THE 
 
 NATURAL HISTORY 
 
 OP 
 
 SECESSION; 
 
 OR, 
 
 DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY AT NECESSARY, 
 ETERNAL. EXTERMINATING WAR. 
 
 B Y 
 
 THOMAS SHEPAllD GOODWIN, A. M. 
 
 The rnioii : it must aud shall be preserved." 
 
 Andrew Jackson. 
 
 Down with the traitor, and up with the stars" 
 
 liatiU Crv. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 COMMISSION BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS, 
 
 No. 5 Speuce Street. Tribune Buildings. 
 1865. 
 

 .(5 6 5- 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, hy 
 
 THOMAS SHEPAKD GOODWIN, 
 
 in the Clei-k's Office of the District Coui-t of the District of Maine. 
 
 GEO. C. KAND & AVERT, 
 8TEFE0TYPKKS AKD PKINTERS, 3 CORNHILL, BOSTON. 
 
MAY - l-^l? 
 
 WASx_ -.'cr 
 
 .^ru.>f, -B.C 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 K R, R A X A. . 
 
 Page 188, line 2, for Indiana read Illinois. 
 
 " 303, " 6, " to differ *' or c^zjfer. 
 
 " 303, " IG, " homes " hones. 
 
 " 319, " 24, " Appendix D " Appendix E. 
 
 " 328, '' 13, '' wreaking '' reeking. 
 
 induce this class of persons to cease their opposition to 
 the outrage committed, and even to join in inflicting the 
 like annoyance on their neighbors. 
 
 Perhaps it is not an unlawful or unworthy aim to rid 
 this class of the company of some who properly belong 
 not to its number; and to do something in the present 
 emergency of our country's affairs to counteract the mis- 
 chievous action of such of that number as remain. 
 
 In ability for mischief, next superior to those who have 
 no general system and are capable of comprehending 
 none, stand the class who reason fallaciously or from false 
 premises on matters of practical political importance. It 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 is hoped that individuals of this class will find in the pres- 
 ent treatise a fairness, thoroughness, and reliability of ar- 
 gument which will commend itself to their respect, and, 
 eventually, to their confidence, so far as they are sincere 
 searchers after truth that they may act on it. 
 
 The third and last class with whom the writer views 
 himself as dealing is composed of those of greater or less 
 ability of reasoning and sincerity of heart, cither within 
 or w^ithout the boundaries of the loyal States, who have 
 become unconsciously but hopelessly impressed in favor 
 of political sentiments and doctrines inimical to the exist- 
 ence and well-being of Popular Government. That this 
 class is both prominent and numerous among us, every 
 day's inscriptions on the page of history verify. Of them 
 the present writer asks no favor, no forbearance. If they 
 are to triumph, he consents to die ; and he does not pro- 
 j)Ose to himself to go down to physical or political obliv- 
 ion in silence or unavenged. 
 
 But Popular Government is not an accident in this 
 "world's afiairs. It entered prominently into the original 
 plan. From the dawn of Creation's morning, provision 
 began to be made for its advent. An ancient prophet of 
 God divulged the time of its coming, and declared that 
 "it should stand forever." 
 
 It is to be not only perpetual but universal. All the 
 institutions of ancient monarchy are to be "broken in 
 pieces and consumed " before it. It came not forth at the 
 war of the American Revolution, to glitter for a time 
 with delusive brightness and then go out in the night of 
 universal despotism which prevailed before. It has not 
 arisen and prevailed on this continent for three-quarters 
 of a century, dispensing unparalleled benefits to those 
 who have been the subjects of its mild, munificent sway, to 
 sink irrecoverably before the first infuriate combination of 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 homc-bom and foreign despots that should league together 
 for its destruction. The world's great Governor has not 
 brought forth this antidote for all the ills of human tyran- 
 ny, to bless the nations for a little while, and then become 
 extinct through the absence of those qualifications for 
 leadership which can be acquired only in a despotic state 
 of society. 
 
 Such are the convictions under which the following 
 pnges have been written ; and they are presented to the 
 pul)lic, not without belief that they will contril)ute to 
 impart to others a measure of the same deei)-rooted and 
 considerate filth in tlu' wortli, the necessity, the perj»etu- 
 ity of Free Government in which they have been written, 
 and the same cahii ])urpose to sustain its institutions, or 
 perisli when tliey fall. 
 
 That the present century is one of unexampled advance- 
 ment and celerity of j)rogress in all that pertains to the 
 more useful arts and sciences, is obvious to every one. 
 That this advancement and accelerated progress are due 
 to the relaxation or abridgment of dictatorial rule, is one 
 of those great truths which are gradually making them- 
 selves felt and admitted without the puny aid of human 
 logic. 
 
 Both the celerity of general movement peculiar to the 
 present age, — which leaves not time for tardy History to 
 perfect its lessons, — and also the exigencies of the new 
 form of civil government that has arisen to fill the place 
 of departing monarchy, demand and justify the present 
 attempt to bring the light of historical reflection to the 
 aid of those on whom devolves the responsibility of 
 defending, not only our existing government, but the 
 very governmental genus to which it belongs, from the 
 fierce and unportended perils that now assail them. And 
 1* 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 yet so brief and recent is the period in which historic 
 Democracy is to be found, that any writing of reflections 
 upon it must needs approximate to the writing of current 
 history. 
 
 The studies incident to preparing a previous and yet 
 unpubUshed volume on the Passing Away of Monarchy 
 conferred on the present author some preparedness to 
 treat the topics presented in the following pages. This 
 preparedness was augmented by thirty years alternate 
 residence in different sections, north and south, enabling 
 him, while familiar with the views and mental habits 
 peculiar to either section, so far to rid himself from the 
 controlling influence of these peculiarities as to be able 
 to speak with historic fairness of them both. 
 
 The time occupied in the production of the following 
 pages was the intervals of professional business during 
 the first two and a half years of war for suppressing the 
 Secession conspiracy. The date of writing is sometimes 
 introduced for the purpose of referring to events then 
 passed, in illustration of views presented. 
 
 During the time which has thus elapsed, many of the 
 practical political positions with which the author set out, 
 and which were then comparatively new and strange, 
 have been extensively adopted by the people and put into 
 operation by the government. While thus much of the 
 novelty of the work will have been lost, this loss will 
 have been measurably compensated by the increased 
 appreciation by the public mind of the importance of 
 the topics of which it treats. 
 
 Most of the time spent in the preparation of the work 
 has been devoted to attaining the greatest degree of con- 
 densation compatible with clearness, in order, as far as 
 
PREFACE. Vn 
 
 prncticfiblG, to bring its contents within the reach of that 
 large and increasing class of men among us whose habit- 
 ual readings approximate the limits of telegram. 
 
 That the perpetuity of domestic slavery is compatible 
 with the perpetual coexistence of free government on the 
 same soil, is an opinion that has been very generally attrib- 
 uted to the founders of this government, as generally 
 entertained by the people of the country, until a recent 
 peri<jd, and is still entertained by the great majority of 
 the ])eople, if we take the whole country into consider- 
 ation. By historical argiunent, and by argument drawn 
 liom lirst ]»rinciples, to confute an opinion that is sustained 
 by so sage and so universal authority, and in practical 
 l^olitics to take a i)Osition antagonistic to the jirinciples 
 on wliich the government of the country has been con- 
 ducted from its origin, is thought to be a matter of such 
 gravity as to demand minute, elaborate accumulation in 
 tiie argument by which that position is sustained. 
 
 "To see ourselves as othei-s see us," implies the posses- 
 sion of a grace with which our natures are so sparingly 
 endowed, that j)r(jducing an accurate portraiture of one's 
 self, or even of our government and national peculiarities, 
 is no easy task. To the difficulty arising from this source, 
 add the immature and undeveloped state of that type of 
 government which is succeeding to the place of decrepid 
 and departing monarchy, a type of which our own govern- 
 ment is perhaps the only relialjle specimen, and the result- 
 ing accumulation of difficulties may perhaps excuse any 
 lack of scientific clearness of aiTangeraent that appears in 
 the matter of the following pages. It is no ignoble achiev- 
 ment to present well some features of a subject that still 
 remains too imperfect or obscure to be entirely grasped, 
 or perfectly portrayed ; leaving it for time and a subse- 
 quent effijrt or author, to finish what has only been well 
 begun. 
 
VIII PREFACE. 
 
 To the unliterary character of the Southern people, or 
 to their modesty, it appears to be due, that the religionists 
 of the North have never enjoyed to any considerable ex- 
 tent the benefit of tlieir criticism. The decision of one 
 of their superior judges, to the effect that a disbeUever in 
 future rewards and punishments was not competent to 
 testify in their civil courts, is a true index of a sentiment 
 almost universally prevalent among them, different from 
 what obtains at the North, and which has seldom been ex- 
 pressed. 
 
 In the following pages the apparent ignoring of the 
 minor repubhcs of the present and former days, results, 
 partly from convenience in conducting the argument, and 
 partly from the necessity of regarding the United States 
 as alone responsible for maintaining the cause of civil 
 Liberty before confronting monarchies, and not from any 
 disposition to undervalue those bright but less potent 
 heralds of the day of universal freedom from civil despo- 
 tism. 
 
 The violently agitated current of passing events, with 
 the felt pressure of its enormous perils, must bring into 
 occasional use and justify expressions of unwonted energy; 
 such as would have been objectionable in times of pro- 
 longed quiet, and used respecting events of only ordinary 
 interest, or importance. The same circumstances will be 
 found to induce, if they do not justify, a trifling expansion 
 of the English language, by sometimes making use of 
 words, the admissibility of which rests on but very recent 
 authority. 
 
 That no more time is at his disposal for perfecting the 
 style and diction of the volume is matter of reorret to 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOK 
 
 LVTRODUCTION, 15 
 
 I. 
 
 ropulnr povornmcnt sncrpeding monarcliv— The grcafnoss nnd difDcul- 
 ty of the chanpe — iJa-^is of each — Sketch of tlje latter — Terms de- 
 fined—Antagonism of tl)e two — A continent divinely reserved for 
 the development of free government, ..... 19 
 
 ir. 
 
 Preparation and transfer of the people who were to Inhabit the continent 
 rcsen-ed for free government, ....... 23 
 
 III. 
 
 Two permanent settlements on this continent — The difference of charac- 
 ter pertaining to the people of each, and the necessary results of tills 
 difference, .......... 
 
 IV. 
 
 Claim of the North to being considered democratic— Its validity and 
 limit, 30 
 
 V. 
 
 Claims of the South to being considered democratic examined, and found 
 to have been sincere at first, but now false in the extreme, . . 35 
 
 VI. 
 
