 
 of the country — in their social organization, education, habits. 
 
translator's preface. xliii 
 
 and laws — in the dangers of our white citizens in Kansas, 
 and of our colored ones in Boston — in the wounds of Charles 
 Sumner and the laurels of his assailant — and no Govern- 
 ment on earth was ever strong enough to hold together such 
 opposing forces. 
 
 " Resolved, That this movement does not seek merely dis- 
 union, but the more perfect union of the free States by the ex- 
 ptdsion of the slave States from the Confederation, in which 
 they have ever been an element of discord, danger, and disfirace. 
 
 " Resolved, That henceforward, instead of regarding it as 
 an objection to any system of policy, that it will lead to the 
 separation of the States, we will proclaim that to be the 
 highest of all recommendations and the grateful proof of 
 statesmanship ; and will support, politically or otherwise, such 
 men and measures as appear to tend most to this result. 
 
 " Resolved, That the sooner the separation takes place the 
 more peaceful it will be ; but that peace or war is a secondary 
 consideration in view of our present perils. Slavery must be 
 conquered, 'peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must' " {a) 
 
 (a) For twenty years, from the time that Mr. Polk required him to give place to 
 Messrs. Ritchie and Armstrong, in 1845, until Columbia was burned and Rich- 
 mond evacuated, in 1865, Mr. Francis P. Blair more or less openly co-operated 
 politically with the men, who passed these resolutions. In a letter addressed, in 
 1855, to Daniel R. Goodloe and Lewis Clephane, Corresponding Committee of 
 the Republican Association of Washington City, he assigned the reasons of his 
 hostility to the Democratic party and to the .South, as follows : 
 
 "The cause, which your organization is intended to promote, may well draw 
 to its support men of all parties. Differences on questions of policy, on constitu- 
 tional construction, of modes of administration, may well be merged to unite men, 
 who believe that nothing but concert of action on the part of those, who would ar- 
 rest the spread of slavery, can resist the power of the combination now embodied 
 to make it embrace the continent from ocean to ocean." 
 
 It is impossible for any one, who knows Mr. Blair, to believe that he believed 
 what he here assigns as the reason of his combination with the men, who passed 
 these resolutions. He was too well informed, knew too much of geography, 
 understood too well the climatic influences, which necessarily confined negro 
 slavery to the Southern St.ites, where alone it could be made profitable, to l>elieve 
 any such thing. But as the close of a lady's letter is said to open the window 
 of her heart, so the close of Mr. Blair's letter opens the window of his. He said : 
 
 "Incumbents and expectants of office and dignities claim a sort of patent right 
 
xliv. translator's preface. 
 
 Here we have disunion avowed in Massachusetts, for the 
 purpose of getting rid of the social and political influences 
 of negro slavery. I have already shown that its social in- 
 fluence was to make the well-behaved poor white man the 
 equal of his rich neighbor, and its political influence was ex- 
 erted to secure light taxes, fair wages, and cheap living. 
 Some of the party, like Mr. Greeley, were willing to "let the 
 Union slide," if thereby they could be left free in the North 
 and East to enjoy the distinctions between poor and rich, re- 
 duce wages, and tax labor and its products for the benefit of 
 an aristocracy. But when the Union sentiment, created by 
 Southern statesmen, showed itself, then the men, who passed 
 these resolutions, were the loudest in crying " rebel," and 
 in denouncing those, who took them at their word and pro- 
 posed to separate peaceably. Then the monarchists, aristo- 
 crats, and advocates of low wages, previously avowed dis- 
 unionists, endeavored to make, and did make, the " simple- 
 hearted citizens," who loved the Union, believe that the 
 South had begun the war. This was not true : for the first act 
 of war was the military movement of Captain, now General, 
 Robert Anderson, in taking possession of Fort Sumter ; unless, 
 perhaps, it would be more correct to say, that the first act of 
 war was done by the men, who passed at Worcester the reso- 
 lutions above quoted, when they sent John Brown and his band 
 to Harper's Ferry, to incite a servile insurrection in Virginia. 
 
 The dominant party of Massachusetts demanded disunion, 
 "peacefully if they could, forcibly if they must." The 
 South, in answer to this demand, offered to withdraw peace- 
 
 in the machine of Government, to create a Democracy adapted to their purposes. 
 Their innovations in the machinery are contrivances to renew their privileges for 
 new terms." 
 
 Mr. Blair had long been the incumbent of the very lucrative office of public 
 printer, and was forced to give way for Mr. Ritchie and General Armstrong, at 
 the instance of the Virgmia delegation. His long "incumbency" made him feel 
 that he had " a sort of patent-right " in the profits of that office, and that his re- 
 moval was an " innovation " in the machineiy contrived by the Democratic party 
 and the South. 
 
translator's preface. xlv 
 
 fully; tendered the olive-branch; sent commissioners to 
 Washington to arrange the terms of peaceful separation. 
 Secession was resorted to as a peaceful measure, to satisfy the 
 dominant party at the North, who had demanded the " cx- 
 pu/sion" of the South from the confederation. Some, as I 
 have said, cared only to get rid of negro slavery ; so that the 
 North, relieved from its democratic tendencies, might more 
 readily make transitions to a monarchical and aristocratic 
 form of government, with high taxes, low wages, and large 
 Government expenditures. Another class saw, in the larger 
 expenditures of a war, the chance of making fortunes by con- 
 tracting for army supplies ; and their purpose to provoke a 
 war was disclosed by the remark about " blood-letting," made 
 by Senator Chandler, whose display of gorgeous liveries and 
 other insignia of pretensions to nobility, on his tour through 
 Europe since the war, in some measure compensated news- 
 paper men for the dearth of excitements when the war was 
 over. But there was another class of men at the North, 
 those, whom M. Guizot calls the " simple-hearted citizens," 
 wdiom Southern statesmen had taught to love the Union, and 
 who, full of courage and virtue, though little mindful of po- 
 litical affairs till something startling happens to arrest their 
 attention, rose up to declare that the Union should be pre- 
 served. The South was willing — anxious — to remain in, 
 and even after secession to return to, the Union, if permitted 
 to do so with their rights inviolate under the Constitution. 
 In December, i860. President Buchanan despatched to Mr. 
 Lincoln a gentleman, (a) a connection by marriage of the latter, 
 to invite him to come to Washington at once; with assurances 
 that he would be received as a guest at the White House, 
 with all the honors due to him as President elect; and that 
 
 (a) This was my father, General Duff Green. Mr. Buchanan selected him to 1-e 
 the bearer of his invitation to Mr. Lincoln, supposing that thron;.;h the marriage 
 connection he would have more influence with Mr. Lincoln than almost any 
 other messenger, who could have been selected. Ninian Edwards, of Springfield, 
 Illinois, was my mother's nephew, and he and Mr. Lincoln had married sistcri. 
 
xlvi translator's preface. 
 
 by uniting their influence, they could yet satisfy the South 
 that they could remain in, or return to the union, with safety 
 to their rights, and honor to their character; that thus the 
 farther progress of secession could be arrested, and the States, 
 that had already acted, be brought back. Mr. Lincoln declined 
 to accept Mr. Buchanan's invitation without the approval of Mr. 
 Ben Wade, of Ohio, and some others, who would not consent 
 to it; and the result was that the blood-letting and contract- 
 ing portion of the aristocratic party carried their point, and 
 succeeded in provoking the war. 
 
 A great effort was subsequently made to produce the im- 
 pression at the North that the war was " the slaveholders' 
 rebellion." Nothing could be farther from the truth. The 
 slaveholders, with rare exceptions, were averse to war, and 
 opposed to secession, lest it might lead to war. Only a few, 
 very few, slaveholders, (who were misled into believing the 
 Worcester declaration that the sooner the separation took 
 place, the more peaceful it would be,) favored the movement. 
 Let the candid reader bear in mind that property-holders are- 
 proverbially timid and averse to all political movements cal- 
 culated to endanger property ; and that the slaveholders had 
 multiplied reasons for caution, in the peculiar nature of their 
 property, which had legs and a will of its own to take itself 
 off. 
 
 It is generally, but erroneously, believed at the North that 
 Yancey, Rhett, Toombs, Benjamin, and some others, were the 
 chief agents in bringing about secession. Their influence, 
 however, was small, compared to that of Governor Joseph E. 
 Brown, of Georgia; and for the reason that their arguments; — 
 (such, for instance, as the offer to "drink all the blood that 
 was spilled," attributed, truly or falsely, to Mr. Toombs ;) — were 
 intended to prove that secession would be peaceable, and were 
 addressed to the slaveholders, who were in a minority of one 
 to fifteen ; while Governor Brown addressed himself to the 
 non-slaveholders, who were a vast majority, as the census of 
 
translator's preface. 
 
 xlvii 
 
 i860 will show, {a) Governor Brown was born in South Car- 
 olina, a self-made man, sprung from the non-slaveholding 
 class of poor whites ; and his influence with that class, who 
 were proud of his talents and success, was not much less in 
 South Carolina than in Georgia. 
 
 While Governor of Georgia before the war, he issued sev- 
 eral papers addressed to the non-slaveholders, advocating 
 secession with great adroitness and ability. His argument 
 was in substance as follows : 
 
 That the (so-called) Republican party was coming into 
 power, pledged and determined to abolish slavery, and to 
 make the negro the equal of the poor white man. 
 
 That, inasmuch as slaves were property, and private pro- 
 perty could not be taken without just compensation, the first 
 result would be to tax the non-slaveholding mechanics, small 
 farmers, croppers, and others of their class, to pay for the 
 slaves. 
 
 That another result would be to reduce wages by the com- 
 petition of the freed negro, who would make up by petty lar- 
 ceny for lower wages; that this would fall upon the laboring 
 whites ; because the slave-owners also owned the lands and 
 the bank and railroad stocks, and could still provide for their 
 
 (a) The vast preponderance of the non-slaveholders appears by the following 
 tabular statement, taken from the census of i860. (See volume of Population, 
 pp. 592 and 593, and volume of Agriculture, pp. 223 to 245.) 
 
 Slaveholders. 
 
 White popula- 
 tiim. 
 
 Ratio of sla\'«- 
 
 holders to white 
 
 population. 
 
 Alabama 
 
 Arkansas , 
 
 Florida 
 
 Georgia 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 North Carolina. 
 South Carolina. 
 
 Tennessee 
 
 Texas , 
 
 Virginia 
 
 33.730 
 11,481 
 5.152 
 41,084 
 22,033 
 
 30.943 
 34,65s 
 26,701 
 
 36,844 
 21,878 
 52,128 
 
 526,271 
 324,143 
 77,747 
 591,550 
 357,456 
 353.S99 
 629,942 
 291,300 
 826,722 
 420,891 
 1,047,249 
 
 I m 15 
 I " 28 
 I " 15 
 I " 14 
 I " 16 
 I " II 
 I " 18 
 I " II 
 I " 22 
 I " 20 
 I " 19 
 
xlviii translator's preface. 
 
 children without labor ; while the non-slaveholders would be 
 further impoverished by taxation to pay for the slaves ; and 
 that it would be they — the non-slaveholders and their chil- 
 dren — who alone would have to compete with the negroes 
 for employment. 
 
 That another result would be to degrade their social posi- 
 tion ; because the freed negroes would not attempt to intrude 
 into the well-furnished drawing-rooms of their late masters, 
 but would force their way to the humble firesides of the poor 
 mechanic and laborer, and insult them by dernanding their 
 daughters in marriage, {a) 
 
 By such arguments as these Governor Brown " fired the 
 hearts" of the vast non-slaveholding majority, and by their 
 votes swept the reluctant slaveholders into secession. When 
 at a later period it was proposed by General Lee and others 
 to put negroes into the army, it was the non-slaveholders, 
 who most bitterly opposed it; because they shrank from a 
 contact, which they feared would bring them down to a level 
 with the negroes. 
 
 The war was not a slaveholders' rebellion. Notwithstand- 
 ing the declaration passed by Congress, at the instance of the 
 late President Johnson, that the only object of the war was 
 to preserve the Union — though very few on either side con- 
 ceived, or were even aware of, the plan, the execution of which 
 they were advancing — it was fought on the one side — by 
 those, who controlled the Government, and in whose minds 
 the design of the vast machine was centred, — in the interest 
 of monarchism and of the capital, that employs free labor; to 
 destroy negro slavery; because its tendencies were anti-mon- 
 
 (a) It is due to Governor Brown to add that, as Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of Georgia, since the war, he has sought to shield the poor whites of that 
 State from one degradation, by the fear of which he sought to " fire their hearts," 
 when advocating secession, by deciding that the intermarriage of whites and ne- 
 groes is prohibited. (See his opinion in the case of Charlotte Scott, plaintiff, vs. 
 The State of Georgia, which those, who have not access to the Georgia Reports, 
 will find in McPherson's Handbook of Politics for 1870, p. 474.) 
 
translator's preface. xlix 
 
 archical, and its influence exerted in legislation to maintain 
 the price of labor and cheapen the cost of living. On the 
 other side, it was fought by the Southern non-slaveholders to 
 avert pauperization by taxation, reduction of wages, and social 
 debasement. 
 
 The great majority of the brave men, who did the hard 
 fighting of the war, fought and bled and died, to keep the 
 Southern States in the Union ; yet their "judgment and will" 
 were subordinated to the control of the men, who, in the 
 Worcester resolutions, declared their purpose to be " the ex- 
 pulsion of the Southern States from the confederation." 
 
 Many conscientious men thought they were fighting to 
 secure justice and liberty for the negroes ; yet their "judg- 
 ment and will" were subordinated to the control of men, who 
 seized the first moment of power to oppress the negroes, by 
 an unjust and unconstitutional tax upon the product of negro 
 labor, cotton, while seeking to use the negnjoes as voting- 
 machines, to oppress free white labor at the North by similar 
 unjust and pauperizing taxation. 
 
 Mr. Attorney- General Akerman, in his speech in Repre- 
 sentatives' Hall, Atlanta, Georgia, ist September, 1870, sought 
 to impress upon Southern capital the fact, that emancipation 
 was a decree of divorce of its interests from those of labor. 
 
 He, or whoever prepared his speech for him, was aware, 
 however, that this was a " serious topic." He therefore en- 
 deavored in that speech to ride on both sides of the " serious 
 topic," by adding that, " looking at the white population alone, 
 the cry of a conflict between labor and capital has generally 
 been the cry of the demagogue, for the reason that capital 
 has seldom been organized against labor; and labor has sel- 
 dom, except in the small way of trades' unions, been organ- 
 ized against capital." 
 
 But what are the historical facts ? 
 
 The following is an extract from a late report of the Mas- 
 sachusetts Bureau ol" Labor Statistics : 
 
1 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 "boston and the working- women — A PITIABLE PICTURE. 
 