 Cause of the Southern lapse from democracy back to despotism — Imper- 
 fect light with which the national constitution was adopted, . . 40 
 
 IX 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Views with which the constitution was adopted— What that instrument 
 did, and what it did not do for slavery, 45 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Constitution adopted — Slavery abolished in the Northern States 
 
 From what influences, and with what results, . . . .48 
 
 IX. 
 
 Causes which operated against the abolishing of slavery in the South — 
 An aristocratic class always existed there — Climate made the negroes 
 thrive — Few whites had the intelligence to understand, or the energy 
 to assert, their rights, 53 
 
 X. 
 
 Causes of the non-abolishment of slavery in the' Southern States contin- 
 ued—The enervation of the whites — The richness of soil — The great 
 number of negroes — The poor whites acquire a love of idleness — The 
 social influence of the negroes degrades and despotizes the whole 
 white community, 59 
 
 XI. 
 
 The effect of slavery to countervail the progress and perfecting of the 
 principles of free government in the Southern States, even among 
 those who held their slaves at first unwillingly, . . . . GG 
 
 XII. 
 
 Conditions which so modify slavery as to abate its influence in counter- 
 acting the progress of free principles, ...... 70 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The gradual departure of those conditions which rendered African sla- 
 very in America mild in character and slight in influence during the first 
 century or more of its existence, ...... 75 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The ultimate, positive, and efficient, action of slave-holding in radically 
 converting the sentiments of the Southern people back from democ- 
 racy to despotism, . . . . . . . . . 80 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 XV. 
 
 Arpimcnt defined, and forces pointed out as they appear In history, which 
 force?- Iiave formed and stimulated our .^outliorn brethrcii to their pres- 
 ent onslaught on all democracy, ....... 86 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The above-defined argument presented in detail — The moulding pressure 
 continually resting on those who feel themselves responsible for the 
 preservation of quiet iu the Slave States — Its effect, . . .90 
 
 X \' I I . 
 
 Intensity of the antagonism between the principles of free government 
 and the i)rinciples on which slaves are governed — The latter analyzed 
 -Tlic precept — The penalty — Checks on the latter, . . . 97 
 
 XV in. 
 
 Tlie above analysis concluded —Chocks on severe penalties — Benevo- 
 lence of the manter — These checks limited and reversed by State ne- 
 ccssitiis — Results, ......... 102 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Results of above analysis recapitulated and applied, . . . .108 
 
 XX. 
 
 reculi:ir qualities conferred on the master of slaves by his position — 
 I'ractical display of these qualities, ...... 113 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Other traits of character conferred by his position on the slave-master, 
 fitting him for war ; and displayed by his class in the present contest, . 119 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The fallacy of supposing that distinctions of color can constitute any per- 
 manent limit to the despotic exercise of authority or greed for power 
 on the part of slave-masters, ..... . . 125 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Recapitnlation — The several ways in which slavery acts, to reconvert 
 masters from democracy to despotism, and to confer on them warlike 
 qualities, .......... . 134 
 
XII CONTENTS. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Antagonism of despotism and democracy overt and tangible — Military 
 organization and action perfectly natural and healthful to a despotism, 
 but difficult and destructive to a democracy, 138 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Same general subject continued — The poor whites of a slave-holdin;^ 
 community equivalent to a standinar army, when contrasted with the 
 destitution of combatants which marks a democracy, . . .143 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 View of the altered condition of affitira in 18G0, compared with 1789 — 
 Was the present precipitation of hostilities necessary ? — As viewed by 
 Northern men, it was not —As viewed by Southern men, it was, . . 148 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Leading Southerners determine to divide the Union — Thirty years spent 
 in maturing and preparing to execute the determination — Steps taken 
 to that end, 152 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Origin and object of the pro-Southern political party under Jackson, . 158 
 
 XXIX. • 
 
 The characteristic principles of Jackson's political party, . • .163 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Some of the modes in which these principles operated, • • • 167 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Eesults of the operation of the above-named principles, • • .175 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 The prostration resulting to a patriotic minority, from the usurpation of a 
 despotic few, controlling a majority, 180 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 How the Jaokson-Buchanan party became identified with Secession, • 185 
 
CONTENTS. Xni 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Recapitulation of the part performed by the Jackson-Buchanan party in 
 bringing about the present war, ....... 193 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 The abolitionists, I99 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Mischievous diversity of views as held, North and South, respecting the 
 abolitionists, .......... 205 
 
 X X X \' 1 1 . 
 
 The despotic class in Europe identified with the despots of America in the 
 existing' onslaught to destroy deinocrucy, ..... 212 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 The extent and efliciency of Kuropean cooperation with American trea- 
 son, 219 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Eome and the Rebellion, ........ 225 
 
 XL. 
 
 Rome and the Rebellion — France, Austria, and England at a gome in 
 Mexico, 241 
 
 XLI. 
 
 General Resum^, . . •..•••• 247 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Sketch of events initiating the revolt, . . • • • • 251 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Separation of the despotic from the democratic elements in the long- 
 donrinant party — Conditions of peace, ..... 258 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Conditions indispensable to peace, and progress toward their attainment, 264 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 The state of the Southern masses — The demonstrated aim of their 
 leaders — Inevitable results of separation, 270 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Concluding reflections — The contemplated cost of the Rebellion — The 
 aim this cost was fitted to subserve — Right-minded men at fault — 
 The no-punishment class — Abuse of the term democratic — Disjomt- 
 ing the Southern masses from thtir despotic leaders, . , .275 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Concluding reflections — The democrat and despot diverse — Grades of 
 despotism — Developments of — Democracy spontaneous in its spread — 
 If it develops in the South, its triumph universal — Contrast of admin- 
 istrations — Delinquency of the old whig statesmen — Final success, . 290 
 
 Appendix A, 305 
 
 Appendix B, 306 
 
 Appendix C, 307 
 
 Appendix D, 311 
 
 Appendix E, 312 
 
 Appendix F, 314 
 
 Appendix G 325 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 A KING of ancient Babylon, during a recess in the 
 expeditions of his conquering armies, and with the known 
 world almost entirely subjected to his sway, was meditat- 
 ing on the perpetuity of his dynasty, and disposed to 
 ask, "What should be thereafter?" This inquiring dispo- 
 sition of the king, the God of Heaven was pleased to 
 gratify. 
 
 Language is always changing to adapt itself to the 
 events, the minds, and modes of thought peculiar to each 
 varying age. Hence it is always lame in describing future 
 events. And as the matter to be communicated was of 
 importance to those who should live by several thousand 
 years remote from the peculiarities of the then current 
 age, an allegorical image was presented in a dream, to 
 convey the desired intelligence. "Its brightness was 
 excellent, and the form thereof terrible. Its head was of 
 fine gold ; its chest and arms of silver ; its belly and 
 thighs of brass ; its legs of iron ; and its feet part of iron 
 and part of clay. A stone was cut out without hands, 
 which smote the image on its feet, and brake them to 
 pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, 
 and the gold, broken in pieces together, and became like 
 the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, and the wind 
 carried them away that no place was found for them ; and 
 the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, 
 and filled the whole earth." 
 
 XV 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A faithful propliet of God was near, who explained the 
 head of gold to represent the king's own Babjdonish 
 empire ; the chest and arms of silver to represent the 
 Medo-Persian empire, which succeeded it ; the next section 
 of brass to represent the Macedonian empire which suc- 
 ceeded the Medo-Persiau ; and the legs of iron he inter- 
 preted to represent the base military strength of the 
 Roman empire. Thus we have presented the whole of 
 historic monarchy, practically complete, and left standing 
 on its conglomerate feet and toes, wliich appear to repre- 
 sent the modern kingdoms of Europe and Western Asia, 
 into which the dual Roman empire dwindled down ; 
 when, suddenly, a principle, antagonistic to all monarchy, 
 developed itself without human design or shaping, smote 
 the hoary structure on its feet, and the whole historic 
 embodiment crumbled, became contemptible, and passed 
 practically out of existence. 
 
 While monarchy remains anywhere extant and domi- 
 nant, those ancient empires, though long since passed 
 from the plane of physical existence, still stand, to uphold 
 the prestige of their kind, and send a powerful sanction 
 from the distant past, and a moulding influence, to fashion 
 and sustain the latest and feeblest of their degenerate 
 progeny. But when the impinging force of a developed 
 form and principle, hostile to all monarchy, breaks in 
 pieces the only remaining representatives of that kind of 
 government, then, not only the conglomerate residuum 
 impinged upon, but the ancient and j^erfect, and yet influ- 
 ential specimens of the order may with propriety be said 
 to break and crumble together ; and, as a class and kind 
 of government, to become powerless and contemptible as 
 chaftj while their newly-developed antagonist enlarges, to 
 fill their place. This antagonist can be no other than our 
 American self-government ; and dates and numbers accom- 
 
INTRODUCTION. XVII 
 
 panying the prophetic declaration of its universal spread, 
 as well as the marked character of recent national 
 chang-es in every part of the world, point to about the 
 present century as the time of its gradual establishment 
 and spread.* 
 
 Though the above views of prophecy suggest the 
 arrangement of the matter which the following pages 
 contain, it is only the historic verity of what is here taken 
 into view that is relied on in support of any of the con- 
 clusions thoufrht to be maintained. 
 
 * See Lectures on Prophecy^ by George Junkin, D. D. Carter. Phila- 
 delphia: 1844. To these Lectures the writer listened while an undergrad- 
 uate of Miami University, over which institution Dr. Junkin at that time 
 presided. 
 
 2* 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION, 
 
 POPULAR GOVERNMENT SUCCEEDING MONARCHY — THE GREAT- 
 NESS AND DIFFICULTY OF THE CHANGE BASIS OF EACH 
 
 — SKETCH OF THE LATTER TERMS DEFINED — ANTAGO- 
 NISM OF THE TWO — A CONTINENT DIVINELY RESERVED FOR 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The greatest secular event of this or of any 
 other age, is the transfer of the reins of civil 
 power to the many, from the few. 
 
 Among the strangest capabiHties and habits 
 of man — the most versatile of created beings — 
 is the capability and habit of submitting to the 
 dictation of his fellow-man. This forms the only 
 foundation on which monarchy can rise or rest. 
 When and wherever this ceases to exist, then 
 and there — and then and there only — will mon- 
 archy or despotic civil authority be known no 
 more. 
 