 Extract from the last Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
 " In Boston, a large proportion are workers in shops. We 
 will take one trade, that of tailoresses and cloakmakers: they 
 go to their work at seven, almost always without any warm 
 breakfast; they work till ten, and then perhaps have a few 
 minutes' rest, when the little teapot is set on the range and a 
 lunch of dry food eaten; but in most of the establishments 
 the girls do not stop work till twelve, when, in all, they are 
 allowed from thirty to sixty minutes for dinner. Work ends 
 at five P. M., and many of the girls take work home with 
 them, work not ceasing till midnight. Room-rent costs not 
 less than two dollars to three dollars each, with often two or 
 more double beds in a room. In good shops and with brisk 
 work they can earn a dollar a day. Some machine girls re- 
 ceive more, bu^the work is very wearing, and induces spinal 
 disease. One of our largest as well as kindest custom-work 
 merchant tailors testified to a committee of inquiry, that few 
 'machine girls' could work over two years before becoming 
 so broken down that they were ever after unfit for labor. In 
 slopwork shops, girls can seldom earn more than their room- 
 rent except by overwork. In slack times their suffering is 
 extreme, girls having been known to work weeks with only 
 water and bread or crackers for food, and fortunate if able to 
 procure an ounce of tea. In dull times many have lived for 
 weeks on five cents' worth each of stale bread per week while 
 seeking work. The lodging-house keepers charge working- 
 women higher rates than men, and many refuse to have them 
 in their houses at any price. Hence they are often obliged 
 to live and sleep in localities, where they would be ashamed 
 to let any one know they ever went. Yet few ever break 
 down morally or become untidy in dress. Those women, who 
 take work home from the slopshops, provident, aid, and other 
 charitable societies, receive as follows : Shirts, 4 cents to 7 
 
translator's preface. li 
 
 cents; fine-bosomed shirts, lo cents to 25 cents; satin vests, 
 20 cents; pants, 15 cents, 20 cents, and 37 cents; coats, 50 
 cents ; French calico suits, lined sacks, faced skirt, 20 cents ; 
 long white night-dresses, 50 cents. Of the 30,000 women in 
 and about Boston, who live by sewing, very few earn over 
 ;^I2 a week ; the average wages do not exceed $2.75. Many 
 poor women take this slop and charity work in quantities, 
 and give it to others to do, still further lessening the receipts 
 of the actual workers, who are usually women with small 
 families dependent upon their labor for support. Paper-box 
 makers average about $t, per week. 
 
 " Factory life is much harder on women than it was 
 twenty-five years ago. Instead of tending two looms, as 
 then, she is required to tend six; while a week's work now 
 will not procure as much comfort as when she only tended 
 'one loom. Very few working-women of any class ever have 
 a good bed, with sufficient bed-covering. Their wages will 
 not allow them to purchase warm flannel undergarments or 
 serviceable shoes, water-proofs, etc. Few are ever exeni[)t 
 from diseases caused by scanty clothing, insufficient and in- 
 nutritious food, and long-continued labor in deleterious con- 
 ditions. The constant pressure of anxiety breaks down many 
 girls physically, and too often morally, before they reach the 
 prime of life. All avenues of employment are overcrowded." 
 
 The New York Times, under Mr. Raymond's management, 
 was, and still is, one of the ablest exponents of the doctrine 
 that "free labor is cheaper than slave labor." On the 14th 
 July, 1868, it said editorially: 
 
 "The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin says that the 
 Southern planters, 'profiting by free labor, have now discov- 
 ered that more money can be made out of a freedman's labor 
 than from that of a slave.' We are glad to hear it. In the 
 old days of slavery, we always told the Southern people that 
 this was the case." 
 
lii translator's preface. 
 
 On the 2 1st July, 1869, the New York Times spoke edito- 
 rially of the great Asiatic slave-trader of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, Koopmanschap, as follows 
 
 " It was only a few weeks ago that the name of Koopman- 
 schap was unknown to fame. Suddenly it has emerged from 
 the obscurity, with which the appellations of ordinary mortals 
 are surrounded, and occupies a lofty niche within the nation's 
 fame. Everybody is asking 'Who is Koopmanschap?' 
 Fortunately he has arrived in the city just in time to answer 
 for himself this question, as propounded to him by our re- 
 porter yesterday." 
 
 Now why does this advocate of cheap labor and dear living 
 give such a lofty niche in the nation's fame to this trader in 
 human bones and flesh and muscle? Is there, can there be, 
 any other reason than because this new organization of the 
 labor system of the United States proposes to furnish capital 
 with cheaper labor, giving to capital all the advantages of the 
 slave system, and at the same time relieving capital from the 
 expense and burden of taking care of labor in sickness and 
 the infirmities of age ? Oh, admirable, money-making phil- 
 anthropy! 
 
 But let the New York Times speak for itself. It says : 
 " It is the importation of these coolies in the past, and the 
 proposed transportation immediately of hundreds of thou- 
 sands more, to supply the demand for labor everywhere, and 
 in every industrial department, and especially to cultivate the 
 neglected plantations of the South, that have Diade the name 
 of Koopmanschap famous in the land. 
 
 "... The woollen factory of Lazar freres, in San Fran- 
 cisco, employs 300 Chinamen, who make splendid hands, al- 
 though they were entirely ignorant of the business when first 
 employed by that firm. This was two years ago, when the 
 Irish hands refused to work more than eight hours a day. 
 The firm immediately discharged them, and employed the 
 coolies, paying the latter for ten hours' labor a day only $1 
 
translator's preface, ]iii 
 
 per diem on an average, while to the Irish laborers they had 
 paid on an average ^3 per diem, or from iSGo to 3100 per 
 month. . . . 
 
 " Mr. Koopmanschap says that he does not bring over 
 Chinese women. They are sure to follow wherever the men 
 go. The Chinamen will import them for themselves." 
 
 The Cincinnati Commercial is another noted advocate of 
 these politico-economical ideas. It also sings pceans to 
 Koopmanschap, and revels in the thought of a coming mil- 
 lennium of cheap labor. It says: 
 
 " Weavers of cotton and silk can be had in China for two 
 or three dollars a month, and skilled artisans receive from 
 five to eight dollars for that period of time. . . . 
 
 " Women are found in abundance in China to do the labor 
 of households for their mere bread and clothing. Laborers 
 can be got in the tea districts of China for six or seven cents 
 a day. . . . 
 
 " The American laborer consumes enough meat, tea, and 
 coffee, two or three times a day, to keep a Chinaman for a 
 week. The price of meat, as is well known, is about four or 
 five times that of bread. . . . 
 
 " The subsistence of the great mass of the Chinese is 
 extremely simple. The great staple, of which it consist'^, is 
 rice, and this, mixed with a little bread, a few vegetable-^-, a 
 little fruit, and a little meat, (more frequently fish,) constitutes 
 the whole diet of millions. Indeed, the small consumption 
 of animal food in China is one of the wonders of the country 
 to a stranger. The flesh of beef or mutton is scarcely ever 
 tasted except by the rich, and no Chinese ever use cither 
 milk, butter, or cheese." 
 
 Such is the Barmecide feast to which the so-called Repub- 
 licanism of 1871 invites the laboring and productive classes 
 of America. 
 
 On the other hand, the question of cheap labor and cheap 
 production, which are the great problems of the age, Ivis 
 
liv translator's preface. 
 
 been so well treated by Ex-Governor Horatio Seymour, in a 
 recent address to a mass meeting of working-men in Utica, 
 New York, that I here insert it entire. 
 
 SPEECH OF EX-GOVERNOR SEYMOUR. 
 
 At a mass meeting of working-men in Utica, New York, 
 Ex-Governor Seymour spoke as follows : 
 
 "At the last six annual elections in this State the Repub- 
 lican leaders have asked that they should be kept in power, 
 because they claimed they had saved the country, and we are 
 left to the conclusion that they saved it for their own special 
 benefit. We do not see the grounds for this claim, so far as 
 the war is concerned, as we sent our full share of men to the 
 field. The city of New York, the stronghold of the De- 
 mocracy, did more than its share in filling the ranks of our 
 armies. If we look at the action of the party in power, the 
 question comes up, what kind of salvati'on have they given 
 us ? Our whole people are grievously burdened by taxation. 
 Military power still tramples upon the judiciary in many 
 parts of the South, and even threatens the sanctity of the 
 ballot-box at the North. Great armies are kept up upon the 
 pretext that they are needed to save the negroes at the South, 
 and to kill the Indians at the West. The country is harassed 
 by Indian and African problems. It is now also perplexed 
 with the Asiatic question. It comes up like a black cloud 
 upon our Western borders, taking unusual forms and propor- 
 tions. To all, who have studied it, it causes great anxiety. 
 Its shadows fall upon us, and we cannot get rid of its dangers 
 by shutting our eyes to its evil forebodings. It enters into 
 this election, for we are about to choose our lawmakers, who 
 must deal with it. Some months ago I wrote a short letter in 
 answer to an invitation from a body of working-men to speak 
 to them upon this subject. I took ground not only against 
 the way, in which the Chinamen come to our country, but to 
 
translator's preface. Iv 
 
 their coming here at all. That letter was sharply censured, 
 but it was not written without thought or study. As the sub- 
 ject is fairly up in this canvass, I will speak of it to-night. 
 Heretofore, except at the time when the people of New York 
 and New England were bringing negroes from Africa to sell 
 •to the people of the South, immigratioa has always brought 
 us people kindred to ourselves in manners, customs, and 
 religion. Even their languages had much in common. The 
 literature of Europe, translated into different tongues, was 
 more or less known to them all. They had the same habits 
 of thought, and were used to the same form of civilization. 
 Their coming gave no shock to our institutions, laws, or 
 habits. They rapidly became part of ourselves, and added 
 to the general wealth and prosperity. Europe was not so 
 overcrowded with people that they were sent to us in great 
 numbers, or more rapidly than they could be assimilated. 
 We therefore welcomed them to our shores. The Chinese 
 immigration is a different thing. It comes from a land 
 crowded with people beyond what our civilization could tol- 
 erate. They outnumber us ten to one. It brings to us a 
 people who are in conflict with all our methods of thought, 
 with all our ideas of morals, and with all our conceptions of 
 government. While we find much to commend in their 
 industry, there is more to condemn in their cunning, their 
 cruelty, and in that stolidity of character, which makes them 
 unimpressible by any influences we can bring to bear upon 
 them. They will always be an undigested, hurtful thing in 
 our political system. The idea prevails that they are a docile, 
 harmless race ; and so they are while they remain a few indi- 
 viduals scattered through the community. 15ut study their 
 characters at home, and you will find thieving, corruption, 
 and falsehood in the interior of the state, piracy upon its 
 coasts, and robbery upon its inland borders. 
 
 " They are hated by all other Asiatics. While some urge that 
 we should welcome them here, they arc debating the qucs- 
 
Ivi translator's preface. 
 
 tion if they shall go on with the massacre of Americans and 
 Europeans, which they began with the awful slaughter of the 
 men and women, who are engaged among them, as mission- 
 aries, in works of charity and religion. Unfortunately for our 
 country, our difficulties in dealing with this question are in- 
 creased by the late amendments to the National Constitution, 
 which have stripped the States of rights needed for their good 
 government. Otherwise this question could have been left 
 to the Pacific States, who would have dealt with it in the 
 light of their own experience. But the Fifteenth Amend- 
 ment binds California and Oregon hand and foot, and lays 
 them prostrate before the Chinaman, who strides over them, 
 and we are forced to confront hin^ here. It is urged by some 
 that Chinese immigration will lower the wages of our labor, 
 cheapen production, and add to the national wealth. This is 
 not true. Cheap labor does not add to a nation's wealth, 
 neither does it cheapen production, as I will show. Look 
 over the map of the world, and you will find universal pov- 
 erty where labor is most poorly paid. In Africa, you can buy 
 a man's labor for life for a string of beads, but they are too 
 poor to get the string of beads. In Asia, the laborer gets a 
 little better pay; but how little is its wealth, and how small is 
 its commerce, compared with its countless millions of people! 
 Men, who wear scanty cotton clothing, cannot uphold arts or 
 industry. They cannot give life and prosperity to the work- 
 shop, to the counting-house, or to fleets of vessels upon the 
 ocean. If you compare Asia and Africa with Europe, you 
 will find that, while the laborers of England, of Germany, of 
 France, and other countries are much better paid, the national 
 wealth is greater, and that they are sending their products to 
 the very regions where the pay of labor is at the lowest ebb. 
 The labor of Europe, whose wages are so much higher than 
 those of the other continents I have named, can still produce 
 all the products of art for a much less price, and can and does 
 sell them to those countries, where labor starves for want of 
 
translator's preface. ivii 
 
 pay. But we must turn to our own country to learn liow true 
 it is that labor must be well paid to give wealth and pros- 
 perity to a land. If the laborers and mechanics of the United 
 States were put upon the same pay given to the Chinamen, 
 we should have universal bankruptcy throughout the bounds 
 of our country. Three-quarters of the stores of this city 
 would be closed. Why is it that a town with 10,000 people 
 here does more business than a city of 100,000 in Asia? It 
 is due to the fact that our mechanics are able to build houses; 
 to furnish them with the comforts of life ; to clothe them- 
 selves and their families, not only in a way which protects 
 their persons, bvt also gratifies their tastes ; which enables 
 them to support the arts and industry in all its forms. Why 
 are the people of these United States able to pay a percent- 
 age of taxation, which would crush any other nation ? It is 
 simply because the wages of labor here enable men to con- 
 sume all those varied articles, which pay a duty to Govern- 
 ment. Go where you will, the world over, and you will find 
 the greatest general wealth, the greatest prosperity, and the 
 greatest happiness, where you find the greatest wages for 
 labor. Men confound cheap labor with cheap production. 
 These are not only different, but at times they are opposite 
 things. Sometimes cheap labor is an element in cheap pro- 
 duction, but that is not the rule. We see the fact to be that, 
 where labor is the highest, production is the cheapest, and 
 sends its works of art and of skill all over the world. The 
 reason of this is, cheap production is the result of intellect as 
 well as labor; of mind as well as of toil. It is wrought out 
 by those, who are in that condition of comfort and respect- 
 ability, that their minds are educated and alert. Starving 
 labor never yet invented machinery to till the ground and 
 gather in its crops ; it never yet worked out those wonders in 
 mechanics, which have borne our country on to its greatness. 
 Men can cheapen their productions and add to their earnings 
 when they can call to their aid science and learning, but 
 5 
 
Iviii translator's preface. 
 