 Among the great facts of human history, 
 nothing that was destined to decline ever dis- 
 played more of vastness and perpetuity than 
 
 19 
 
20 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 civil monarchy. From the clays of Nimrod clown 
 to the year of grace, 177G, hardly anj^thing 
 appeared to intimate that division into the two 
 hitherto inevitable classes — slave and master, 
 subject and sovereign — was not the normal and 
 necessary condition of the race. Crowmed with 
 the Babylonish empire as its "head of gold/' 
 monarches through successive ages of universal 
 prevalence, had wTOught itself into an august 
 embodiment that promised to absorb within it- 
 self all that remained of human history. The 
 antagonivstic civil principle had not yet germi- 
 nated. The "little stone" that was to "become 
 a great mountain, and fill the earth" instead, had 
 not yet been "cut out without hands.* x\nd yet 
 there was a progressive degeneracy in that which 
 constituted the peculiar richness and excellence 
 of monarchical power. Through tlie Medo-Per- 
 sian and Macedonian ages, this degeneration pro- 
 gressed, until the iron despotism of the Roman 
 empire, and its representatives and successors, 
 the modern kingdoms of Europe and western 
 Asia, displayed the once glorious and beneficent 
 principle of civil monarchy in forms of baseness 
 and cruelty unsurpassed by anj^thing outside the 
 confines of the darkest barbarism. 
 
 * The reference here is to the prophet Daniel, who i? intei-preted as say- 
 ing that monarchical government must become extinct at about the present 
 age of the world. 
 
MONARCHY AXD DEMOCRACY. 21 
 
 Perhaps the basis of monarchical strength — 
 the capability and easy habit of submitting to 
 dictation — had been gradually ebbing out of 
 the popular masses, thus necessitating the as- 
 sumption of harshness and violence on the part 
 of the ruling few, in order to save their inherited 
 or usurped preeminence from falling into hope- 
 less desuetude. 
 
 The word monarchy, when strictly defmed, 
 describes the condition of affairs in which one 
 man presides in supreme civil power over the 
 state or nation. In common usage, the word is 
 understood to apply to all those modifications of 
 the one-man-power which fall short of democ- 
 racy. In democracy the majority rule. The 
 word despotism describes an intense, abused 
 form of monarchy. 
 
 As monarchy is founded on nothing but the 
 ability and habit of the people to submit to the 
 dictation of superiors, so democracy is founded 
 on nothing but the opposite of this, namely, the 
 permanent inability of the people to submit to 
 the dictation of any but themselves. 
 
 These two plans or principles of government 
 are intensely antagonistic : so much so, that 
 wherever they exist together, annihilating war 
 is inevitable, in one form or another, until the 
 one principle or the other is extirpated. 
 
22 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 Such being the state of the case, and mon- 
 archy being already universal in the Old World, 
 where should a place be found, whereon to de- 
 velop the germ of free government? This in- 
 quiry would have been a serious, perhaps an 
 unanswerable one, had not the wise and gracious 
 Kuler of the universe, from the first founding of 
 the world, reserved the American continent for 
 this special purpose. 
 
 As the age drew near in which monarchy was 
 to become extinct, two great preparatory opera- 
 tions were found to be going on. First, the con- 
 tinent was being discovered, explored, and ren- 
 dered accessible and habitable. Secondly, a race 
 of men, the first of the nations, were being train- 
 ed, separated, and at last transported thither, 
 among whom the principle of popular self-gov- 
 ernment was to be planted, developed, and 
 strengthened into unconquerable prevalence. 
 
II 
 
 PREPARATION AND TRANSFER OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE TO 
 INHABIT THE CONTINENT RESERVED FOR FREE GOVERN- 
 MENT. 
 
 While the continent that had been reserved 
 for the birthplace of civil freedom was yet an 
 undiscovered wilderness, roamed over only by a 
 few tribes of feeble savages, the race of men 
 that were to be its first fit occupants were being 
 thus prepared. 
 
 An island was selected in the temperate zone, 
 best fitted for the development of mental, moral, 
 and physical strength, remote alike from the 
 stinting cold and poverty of the frigid, and from 
 the sickening, passion-kindling, heat of torrid, 
 latitudes ; sufiiciently near the continent to 
 admit the stimulating influence and intercourse 
 of the European society of nations ; sufficiently 
 isolated to remain largely uninfluenced by the 
 degeneracy and turmoils of those nations. Here 
 the aboriginal inhabitants were crossed by an 
 admixture of the civilized and all-conquering 
 Romans, and afterward successively by four 
 other of the most stalwart races of middle and 
 
 23 
 
24 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 northern Europe. The result was, a people more 
 vigorous and controlling than any contempora- 
 neous nation of the earth. Their vigor dis- 
 played itself in an early separation from the 
 Eomish Church, and a successful defiance of 
 both its corruptions and its force. 
 
 The despotism that prevailed oppressively 
 over the rest of Christendom was soon broken 
 and permanently modified in England by the 
 turbulent exactions of the nobility. The " Magna 
 Charta," exacted by his nobles from King John, 
 is justly regarded as the first distinct germ of 
 modern free government. 
 
 This turbulent nobility at length destroyed 
 itself in its intestine wars, and left the Commons 
 — the elected representatives of the common 
 people — to rise into an importance which they 
 have never resigned, and which is as great, per- 
 haps, as is compatible with the continued exist- 
 ence of monarchy. 
 
 From a people thus prepared and trained — a 
 people of mental and moral stature, and national 
 strength and resources second to none of its 
 contemporaries — were selected the chosen few 
 who were to plant the first permanent settle- 
 ments on the continent that had been reserved 
 to be the birthplace and heritage of popular 
 government. Here they hardened under un- 
 
EARLY SETTLERS. 25 
 
 wonted trials and privation, removed by a 
 voyage of months from the efficient presence of 
 that government under whose ample protection, 
 and from the enlightened community in whose 
 affluent bosom, they had been reared. Exposed 
 to the rigors of a trying climate, assaults of sav- 
 ages, the ravages of disease, and in no slight 
 degree to the perils of starvation, they gradually 
 became aware of their ability to protect them- 
 selves, and became insensibly possessed of a 
 mysterious inability to submit to needless and 
 unreasonable dictation. Gradually reinforced in 
 numbers from the source from which the original 
 settlers sprang, there resulted a homogeneous 
 and unique national character, one great essen- 
 tial of which was the yet latent but inexorable 
 necessity of self-government. 
 
III. 
 
 TWO PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS ON THIS CONTINENT — THE 
 DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER PERTAINING TO THE PEOPLE 
 OF EACH, AND THE NECESSARY RESULTS OF THIS DIFFER- 
 ENCE. 
 
 Two permanent settlements were made in 
 North America at about the same period, and a 
 few hundred miles apart. One at Plymouth, 
 Massachusetts, by a religious community, brought 
 out from its former home by the pressure of 
 religious restrictions, to find more perfect reli- 
 gious freedom. The other at Jamestown, Vir- 
 ginia, by a secular community, moved by the 
 motives which ordinarily prompt to the colo- 
 nizing of new countries, — a desire to promote 
 national enlargement, and to better the condi- 
 tion of the individuals concerned. Each colony 
 drew to itself kindred material from the mother 
 land, and spread. Other settlements, less dis- 
 tinct in character, came to the intervening and 
 adjacent space, amalgamated with either of the 
 first two settlements, and the country, for hun- 
 dreds of miles in every direction, became com- 
 pactly filled. The originally secular community 
 
THE TWO COLONIES. 27 
 
 became more religious, and the originally reli- 
 gious community gradually became substantially 
 secular, until, to the eye of the common ob- 
 server, no lineament of the original diversity 
 of germ was discernible in the homogeneous 
 product of the two primal settlements. Whether 
 a century of amalgamated existence and united 
 governmental activity has or has not eradicated 
 ori2:inal incono-ruities of character from the off- 
 spring of these separate germs, is a question 
 that has been clothed with momentous impor- 
 tance by the events of 1861-2. 
 
 The original religious difference between the 
 Northern and Southern colonies, though dimin- 
 ished, has never become extinct. The activity 
 of Northern minds still takes a religious turn. 
 What there is amono; them of real faith in God 
 and in his revealed Word assumes a more posi- 
 tive, aggressive, and fruitful type than elsewhere ; 
 and what there is among them of ungodliness 
 and infidelity assumes, to a very remarkable 
 extent, a sanctimonious aspect and a religious 
 form. Whole denominations of churches keep 
 up the costly rites and ceremonies of religious 
 worship, merely to clothe themselves with the 
 external decorum of believers, to give expres- 
 sion and exercise to those religious faculties and 
 feelings common to the race, to emphasize 
 
28 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 
 
 their rejection of revealed truth, and to retain 
 their followers from being drawn under the 
 dominion of an evangelical faith. While in the 
 South, real religion is more silent and retiring, 
 and ungodliness prides itself on the frank and 
 open bearing of the undisguisedly profligate. 
 
 Diversity of climate and other accidents have 
 induced more or less difference of character and 
 habit between the descendants of the Northern 
 and Southern colonists, in addition to any diver- 
 sity that originally marked their ancestors. All 
 these, with the original and continued religious 
 difference that existed and still exists, may serve 
 to induce diversity of social tastes, and even a 
 degree of antipathy between the dwellers in 
 the Northern and Southern portions of the 
 Union ; but all this sinks into utter non-impor- 
 tance in the presence of the one great charac- 
 teristic feature of the age. Despotism and 
 Democracy have for years been mustering their 
 adherents for deadly and final conflict ; and by 
 the all-absorbing power and importance of this 
 struggle, where it is present, any other shade or 
 ground of difference between two civil commu- 
 nities is merged at once in oblivious insignifi- 
 cance. 
 
 The question, then, whether, between the 
 people of the Northern and Southern portions 
 
COXDITIOXS OF UXION. 29 
 
 of the Union there exists such radical divergence 
 of character as necessitates the sundering of the 
 civil ties that hitherto united them, becomes 
 simply the question whether the people of these 
 two sections have become arrayed on different 
 sides in the great strife that is going on through- 
 out the civilized world between the friends and 
 the enemies of popular self-government. 
 
 If both are on the same side in this one great, 
 all important, all-absorbing, conflict of the age, 
 then any present or partial difference that may 
 separate tliem on minor points will of necessity 
 soon subside and disappear, and leave them 
 naturally and substantially united. If, on the 
 contrary, the people of these two sections are 
 fairly and joermanently fixed on different sides 
 in the great conflict of the age, then, no act of 
 separation, no peace-treaty or covenant, no guar- 
 anty or mediation, can prevent their warring 
 with deadly animosity, until one or the other 
 party to the strife is converted or consumed. 
 
 8* 
 
IV. 
 
 CLAIM OF THE NORTH TO BEING CONSIDERED DEMOCRATIC — 
 ITS VALIDITY AND LIMIT. 
 
 With regard to the position of the Northern 
 States, on the great question of the day, there 
 is, and can be no dilBTerence of opinion. If their 
 own profession, and the admission of all foreign 
 nations, that they are the peculiar possessors, 
 advocates, and champions, of free government, 
 were not satisfactory proof on this point, their pe- 
 culiar follies and weaknesses, as displaj^ed in the 
 conduct of the present war, their apparent 
 utter inability to have a governing policy, or an 
 efficient head, should establish beyond a cavil 
 that they are anything else but monarchists. 
 
 The fact of the Northern States having abolished 
 slavery within their borders is some proof of the 
 depth and genuineness of their professed democ- 
 racy, inasmuch as the causes which induced this 
 line of action, and the action itself, would have 
 tended somewhat strongly to induce and to con- 
 firm the democratic element. The fact that the 
 people of the Northern States have never exacted 
 from their several States, nor from the general 
 
 30 
 
LIMITS OF NORTHERN FREEDOM. 31 
 
 government, distinct admission of the citizenship 
 of their colored population, limits, though per- 
 haps it does not go far to countervail, the depth 
 and sincerity of their claims to being considered 
 democratic. 
 
 A still more serious limit to the genuineness 
 of these claims is found in the history of the 
 tame submissiveness with which tlie people and 
 statesmen of the North, have almost unresistingly 
 accorded a vast predominance of political influ- 
 ence to the Southern minority in the national 
 councils.* This is an error, not of design, but 
 of unconscious feebleness in what forms the 
 basis of all reliable self-government, — an inabil- 
 ity to submit to dictation. 
 
 Perhaps, on the other hand, some allowance is 
 justly to be made on account of the unorganized, 
 unsuspecting nature of all democratic communi- 
 ties. Only in the presence of a recognized 
 
 * Ont of the seventy-two years of the existence of our government from 
 its organization to the close of Buchanan's administration, Southern men 
 have held the seat of chief executive forty-eight years — just two-thirds 
 of the time. Add to this, that Pierce and Buchanan, two of the Northern 
 Presidents were notoriously mere tools of the South, and owe their elections 
 to that fact, which the history of their administrations never contradicted, — 
 then allow that all offices of emolument and trust under the general gov- 
 ernment, domestic and foreign, civil, military, and naval, have been distrib- 
 uted to Southemers in approximately the same ratio in which they have 
 held the post of chief executive, — and the resvdt will be a somewhat seri- 
 ous drawback on the validity of the profession of Northerners to being a 
 democratic people. . 
 
32 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 antagonist is there anjrthing to inspire them 
 with suspicion, to force on them that organiza- 
 tion, or train them to that reconnoitruig alert- 
 ness, from which they naturally lapse in time of 
 peace, and without which they are defenceless 
 as sheep. 
 
 A monarchical government so readily assumes 
 the attitude and armament of war that war may 
 ahnost be said to be its normal state. Its single 
 or naturally united head, always necessarily 
 vigilant, and alert to maintain its own preemi- 
 nence in its own community, undergoes but 
 trifling change of state or activity when it turns 
 its attention to foes without, or taxes the resour- 
 ces of its realm to resist invasion or to become 
 itself the invader. 
 
 On the other hand, in the democratic com- 
 munity, the law that reduces all preeminence to 
 the common level — the practical efficiency of 
 which law is the first condition of democracy — 
 neutralizes the intelligence and paralyzes the 
 activity of any one who might be able to warn 
 of danger, or to direct efforts to forestall disaster, 
 until such time as the constant aggravation of 
 prolonged oppression, or some sudden violation 
 of every sense of justice, rouses the universal 
 populace with one common purpose to resist. 
 
LIMITS OF NORTHERN FREEDOM. 33 
 
 This natural disposition and tendency of a 
 democratic community to be remiss and ineffi- 
 cient in preserving its rights, and resisting aggres- 
 sion, will account in part for the undue ascend- 
 ency of Southern influence in our national coun- 
 cils, but it will not wholly account for or excuse 
 this. The historic fact that such notoriously 
 imbecile tools as Frank Pierce and James 
 Buchanan had strong, organized, and in some 
 instances ruling, parties in the North to advocate 
 their election and to sustain their administra- 
 tions, — is a fact that admits of explanation only 
 on the admission that said parties had become 
 depraved to a great extent of the first essential 
 of democrac}^, — an inability to submit to usurped 
 dictation. 
 
 To extenuate their conduct, it may be said 
 that many of the men who voted to raise these 
 two men to the chief magistracy did so without 
 understanding the import of their deeds. They 
 were practised on by party deceptions; they 
 had been drilled for years to blind submission to 
 party leaders ! As much as this can be said in 
 defence of the most grovelling set of slaves that 
 ever fixed upon themselves the shackles of a 
 despot. 
 
 The simple truth is, that with more light and 
 
34 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 knowledge than ever before illuminated the path 
 of a people similarly situated, they did what in 
 them lay, to sell themselves and their country 
 into the hands of as fierce a set of tyrants as 
 ever endeavored to usurp the rights of a people 
 they had purposed to enslave. 
 
CLAIMS OF THE SOUTH TO BEING CONSIDERED DEMOCRATIC 
 EXAMINED, AND FOUNT) TO HAVE BEEN SINCERE AT FIRST, 
 BUT NOW FALSE IN THE EXTREME. 
 
 The people of the Southern States profess also 
 to advocate, possess, and exemplify the principles 
 of popular self-government. And it is only by 
 separating what is fact from what is fiction, in 
 this profession, that we can arrive at any reliable 
 conclusion respecting the moving spring of their 
 rebellion, or the means of bringing our existing 
 war to a successful close. 
 
 That the people of the Southern States, with 
 comparatively few individual exceptions, sincere- 
 ly believe themselves to be democratic members 
 of a democratic community, there can be no 
 doubt. 
 
 But the question before us is not a question 
 as to what the Southern people believe or sup- 
 pose themselves to be, or what they are believed 
 or supposed to be by others. It is a question of 
 fact, whether they ai^e or are not capable of them- 
 selves exercising or submitting to the exercise 
 by others, of despotic dictation in civil affairs. 
 
 35 
 
36 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 
 
 Let the answer to this inquiry be reliably ascer- 
 tained, and in that answer, and in that only, we 
 have the data for framing a policy which will 
 bring our present grievous intestine war to a 
 successful issue. 
 
 The history of the Southern people, at first 
 view, appears to justify the conclusion that their 
 profession of democratic principles is sincere. 
 Oriorinatino* from the same national stock, trans- 
 ported at about the same period across the same 
 almost interminable ocean (as then navigated), 
 and subjected to the same perils of starvation 
 and savage hostilities, there is nothing wanting 
 but the same severity of climate and poverty of 
 soil, to complete in all essentials the historic 
 parallel between the early experience of the 
 Northern and Southern colonies. Each appears 
 to have had substantially the same experience 
 and training, leading and impelling them to re- 
 sist the dictatorial exercise of power by the 
 mother country; and with substantially the 
 same result. The end of a century and a half 
 of colonial existence found the accumulated col- 
 onies of the North, under the lead of Massachu- 
 setts, and of the South, under Virginia, alike 
 prompt and desirous to inaugurate and carry on 
 the war of independence, and alike worthy to 
 share the benefits that war obtained. 
 
SOUTHERN SENTIMENT IN 1776. 37 
 
 Such a test as the war of the Revolution sup- 
 plied, could not fail to develop any deficiency of 
 the elements of freedom, had any such defi- 
 ciency existed at that time. Since then, the 
 trade of politicians has been plied in every quar- 
 ter of the land so thoroughly, so perpetually and 
 persistently, that any movement of the people 
 or of any portion of them, requires to be re- 
 viewed and repeated for some length of time, 
 before it is safe to consider it as spontaneous or 
 sincere, and not artificial and produced by dem- 
 agogues. But at the time of the Revolution 
 and before, whatever the people did w\as reason- 
 ably sure to have been done sincerely and of their 
 own simple motion. There were tories North 
 and South ; individuals, and sometimes large 
 neighborhood majorities, who preferred monar- 
 chy, or, at least, preferred the old British govern- 
 ment, to anything which they thought likely to 
 be achieved by revolution ; and they showed this 
 J) reference by active cooperation with the Brit- 
 ish, or by yery obstinate neutrality. There ap- 
 pears to have been more of tliese in the extreme 
 South, than in any other section. A more ener- 
 vating climate, less advantages of education, and 
 of enlarged intercourse, and a more natural in- 
 difference as to what government they were un- 
 der, may account for this. While the splendid 
 
38 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 specimens of ability and devotion to Freedom's 
 cause, which were at the same time displayed in 
 the same section, largely offset the other, and 
 almost dispel any suspicion that the Southern 
 colonies, as a section, were behind the North in 
 their demand for national freedom, or in their 
 contributions for its procurement. 
 
 The influence which the Eevolutionary strug- 
 gle, with its sacrifices and privations, must have 
 had on those who engaged in it, could not have 
 been other than to deepen and confirm their 
 preference for the cause they espoused, even 
 if that preference had been at first waver- 
 ing. And the results of the glorious achieve- 
 ments of that war — the sense of triumph, and 
 the rapid rise of national character and wealth 
 — must have overwhelmed the cravien spirit of 
 toryism that at first persisted in its preference 
 for British monarchy as its government. Such, 
 we may well believe, was indeed the case. Pref- 
 erences for monarchical government disappeared. 
 And up to a recent period, almost no one has 
 had the hardihood to avow a preference for any 
 form of government other than the one we have* 
 had. So perfectly and so splendidly has the 
 upward progress of our nation exemplified and 
 illustrated the benefits of free government, that 
 evidence amounting almost to proof of hatred 
 
THE REBELS ENEmES OF FREE GOTERXMENT. 39 
 
 to all democracy in the authors of this rebellion, 
 is found in the fact that they have purposed, and 
 are laboring to achieve, the overthrow of this 
 first successful specimen of popular self-govern- 
 ment. This government is universally admitted 
 to be the representative and almost the embodi- 
 ment of all modern free government, and those 
 who are en^-an-ed in an assassin stru^^o-le for its 
 overthrow are a monstrous anomaly in the world 
 of sequence, if they are not the representatives and 
 champions of the tottering monarchies of a ty- 
 rant-ridden world. The gauzy pretence that they 
 are laboring to establish a more perfect form of 
 free government, is but an extorted compliment 
 to the admitted worth and splendor of the one 
 they are laboring to destroy. Nothing else but 
 such pretence could shield them from the open 
 shame of being the common enemies of man- 
 kind. 
 
VI. 
 
 CAUSE OF THE SOUTHERN LAPSE FROM DEMOCRACY BACK TO 
 DESPOTISM — IMPERFECT LIGHT WITH WHICH THE NATIONAL 
 CONSTITUTION WAS ADOPTED. 
 