 these two cannot live where labor is pinched down to the 
 point of starvation. If man invents a machine, which enables 
 him to make more, he can yet sell for less and grow rich. 
 But force him to sell for less by the competition of the China- 
 man, which does not increase his power of production, and 
 he starves. And when the laborer sinks, the whole structure 
 of society, of which he is the basis, sinks with him. This 
 may be laid down as a law — that cheap production and gen- 
 eral prosperity are the results of high civilization and general 
 intelligence ; that these can only exist among a people, where 
 the great mass of the working men are well paid and placed 
 in the condition of respectability, where their minds are fed as 
 well as their bodies. But it is said there is no danger that 
 the Chinamen will come to this country in such numbers as 
 will harm our working-men. Is this true ? We find that the 
 character and condition of the Chinese is such that they can 
 be sent for as readily as so many boxes of tea. We learn 
 every day of orders that are sent out for thousands of them 
 for special purposes. Orders are now under way for bands 
 of them to make boots and shoes. It does not take a large 
 number, thrown into this branch of business, to overstock the 
 demand for this labor, and to unsettle the wages of those, who 
 are skilled in this business. Already the artisans engaged in 
 this trade are uneasy. They do not know how soon that skill, 
 which they have gained in it, may be made valueless to sup- 
 port their families in the condition they have heretofore lived. 
 The men who make clothes or hats, or other classes of our 
 mechanics, may be treated in the same way. Those, who 
 work in our factories, are liable to be driven out by orders, 
 which are even now on their way to Asia. Navigation on 
 the Pacific, as its name implies, has always been less costly 
 and dangerous than that of the stormy Atlantic. There are 
 now about one hundred and fifty thousand Chinamen in our 
 countr}^ An equal number, brought here by selfish and de- 
 signing men, may be so placed as to force down the wages of 
 
translator's preface. lix 
 
 working-men. The mere fact, that this can be done, destroys 
 the independence and clouds the hopes of the body of our 
 mechanics. There is a growing belief in men's minds that 
 the mission of Mr. Burlingame was contrived by a class of 
 manufacturers to effect this very object, at the moment they 
 were appealing to Congress for special legislation in their 
 own behalf Short-sightedness is always incident to selfish- 
 ness and greed. Let these men bear in mind that, when they 
 have broken down the body of the laborers of this country, 
 they will have destroyed their ability to be the consumers of 
 manufactured products. The evils of underpaid labor will 
 not fall upon the working-men alone. All classes must suffer 
 when they are made poor. The 'owners of real estate, the 
 merchant, the manufacturer, will find that the laws of trade 
 and the rules of value are universal and unvarying. They 
 will operate in Europe or America, as they do in Asia or 
 Africa. True statesmanship and generous wisdom ever look 
 to building up the interests of labor. Where the homes of 
 toil are happy, and where prosperity waits upon the hand of 
 industry, there is national greatness, wealth, and glory. But 
 we are asked. What can we do to avert these evils? How 
 can we hinder the landing upon our shores of swarms of 
 Asiatics, without overturning the established maxim as to im- 
 migration ? We need no change of our policy in this respect. 
 We put the Asiatic and the European upon the same footing. 
 Our laws have never allowed any nation to send here a hurt- 
 ful or a dangerous class of men. When in some instances 
 they have shipped paupers to our shores, we have sent them 
 back. We forbid the violators of laws, men who endanger 
 the public health or order, to land here. The statutes of the 
 different States and of the nation are full of such regulations. 
 We welcome the great body of European immigrants, because 
 it is for our advantage to have them here. The Chinaman 
 has no better rights than the German, the Irishman, the Eng- 
 lishman, or the Frenchman. If his coming here is hurtful to 
 
Ix translator's preface. 
 
 the good order of society, to the great interests of industry, 
 we have a right to keep him away. If there is danger that 
 they will pour into the Pacific States in such numbers as to 
 shape their customs and habits by Asiatic rules, then they 
 endanger our Union, for the end of this must be their utter 
 severance from the rest of our country. The Mormons 
 are not so much in conflict with our ideas of morals and 
 civilization as are the Chinese. Yet no one would tolerate 
 the idea that the Mormons should gain control of the Pacific 
 coast. This Government is even now adopting sharp meas- 
 ures to hold them in check, at their colony in the midst of 
 the great deserts of the West. A simple law, such as has 
 been adopted with regard "to foreign immigration, will settle 
 this whole question. Let Congress declare that no more 
 than ten Chinamen shall be landed from one vessel, and they 
 will close to a safe degree those floodgates, which are now 
 wide open, and through which we are threatened with an in- 
 vasion from Asia as hurtful as that, which once desolated 
 Europe under Genghis Khan, I have spoken thus plainly 
 upon this subject, because I believe it more deeply concerns 
 the welfare of the American people than any topic involved 
 in this election. I have no censures for those who may differ 
 from the views I hold. I have no prejudices, which will hin- 
 der me from changing those views, if I find that I am wrong. 
 What I have said is the result of much thought and careful 
 study. I wish that those, who are charged with the conduct 
 of national affairs, or that their supporters, who are active in 
 this canvass, had in a plain and open way stated their views 
 with regard to this great Asiatic problem. I think that, by 
 so doing, they would stand in a better light before the country 
 and the world, than by efforts to keep alive sectional hate 
 and partisan malice," 
 
 To the editorial comments of the New York Times on the 
 fact noticed by the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, it i>s 
 
translator's preface. Ixi 
 
 only necessary to add one single example, out of millions, to 
 illustrate that the effect of emancipation has already been to 
 reduce wages, and to diminish the share of the products 
 of labor, allotted to those, by whose labor they were pro- 
 duced. A negro woman, who was an excellent cook, was, by 
 the casualties of the war, separated from her owners in 1864. 
 In January, 1870, she was most happy to get back to them. 
 She told them she had been doing her best to support herself, 
 but had not been able to get more than her food and forty 
 dollars a year, out of which she had to clothe herself, and 
 pay for medicine and medical attendance. Before the war 
 she could be hired readily for 5125 to $150 per annum, with 
 food, clothing, medicines, and medical attendance in addition. 
 
 Yet the Republican cry is still for cheaper labor ! and 
 Senator Sprague attended the Memphis Commercial Con- 
 vention for the sole purpose of impressing on the mind of 
 Southern capital that, having been divorced by emanci]xition 
 from labor, it should now unite with Northern capital in 
 measures to cheapen labor, {a) 
 
 In this divorce case, labor is the feebler party; — the poor 
 deserted wife, left without alimony, and with a brood of 
 hungry children crying for bread, and dependent on her for 
 support ! 
 
 Emancipation has taken from her that "natural ally." which 
 a community of interests secured to her in the old days of 
 negro slavery, as expressed in Mr. Jefferson's a[)horism, 
 above quoted. Wages no longer, at the South, go into, but 
 they come out of, the pockets of capital. The cost of living, 
 at the South, no longer comes out of, but goes into, the 
 pockets of capital. 
 
 And now we have the authoritative declaration of the 
 Attorney-General, the first law-officer of the Government, that 
 Mrs. White Labor and Mrs. Black Labor are two lonely 
 grass widows. 
 
 (tf) See Senator Sprague's speech at tlie Memphis Commercial Convention. 
 
Ixii translator's preface. 
 
 The question arises, Where can they, in their. lonesome 
 grass - widowhood, turn for aid and comfort, food, and 
 shelter ? 
 
 Shall they "go to Chicago"? Alas, they are already 
 divorced by emancipation ! They would be glad to make an 
 honest living, as hirelings, if they could get wages to keep 
 soul and body together. But they shrink from living by 
 beggary, prostitution, or theft. Then there is no use in their 
 ''going to C J lie ago!' 
 
 Shall they appeal to what is called RepJiblicanisjn in 1871 ? 
 Alas ! with the old rakes of that set, who misled, deceived, and 
 betrayed them, the heyday of the blood is over ; their hearts 
 are withered and callous ! Besides, they brought about the 
 divorce, of malice prepense, with set purpose to ruin these two 
 poor women; that they might thereby be forced into one of 
 De Cassagnac's four classes of the proletariat, viz., hirelings 
 at cheap wages, or else beggars, prostitutes, or thieves ! 
 
 Shall they appeal to the younger bloods of the set — any 
 of the "smaller fry," who call themselves Republicans? 
 Alas ! they never had either hearts or brains ; or, if they 
 had, there was not phosphorus enough in their composition 
 to light up the one, or warm the other ! Besides, they be- 
 long, body and soul, to capital, and believe that, in the pro- 
 gress of civilization, the great need of the hour \s cheap labor / 
 
 Can they find relief in what the Attorney-General calls 
 "the small way of trades' unions"? Alas, alas, alas! our 
 author shows that all history proves that to be a poor and 
 vain reliance ! Egotism, selfishness, appear there, as else- 
 where. I attended the National Labor Convention in Balti- 
 more in 1866, as a spectator, from curiosity, to see what it 
 was composed of, and what were its objects. I was at the 
 National Labor Convention in Chicago in 1867, as a delegate 
 from the Pattern-makers' Union of Baltimore. I had not much 
 to say at either Convention, but was a close observer at both. 
 Of all the men, whom I saw at Baltimore or Chicago, only 
 
translator's preface. Ixiii 
 
 two impressed on me the idea that their purpose was to 
 relieve the distress of the two poor divorced widows, Mrs. 
 White Labor and Mrs. Black Labor. All the rest impressed 
 me with the idea that their "judgment and will " were under 
 the control of the few, in whose minds the designs of the ma- 
 chine were centred; or that egotism, selfishness, was their 
 only motive ; that their purpose was " to grind their own 
 axes," and to get some control over the two poor lonesome 
 grass widows, on which they could trade, for their own profit, 
 with the advocates of cheap labor. 
 
 Can wan, pallid Mrs. White Labor find an asylum in the 
 cabin of her dusky rival, Mrs. Black Labor, now the favored 
 mistress of that wild enfant perdn, Imperialism, who is trav- 
 elling, mcog., through the United States, under the assumed 
 name of Republicanism ? 
 
 Pshaw ! Let Pharisees, who trade upon, and grow rich by, 
 negrophilism, falsely prate about the equalit)^ or superiority 
 of the negro over the white race, in all intellectual, moral, 
 physical, social, and political aptitudes. Let charlatans in 
 statesmanship vainly delude themselves with the belief, 
 that, by such legislation as the Akerman Election Bill of 
 Georgia, they can vote negroes, without challenge, as often 
 as their party necessities require. Let would-be emperors 
 fondly imagine that, because the ''colored troops fought 7iol)l)>" 
 the colored vote can be used to make them small Neros or 
 Caligulas. All this is vanity and vexation of spirit. It is 
 historically certain — at least I firmly believe — that thirty 
 millions of the Caucasian race will not long consent to leave 
 their destinies under the control of four millions of ignorant 
 negroes, misled by bad white men, of very little more intel- 
 lect than the negro, and with hearts blacker than the negro's 
 skin. 
 
 Oh, that these poor divorced women could turn to some 
 one of the noble and gallant men, whom they called "rebels." 
 when in fact they were risking life and fortune, and lost cvcr>'- 
 
Ixiv translator's preface. 
 
 thing but honor, for their sakes and in their cause ! I could 
 speak to them of men, whose names are synonyms for all that 
 is great in intellect, noble in conduct, pure in morals, knightly 
 in courtesy. I could point to one in Georgia, a native Geor- 
 gian ; brave as Marshal Ney, eagle-eyed and skilful as the 
 first Napoleon, devout and sincere as Havelock or Robert E, 
 Lee, the great Christian soldier, Major-General John B. Gor- 
 don, who was on the battle-field and in the Episcopal Church, 
 what Stonewall Jackson was on the battle-field and in the 
 Presbyterian Church. Near to him, in South Carolina, I 
 could point to General William S. Walker, a Pennsylvanian 
 by birth, but, like Gordon, " sans peur et sans reproche ; " 
 one who never deceived man or misled woman. I might 
 name others. But, alas ! all these men were Southern rebels. 
 They fought bravely and conscientiously in a cause they 
 believed to be right ; yet, they were conquered — subjugated. 
 Now they are prostrate. The dusky mistress of Imperialism 
 has her pearl-embroidered slipper {a) on their necks. 
 
 Is there, then, no hope for the widows — is there no help 
 for the widows' sons and daughters ? 
 
 Yes. In the Democracy of the Great West, there yet 
 remain traces of the pure republicanism of Jefferson and 
 Madison, of Calhoun and Webster. There labor can find 
 statesmen, who have never bowed the knee to Baal or to 
 Mammon, nor accepted the idea that, in the progress of civil- 
 ization, the great objects of social and political science are to 
 cheapen labor, and to regulate the diet of American working 
 men and women by the smallest quantities of rice and fish, 
 on which an Asiatic can exist. 
 
 The first great need of labor is an honest and economical 
 administration of Government. Prodigal expenditures require 
 oppressive taxation, which, however disguised by the subtle 
 and artful contrivances of modern legislation, labor and the 
 products of labor in the end have to pay. (^) 
 
 (a) See chap. xvii. 
 
 [i>) See chap, xiv., on the Fall of the Ancient Trades' Unions. 
 
translator's preface. Ixv 
 
 But what, more than all else, oppresses labor, and all, who 
 employ labor in the pursuits of productive industry, is the 
 subtle and artful fiscal contrivance, by which the control of 
 the money of the country is centred in a few hands, enabling 
 them by combination and concert of action to raise or lower 
 the prices of the products of labor at pleasure, by making 
 money scarce when they wish to buy, and abundant when 
 they wish to sell. " Never," said Mr. Calhoun in the Senate, 
 October 3, 1837 — "Never was an engine invented better 
 calculated to place the destiny of the many in the hands of 
 the few, or less favorable to that equality and independence, 
 which lie at the bottom of our free institutions." 
 
 I wish here to repeat, what I have said in my dedication, 
 that under the designation of " The Laboring and Burgher 
 Classes of America," I include all of the learned professions 
 — all, who labor with the brain or with the hand — all, who 
 wish to Hve and grow rich by the fruits of their own honest 
 industry — all, who do not seek to live by plundering the 
 Federal or State treasuries, nor by Congressional or State 
 class legislation. 
 
 What they all require is an abundant and cheap measure 
 of prices, of uniform and stable value. 
 
 But a further discussion of this subject would make this 
 preface too long, and I propose to treat of it in another book. 
 If I have succeeded in dispelling some few of the many 
 errors, under which the Northern and Western mind have 
 been befogged, in reference to the causes and results of the 
 late Civil War in America, my present purpose will have 
 
 been accomplished. 
 
 BEN. E. GREEN. 
 
 Hopewell, near Dalton, 
 Whitfield County, Georgia, 
 February, 187 1. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 WE have already alluded briefly (see p. xlviii.) to the repng- 
 . nance of the non-slaveholding whites of the South to the 
 proposition for negro enlistments in the Confederate armies ; a 
 repugnance which even the great name and magic influence of 
 Robert E. Lee could not overcome. This proposition was advo- 
 cated by General Lee at a late period of the civil war — perhaps too 
 late to have changed the results. Reluctant as we are to detain our 
 readers, we would feel that our part of this work was incomplete if 
 we failed to notice the fact, that long before General Lee came to 
 that conclusion, there was one man whose forecast anticipated that 
 some such measure would be indispensable to the success of the 
 Confederate cause. That man was Colonel John T. Pickett, who 
 was selected, on account of his previous Mexican experience, as 
 the first diplomatic agent of the Confederate States in Mexico. 
 Early in the war — under date of Vera Cruz, February 22, 1862 — 
 he submitted, for the consideration of the Confederate Government, 
 the following 
 
 "MEMORANDUM. 
 
 "Is there no mode by which we may be able to neutralize the 
 hostility existing throughout the world against our institution of <iJo- 
 mestic servitude ? It is in vain to attempt to correct the gross mis- 
 apprehensions prevailing with regard to it. The word ' slavery ' is 
 sufficient to condemn it among the peoples. Can we not invent a 
 better and more appropriate name for it ? It is not ' slavery ' as 
 understood among men ; but we bear the odium as though it were. 
 The enactment of laws which would prohibit the separation of 
 mothers and children, (though what white family is not so sepa- 
 rated ?j the granting to the negroes certain civil rights, (so to speak,) 
 22 329 
 
330 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 — such as protection from cruel and arbitrary punishment, right to 
 change their masters if maltreated, privilege to purchase their free- 
 dom, etc., etc., — might go far toward the end so much to be de- 
 sired. Practically, these things do exist to a certain extent. The 
 force of public opinion is protection to the negro, not to speak of 
 the interest and even affection of the master. But the world at large 
 knows not these things, and cannot or will not be convinced ; 
 whereas, an expression of the supreme legislative will would appeal 
 to the governments and to the enlightenment of the age. I resided 
 for years in the British West Indies, made many visits to Hayti and 
 to the Dominican Republic, have seen only too much of the fruits 
 of indiscriminate equalit)'^ among the mongrels and hybrids of Span- 
 ish America, and therefore no one can entertain sounder views on 
 the great domestic question than I do. In short, emancipation toith- 
 <?2// deportation would be national suicide; ivlth it, a chimera." 
 
 These suggestions were not acted on for two reasons : first, be- 
 cause the question was a local one, belonging exclusively to the 
 States, and the Confederate authorities had no constitutional power 
 to touch it in any way ; secondly, because their whole time, atten- 
 tion, thoughts, and energies were absorbed in the question of de- 
 fence — of repelling the armed invasion of their territory. 
 
 Colonel Pickett's idea was, that the inauguration of a scheme of 
 gradual emancipation would emasculate the Abolition party of the 
 North, satisfy Europe, and secure intervention, peace, and inde- 
 pendence ; and that although the Constitution of the Confederate 
 States gave to the Confederate Government no right to interfere with 
 the local institutions of the States, yet the Confederate Congress 
 might, by joint resolution, recommend some such action to the State 
 Legislatures, and justify their recommendation by the plea of " mili- 
 tary necessity,^* which in time of war covers, like charity at all 
 times, a multitude of sins. 
 
 Colonel Pickett soon found that he could accomplish nothing by 
 remaining in Mexico, and, without waiting for instructions from his 
 Government, returned to take part in the active service of the field, 
 as chief of staff to General Breckinridge. As Mr. Colwell, under 
 the excitements of the war, came to the conclusion that negro 
 slavery should be sacrificed to save the Union, so Colonel Pickett, 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 331 
 
 from his standpoint, under the influence of his associations with the 
 diplomatic representatives of the monarchies and eni)jires of Karoj.e, 
 came to the conclusion that the instiiuiion should be sacrificed to 
 secure European intervention, peace, and independence. 
 
 Subsequently, he ran as a candidate for the Confederate Congress, 
 against General Humphrey Marshall, that he might officially and 
 more effectually ventilate his views in favor of negro enlistments 
 and gradual emancipation. He was defeated, not, as he supposes, 
 by any intrigues of General Marshall, but because it got bruited 
 about among the non-slaveholding whites that he was in favor of 
 negro enlistments and gradual emancipation. 
 
 Still later, he learned that the Confederate Government contem- 
 plated sending another minister to Mexico, and, for the benefit of 
 his successor in that mission, submitted the suggestions of his expe- 
 rience, as follows : 
 
 " The cause of Mexican hate toward us, as individuals and as 
 a nation, is patent. ... It may be said to arise, firstly, from the 
 great aversion of the Mexicans to negro slavery; and, secondly, 
 from jealousy of race, the natural dread a weaker people have for 
 a stronger neighbor, and from the artfully contrived teachings of 
 the United States Government as to past and future aggressions upon 
 Mexican territory. 
 
 "As to the first proposition. It is impossible to unteach the Mexi- 
 can mind on the subject of slavery. We daily feel what an aboli- 
 tion propaganda has done among a more enlightened people. But 
 it ought to be in our power to persuade Mexican statesmen (for it 
 will be with Mexicans that our diplomatist will have to deal, even 
 under the government of Maximilian) that, although slavery has both 
 its moral and political blessings, and as practised in the Confederate 
 States, it is but a mode of hiring servants for life, while in other coun- 
 tries they are employed by the day, month, or year, yet we have never 
 designed to force the institution upon our neighbor. It can be shown, 
 too, that free colored people are regarded with more consideration 
 and entitled to more substantial privileges among us, though not 
 admitted to social and political equality, than in the United States. 
 Our history will furnish instances. General Jackson treated the free 
 
332 POSTSCRIPT, 
 
 colored inhabitants of New Orleans as 'citizens,' in a certain sense. 
 We know that a large class in Mobile, of the present day, termed 
 'Creoles,' are colored people, (whence the popular error as to the 
 true signification of that word,) of French and Spanish admixture. 
 It is also a fact that many adopted citizens of Texas have African 
 blood in their veins. Neither did our Southerners in California ob- 
 ject to the eminent Don Pio Pico because of his negro blood. But 
 California, an Abolition State, refuses citizenship to the Chinese, (to 
 which refusal the writer does not object, individually,) while, to my 
 knowledge, some of the best families in Mexico have Chinese blood 
 in their veins — the natural consequence of the annual galleon be- 
 tween Acapulco and Manilla. I was on very friendly terms with 
 the head of one of these families, Don Luis Jauregui. But the most 
 striking contrast of this whole picture would be the treatment which 
 the negroes received from a New York mob not many months ago. 
 
 " It would be an ungracious office, but we might remind the Mex- 
 icans that they enslave their own race. Indeed, white peons are 
 very numerous, and peonage is the most atrocious system ever con- 
 ceived of. It is slavery for debt, without provision for infancy, sick- 
 ness, or old age. It is transmitted from father to son, while with us 
 the child takes the coftdition of the mother only. But hear Com- 
 modore Perry on the subject of Mexican peonage. ' God pity these 
 poor creatures ! ' says the commodore in his journal, in reference to 
 the laboring classes of the Lew Chew Islands. ' I have seen much 
 of the world, have observed savage life in many of its conditions, 
 .but never, unless I may except the miserable /<v//jr of Mexico, have 
 I looked upon such an amount of apparent wretchedness as these 
 squalid slaves would seem to suffer. ' 
 
 " It is a system which would have disgraced the laws of Draco, 
 which are said to have been written in blood. If we were as' hypo- 
 critical and meddlesome as our Northern brethren, and were in a 
 condition to do so, we might cajole the world by a crusade against 
 this enslavement of white men. We might create a great sensation, 
 too, by broaching a scheme for the amalgamation of the white and 
 red races of the continent. Why should it not be as great an honor 
 to claim the blood of Montezuma as that of Powhatan ? At least, let 
 us impress Mexicans with the fact that we have no prejudice against 
 their native race — that Indians are citizens with us, and sit in our 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 333 
 
 national legislature. It would be well, also, to explain to them that 
 it is in the abolition programme to colonize Mexico with North 
 American negroes of the Protestant (i. e. ' heretic ') faith, and speak- 
 ing the English language. 
 
 " As a proof that Mexico is thoroughly abolitionized, I will men- 
 tion that, during my long residence as United States Consul at Vera 
 Cruz, I never succeeded in reclaiming, by intervention of local 
 authority, a single negro deserter from the vessels of my nation ; 
 while, on the other hand, I scarcely ever failed to have the white 
 sailors returned promptly. I think the accomplished gentleman * 
 mentioned in connection with the secretaryship of the new mission 
 has some official knowledge of this fact. I will dismiss this part of 
 my theme by suggesting that the envoy procure some of our stand- 
 ard Southern works on the slavery question. They may be useful 
 to him, and cannot, probably, be procured in Mexico.* He can 
 easily obtain the published Northern view of the .subject in that 
 capital, and should do so. Fas est ab hosie doceri." 
 
 Colonel Pickett is an accomplished scholar, a sound thinker, a 
 quick and acute observer. Yet the standpoint from which his ob- 
 servations were taken did not command a view of the whole field. 
 He looked at the subject only as a diplomatist, intent on one object, 
 viz. peace and independence through the instrumentality of an 
 European intervention. Consequently, like M. Guizot, (see anh-, 
 p. 134,) with many clear and correct views, he stopped halfway on 
 his road to a great discovery. He saw that the world is governed 
 by sensations; but he did not prosecute his inquiries far enough to 
 discover who created these sensations, and for what purposes. If he 
 had done so, he would have seen that self-interest was at the bot- 
 tom; that "man advances in the execution of a plan which he has 
 not conceived, of which he is not even aware, and which he compre- 
 hends very imperfectly," while " its designs are centred in a single 
 or in few minds." 
 
 He saw that the diplomatic representatives of European despot' 
 isms were bitterly and unchangeably opposed to iht peculiar inslitu 
 tion of negro slavery in the Southern States, while they had no word 
 
 * Walker Fearn, Esq., Secretary of Legation to Mexico with the Hon. Joha 
 Forsyth, Minister Plenipotentiary. 
 
334 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 of sympathy for the far more wretched condition of the peons of 
 Mexico, nor for the slaves of the Lew Chew Islands and of the 
 British East Indies. 
 
 He did not stop, or rather he did not go on, to inquire why this 
 was so. If he had, he would have discovered that negro servitude, 
 as it existed in the Southern States, being a. peculiar institution, pro- 
 duced peculiar political and politico-economical results. 
 
 ist. Its tendency was to strengthen the democratic principle of 
 political and social equality among the rich and poor whites. 
 
 2d. It elevated the whites, however poor they might be, above 
 the degradation of selling their votes. 
 
 3d. It mar7-ied capital to labor, by making it the interest of cap- 
 ital to keep up wages, which went into its pocket, and to keep down 
 the cost of living, which came out of its pocket. 
 
 4th. Tl,:e result of these peculiar influences was to give stability to 
 free institutions, causing the Southern States to be " constantly in- 
 clined most strongly to the side of liberty : the first to see and the first 
 to resist the encroachments of po7ver ; and, by the marriage of capital 
 to labor, it enlisted capital on the side of labor against that legisla- 
 tive policy which seeks to cheapen labor, to increase taxes, and to 
 squander the taxes paid by labor for the profit of capital." (See Cal- 
 houn's speech, ante, p. xxxii.) 
 
 If Colonel Pickett had pushed his observations beyond the diplo- 
 matic into the politico-economical field of inquiry, he would have 
 discovered that, on the part of the advocates of centralism and of 
 capital, emancipation was the chief object of the war ; because, 
 ist. Emancipation would divorce Southern capital from labor ; 
 2d. It would destroy the chief support of the democratic princi- 
 ple of equality among the whites, and place the Government on the 
 inclined plane to monarchy ; 
 
 3d. It would substitute for the incorruptible votes of the poor 
 whites of the South the cheaply purchasable votes of negro freedmen, 
 to neutralize the votes of the Avorking and burgher classes of the 
 North and West. 
 
 When Colonel Pickett said that "emancipation without deporta- 
 tion would be national suicide; with it, a chimera," he spoke oi im- 
 mediate emancipation in mass. His observations and experience in 
 Mexico and the West Indies doubtless satisfied, him, as ours did us, 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 335 
 
 that deportation was surrounded with practical difficulties which made 
 the scheme chimerical. Those difficulties were, first, the enormo-js 
 expense of moving 4,000,000 of people, and of taking care of them 
 in transitu, and until located in new homes ; second, their inability 
 to take care of themselves after they were located, :ls shown by the 
 fate of the American negro colony on the island of Santo Domingo; 
 third, the inhumanity of the "frightful misery" which must inev- 
 itably result from turning them off to take care of themselves ; and. 
 finally, because their labor was indispensable where they were, and 
 could not be supplied except by a slow and gradual system, nmning 
 through a long course of years. 
 
 This idea of gradual emancipation with deportation originated 
 with Mr. Jefferson, fifty years ago — long before the very peculiar 
 politico-economical results of \ht peculiar institution were analyzed 
 by the master mind of Calhoun. Up to the close of the war, de- 
 portation of the negroes was a favorite idea with most of the prom- 
 inent leaders of the monarchical cheap-labor party. 
 
 On the 8th of December, 1859, Senator Trumbull said : 
 
 " When we say that all men are created equal, we do not mean 
 ,that every man in organized society has the same rights. We do 
 not tolerate that in Illinois. I know that there is a distinction be- 
 tween these two races, because the Almighty himself has marked it 
 upon their very faces; and, in my judgment, man cannot,- by legis- 
 lation or othenvise, produce a perfect equality between these races, 
 so that they will live happily together. ... I trust that an idea 
 foreshadowed by Mr. Jefferson will hereafter become, although it Ls 
 not now, part of the creed of the Republican party. I mean the 
 idea of the deportation of the free negro population from this country. 
 ... It seems impracticable to transport this great population to 
 Africa. Let us obtain a country nearer home ; and I know I mar 
 say for the people whom I represent, we will contribute liberally of 
 our means to relieve the country of the free negro population. I 
 hope it may become the policy of the Republican party ... to 
 deliver the country from the only element which ever seriously 
 threatened its peace, and furnish the means of relieving it from the 
 evils of a large free negro population. By such a course we may 
 lay the foundation for continued and permanent prospcnty." 
 
33^ POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 On the 13th of April, i860, Senator John Sherman, in a speech 
 at the Cooper Institute, New York, favored the idea of the "gradual 
 colonization of the negro population of the United States in the 
 Central American States, ' ' where they might be ' ' free from the 
 domination of the white race." 
 