 Unquestioned and unquestionable is the his- 
 toric record, that, from Washington and Jeffer- 
 son, down to Marion and Sumter, the Southern 
 colonies supplied many of the bravest warriors 
 of the Revolution, many of the ablest and most 
 devoted of the framers of our present govern- 
 ment. Equally certain is it, that the ablest 
 minds of the South, one and all, Avith sparse 
 exceptions, are now laboring with infuriate zeal 
 to dissipate what the valor of their fathers won, 
 to pull down what the wisdom and devotion of 
 their fathers reared. 
 
 This change, that has occurred between the 
 fathers and their sons, demands to be accounted 
 for. 
 
 To attribute such a change to caprice, or to 
 political accidents, one or many, without the 
 intervention of the sternest laws, and the deepest 
 principles that influence and govern national 
 character and conduct, would be to abandon all 
 
 40 
 
THE SOUTHERN LAPSE. 41 
 
 idea of cause and effect in the sphere of man's 
 associate action, and to convert the moral world 
 into a moral chaos, wherein all law is nugatory 
 and reason useless. 
 
 That the parties undergoing it should be 
 themselves intelligently cognizant of the change, 
 is not to be expected. It is too deep and radical, 
 its occurrence has been too gradual and silent, 
 it is too total, extensive, and absorbing, to be 
 intelligently comprehended by those who are 
 the subjects of it. It is the greatest and most 
 mysterious change that human character can 
 undergo, next to that change of which the 
 Scriptures say, " as the wind bloweth where it 
 listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
 canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it 
 goeth, so is every one that experiences it." It 
 is the change from democracy to despotism; 
 or rather the lapse consequent on the conver- 
 sion from despotism to democracy having been 
 in the first instance imperfect. 
 
 When the war of the Eevolution was over, 
 and the convention which formed our Constitu- 
 tion had assembled, jarring and repellent inter- 
 ests well-nigh rendered their labors finally abor- 
 tive. 
 
 This was to be expected. Only the heavy 
 
 4» 
 
42 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 costs of freedom had as yet been proved. The 
 rich fruits of its possession were still conjectu- 
 ral; and union, as indispensable alike to their 
 procurement or preservation, had not then, as 
 now, become matter of manifold experience. 
 Sectional interests and even local prejudices 
 were sufficient to jar, and even repel, the parts 
 that had not then been formally united, nor 
 welded into one, by three-fourths of a century 
 of happy and glorious experience. 
 
 No fundamental ground of diversity in prin- 
 ciples or practice then displayed itself Even 
 the question of slavery was far from being local 
 at the South. Though the States were all, or 
 nearly all, slave-holding, the predominance of 
 interest in that institution was at the South. 
 Yet the South was far from being unanimous in 
 favor of slavery ; and the North w^as nearly as 
 far from being unanimous against it. The lead- 
 ing statesmen of the age, from the South as well 
 as from the North — themselves slave-holders — 
 were against perpetuating the institution. They 
 had successfully perilled their lives, their posses- 
 sions, and their hopes, to obtain for themselves, 
 their posterity, and their country, the boon of 
 civil freedom ; and they were then engaged in 
 the extremely arduous and critical work of giv- 
 ing security and permanence to what their perils, 
 
DEFICIENCY OF LIGHT IN 1787. 43 
 
 privation, blood, and toil, had gained. They 
 were deeply conscious of the incongruity of 
 making the perilous and costly consummation 
 of the freedom of one race the occasion of riv- 
 eting irrevocably the fetters of another race, 
 intermingled among them on the same soil. 
 But the peril of such a course they did not 
 understand. The latent, inevitable, consuming, 
 hostility between despotism and free govern- 
 ment, had not, at that early stage of the conflict 
 between these two great principles, been suffi- 
 ciently demonstrated to be understood. They 
 dreaded only the usurpations of those who were 
 despotically disposed ; and had no dread of the 
 broader, deeper, and more surely prolific ground 
 of despotism, — the subservient disposition of the 
 masses. That the existence of slaves necessi- 
 tates the existence of masters, and that masters 
 are necessarily tyrants, despots, are truths, obvi- 
 ous enough to us, but which they appear not 
 distinctly to have discovered. The war they 
 had just gone through was looked on as not ge- 
 nerically diverse from former wars, and not as the 
 initiatory engagement in a series of conflicts, 
 the most fierce, perhaps, that the world's history 
 will ever have recorded, which are to terminate 
 in the utter subversion of all monarchy. 
 
 It was left for us, their descendants, at this 
 
4-i NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 remoter period, by the light which the history 
 of their day throws forward upon ours, and in 
 the light which ours and intervening years 
 throw back on theirs, to discover the truth that 
 they and we are taking part in the downfall of 
 universal despotism, the greatest revolution that 
 civil society ever has been, or will be, called to 
 pass through; that they and we are fighting 
 out issues, not for ourselves alone, but for the 
 human race, — issues not again to be reversed 
 till the end of time. 
 
 Had the patriot framers of the Constitution 
 of our country's government been permitted to 
 see and realize the magnitude and extent of 
 the change they were inaugurating in the world's 
 history ; had they obtained a glimpse of the 
 inevitable certainty and consuming bitterness of 
 the wars which they had begun, and which were 
 to rage at intervals until the last of monarchical 
 institutions shall have become extinct, sooner 
 than do as they did, — plant the seeds of inevi- 
 table, intestine, consuming war in the bowels of 
 the sacred structure they were rearing up to be 
 consecrated to universal Freedom, — such colony 
 or colonies as refused to pledge themselves to 
 final emancipation would have been left outside 
 the Union, till the bitter fruits of their fatal 
 choice had ripened in destruction on their own 
 unpitied heads. 
 
VII. 
 
 VIEWS wrrn wnicn the coxstitutiox was adopted — 
 
 WHAT THAT INSTRUMENT DID, AND WHAT IT DID NOT 
 DO FOR SLAVERY. 
 
 IL\D the States v/bich persisted in making Af- 
 rican slavery perpetual been excluded from the 
 original Union, would the Free United States 
 have prospered as they have done in the union 
 of all the States ? Tlie history of the Free States 
 does not admit the shadow of a doubt, that, 
 without any union with, or assistance from, the 
 Slave States, their prosperity would have been 
 great and their advancement irresistible. Their 
 climax of greatness might, perhaps, at no time 
 prior to the present, have reached the point at 
 which it stood when this war began ; but there 
 can be no doubt that it would have reached the 
 condition in which it will be found when this 
 war shall close. 
 
 The Southern or slave-holding States, on the 
 other hand, would have been early won, to join 
 the prosperous Free States, and abandon slavery, 
 or else they would have become monarchical in 
 form as rapidly as they became so in fact ; would 
 
 45 
 
46 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 have become confederate with European mon- 
 archies ; and their present war on freedom, would 
 have taken place ten or twenty years earlier 
 than it has, and before the Slave States attained 
 a tithe of their present power for mischief. The 
 war, in that case, might have been less deci- 
 sive, more protracted, or repeated at intervals, 
 more than now, but during its course, whether 
 long or short, there could hardly have been as 
 much lying as has been done in Europe and in 
 the Slave States during each ten days since the 
 rebellion commenced. 
 
 But the truth of the case is, that the patriot 
 founders of our government never believed that 
 African slavery, though extant, would become 
 perpetual. They were themselves possessed of 
 a love of liberty that outweighed all other con- 
 siderations. They knew the same sentiment to 
 pervade their countrymen, North and South. 
 They knew that the terrible costs of the war 
 had not only proved the existence and preva- 
 lence of this sentiment, but had developed, deep- 
 ened, and increased the same. They saw with 
 sanguine faith something of the rich prosperity 
 that awaited the future of the United States ; 
 and they not unreasonably calculated that this 
 would confirm the love of freedom in every sec- 
 
THE CONSTITUTION AND SLAVERY. 47 
 
 tion of the land. And they saw no good reason 
 to doubt that the evident incongruity of a love 
 of being free one's self, and the love of enslav- 
 ing another — the warring difference there was 
 between the sentiment and the practice of se- 
 curing the widest liberty to the white, while 
 imposing the heaviest servitude on the black — 
 would, at no distant day, while yet the love of 
 freedom in the citizens was unshaken, eventuate 
 in the enfranchisement of the slaves. 
 
 They secured the extingidshment of the foreign 
 slave-trade, and pennitted the domestic slave-trade 
 to have a free field. They allowed a representa- 
 tion in Congress to the masters on account of 
 slaves, and secured the return of the fugitives. 
 These things they did as a fit and customary 
 compromise of jarring interests, and left the in- 
 evitable opposition between slavery and freedom 
 to work out the rest; desiring and believing that 
 the result would be, the ultimate glorious tri- 
 umph of the latter. Their expectations are not 
 to be disappointed. But the long delay and 
 the bloody vale of humiliation, which were to 
 intervene between the inception and the accom- 
 plishment of their hopes, they did not fore- 
 see. The causes of this partial disappointment 
 of their expectations, it is worthy of our most 
 earnest and patient endeavors to understand. 
 
Till. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION ADOPTED — SLAVERY ABOLISHED IN THE 
 NORTHERN STATES — FROM WHAT INFLUENCES, AND WITH 
 WHAT RESULTS. 
 
 The Constitution, formed by the Convention 
 for that purpose met in Philadelphia, through 
 much difficulty, peril, prayer, and patience, was 
 at length completed. More or less tardily each 
 of the thirteen then existing States gave in its 
 adherence thereto, and on the thirtieth of April, 
 1789, it went into operation by the assembling 
 of Congress and the induction of George Wash- 
 ington into office as the first President. From 
 this date commenced the progress of the United 
 States in a career of affluence, expansion, re- 
 spectability, and power, unparalleled and unap- 
 proached in the history of nations,"-' and un- 
 checked, until it was confronted with the prod- 
 uct of those seeds of conffict and of dissolution 
 which were planted in the Constitution when 
 
 * It seems to be only with some qualification that the term nation can be 
 applied to a conglomerate like that which fills the boundaries of our land — 
 a type of population like the gathered nationalities of former universal 
 monarchies, which seems of itself to presage the universal spread of the 
 government they sustain. 
 
 48 
 
NORTHERN STATES ABOLISH SLAVERY. 49 
 
 its protections of African Slavery were per- 
 mitted to remain perpetual. 
 
 Six of the northernmost of the original thir- 
 teen Slates shed off the incubus of negro sla- 
 very without commotion and without regret. 
 