 On the 7th of March, i860. Senator Wade, of Ohio, said, in the 
 Senate of the United States : 
 
 "This great Government owes it to various pressing considera- 
 tions to provide a means whereby the free negroes may emigrate to 
 some congenial clime, where they may be maintained to the mutual 
 benefit of all. This would insure a separation of the races. Let 
 them go into the tropics. There are vast tracts of most fertile and 
 inviting lands, in a climate perfectly congenial to that class of men, 
 where the negro will be predominant, where his nature seems to 
 be improved, and all his faculties, both mental and physical, are 
 fully developed, and where the white man degenerates in the same 
 proportion as the black man prospers. Let them go there ; let them 
 be separated ; it is easy to do it. They will be so far removed from 
 us that they cannot form a disturbing element in omx political economy. 
 ... I hope, after that is done, to hear no more about negro 
 equality, or anything of the kind. We shall be as glad to rid our- 
 selves of these people as anybody else can." 
 
 On the 2ist of August, 1858, at Ottawa, 111., Mr. Lincoln said: 
 
 " I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality be- 
 tween the white and black races. There is a physical difference 
 between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably yi^r^z'^r for- 
 bid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and, 
 inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I 
 am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior posi- 
 tion." 
 
 In the course of his canvass with Mr. Douglas, in Illinois, in 1858, 
 Mr. Lincoln repeatedly declared that he was opposed to "a social 
 and political equality between the white and black races ; " that he 
 "was not in favor of negro citizenship; " and that he would "to 
 th? very last stand by the law of Illinois which forbade the marriage 
 of white people with negroes." He also declared that, in his 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 337 
 
 *' opinion, it would be best for all concerned to have the colored 
 population in a State by themselves." 
 
 Finally, in his messages to Congress and otherwise, Mr. Lincoln 
 urgently advocated gradual eynancipation loith deportation. 
 
 In his annual message, December 3, 1861, he said : 
 
 " To carry out the plan of colonization may involve the acquiring 
 of territory, and also the appropriation of money beyond that to 
 be expended in the territorial acquisition. . . . If it be said that 
 the only legitimate object of acquiring territory is to furnish homes 
 for white men, this measure effects that object ; for the emigration 
 of colored men leaves additional room for white men remaining or 
 coming here. Mr. Jefferson, however, placed the importance of 
 procuring Louisiana more on political diX\d commercial grounds than 
 on providing room for population. 
 
 " On this whole proposition, including the appropriation of money 
 with the acquisition of territory, does not the expediency amount to 
 absolute necessity — that without which the Government itself cannot 
 be perpetuated .? " 
 
 This amounts to an assertion by Mr. Lincoln that emancipation 
 without deportation would be national suicide. 
 
 But why tear from their homes, and from the "kind, protecting 
 care" they then enjoyed, 4,000,000 of negroes, to banish them to 
 the "frightful misery" of taking care of themselves in the Central 
 American States? Did any idea of good will for the negroes enter 
 into this scheme for their banishment? Surely not; for when Mr. 
 R. M. T. Hunter, at the Hampton Roads conference, alluded to 
 the sufferings which would result to the old and infirm, and to the 
 women and children, who were unable to support themselves, the 
 only answer was the following story, told by Mr. Lincoln : 
 
 '"An Illinois farmer was congratulating himself with a neighbor 
 upon a great discovery he had made, by which he could economize 
 time and labor in gathering and taking care of the food crop for 
 his hogs, as well as trouble in looking after and feeding them during 
 the winter. 
 
 " 'What is it?' said the neighbor. 
 
 " ' Why, it is/ said the farmer, ' to plant plenty of potatoes, and 
 
338 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 when they mature, without either digging or housing them, turn the 
 hogs in the field, and let them get their own food as they want it.' 
 
 " 'But,' said the neighbor, 'how will that do when the winter 
 comes, and the ground is hard frozen ? ' 
 
 " 'Well,' said the farmer, 'let 'em root!' " 
 
 (See the War between the States, by A. H. Stephens, vol. ii., p. 
 615. Barrett's Life of Lincoln, p. 827.) 
 
 From the inhumanity of saying to the old and infirm negroes, 
 and to the women and children who were unable to support them- 
 selves, '^'^ Root, hog, or die,''' the Southern people shrank with greater 
 indignation than Plutarch felt for Cato. (See p. 275.) There was 
 no trace of benevolence or pity for the negroes in that sentiment. 
 
 Did an overcrowded territory require that the negroes should be 
 driven out, like the Indians, to make additional room for white men? 
 It is true that Mr. Lincoln's message of December 3, 1861, gives 
 prominence to this argument, and his message of December i, 1862, 
 elaborates the idea that the time is fast approaching when our popu- 
 lation will have so increased, that, '^ instead of receiving the foreign- 
 born, as 710W, we shall be compelled to send part of the native-born 
 {the negroes) aivay. ' ' To show when that time would probably arrive, 
 Mr. Lincoln, or rather Mr. Seward, (for his handiwork is clearly per- 
 ceptible in both messages,) said : " Several of our States are already 
 above the average of Europe — 73 J to a square mile. Massachu- 
 setts has 157, Rhode Island 133, Connecticut 99, etc., etc." 
 
 Then he gives a tabular statement of decennial increase, showing 
 that in 1930 our population 7nay reach the overcrowded number of 
 251,680,914; and concludes thus : 
 
 " These figures show that our country may be as populous as 
 Europe now is, at some point between 1920 and 1930 — say about 
 1925 — our territory, at 73J persons to the square mile, being the 
 capacity to contain 217,186,000." 
 
 Now, this argument of Mr. Seward, and his ingenious sophistries 
 about capital and labor in the same messages, were as false and as 
 deceptive as his dogma of the irrepressible conflict between free labor 
 and slave labor. They were adroitly and ably prepared for the 
 express purpose of misleading and enticing the working and burgher 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 339 
 
 classes of the North into an indiscretion, a false step, against their 
 natural dX\y 7mA politically-wedded spottse ; the consequence of which 
 would be, and since has been, a declaration of the Attorney-General 
 that labor is now a divorced grass-widow ! 
 
 The so-miscalled Republican party were not acting in good faith 
 with white labor when they endeavored, in 1861 and 1862, to make 
 it appear that their purpose was to drive out the negroes to make 
 additional room for the rapidly increasing white population. This is 
 apparent from the fact that, since their object has been accomplished, 
 by divorcing capital from labor by emancipation, we hear nothing 
 more said about deporting the negroes. So far from being the spe- 
 cial friends of the negroes, they were actuated by a malevolence to 
 the negro almost as atrocious as Sherman's treatment of the women 
 and children of the white working classes of Atlanta. This is ap- 
 parent from the proposition to drive away the negroes from their 
 comfortable homes, and say to their old and infirm and women and 
 children, ^^ Root for yourselves, like liogs, or die /'' 
 
 Moreover, in the same message, in speaking of our vast territory 
 of 2,963,000 square miles, Mr. Seward admits that they furnish 
 abundant room, a broad national homestead, an ample resource 
 against an overcrowded condition for at least fifty years to come — 
 perhaps much longer. Then, why drive the poor negro away now, 
 into the Central American States, to Santo Domingo, or elsewhere f 
 
 Mr. Seward, the Oily Gammon of politics, throws out a cautious 
 intimation that, like Mr. Jefferson's acquisition of Louisiana, there 
 was di political object to be gained. Bluff Ben Wade, in his bluff 
 way, blurts out the true answer, and says, " The negroes form a dis- 
 turbing eleme?it in our political economy." 
 
 Why disturbing? We have already given the true answer, but it 
 cannot be repeated too often. If Mr. Wade was candidly and con- 
 fidentially explaining this disturbance to one of his party friends or 
 followers, his language, substituting dashes for the oaths with which 
 he sandwiches his discourse, would be about iis follows : 
 
 " This peculiar institution, under which these negroes 
 
 exist in this country, has peculiar results. , U mar- 
 ries capital to labor. It makes the owners of negroes vote 
 
 with the working-men in the North and West. they want 
 
340 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 to keep up wages, because wages go into their pockets. They 
 
 legislate with a view to keep down the cost of living, because they 
 
 have to feed and clothe and nurse and take care of the negroes, 
 
 and that comes out of their pockets. And , they go in for 
 
 what they call an honest and economical administration of the Gov- 
 ernment, and they oppose our little occasional appropriations 
 
 of a few millions or so, with which to enrich our party friends; and 
 
 , they whine about these paltry millions coming partly out of 
 
 their own pockets and partly out of the pockets of the work- 
 ing and burgher classes of the North and West. But , these 
 
 owners of negroes treat poor white men as equals. Now, 
 
 all these disturbances of our political economy grow out of this 
 
 rnarriage of capital to labor in the South. We must divorce them. 
 
 We must separate the white from the negro race. We must send 
 
 the negroes off into the tropics. Then Southern capital will 
 
 vote with Northern and Western capital, and we can, by subtle and 
 artful fiscal contrivances of legislation, impose as many burdens on 
 
 the workmg-men, and grant as many privileges to capital, and 
 
 make as many and as large appropriations for the benefit of our 
 
 party friends as we please. And if we can get rid of these 
 
 negroes by sending them away into the tropics, we can get 
 
 rid of the democratic notion of the slave power about 
 
 the equality of white men, which this peculiar institution 
 
 fosters. ' ' 
 
 As we have said, there can be no doubt that Mr. Seward prepared 
 those portions of Mr. Lincoln's annual messages of 1861 and 1862 
 relative to the deportation of the colored population. It is not to 
 be supposed, however, that Mr. Lincoln would have sent those mes- 
 sages to Congress without the concurrence and approval of the other 
 members of his cabinet. These were S. P. Chase, Simon Cameron, 
 Gideon Welles, Caleb B. Smith, Edward Bates, and Edwin M. 
 Stanton. Now, if Mr. Lincoln and these his cabinet officers, and 
 Senators Trumbull, Wade, and Sherman are to be accepted as the 
 authorized exponents of the principles and policy of the so-miscalled 
 Republican party, we have, in these messages and in the speeches 
 of those senators, an official declaration of a purpose to drive the 
 colored population out of the country, to make more room for white 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 341 
 
 population, accompanied with the suggestion that it was a necessity, 
 without which the Government itself could not be perpetuated ! 
 
 Let the colored population bear this always in mind ! ! 
 
 Let the white population of the North and West bear in mind 
 that since then the so-miscalled Republican party have taken a new 
 departure ! ! ! 
 
 Now, instead of " sending the negro population into the Central 
 American States, where they may be free I'rom the domination of 
 the white race," they have subjected the white race in the South to 
 the domination of the negro. Why this new departure ? Because 
 they wish to use the cheaply purchasable votes of the negro freed- 
 men to neutralize the votes of the white working and burgher 
 classes of the North and West, and hope so to use 4,000,000 of 
 negro freedmen as to secure to themselves the power to govern and 
 tax 40,000,000 of whites. 
 
 What Attorney-General Akerman says is tnie : ^^Emancipation 
 has DIVORCED the interests of capital from the interests </ labor." 
 By this divorce the working and burgher classes have lost their 
 ^' natural ally. '' Now, they must, single-handed and alone, resist 
 the encroachments of power, and the "subtle and Artful fiscal con- 
 trivances by which capital seeks to divide the wealth of all civilized 
 communities so unequally, and to allot so small a share to those by 
 whose labor it was produced, and so large a share to the non-pro- 
 ducing classes." 
 
 This divorce was intended to be, and is, complete and perpetual. 
 It is a divorce a mensa et thoro and a vinculo. There is no api)eal. 
 The decree is irreversible, and it forbids the parties from marrying 
 again. No one at the North or West, not one in ten thousand at 
 the South,' indulges in the delusive dream of a restoration of negro 
 slavery. 
 
 What remains? Much of hope and encouragement in the future 
 of the working and burgher classes. With their eyes opened to the 
 tricks by which centralism and capital cajoled them into a cru.sa(le 
 against their natural allies, and by brute force "divorced cai)ital 
 from labor by emancipation," they may find in the experience of the 
 past a light to guide them in the future. If they would successfully 
 resist the encroachments of power, and the artful contrivances of 
 capital, they must go back to the political prin^ples of Washington, 
 
342 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 Jefferson, and Calhoun ; principles which Washington, Jefferson, 
 and Calhoun termed republican, while the monarchists and capital- 
 ists of New England, in derision and by way of reproach, called 
 them democratic. 
 
 A few more words to the National Labor party. On the 25th of 
 January, 1871, their committee, under a resolution of the National 
 Labor Congress held at Cincinnati, in August, 1870, called a conven- 
 tion to meet at Columbus, Ohio, at 10 0' dock, A. M., on the third 
 Wednesday of October, 187 1, for the purpose of. nominating candi- 
 dates for the offices of President and Vice-President of^the United 
 States, and the transaction of such other business as may properly 
 come before them. 
 
 On the 29th of May, 1871, H. M. Turner, (negro,) as President 
 of the Georgia State Convention, issued a proclamation addressed 
 ' ' to the colored citizens of the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Dela- 
 ware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, Maryland, 
 Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Vir- 
 ginia, West Virginia, and the Territory of Columbia." 
 
 This proclamation calls a convention of the colored citizens of the 
 States above naAed to meet at Columbia, S. C. , on the 1 8//i day of 
 October, iS^i, at 12 o'clock, M. 
 
 Now let the working and burgher classes of the North and West 
 take special notice of these dates! Why this call, in May, 1871, 
 for a negro convention at Columbia on the same day in October 
 selected by the committee of the National Labor party as early as 
 January, 187 1 ? 
 
 It is another trick of imperialism and capital to organize ihe 
 negro vote of all the Southern States in the interest of imperialism 
 and capital, and to neutralize by that negro vote of the Southern States 
 any action that may be taken at Columbus, Ohio, by the working 
 and burgher classes of the North and West, against the interests of 
 imperialism and capital. 
 
 Look into and think about the purposes and objects of this little 
 trick / 
 
 Ben. E. Green, 
 
 Washington, yune \2ih, 1871, 
 
ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 Supplement to the Fourth Annual Report of the Special Commission- 
 ers OF THE Revenue. Cost of Labor and Subsistence in the United 
 States. Tables showing the comparative and average Weekly Wages 
 paid, etc., etc. Prepared by Edward Young, in charge ok the Bu- 
 reau of Statistics. Washington : Government Printing-Ofkice. 1S70. 
 
 THE/oregoing is the title of an official document sent to us by a 
 Member of Congress,* to convince us, by the statistics it pro- 
 fesses to give, that we are wrong in our historic theory that one of 
 the main purposes and results of the late civil war was to reduce 
 wages and increase the cost of living. 
 
 On careful examination, we find this document remarkable alike 
 for the absurdity of its multitudinous errors, and for the very man- 
 ifest purpose of deception, with which it has been carefully and 
 elaborately prepared, as a campaign document, to mislead and </!,•■<//« 
 betray the working and burgher classes into the support of the (so- 
 miscalled) Republican party. 
 
 In seventy-five octavo pages the Bureau of Statistics gives sixty- 
 seven tables of figures, doubtless supposing that no one would ever 
 take the trouble to wade through them. 
 
 The first fifty-eight tables are intended to produce the impression 
 that, under the policy of the (so-;;«Vcallcd) Republican Admmistra- 
 tion, there has been an increase in wages, amounting to an average 
 of forty-eight per cent., as summed up in Table 57, on page 57, as 
 follows : 
 
 *Hon. John Coburn, of Indiana. 
 
 343 
 
344 
 
 ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 Table showing the percentage of Increase in Monthly Wages, with Board, paid for 
 Farm and other Labor, in the United States, in 1869 over i860. 
 
 States. 
 
 Maine 
 
 New Hampshire 
 
 Vermont 
 
 Massachusetts 
 
 Rhode Island 
 
 Connecticut 
 
 New York 
 
 New Jersey 
 
 Pennsylvania 
 
 Delaware 
 
 Maryland 
 
 West Virginia 
 
 Ohio 
 
 Indiana 
 
 Illinois 
 
 Michigan 
 
 Wisconsin 
 
 Minnesota 
 
 Iowa 
 
 Kansas 
 
 Nebraska 
 
 Missouri 
 
 Kentucky 
 
 Virginia 
 
 North Carolina 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 Georgia* 
 
 Alabama 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 Texas 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 Tennessee 
 
 Average in United States, exclusive of Pacific 
 States and the Territories 
 
 y.B 
 
 ■a c 
 
 E 
 
 c 
 
 AS . 
 
 i 
 
 f/^ 
 
 s- 
 
 bi 
 
 tt 
 
 ro^. 
 
 ui 
 
 ■g-o-^ 
 
 ii'o _ 
 
 c-u'^ 
 
 c-o ^ 
 
 E?^ 
 
 US 
 
 0. f^ fe 
 
 °-5 ■- 
 
 ^ s s 
 
 
 e Ji rt 
 
 B S 
 
 H^6 
 
 H-= " 
 
 0-= E 
 
 O-C" 
 
 c3-^^ 
 
 fe > 
 
 55 
 
 48 
 
 45 
 
 45 
 
 36 
 
 44 
 
 4b 
 
 46 
 
 45 
 
 33 
 
 55 
 
 64 
 
 65 
 
 59 
 
 62 
 
 59 
 
 53 
 
 75 
 
 60 
 
 58 
 
 62 
 
 7b 
 
 58 
 
 59 
 
 57 
 
 80 
 
 50 
 
 100 
 
 67 
 
 100 
 
 88 
 
 50 
 
 67 
 
 50 
 
 «7 
 
 75 
 
 66 
 
 57 
 
 55 
 
 50 
 
 55 
 
 93 
 
 81 
 
 76 
 
 81 
 
 81 
 
 qb 
 
 8q 
 
 64 
 
 70 
 
 59 
 
 64 
 
 51 
 
 b5 
 
 43 
 
 20 
 
 50 
 
 29 
 
 
 100 
 
 67 
 
 75 
 
 60 
 
 50 
 
 60 
 
 100 
 
 3« 
 
 38 
 
 40 
 
 42 
 
 25 
 
 40 
 
 4« 
 
 48 
 
 40 
 
 45 
 
 44 
 
 59 
 
 S6 
 
 60 
 
 41 
 
 33 
 
 42 
 
 47 
 
 46 
 
 42 
 
 42 
 
 40 
 
 50 
 
 bq 
 
 62 
 
 64 
 
 53 
 
 60 
 
 62 
 
 53 
 
 42 
 
 42 
 
 42 
 
 31 
 
 36 
 
 44 
 
 60 
 
 59 
 
 66 
 
 58 
 
 69 
 
 59 
 
 50 
 
 48 
 
 5b 
 
 51 
 
 54 
 
 61 
 
 35 
 
 • 6q 
 
 58 
 
 32 
 
 48 
 
 48 
 
 a^ 
 
 83 
 
 67 
 
 50 
 
 50 
 
 46 
 
 65 
 
 37 
 
 65 
 
 75 
 
 b3 
 
 102 
 
 28 
 
 37 
 
 32 
 
 20 
 
 27 
 
 29 
 
 22 
 
 15 
 
 21 
 
 18 
 
 15 
 
 25 
 
 40 
 
 26 
 
 25 
 
 15 
 
 25 
 
 38 
 
 36 
 
 25 
 
 33 
 
 3a 
 
 19 
 
 50 
 
 II 
 
 20 
 
 I 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 17 
 
 3° 
 
 26 
 
 25 
 
 27 
 
 15 
 
 16 
 
 46 
 
 54 
 
 4b 
 
 66 
 
 50 
 
 20 
 
 88 
 
 »5 
 
 60 
 
 31 
 
 34 
 
 33 
 
 54 
 
 71 
 
 24 
 
 40 
 
 38 
 
 15 
 
 35 
 
 48 
 
 37 
 
 66 
 
 50 
 
 20 
 
 23 
 
 26 
 
 27 
 
 24 
 
 38 
 
 40 
 
 51 
 
 51 
 
 47 
 
 46 
 
 46 
 
 SI 
 
 * The percentages of increase here given, although accurately computed, do not indicate the 
 true advance in the wages paid. This arises from the fact that while there were nineteen returns 
 from Georgia giving the wages in 1869, but six of them gave those of 1S60. The true increase in 
 the monthly wages paid in 1869 over i860 was about 23 per cent, instead of 11. 
 
 Under the heading, " Expenses of Living," Tables 59 to 66, 
 both included, (pages 58 to 73,) are intended to produce the im- 
 pression that the cost of living has been reduced, while wages have 
 gone up 48 per cent, on an average. In order to make this appear, 
 the Bureau of Statistics selects the years 1867 and 1869 for compar- 
 ison, and gives prominence to wheat flour, which, for New England, 
 it puts at ^12.35 in 1867, and ^9.15 in 1869; for the Middle States, 
 at ^12.50 in 1867, and ^7.85 in 1869 ; for a portion of th'e Western 
 
ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 345 
 
 States, at $12.71 in 1867, and $6.41 in 1869; for other Western 
 States and Territories, at $8.67 in 1867, and §5.35 in 1869 ; and for 
 the Southern States, at $10.72 in 1867, and $9.50 in 1869, 
 The poet says : 
 
 " Oh ! what a tangled web we weave 
 When first we jiractise to deceive." 
 
 The Bureau of Statistics, absorbed in its figures, had never read 
 these lines, or did not appreciate the exhortation to honest deahng 
 which they contain ; or else it relied on its formidable array of 
 figures to deter any one from attempting to unravel its tangled web 
 of deceit. It is obvious that the Bureau was '' practising to deceive" 
 when it selected the years 1867 and 1869, and gave this prominence 
 to the varying price of wheat flour, in order to produce the impres- 
 sion on the working and burgher classes that the effect of Radical 
 policy had been to reduce the cost of living. For, this difference 
 in the price of flour was caused, not by any beneficial influence of 
 Radical policy, but partly by the difference in the seasons, and partly 
 by that subtle and artful fiscal contrivance, by which the wheat-grow- 
 ers of the West are placed in the power of the great moneyed aristo- 
 cracy for the means, with which to move their crops to market ; there- 
 by enabling Eastern capital to depress the price of Western wheat 
 at pleasure. 
 
 But even admitting that the Bureau's figures are correct and reli- 
 able, (which they are not,) they disprove the very idea, which this 
 elaborate document was concocted to sustain. For on i)ages 74 and 
 75 we have a table of the "comparative cost of building-materials, 
 and of dwelling-houses," in 1861 and 1869, which shows that "the 
 true average increase in the cost of materials and labor ret/tiired in 
 building a dwelling-house suitable for workmen 7vas %% per cent.'' 
 
 Now, this is a much more reliable criterion of the increase or 
 decrease of the cost of living than the difference between the cost 
 of wheat flour in 1867 and 1869 ; and even if it were true that wages 
 had advanced 48 per cent, from i860 to 1869, how arc the working 
 and burgher classes benejited, when that increase of wages is accom- 
 panied by an increase of 88 per cent, in the cost of living? 
 
 As to Table 57, page 57, (above quote<l,) which pretends to show 
 
346 ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 the percentage of increase in monthly wages, with board, etc., we 
 know that in Georgia, where we have lived since 1855, and we be- 
 lieve that in the other Southern States, instead of an increase of 23, 
 or even 11 per cent., there has been an actual decrease of from 25 
 to 50 per cent, on a general average, and not taking into account 
 the exceptional cases of high wages paid for hands in some of the 
 swindling railroad operations, based on State bonds, which, if not 
 repudiated, will bankrupt the States for the profit of a few individual 
 carpet-baggers and scalawags. 
 
 Neither can we believe that this table is reliable as to the Eastern, 
 Middle, and Western States. 
 
 First, because we know that it is wrong as to Georgia, and believe 
 it to be wrong as to other Southern States. 
 
 Secondly, because it is obviously got up with great care in the in- 
 terest of the Radical party, and with a premeditated design to "prac- 
 tise to deceive." 
 
 Thirdly, because, as the Bureau of Statistics admits, in an intro- 
 ductory note, it is '■'■the result, mainly, of inquiries made through 
 the assistant assessors of internal revenue in the various collection 
 districts of the United States'' — a very unreliable authority. 
 
 Finally, because a mere reading of Table 65, on page 72, which 
 professes to give a summary of the results of all these inquiries and 
 figures, will show to any man of common sense that it is utterly 
 unreliable, not to use the much stronger language which the absurd- 
 ities of that table would suggest. 
 
 It is as follows : 
 
ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 347 
 
 Table showing the average Weekly Expenditores of Workmen's Familiks ih somb o» 
 THE Manufacturing Towns of the United States in i»69. 
 
 Articles. 
 
 Bread and flour 
 
 Meat of all kinds 
 
 Lard 
 
 Butter 
 
 Cheese 
 
 Sugar and molasses 
 
 Milk 
 
 Coffee 
 
 Tea 
 
 Fish, fresh and salt 
 
 Soap and starch 
 
 Salt, pepper, and vinegar 
 
 Eggs 
 
 Potatoes and other vegetables 
 
 Fruits, fresh and dried 
 
 Fuel 
 
 Oil or other light 
 
 Other articles 
 
 Spirits, beer, and tobacco 
 
 House rent 
 
 Taxes 
 
 For benevolent objects 
 
 Total per week (clothiag ex- 
 cepted) 
 
 So- 75 
 
 1-25 
 24 
 
 I. CO 
 20 
 
 69 
 
 59 
 30 
 63 
 10 
 25 
 12 
 
 30 
 
 30 
 
 30 
 
 1. 00 
 
 30 
 I. II 
 
 H-50 
 
 14.32 
 
 i) 
 
 
 
 
 
 u 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 <2 
 
 > 
 
 -« 
 
 V 
 
 > 
 
 
 & 
 
 C_4 
 
 "2 F 
 
 •Si 
 
 •a c 
 
 St: 
 
 Ss 
 
 
 ?p 
 
 ^P 
 
 c 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 TJ 
 
 -0 
 
 rt-3 
 
 "•o 
 
 a 
 
 
 :ii- 
 
 '£'£ 
 
 2'^ 
 
 
 i'r 
 
 — !2 
 
 a'r 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 S " 
 
 
 
 
 
 c u 
 
 u 
 
 u 
 
 a 
 
 s; 
 
 t 
 
 V 
 
 y 
 
 y 
 
 f! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Si 
 
 p4 
 
 c^ 
 
 &, 
 
 a, 
 
 b 
 
 0. 
 
 0. 
 
 
 
 ^0.78 
 
 $0.85 
 
 $o.gs 
 
 J1.29 
 
 Si-37 
 
 ;?i-73 
 
 $2.50 
 
 $2-37 
 
 <'-39 
 
 1.60 
 
 1-75 
 
 1.92 
 
 2.21 
 
 3-09 
 
 2.92 
 
 3-"- 
 
 4.68 
 
 2.481 
 
 33 
 
 33 
 
 44 
 
 40 
 
 35 
 
 bi 
 
 33 
 
 6i 
 
 39{ 
 
 71 
 
 b2 
 
 1. 10 
 
 1.26 
 
 98 
 
 1-3S 
 
 1.32 
 
 2.88 
 
 1.27) 
 
 12 
 
 14 
 
 16 
 
 20 
 
 II 
 
 26 
 
 22 
 
 18 
 
 16 
 
 74 
 
 92 
 
 92 
 
 1. 18 
 
 85 
 
 1.18 
 
 76 
 
 1.80 
 
 1. 00 
 
 41 
 
 44 
 
 37 
 
 50 
 
 58 
 
 26 
 
 56 
 
 1.36 
 
 55 
 
 20 
 
 23 
 
 32 
 
 32 
 
 34 
 
 34 
 
 
 65 
 
 3° 
 
 23 
 
 39 
 
 3» 
 
 4b 
 
 57 
 
 75 
 
 SO 
 
 35 
 
 47 
 
 13 
 
 25 
 
 20 
 
 22 
 
 24 
 
 23 
 
 20 
 
 16 
 
 »9 
 
 17 
 
 22 
 
 17 
 
 23 
 
 25 
 
 18 
 
 16 
 
 54 
 
 84 
 
 og 
 
 ob 
 
 12 
 
 12 
 
 II 
 
 18 
 
 10 
 
 30 
 
 13 
 
 25 
 
 21 
 
 24 
 
 29 
 
 »5 
 
 06 
 
 20 
 
 58 
 
 as 
 
 44 
 
 61 
 
 47 
 
 73 
 
 80 
 
 60 
 
 40 
 
 88 
 
 s« 
 
 26 
 
 33 
 
 21 
 
 42 
 
 46 
 
 27 
 
 50 
 
 62 
 
 39 
 
 9b 
 
 74 
 
 1.09 
 
 1.20 
 
 1-13 
 
 88 
 
 1. 21 
 
 1.50 
 
 1.08 
 
 22 
 
 25 
 
 23 
 
 21 
 
 23 
 
 19 
 
 16 
 
 22 
 
 23 
 
 22 
 
 54 
 
 21 
 
 21 
 
 20 
 
 35 
 
 
 38 
 
 35 
 
 23 
 
 02 
 
 13 
 
 35- 
 
 , *^ 
 
 27 
 
 05 
 
 12 
 
 16 
 
 2.17 
 
 2.23 
 
 2.29 
 
 2.17 
 
 *3-34 
 
 2.25 
 
 2.25 
 
 2.56 
 
 2.64 
 
 37 
 
 03 
 
 12 
 
 05 
 
 24 
 
 18 
 
 
 30 
 
 13 
 
 34 
 
 5« 
 
 40 
 
 34 
 
 25 
 
 30 
 15-36 
 
 2.00 
 
 60 
 
 57 
 
 10.97 
 
 11.96 
 
 12.44 
 
 13-36 
 
 16.11 
 
 16.42 
 
 2544 
 
 14-93 
 
 i" 
 
 ?> 99 
 3.46 
 
 33 
 
 1. 12 
 26 
 
 1. 01 
 46 
 
 as 
 46 
 t 
 
 II 
 36 
 
 9» 
 22 
 
 73 
 t 
 2.14 
 
 14.99 
 
 * The increased cost of house rent, and the use of more e.\pensive provisions, render the expense* 
 of these families higher than some of larger size. 
 
 fNot furnished in 1867. Deducting these, the average weekly expenses of families in 1869, as 
 compared with 1867, will be reduced to I13.88. 
 