 This result was favored by the accident of 
 climate, and perhaps of soil. Negroes are con- 
 stitutionally adapted to a warm climate. They 
 seem almost incapable of being hardened to a 
 cold climate like the white races. Hence they 
 did not thrive so spontaneously, they did not 
 multiply as rapidly, as in the Southern States ; 
 it cost more to keep them, and they were 
 worth less when kept. Again, the bracing cli- 
 mate stimulated both the mental and bodily 
 powers of the white race into greater activity, 
 so that there was less demand for slave labor. 
 The fast-growing spirit of freedom and equality 
 soon produced a social atmosphere in which the 
 individual, if personally otherwise inclined, be- 
 came deeply ashamed to accept his sustenance 
 or wealth at the hands of an unrequited, half- 
 civilized, half starved darky. The negro him- 
 self became stimulated, if not by the climate, by 
 his large and constant intercourse with intelli- 
 gent, ingenious, and self supporting whites, and 
 rapidly and obviously became fit for freedom. 
 
 The soil in the Northern States is not suffi- 
 
50 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 ciently productive to admit of the constant 
 production of one great staple crop, to be sold 
 off for cash ; and all experience proves that in 
 no other circumstances is slave labor profitable. 
 Nothing but the ^potent stimidiis of personal in- 
 terest will so far overcome the latent inertia of 
 human powers as to induce a man to apply him- 
 self successfully amidst a variety of domestic or 
 agricultural pursuits. Under a relaxing climate, 
 autliority may avail to impel the slave along in 
 the deep-worn channel of routine, in the simple 
 production of cotton, rice, sugar, or tobacco. 
 But if provisions and teams are also to be raised 
 as well as the staple crop, the white man will 
 find it about as cheap to do his work himself, or 
 to pay some one who will be concerned to save 
 his varied interests from harm.* If no great 
 staple is to be produced at all, if, as is the case 
 almost throughout the Northern States, affluence 
 is to spring from the application of skill, indus- 
 try, and economy, to the multifarious vocations 
 of a sterile country, slave labor soon proves 
 itself to be a costly nuisance. 
 
 Slavery having been finally and effectually 
 abolished in the six northernmost of the original 
 States, and being excluded from the northern- 
 
 * See Appendix A at close of volume. 
 
FEUITS OF AMPLE FREEDOM NORTH. 51 
 
 most of the new States which, from time to time, 
 were admitted to the Union, nothing was left 
 in these States to Hmit or retard the maturing 
 to perfection of the sentiments and principles 
 of free government. " For better for worse," 
 whatever these principles and sentiments lead 
 to was destined here to be witnessed and expe- 
 rienced to its full extent. 
 
 Accordingly we see the Northern States pre- 
 eminent in the increase and general diffusion of 
 wealth and learning ; the shipping and manu- 
 factures of the country fell almost entirely into 
 their hands, and so well were they handled that 
 history presents no parallel results. Immigra- 
 tion fell so exclusively to the North, that, in 
 i860, the Northern States possessed two-thirds 
 of the white population of the whole country. 
 The peculiar work of democratic principles — the 
 leveling down of individual preeminence — had 
 at this date been so effectually performed that 
 not only had the Southern oligarchy held con- 
 trol of the general government, and used it for 
 their own purposes for half a century, but when 
 they now came to cast off the Northern States, 
 robbed, insulted, and defied, and these were 
 compelled to resort to arms for self-preservation, 
 their armies were like sheep without a shepherd, 
 and their legislature more so. With such a 
 
52 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 trembling grasp was power held by their exec- 
 utive, that, at the end of sixteen months of war, 
 it was not easy to show that they had not injured 
 themselves by exhaustion, more than they had 
 inflicted injury on their antagonists ; and Europe 
 was still in doubt whether the South, with two 
 men to her one against her in the field, w^ith a 
 still greater disparity against her in pecuniary 
 resources and war-material, and without the 
 shadow of a navy, against the best fleet in the 
 world, was not destined to have things her own 
 way, simply by virtue of efficient leadership. 
 
IX. 
 
 9 
 
 C-AUSES WHICH OPERATED AGAINST THE ABOLISHING OF 
 
 SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH — AN ARISTOCRATIC CLASS AL- 
 WAYS EXISTED THERE — CLIMATE MADE THE NEGROES 
 THRIVE — FEW WHITES HAD THE INTELLIGENCE TO UN- 
 DERSTAND, OR THE ENERGY TO ASSERT, THEIR RIGHTS. 
 
 Prior to the adoption of the constitution we 
 have seen that the Southern colonies were set- 
 tled by a class of men, of character somewhat 
 different from that of the settlers at the North, 
 and for somewhat different purposes. Yet they 
 struck for freedom at the Revolution ; they 
 contributed adequately to secure the prize, and 
 shared on terms of equality in the distribution 
 of its benefits. It is true that the contributions 
 from the South toward the achievement of our 
 independence, and the subsequent founding of 
 our government, came more in the form of dis- 
 tinguished leaders than of a reliable or abun- 
 dant supply of men to fill the army ranks, or a 
 strongly supporting sentiment of the common 
 people. Yet up to the final adoption of the 
 Constitution, and the organization of the govern- 
 ment under Washington, we find no ground to 
 
 6* 53 
 
54 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 justify the suspicion of a radical, even incipient, 
 departure, on the part of the South, from the 
 guidance of the principles of popular govern- 
 ment. It is, then, to a period subsequent to the 
 adoption of the Constitution, that we are to look 
 for the inception, growth, and maturing of those 
 principles which have produced the present Re- 
 bellion and intestine war. And the first promi- 
 nent fact that strikes our attention in the search 
 is, that wdiereas African slavery dwindled to 
 extinction in the Northern States, it progressed 
 uninterruptedly at the South. The causes and 
 the consequences of this progress demand atten- 
 tion, and the latter more than the former. But 
 first the causes. 
 
 It is noticeable that in the settlement of the 
 Southern colonies, nobles, or prominent leaders 
 figure extensively. The common people appear 
 not at an early period to have manifested the 
 same power and will to take care of themselves 
 that from the first characterized the colonists of 
 the North. In 1G71, in a population of 40,000, 
 Virginia numbered 2,000 slaves and 6,000 in- 
 dentured white servants ; and was presided over 
 by a governor who prayed "that they might 
 long remain free from the pernicious influence 
 of free schools and the printing-press." 
 
 The educating trials of colonial experience, 
 
 I 
 
OBSTACLES TO FREEDOM'S PROGRESS SOUTH. 55 
 
 and the salutary discipline of the Eevolutionary 
 War, doubtless went fi^r to obliterate aristocratic 
 distinctions, and to make the Southern commu- 
 nity in reality ^vhat it professed to be, — sell- 
 <i;(>verning by popular sufTrage. And yet, neither 
 i'ree schools nor colleges, or other schools not 
 [vQO, nor yet tlic ])rinting-press, have ever pre- 
 vailed at the South with more than a tithe of 
 the inlluoncc they exerted at the North; and 
 society there has always, to the present time, 
 exhibited strong tendencies to divide itself into 
 d(Jinin;mt and subject classes. This tendency 
 may liave had .-ome direct influence in limiting 
 the extension and ])erlectiiig of the principles 
 of free governnieiu, but it may also be regarded 
 as one strong banier to the sj)read of that spirit 
 and practice of emancipation that swept the 
 Northern States. 
 
 The warm climate, adapted to the African 
 constitution, made the negroes thrive, and pre- 
 vented the institution of slavery from declining 
 of its own accord. It also imparted to the 
 master an indolence of disposition, averse to 
 personal application, enterprise, and industry, 
 and went far to reverse those characteristics of 
 the Northern population, which made them scorn 
 alike to become the subjects of another's mas- 
 
dQ NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 tersliip, or to accept their living at the hands of 
 slaves over whom they happened to have the 
 power to extort it. 
 
 This indolence of disposition, on the part of 
 the whites, goes far to account for the absence 
 of free schools, and the almost entire absence 
 of a Southern literature to the present day. 
 
 The reason why slavery was not abandoned 
 in the South at the time and under the pressure 
 of the influence of free institutions for the 
 whites, which abolished it at the North, is in 
 no small degree to be found in the fact that the 
 Southern white population lacked the enterprise 
 to abolish it, even if the vast majority of them 
 sincerely desired it to be abolished. The actual 
 slave-owning part of the Southern white popu- 
 lation never has been more than one in thirty. 
 These hold five-thirtieths of the others, or five 
 times their own number, identified in interest 
 with themselves, by blood relationship and fam- 
 ily alliance ; leaving four-fifths who not only 
 have no interest in slavery, but whose every 
 prospect, hope, and privilege, but that of vege- 
 tating on a scanty subsistence, are blasted by its 
 presence. 
 
 The most prominent of all the causes which 
 countervailed the abolishing of slavery in the 
 
SPIRITLESSNESS OF SOUTHERN MASSES. 57 
 
 Southern as it was abolished in the Northern States, 
 under the influence of free institutions estab- 
 lished for the whites, is, that the noU'Slave-holding 
 people of the South lacked the enterprise, intelligence^ 
 and daring to demand and exact their democratic 
 rights; but on the contrary they sat down su- 
 pinely to the possession of naked existence, 
 under a network of legislation and popular 
 usage which their slave-holding ohgarchy had 
 framed for their subjugation. The same is a 
 most prominent cause, without the operation of 
 which, the present nefarious Eebellion against 
 the national government could not have existed 
 two months. And without the subversion of 
 w^hich, this Rebellion can never be put down 
 effectually.'^ 
 
 * In allowing the majority of the people to be defrauded of the right of 
 suffrage in the States that never did, and never could, cany a popular ma- 
 jority in favor of Secession, — as in Virginia, Louisiana, and Tennessee, — 
 and in then pei-mitting these Union majorities to be forced by despotic mil- 
 itary power into the armies arrayed against a government which, if left to 
 their choice, they would quite as soon have supported as opposed, the ad- 
 ministration of President Lincoln appears to have shown deficiency of aim 
 or an inefficiency of action which ought not to be chai'ged to the account 
 of the necessary weaknesses of democratic government. Perhaps a part of 
 the "damnable inheritance" entailed on the present administration by its 
 immediate predecessoi', was the necessity of inaction in this regard ; but it 
 appears to be exceedingly desirable to know, whether the constituent of a 
 government on which he is dependent for protection abroad, is or is not 
 entitled to aid from the general executive, when he finds himself in an 
 emergency like that in which these Union majorities were placed. If the 
 only protection to which these Union men were entitled, was to be found in 
 the decisive energy of their own strong amis, under the lead of such men 
 
58 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 as could be found in their own number, it might facilitate business very 
 much to have this fact clearly understood, before another such emergency- 
 shall arise. 
 
 Perhaps no demonstration could be more conclusive that these majorities 
 had become perfectly conformed to the character and condition of the ab- 
 ject many in a despotism than the fact that they allowed — as in Virginia, 
 for instance — the tyrant few, calling to their aid what negro-traders, gam- 
 blers and other despei*adoes could be collected, to defeat, put down, and im- 
 molate, the masses of the community. 
 