 This table presents results that would make Malthus, dead as lie 
 is, open his eyes with astonishment. We earnestly recommend to 
 all, who are contemplating obedience to the Scriptural injunction, 
 ^'increase and multiply,'''' to study it carefully. It would be too 
 tedious to point out all its peculiarities. A few will suffice to direct 
 attention to the others. 
 
 ist. According to this table, the average expense per week of a 
 workman and wife with seven children for bread and flour is J2.50; 
 with eight children, only I2.37. 
 
 2d. With six children, their average weekly expense for lard will 
 be 6t, cents ; with seven children, only n cents. 
 
 3d. Their average weekly expense for butter will be, without 
 children, ^i.oo; with one child, only 71 cents; with two children, 
 82 cents; with three children, ^i.io; with four children, ^1.26; 
 with five children, only 98 cents, etc., etc. 
 
348 ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 4th. Their average weekly expense for cheese will be, without 
 children, 20 cents; with one child, 12 cents; with two children, 14 
 cents ; with three children, 16 cents; with four children, 20 cents; 
 with five children, 11 cents; and with eight children, 18 cents. 
 
 5th. Their average weekly expense, without children, for sugar 
 and molasses, will be 69 cents; with four children, $1.18; with 
 seven children, only 76 cents. 
 
 6th. Their average weekly expense for milk will be, without 
 children, 59 cents; with one child, 41 cents; with two children, 
 44 cents ; with three children, 37 cents ; with four children, 50 
 cents; with five children, 58 cents; with six children, 26 cents; 
 with seven children, 56 cents; and with eight children, ^1.26. 
 
 Finally, and funniest of all — even funnier than the allowance, 
 on a general average, of 59 cents for milk to a workman and wife 
 without children, and only 26 cents for a workman and wife with 
 six children — is the Bureau's estimate for soap and starch :j 
 
 It allows to a man and wife without children, per week 25 cents. 
 with I child, " 17 " 
 
 2 children, " 22 " 
 
 3 " " 17 " 
 
 4 " " 23 " 
 
 5 " " 25 " 
 
 6 " " 18 " 
 ■J " " 16 " 
 8 " " 54 " 
 
 Without wasting more time, the reader will find similar absurdities 
 running through the whole of this and other tables of this precious 
 production of the Radical Bureau of Statistics. It might excite mer- 
 riment and laughter, if indignation at such palpable partisan patch- 
 work would admit of pleasantry. But the question is too serious for 
 mirth. These tables have been laboriously prepared in the interest 
 of the monarchical, aristocratic, cheap-labor party, and on the sup- 
 position that the great mass of the people of the United States — 
 lawyers, doctors, ministers of the gospel, merchants, civil engineers, 
 etc. , etc. , as well as the working-men — were too busy with their own 
 private affairs, or too ignorant, to discover and expose the deceit 
 attempted to be practised upon them by this array of figures. 
 
 When we examined the figures, we thought, surely, these must be 
 typographical errors. We therefore called upon Mr. Edward 
 Young, at the Bureau of Statistics, in the Treasury Department, 
 and asked him whether there were any typographical errors in 
 
ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 349 
 
 his tables. He said, "No." We then asked him to explain by 
 
 what process of computation he arrived at such wonderful results, 
 according to which a husband and wife, without children, required 
 25 cents' worth of soap and starch per week; with one child, only 
 17 cents; with six children, 18 cents ; and with seven childen, only 
 16 cents. 
 
 The reply, not very courteously given, was: "That table has 
 been criticized before, and where there is a determination to criti- 
 cize, anything may be criticized." Pursuing information under diffi- 
 culties, we persisted, and at last drew out this explanation, viz. that 
 the first nine columns of figures do not represent averat^es, as the 
 heading would indicate, but only the expenditures of single selected 
 families, the averages being given in the tenth and eleventh columns, 
 so as to show a reduction in the cost of living from 1S67 to 1869. 
 
 Our interview with the Bureau of Statistics convinced us that its 
 tables were manufactured solely for partisan purposes, and are 
 utterly unreliable, except in so far as they show, on page 75, that 
 the true average increase in the cost of materials and labor recpiired 
 in building a dwelling-house suitable for workmen has been 88 per 
 cent, in the ten years that the so-miscalled Republican party have 
 been in power. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 fACK 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE yU 
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE Ixti 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GENERAL IDEA OF THE PROLETARIAT. 
 
 The working classes do not exist among all peoples — Wliy ? — No one has 
 dreamed of writing their historj' — Gap which the absence of that history 
 leaves in politics — The working classes come from the proletariat — Mod- 
 em signification of this word — The proletariat comprises working-men, 
 beggars, thieves, and prostitutes 8 1 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE PROLETARIAT. 
 
 Political prejudices which the history of the four branches of the proletariat 
 ought to dispel — The proletariat produced by the emancipation of slaves 
 
 — Among all peoples before the emancipation of slaves there were neither 
 working-men, nor beggars, nor thieves, nor prostitutes — Why ? — By Chri'^ • 
 tianity the proletaries greatly multiplied — Slavery having preceded the 
 proletariat among all peoples, whence comes that universal slavery which 
 
 is thus found among all peoples ? — Is it a natural or violent fact ? . .86 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 ORIGIN OF SLAVERY. 
 
 The first epoch of every society contains two classes of men, masters and 
 slaves — This fact anterior to all institutions, and therefore not instituted 
 
 — In what sense slavery may be said to be by divine right — Slavery is a 
 primitive and spontaneous element of all societies — The history of the 
 masters gives the history of the slaves — Whence come masters? — Tlie 
 first masters the first fathers— Of tlie paternal power in noI)lc families — 
 Names designating these families in the Greek and Latin poets — Sii^ifi- 
 cation of the word ftus — Paternal power absolute in noble families — 
 
 7 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Proofs establishing this fact — Fathers could kill or sell their children — 
 The first children therefore the first slaves — This is the only theory by 
 which all the facts relative to slaveiy can be explained — Multiplicity of 
 children in the first families , 95 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF SLAVERY BY POSITIVE LAWS. 
 
 Political institutions, having found slavery already established as a fact in the 
 family, generalized it as a right in society — New sources of slavery opened 
 by positive laws — War — Asylums — Debt — Marriage — Explanation of 
 a passage of Homer — Slavery, then, became an institution in course of 
 time ; but it commenced as a spontaneous fact — Positive laws sanctioned 
 and regulated, but did not create it — Every other theory contradicted by 
 facts — The noble and slave races, therefore, two primitive and contempo- 
 raneous facts — ^Together they constitute humanity — This volume devoted 
 to the history of the slave races : that of the noble races will be treated 
 of in another ............ lo8 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EMANCIPATION OF SLAVES AND FORMATION OF BURGHERS. 
 
 Meaning of the words free race and slave race in this book — Slaves lived 
 apart, multiplied among themsel\'$i?, and ended by becoming a distinct race 
 of men — Their food — Their maladies — Until what epoch pure slavery 
 continued among nations — Beggars and hirelings indicate the commence- 
 ment of emancipations — Why? — The ancients did not practise sys- 
 tematic emancipations — Christianity multiplied emancipations and. swelled 
 the mass of proletaries — The slave race always scoffed at, even by the 
 freedmen — Roman emperors who had been slaves — Emancipated slaves, 
 
 repelled from the society of the nobles, form a society of their own . 
 
 This is the commune 117 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GENERAL IDEA OF THE COMMUNE — TWO KINDS. 
 
 The commune, the government proper for freedmen, is, then, a universal 
 historic element — The author dissents from received opinions on this sub- 
 ject — Ideas of M. Raynouard about the commimes — Ideas of M. Au- 
 gustin Thierry — These two contradictory systems both refuted by facts — 
 Ideas of M. Guizot — They are correct, but incomplete — We must distin- 
 
CONTENTS. Q 
 
 gnish between the spontaneous and the artificial commune — What ihc 
 author understands by these words — Analysis of a passage of Auhis Gel- 
 lius, misunderstood by M. Raynouard — Comparison of the French com- 
 munes of the time of Philip Augustus with the Greek communes of the 
 time of Pericles l ,| 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE FRENCH COMMUNE. 
 
 In what the right of commune consists — Charter of Autun — Different 
 names for the commune — The names various, the essence alwavs the 
 same — Errors of M. Augustin Thierry, who only recognizes a commune 
 by the name communia, and by the insurrectional conspiracy, giving to its 
 magistrates the name ai juris — Communes which are not called com- 
 munia — Jures who have not conspired — Error of those who believe that 
 the commune only dates from the twelfth century — Communes existed in 
 all ages of history — Communes formed from the sixth to the eleventh 
 century — French communes are of two kinds, one of Roman origin, the 
 other indigenous — Communes formed by freedmen recently set free — 
 Passage in the chronicle of the anonymous canon of Laon misunder- 
 stood by M. Augustin Thierry — Communes contain two kinds of men — 
 Interior organization of a commune — Error of the constituent assembly. 138 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE — HIRELINGS AND BEGGARS. 
 
 What the author understands by the ancient commune — Why he relics upon 
 the Bible — The existence of hirelings and beggars indicate the existence 
 of communal government — Why ? — Beggars in the Odyssey and in 
 Hesiod; none in the Iliad — Explanation of two passages of llomcr . 151 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE — ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Walled cities were communal cities — History of architecture not written — 
 The author gives a partial sketch of it— Radical difference between iso- 
 lated castles and associated houses — The tower for the gentlemen, the 
 party-wall for two burghers — Why noble families have necessarily iuhab- 
 ited isolated castles — Signification of a tower in architecture — Expl.ma- 
 tion of a passage in Horace —Character of noble houses — Castles of 
 Patroclus, Hector, yEneas, King Demetrius, Herod the Great, Augustus, 
 
10 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGS 
 
 Velleda, Ulysses, Alcibiades, Asidates, Gobryas — Platform, battlement, 
 machicolation — Associated houses — Formation of cities — All have a 
 castle for their centre — The Acropolis of Athens, the Palace of France, 
 The Tower of London — Town and city — Open and walled towns — ■ 
 Open towns belonged to nobles — Sparta — Walled towns were communal 
 
 — Why ? — Houses associated in walled towns — Hotel de ville of Tegea 
 
 — History of the Roman party-wall — The wall of enclosure the necessary 
 complement of houses built in blocks — The wall of enclosure and the 
 party -wall infallible signs of burghers , . . . . . .156 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE JURISPRUDENCE. 
 
 The author sketches the history of property — Noble and burgher property 
 
 — Their characteristics — Burgher property only found in walled cities — 
 Noble property only found without walls — The existence of walled towns 
 proves the existence of burghers — There were communes in the walled 
 towns — At Jericho, Troy, Gortyna, and Calydon .... 1 73 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE PEASANTS. 
 
 Historians have forgotten the peasants — Why ? — This forgetfulness renders 
 general history incomplete — The history of the peasants requires the pre- 
 vious history of the landed proprietors — Sketch of this — There was a 
 Greek and Roman feudality anterior to the emancipation of the communes 
 in Italy and Greece — Proofs of this fact — The words vassal and arriere 
 ^'axva/ belong to the ancient Roman law — Proofs — The expression r^^ 
 of the glebe found in a law of Honorius and Theodosius — What proletaries 
 were in the ancient Roman law — Foundation of towns and villages — 
 Exact idea of the peasants of antiquity — Law of the Emperor Anastasius 
 
 — Revolution in the cultivation of lands — Different kinds of peasants — 
 The words gentleman, chevalier (knight), baron, count, marquis, duke, 
 prince, taken from the Latin language — Establishment of fairs among the 
 ancients 182 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ANCIENT trades' UNIONS FORMATION. 
 
 Slaves having attained the commune, or feudalism, some labor, and form the 
 trades' unions ; others do not labor, and become beggars and thieves — 
 Trades' unions existed from the time of Solomon in Judea; from the time 
 
CONTENTS. II 
 
 rAci 
 
 of Theseiis in Greece; from the time of Numa in Italy — Proofs — Three 
 epochs in the Roman trades' unions — Purpose and use of these unions — 
 Their employment by government — Two kinds of Roman trades' unions 
 
 — Commercial unions — Industrial unions — Number and functions of the 
 first — Sailors — Bakers — Butchers — Internal organization Enumera- 
 tion of the industrial unions jqg 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ANCIENT trades' UNIONS — DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 Transition of the Roman unions from the free to the obligatory state His- 
 tory of their reform up to the time of Trajan — They become a necessary 
 corps — Members could not leave — They could not sell their property — 
 The unions seized upon the person, property, and family of every member 
 
 — Their inconveniences — Their advantages — Their revenues — Their 
 endowments — Their privileges — Their legacies — AlienabiUty of their 
 property — Their flourishing epoch 213 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ANCIENT trades' UNIONS — THEIR FALL. 
 
 Tlieir decline commenced with Constantine — Its cause — They were respon- 
 sible for part of the taxes — They were victims of the insolvency of the 
 farmers of the domain — Ruined by the foolish extravagance of the empe- 
 rors — Caligula — Claudius — Nero — Disorganization of the unions — 
 They reclaim their fugitive members — Their fragments — Later, one of 
 these fragments formed the Commune of Paris 225 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BEGGARS AND HOSPITALS. 
 
 Beggars are not ancient — Wiy? — Few when Christianity came — Roman 
 beggars — The ancients had no hospitals — Christianity multiplied the 
 poor — Pauperism in Italy at the end of the fourth century — \Miy Giris- 
 tianity multiplied the poor — Foundation of hospitals — Diflercnt kinds . 235 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 LITERARY SLAVES. 
 
 Three kinds of slaves seek to rise above their condition — Literary slaves — 
 Courtesans — Bandits — Slaves only cuiUvate some literary specialties — 
 
12 CONTENTS. 
 
 rAGB 
 
 Slave grammarians — Their history — Slaves do not cultivate rhetoric — 
 Why ? — History written by gentlemen — Slave poets and buffoons — Their 
 history — Slave philosophers — Their history ...... 243 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE COURTESANS. 
 
 Courtesans of houses of debauch — They were slaves — Slave merchants — 
 Their skill in the toilette of women — Freedwomen — Their talent — 
 Their luxury — Their influence — Error of the French elegy-writers of the 
 eighteenth century — Nearly all these freedwomen were Greeks — Their 
 devotion — Their domestic life — Gentlemen visited'them — The soiree — 
 Nightly brawls — Serenades — The mother — Their toilette — Dress — 
 Errors of the moderns as to dress of ancients — The bath — Importance 
 of swimming among the ancients — Perfumed soap — Avarice of the freed- 
 women — Twenty-three odes of Horace addressed to freedwomen — Ci- 
 nara — Thargelia — Theodota — Timandra — Lais — Flora — Aspasia — 
 Praecia 258 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 BANDITS. 
 
 The ancients had no idea of the equality of men — Homer, Plato, and Aris- 
 totle believed in the duality of human nature — Slaves believed in the 
 legitimacy of slavery — Anecdote — Slaves revolt from other motives than 
 ideas of liberty — Ten slave revolts — Caused by tampering with them, by 
 harshness of masters, and by failure to execute the laws — History of the 
 three last revolts — Eunus the Syrian — Athenion — Spartacus — Revolted 
 slaves did not preach the doctrine of equality — Thieves and pirates result 
 from slave revolts — Guards — Troops (gendarmerie) — Brigand bands of 
 10,000 men — The brigand Tabary — The pirates — Their history — They 
 were slaves — Agathocles . _ 274 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 MODERN trades' UNIONS. 
 
 Objection to the historic theory of this book — Why were there no communes 
 nor trades' unions in France before the twelfth century? — Answer — In 
 what the barbarisjn of the barbarians of the North consisted — The revo- 
 lutions in the family serve to measure degrees of civilization — The peoples 
 of the North had passed through fewer phases of the family — This con- 
 stituted their barbarism — Backset impressed on the Roman world by the 
 
CONTENTS. 13 
 
 PAGI 
 
 invasion — Error of Vico — The invasion suspended emancipations — 
 Everything recommenced in Gaul — Seven centuries required for (Jaul to 
 get back to the point where the invasion found it — Condition of Gaul at 
 the time of the invasion — Error of the Abbe Dubos, Montesquieu, and M. 
 de Savigny — The barbarians destroyed the trades' unions incompletely — 
 Traces of trades' unions through the middle ages — Trades' unions organ- 
 ized under St. Louis — The public powers that governed Paris — PrevOt of 
 merchants — Pr^vot of Paris — Stephen Boileau regulates the trades' 
 imions — The register of trades contains the statutes of one hundred pro- 
 fessions — The trades' unions considered in their relation to the State — 
 Authorization — Considered in relation to their members — Libert)' — Ap- 
 prentices — Conditions of apprenticeship — Unions considered in them- 
 selves — Administration — Community and fraternity — Invocation of 
 saints — The corps and the trades (metiers) — The prud'hommes — Juris- 
 diction — The six corps of Paris — Their history — Their heraldiy — Use- 
 fulness of trades* unions — Causes of their fall — Blindness of the con- 
 stituent assembly 2S9 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Summary •• 3^7 
 
 Postscript to Translator's Preface 3^9 
 
 Addenda to Translator's Preface 343 
 
 Index to Translator's Preface 35' 
 
INDEX 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE AND NOTES. 
 
 ADAMS, JOHN, xiv., xvii., xxiii. 
 Adams, John Q., xx., xl. 
 Adams, Samuel, xx. 
 Akerman, Attorney-General, xxix., xlix. 
 Alaric, 296. 
 
 Alexander the Great, 303. 
 Amalgamation, xlvii. 
 Anderson, Gen. Robert, xliv. 
 Angouleme, 149. 
 Appropriate music, 305. 
 Armstrong, Gen., xl. 
 Art and artists, 305. 
 Asiatic slave trade, xlvii. 
 Atlanta, burned by Sherman, 295. 
 Attila, 296. 
 
 Benjamin, J. P., xlvi. 
 
 Blair, Francis P., xxxvi.-xl., xliii. 
 
 Blood-letting, xlv. 
 
 Boston, vi^orking women in, 1. 
 
 Boulogne, 149. 
 
 Breckenridge, John C., xli. 
 
 Bribery at elections, xxvii. 
 
 British policy, xxxix. 
 
 Brown, John, xliv., 277, 305. 
 
 Brown, Jos. E., Gov. of Ga.,xxxv., xlvi. 
 
 Buchanan, President James, xii., xlv. 
 
 Bullock, Rufus K.,Gov. of Ga., 276, 281. 
 
 Burlingame's mission to China, lix. 
 
 Burning, see W. Tecumseh Sherman. 
 
 Calhoun, James M., 297. 
 
 Calhoun, John C, xxxiii., xxxvii., 87. 
 
 Cameron, Simon, 340. 
 
 Capital divorced from labor, xxix., xlix. 
 
 Cassagnac, A. G. de, viii., xxxii., 
 
 xxxviii., 87. 
 Catholics, Roman, 295. 
 Census of 1S60, xlvii. 
 Chandler, Zach., Senator, xlv. 
 Chase, Salmon P., xxvii., xxxi., xxxviii. 
 Chinese labor, food, and wages, liii. 
 
 Cincinnati Commercial, liii. 
 
 Classes, struggle of, xxx. 
 
 Clephane, Lewis, xliii. 
 
 Coburn, Col. John, captor of Atlanta, 299, 
 
 343- 
 Columbia, District of, 14S. 
 Columbia, S. C, 293. 
 Colwell, Stephen, vii. 
 Commune, right of, 148. 
 Connecticut Reserve, 295. 
 Consolidation, xxi. 
 
 Contracts for army and navy supplies, xlv, 
 Covode investigating committee, xxvii. 
 Crockery. See W. T. Sherman. 
 Crusades, effects of, xxiv. 
 Curtis's Pac. R. R. bill, xli. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, xi. 
 
 Delescluze, 307. 
 
 Delilah and Samson, 273. 
 
 District of Columbia, 148. 
 
 Disunion resolutions at Worcester, 
 
 Mass., xlii. 
 Divorce of capital from labor, xxix., Ixi. 
 Douglas, Stephen A., xli. 
 
 Edict of Moulins, 148. 
 
 Federalists, xx. 
 
 Female influence on government, 27a. 
 P'reedmaa's Bureau, 127, 14S. 
 Fullerton, Gen. J. S., 127. 
 
 Genghis Khan, 296. 
 
 Georgetown, D. C., 149. 
 
 Georgetown College, viii. 
 
 Giles, Gov. of Virginia, xxi. 
 
 Goodloe, Daniel R., xliii., 281. 
 
 Gordon, Gen. John H., Ixiv. 
 
 Grand Army of the Republic, xix., 266, 
 
 292. 
 Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., xviii.-xix., 292. 
 Grass widows, Ixi. 
 
 35» 
 
352 INDEX TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE AND NOTES, 
 
 Greeley, Horace, xliv. 
 
 Green, Gen. Duff, xi., xli., xlv. 
 
 Guizot, Mons., ix.— x., xxx., 148. 
 
 Hamilton, Gov. of S. C., xxxvii. 
 
 Hampton, Gen. Wade, 293. 
 
 Harlan, Sec. of Interior, 274. 
 
 Harper's Ferry, xliv., 277, 305. 
 
 Harvard University, xvii. 
 
 Henry, John, British agent in Boston, 
 
 xxxix. 
 Heraldry and genealog}'', xvii. 
 Holden, Gov. of N. C., 150, 276, 280. 
 Hood, Gen., 303. 
 Howard, Gen. O. O., 126,' 311. 
 
 Imperialist, newspaper, xix. 
 Incendiarism. See John Brown and 
 
 W. T. Sherman. 
 Intermarriage of whites and blacks, xlvii. 
 
 Jefferson, Thos., xxi., xxviii. 
 Jenkins's life of Calhoun, xxxvi. 
 Johnson, Andrew, xlviii. 
 Johnson, Herschel V., xli. 
 Journal of Commerce, xlii. 
 
 Koopmanschap, lii. 
 
 Labor statistics, (Mass.,) xlix. 
 
 Lee, Gen. Robert E., xlviii., 329. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, xi., xl., xli., xlv., 272. 
 
 Lippincott's Magazine, xvii. 
 
 Logan, Grand Commander, 266, 292. 
 
 Marietta, Ga., burned by Sherman, 305. 
 Massachusetts, xlii., xlix., 295, 305. 
 Memphis Commercial Convention, xxi., 
 
 Ixi. 
 Middle States, xvi. 
 Music, appropriate, 305. 
 
 New England : 
 
 Cheap labor, xxvii.— xlix. 
 
 Monarchical and aristocratic, xiv. 
 
 Slave-trading, xxiii. 
 New York Herald, 127. 
 New York Times, li. 
 New York Tribune, 127. 
 Nicholas, Judge, of Kentucky, xiii. 
 Nichols, Brevet Maj. Geo. Ward, 303. 
 Non-slaveholders, xlvii. 
 North Carolina outrages, 229, 279. 
 Northwestern Territory, xli., 295, 305. 
 Nullification, xxxvi. 
 
 Pacific Railroad, xli. 
 Party names, xx. 
 
 Peons, 332. 
 
 Pickett, Col. John T., 329. 
 
 Porus, 303. 
 
 Rawlings, Gen., xix. 
 
 Raymond, H. J., li. 
 
 Rheims, 149. 
 
 Rhett, R. B., xlvi. 
 
 Ritchie, Thomas, xxvi.-xl. 
 
 Rome, Ga., burned. See Sherman. 
 
 Scott, Gov. of S. C, 276, 281, 311. 
 Seward, Wm. H., xxvii.-xxxi., • 
 
 xxxviii. -xxxix., 338. 
 Seymour, Horatio, liv. 
 Sherman, Gen. W. Tecumseh, 292. 
 Sherman, Senator John, 303. 
 Slaveholders, xlvii. 
 Smith, Rev. J. B., 230, 278. 
 Sprague, Senator, xxxi., Ixi, 
 Steadman, Gen. J. B., 127. 
 Stephens, Alex. H., xiii. 
 Sumner, Senator Charles, x. 
 Sylla, xix. 
 
 Toombs, Robert, xlvi. 
 Toulouse, 149. 
 
 University of Alabama burned, 306. 
 
 See Sherman. 
 University of Virginia, viii. 
 Usher, Sec. of Interior, 274. 
 
 Van Buren, Martin, xl. 
 Virginia, xli., 295. 
 
 Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, 
 xxxvi. 
 
 Wade, Ben, xlvi., 336, 339. 
 
 Walker, Gen. W. S., Ixiv. 
 
 Washburne, U. S. Minister at Paris, 296. 
 
 Washington City, 149. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, xli., 295, 305. 
 
 Weitzel, Gen., xii. 
 
 West Indies, 119. 
 
 Wilderness, battles of, 296. 
 
 Wilson, Bill, 130. 
 
 Wilson, Senator Henry, 172, 274. 
 
 Wood, Fernando, 126. 
 
 Worcester (Mass.) disunion resolutions, 
 
 xlii. 
 Working women of Boston, 1. 
 
 Yale College, xvii. 
 Yancey, W. L., xlvi. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
THE 
 
 IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 LABOR AND CAPITAL: 
 
 A BRIEF SUMMARY OF SOME OF THE CHIEF CAUSES AND 
 
 RESULTS OF THE LATE CIVIL WAR IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES, 
 
 AS PRESENTED IN 
 
 THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 TO 
 
 ADOLPHE GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC'S 
 HISTORY OF THE WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES, 
 
 IN WHICH THE 
 ORIGIN, NATURE, AND OBJECTS OF THE MUCH CALUMNIATED 
 
 FRENCH COMMUNE 
 
 ARE HISTORICALLY EXPIjVINED. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 
 
 819 & 821 MARKET STREET. 
 1872. 
 
HISTORY OF THE 
 WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 BY M. ADOLPHE GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC, 
 
 PARIS, FRANCE, A. D. 1838. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY BEN. E. GREEN, 
 
 OF DALTON, WHITFIELD CO., GA. 
 
 Published by OLAXTON, EEMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, Philadelphia. 
 
 From the Washington Chronicle. 
 
 This valuable work has been for some time out of print, and copies of it are 
 exceedingly rare, therefore an American translation will be welcome. 
 From the New Orleans Times. 
 
 Cassagnac wrote this elaborate history in two parts, the first of which is now 
 translated ; the second, on the " Noble Classes," is, we believe, extant only in 
 the original French. It has not been our fortune before this to meet with the 
 work, although at the period of its publication in Paris it commanded attention, 
 and has been ever since the source of nearly all the discussions on the great social 
 and political questions of the conflict between monarchy and democracy, and 
 capital and labor — two elements of strife that, alike in Europe and this country, 
 are rapidly assuming portentous shapes, and which cannot be put aside even by 
 the most indolent observer. When we opened this volume, we at once remem- 
 bered the notices that appeared in one of the French periodicals, and now are 
 satisfied that, of its class, it is the most profound and exhaustive. We urge any of 
 our citizens who think about the results of business, or the near future of the United 
 States, both politically and financially, to buy this volume and ponder its contents. 
 From the Trenton Gazette. 
 
 This work of Adolphe Cassagnac is an interesting and instructive work. It 
 abounds with classical lore and curious information, and to the student of the 
 labor problem is a treasure. 
 
 From the Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 This work is an intensely interesting one. The preface of the translator, Mr. 
 Ben. E. Green, of this State, is a very elaborate one, setting forth, among other 
 propositions, the causes of the late war, the effect of negro slavery in the South, 
 the struggle of classes in this as in all other countries, the fusion of elements pro- 
 ducing the Republican party, and that emancipation has cheapened labor, reduc- 
 ing its wages and diminishing its share of the products. The Translator thinks 
 that even Mr. Stephens has not reached the real causes of the war, which are 
 claimed to be the "Conflict between Monarchy and Democracy," and the "Irre- 
 pressible desire of c.ipital to cheapen labor." In "The Laboring and Burgher 
 Classes" are included all the learned professions — all who labor with the brain 
 or with the hand, and who wish to live and grow rich by the fruits of their own 
 honest industry. De Cassagnac was a student " absorbed in the solution of the 
 facts and philosophy of history." He has treated his subject exhaustingly, and 
 with great faithfulness as a historian. The work is an exceedingly valuable one, 
 and should find its way into every library. The Preface alone is worth the price 
 of the book. 
 
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