CAUSES OF THE NOX-ABOLISHMENT OF SLAVERY IN THE 
 SOUTHERN STATES CONTINUED — THE ENERVATION OF 
 THE WHITES — THE RICHNESS OF SOIL — THE GREAT NUM- 
 BER OF NEGROES — THE POOR WHITES ACQUIRE A LOVE 
 OF IDLENESS — THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE NEGROES 
 DEGRADES AND DESPOTIZES THE WHOLE WHITE COMMU- 
 NITY. 
 
 Not only did the inertness of character pro- 
 duced by the climate of the Southern States act* 
 by deterring the great non-slave-holding majority 
 of white citizens in those States from asserting 
 their rio-hts and enforcino; what their interests 
 dictated, in respect to the abolishment of slav- 
 ery, but the same lack of enterprise also de- 
 terred many and many a master from ever acting 
 out his own hearty wish to leave his posterity 
 free from the obvious curse. 
 
 Such was the radical working of the despotic 
 principles in the whole framework of society, 
 that it presently became a matter of very great 
 ditficulty for a slave to be set free, or for a mas- 
 ter to abrogate the onerous prerogatives of own- 
 ership. 
 
 The fertility of the soil, by enabling the coun- 
 
 59 
 
60 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 
 
 try, for a long time, to bear the embarrening 
 influence of the thriftless institution, contributed 
 far to postpone the day of necessary emancipa- 
 tion. 
 
 The number of negroes in the Southern States 
 being much larger than in the Northern, as it 
 was diflicult, if not impracticable, to remove them, 
 the apprehended inconvenience of having so 
 large a number of persons of little intelligence 
 or principle, and unused to exercise the rights of 
 freemen, let loose upon a civihzed community, 
 operated adversely to emancipation. Perhaps 
 they might have been exported, but the expense 
 and difficulties of the work would have been im- 
 mense ; their labor was needed. The poor whites 
 soon came to prefer poverty and idleness to in- 
 dustry and thrift, and the presence of the slave- 
 system so effectually turned away the immigra- 
 tion of foreign laborers that no one thought of 
 obtaining a supply of labor from that source. 
 
 But among ail the causes that contributed to 
 withstand the progress of free principles at the 
 South, and to prevent the spread there of that 
 perfect spirit of freedom which cleared the North 
 of slaves, perhaps the most prominent and effect- 
 ual was the direct influence of so large a pro- 
 portion of half-barbarous Africans interspersed 
 among them, in forming the character, principles, 
 
SLAVES MOULDING THEIR MASTERS. 61 
 
 and habits^ of the members of the white com- 
 munity. 
 
 It has been before remarked that in these 
 pages we are dealing, not so much with what 
 men suppose themselves to be, or with what 
 they intelligently purpose to do, as we are with 
 what men are^ from the necessities of the situa- 
 tion in which their ancestors placed them, and 
 in which they consent to remain ; and with what 
 they do, as a necessary sequence of what they 
 are. 
 
 For the " high-born," labor-scorning aristocrat 
 of the South to suppose or to admit that there 
 is anything x\frican in the composition of his 
 character, is not to be expected. And yet, that 
 sparsely-settled white families, who, of their own 
 free-will and choice, abide in the midst of col- 
 lected Africans, often have their infants nursed 
 from the breasts of African women, grow up in 
 the companionship of African playmates, pass 
 their early and their later years perpetually 
 leaning on African attendants, are perpetually 
 tempted, and not seldom effectually tempted, to 
 indulge in African recreations ; supported in af- 
 fluence on the proceeds of African labor, from 
 youth to age perpetually familiar with the tones 
 of African voices, and conversant with the work- 
 ings of African minds, and exalted to what 
 
62 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 themselves suppose and esteem to be the high- 
 est pinnacles of social and political eminence, by 
 nothing but the upholding of African subordi- 
 nates, — to be, to do, and to suffer all this from 
 generation to generation, and come off at the 
 end uncontaminated with any considerable traits 
 of African character, is simply impossible. " Evil 
 communications corrupt good manners." Two 
 individuals of different grades of moral elevation 
 and improvement can hardly be brought in con- 
 tact, to any considerable extent, without each 
 participating, to some extent, in the character of 
 the otlier. Two masses of population, of differ- 
 ent grades of civihzation, can never be continu- 
 ously interspersed, as are the whites and blacks 
 in one of the Slave States, and avoid the effi- 
 cient action of that natural law which tends to 
 bring both to a common, medium level. The 
 more degraded will be elevated ; the more ele- 
 vated will be brought down. 
 
 Many traits of character which have been thus 
 imparted to the white from the colored race, by 
 long and familiar intercommunication in the 
 Slave States, it would be invidious to specify. 
 But one of these, if possible, more prominent 
 and more important than any other, it is neces- 
 sary here to consider. That trait is African des- 
 potism, — unmitigated by any of the amenities of 
 
AFRICAN TITLES IN AMERICAN HANDS. 63 
 
 revealed religion, or of modern learning or civil- 
 ization, imported in the form of masses of the 
 vilest barbarians, and participated in through 
 the medium of a willing, constant, intimate, and 
 lifelong intercommunication b}^ the white race 
 in Slave States. 
 
 This, as all other forms of despotism, neces- 
 sarily exists in two divisions, — in the imperious 
 usurpation of dictatorial powder on the part of a 
 few over the many, and in the cringing acqui- 
 escence under this dictation, on the part of the 
 many. One of these divisions cannot long exist 
 without the other; and the one is necessarily 
 produced and propagated by the presence of the 
 other. The former, or usurping, dictatorial class 
 were not imported from Africa. These were 
 generated on the spot by the presence of the 
 servile masses. Yet the rights and authority in 
 which they flourish were imported, and are pure- 
 ly African. A barbarous father sold his child to 
 the brutal slave-trader ; a bloody chief of an 
 abject tribe surprised a sleeping village, and, 
 after murdering a portion of its inhabitants, sold 
 the rest to the slave-trader for rum and tobacco. 
 Titles thus acquired to the lifelong services of 
 the remotest descendants of these abject, god- 
 less captives, are transferred to an American mas- 
 ter, and in these he flourishes ; with the effect, it 
 
64 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 is true, to better the condition of the slave, for 
 it does not admit of being made worse ; but with 
 the effect on himself, to deprive him of all ability 
 and disposition to act an honest part as a citizen 
 of a democratic community, in supporting the 
 principles and institutions of popular self-gov- 
 ernment, or to understand that, looking at the 
 matter with any other than the eyes of an Afri- 
 can despot, it is not only undemocratic, but un- 
 utterably mean, cruel, unjust, and dishonorable, 
 to recognize any such title as that by which the 
 negro is held in bondage, or to fatten in useless 
 idleness on the unrequited toil of a slave, com- 
 pelled to labor by the force of superior intelli- 
 gence and combination. 
 
 The presence of these abject masses of Afri- 
 cans, by elevating their owners into the position 
 of lords and nobles, and by depriving the non- 
 slave-holding whites, to a great extent, of the 
 usual opportunities of productive labor, and also 
 by rendering labor of the whites disreputable, 
 thereb}^ confining down the non-slave-holding 
 whites, for the most part, to a state of hopeless 
 poverty and idleness, perfected what the presence 
 of nobles and great men had early begun, — the 
 separation of Southern society into the two mon- 
 archical grades of high and influential few, and 
 low and uninfluential many; thus sealing and 
 
SLAVERY ADVERSE TO FREE SCHOOLS. 65 
 
 rendering perpetual a social state inimical to 
 democracy. 
 
 The blacks, not only by the force of their ex- 
 ample, remaining in contented ignorance, but by 
 spreading out the white population so sparsely 
 as to render public free schools ill-convenient 
 for children to attend, contributed much to pre- 
 vent that degree of general intelligence among 
 the whites, without w^hich affairs of government 
 cannot safely be intrusted to the hands of the 
 public at large. 
 
 6* 
 
XI 
 
 THE EFFECT OF SLAVERY TO COUNTERVAIL THE PROGRESS 
 AND PERFECTING OF THE PRINCIPLES OF FREE GOVERN- 
 MENT IN THE SOUTHERN STATES, EVEN AMONG THOSE WHO 
 HELD THEIR SLAVES AT FIRST UNWILLINGLY. 
 
 The last chapter was to have completed our 
 notice of the causes that acted in the Southern 
 States to stop the progress of those sentiments 
 of freedom which had cleared the North of 
 slaves. The closing passages of that chapter 
 verged upon what is the stated aim of this, 
 namely, to notice the effects of slavery while it 
 was retained, to counteract the growth and to 
 turn back the progress of the principles of free 
 government. The influence exerted on the 
 white community by that heathen mass, so dis- 
 tributed as to come in contact with them at 
 almost every point, cannot be overestimated in 
 its effect of imparting to American minds Afri- 
 can opinions and sentiments of what is advan- 
 tageous, w^hat is proper, and what is right, in 
 regard to ownership^ by one man, of property in 
 the life and services, the bone, muscle, and brain, 
 of another. The whole tone and spirit of the 
 
SLAVERY AND DESPOTISM INSEPARABLE. 67 
 
 Anglo-Saxon mind and character must have been 
 degraded and demoralized by the contaminating 
 influence of heathen associates — must have be- 
 come essentially Africanized — before this doc- 
 trine of property in man could have been per- 
 manently introduced. 
 
 But, having been once introduced, approved 
 of, and rendered permanent, it requires but a 
 glance to show that the deepest, darkest, form 
 of despotism had been planted there, so that 
 wherever African slavery existed, and was per- 
 manently preferred to a state of society where 
 all are free, there this lowest form of heathen des- 
 potism obtained in principle and in practice, and 
 slavery and despotism mutually confirmed each 
 other, and both necessarily increased and ex- 
 tended, till they reached and confronted the 
 vital forces of a sincere democracy, there to 
 rage and rave and perish, as they are now 
 doing in the existing war. 
 
 Much of American slave-holding is to be at- 
 tributed to accident, and not to design or choice. 
 In such cases, principles of free government 
 were held and cherished sincerely, and without 
 being greatly counteracted by the unwilling, ac- 
 cidental, holding of the relation of master. Such 
 was the case of Washington himself, of Jefferson, 
 of Clay, and doubtless of the vast majority of 
 
68 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 slave-owners in the latter colonial times, and in 
 the earlj^ history of the States. They lacked 
 only opportunity, a sense of the important influ- 
 ence slavery was secretly exerting against free 
 government, and a more energetic enforcement 
 of their own hearty preference in respect to it, 
 to have freed themselves from its contaminating 
 power. These, however, they lacked. They 
 sluggishly acquiesced in its continuance. The 
 degenerating, degrading influence of African asso- 
 ciations acted on their descendants more and 
 more in each succeeding generation, until the 
 love and approbation of ownership in slaves be- 
 gan generally to prevail, and with it all real at- 
 tachment to the principles and institutions of 
 free government were silently and unconsciously, 
 but effectually and thoroughly, undermined and 
 uprooted; and every one became unwittingly 
 prepared to take his place at a greater or less 
 elevation in the common grading of subordi- 
 nates beneath a despotic head. 
 
 I say every one became unwittingly thus pre- 
 pared ; for if there had been one uncontaminated 
 freeman left, he would have pronounced himself 
 by severing that despotic head from the shoul- 
 ders on which it was sustained, ere the meshes 
 of tyrannical control had been woven around 
 him, and his bleeding land laid desolate merely 
 
SOUTHERN UNIONISTS. 69 
 
 to save that head from being severed. Per- 
 haps this remark should be modified in favor 
 of some Avhom compulsory distance or prison 
 walls prevent from performing the desire of 
 their hearts. 
 
XII. 
 
 CONDITIONS WHICH SO MODIFY SLAVERY AS TO ABATE ITS 
 INFLUENCE IN COUNTERACTING THE PROGRESS OF FREE 
 PRINCIPLES. 
 
 From the injQuence of climate, rendering the 
 negroes prohfic and content, and the whites 
 averse to industry and toil ; from the influence 
 of a soil so rich as to allow the thriftless system 
 to continue ; from the influence of the numbers 
 of slaves, rendering emancipation difficult and 
 hazardous ; from the social influence of the 
 blacks, acting to depress and Africanize the 
 civilization of the whites, and to import and im- 
 part the property-title, and the type-African, 
 which is the lowest form of despotism ; and 
 from the influence of the numbers of the blacks 
 in spreading the white population so sparsely 
 that free schools could not be maintained ; and 
 perhaps from the influence of still other causes 
 which have been overlooked, — it came to pass 
 that the progress of the principles of free 
 government, which had abolished slavery in the 
 Northern States, was stayed at Mason & Dixon's 
 line. Slavery remained, and still remains, un- 
 
 70 
 
DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY INCONGRUOUS. 71 
 
 abolishedj and, till recently, prospering in the 
 Southern States. What lies before us now is 
 to observe in detail the several ways in which 
 this existing institution necessarily acts to con- 
 vert back to the principles of political despotism 
 the people of those Southern States who had 
 once given in, with some emphasis, their adher- 
 ence to the j^rinciples and (as far as white per- 
 sons are concerned) to the practices of civil 
 freedom. 
 
 And, first, we are reminded by the language 
 in which the above proposition is necessarily 
 stated, that there is, and must be, a radical incon- 
 gruity, a deep, internal self-contradiction in the 
 pretence of adopting or adhering to the princi- 
 ples of free government for one class of persons, 
 while the same franchise is totally denied to 
 another class in the same community, — the 
 broadest, free government for whites, and the 
 deepest, darkest despotism for blacks in the same 
 community, and on the same soil. 
 
 To obviate the bad appearance and bad result 
 of this unhappy combination of despotism and 
 democracy in the South, it is to be remembered, 
 as already remarked, that much of the slave-hold- 
 ing, as in the case of Washington and his com- 
 peers, was accidental and without any sincere 
 participation in the governmental principle 
 
72 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 which willing and persistent slave-holding in- 
 volves.* 
 
 How far the practice of slave-holding, where 
 the principle is rejected, will act gradually and 
 silently to corrupt and undermine opinions and 
 preferences favorable to free government, is 
 a question that we cannot definitely decide. 
 Where the unwilling slave-holder is constantly 
 occupied, as were the fathers of the Republic, in 
 elaborating the form, and erecting the institu- 
 tions, of free government, the presence of this 
 odious hulk of despotism would, doubtless, pro- 
 voke a spirit of reaction against the govern- 
 mental principle on which it is based. But, 
 where the actual slave-owner, though favorable 
 to free government, is left unoccupied by any 
 employment -that puts his love of freedom in 
 active and trying exercise, although that love of 
 freedom may not be consciously or entirely sub- 
 verted by the practice of slave-holding, yet it 
 will not be strange if his continual practical 
 acquiescence in a system which he disapproves 
 should have the effect to blunt his apprehension 
 of what freedom really consists in, and so to 
 
 * Those readers who are disposed to pursue a definite and extended 
 inquirj'- into the expressed views of the fathers and founders of this gov- 
 erinnent, on the subject of "negroes as slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers," 
 will find the material for such investigation collected ready to their hand, 
 m An Historical Research, by George Livermore. Boston: A. Williams 
 & Company, 1863. 
 
UNFITNESS OF NEGROES TO BE FREE. 73 
 
 accustom him to submit to doing what he disap- 
 proves that he would at length be found to be 
 the fit man to enlist under the rankest despot, 
 to fight for the " liberty " of holding other men in 
 bondage. But there is still a very wide differ- 
 ence between the willing and persistent, and the 
 accidental and unwilling, holding of slaves, in 
 respect to the influence which slave-holding 
 exerts to undemocratize the master. 
 
 Besides the accidental and unwilling character 
 of much of the slave-holding that has character- 
 ized the South, one other condition has inter- 
 vened essentially to modify the influence which 
 slave-holding would otherwise exert to counter- 
 act the perfecting and the spread of j^rinciples 
 of civil freedom. It is the unfitness of the 
 negro, by reason of ignorance and vice, and of 
 his low, spiritless, and barbarian traits, either to 
 be himself profited by possessing the franchises 
 of freemen, or to be a safe or useful member of 
 a democratic community. 
 
 There is no denying that negroes when freshly 
 imported from their barbarous African homes, — 
 where, according to the best of testimony, " nine- 
 tenths of the inhabitants are slaves to the other 
 tenth," — are utterly unfit to be intrusted with 
 
 the privileges of free citizenship in an enlight- 
 ir 
 
74 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 ened community. And, during this pupilage of 
 degraded feebleness and ignorance, which, where 
 large masses of them are together, may last for 
 generations, it is hardly violating the principles 
 of civil freedom, to hold them dependent on 
 masters as their proper guardians. This it was 
 that rendered slavery in colonial and Revolu- 
 tionary times, compatible with the inception, 
 growth, and all-conquering progress of the prin- 
 ciples of civil freedom. And this, together with 
 the large amount of unwilling slave-holding that 
 existed at the time the Constitution was adopted, 
 rendered the authors and adopters of that instru- 
 ment so little concerned about the anti-republi- 
 can tendencies of the institution which they 
 neglected to extirpate. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE GRADUAL DEPARTURE OF THOSE CONDITIONS WHICH 
 RENDERED AFRICAN SLAVERY IN AMERICA MILD IN CHAR- 
 ACTER AND SLIGHT IN INFLUENCE DURING THE FIRST 
 CENTURY OR MORE OF ITS EXISTENCE. 
 
 Historical events of the hii^-hest mao-Tiitiide 
 and importance often fail to be appreciated, 
 because they take place gradually. Such was 
 the case in the transition of negro slavery, by 
 which it passed from the mild, accidental form, 
 which marked the first century or more of its 
 existence in this country, to the positiveness and 
 virulence of its character in later 3^ears. Had 
 the boundaries of the original colonies remained 
 unchanged, had the early character of our com- 
 mercial exports not altered, and the political 
 arena been free from agitation on the subject of 
 slavery, then might the action of the institution, 
 in respect to its influence on our peculiar civil 
 system, have remained harmless as at first. But 
 unfortunately, neither of these conditions of 
 its harmlessness was preserved. Our Western 
 boundaries were extended until they embraced 
 additional territory enough for a magnificent 
 
 75 
 
76 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 empire, of the richest of soils, and under the 
 same Southern sim. This gave to slaves a value 
 that they never possessed in colonial times, and 
 added new rivets to the bondage that previously 
 appeared almost ready to fall off of its own 
 accord. Next came, gradually, the discoveries, 
 that cotton was one of the most desirable textile 
 staples in the world, that every human being 
 wanted it, in no stinted supply, for clothing, and 
 could afford to pay well, according to his means, 
 rather than be deprived of its use, that the soil 
 and climate of the Southern States, with this 
 newly-acquired Southern territory, were best 
 adapted of any known to the production of this 
 desired staple, and that slave-labor was better 
 adapted to its cultivation than to any other 
 known branch of industry. Next came the im- 
 provements in machinery for the cleaning and 
 manufacture of cotton, which increased the de- 
 mand for it ten thousand fold. The market 
 money-value of negro slaves rose five hundred 
 per cent., and settled forever, on the wrong side, 
 the question whether the spreading application 
 of the principles of free government should 
 peaceably progress any farther in opposition to 
 the sway of this darkest form of African des- 
 potism. 
 
 Now was the time, as soon as the above facts 
 
NORTHERN QUIETUDE. 77 
 
 became developed, to have recognized a state 
 of irreconcilable war between slave-holders and 
 their adherents on the one hand, and the up- 
 holders of the principles on which the civil insti- 
 tutions of our country had been founded, on 
 the other hand. But the inherent imbecility of 
 popular governments, as compared with mon- 
 archies, in respect to matters of war and self- 
 defence ; the cupidity of those at the North 
 who contrived to share in the profits of lucrative 
 slave-holding, and the intrigue of the slave-hold- 
 ers to keep everything quiet until they could 
 corrupt the Northern people, and grasp the reins 
 of power in the general government, all wrought 
 together to prevent alarm, until the designs of 
 despotism had progressed so far that, in the 
 estimation of disinterested European statesmen 
 and observers, the fate of free governments in 
 general, and of the United States in particular, 
 was sealed, before the people of the Northern 
 States allowed themselves to believe that any- 
 thing was seriously amiss with them. 
 
 While the area of fertile Southern territory 
 was being extended, and the enormous and 
 lucrative business of cotton production was being 
 developed, and the pecuniary value of slaves 
 was being doubled over and over again, thus fix- 
 ing them in their state of bondage beyond the 
 
 7* 
 
78 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 hope of any peaceable release or relaxation, an- 
 other change was silently and gradually taking 
 place, which enhanced the tyrannical and op- 
 pressive nature of their bondage, about in the 
 same proportion in which its perpetuity became 
 inevitable. This was, the growing intelligence, 
 civilization, and Christian enlightenment, of the 
 negroes, which fitted them daily more and more 
 to enjoy the privileges, and to discharge the 
 duties, of freemen ; thereby rendering it daily a 
 greater and greater outrage on the principles 
 of free government to hold them in servitude. 
 
 We have before remarked that where two 
 masses of population, of different degrees of 
 elevation and enlightenment, were thrown to- 
 gether on terms of intimate and constant inter- 
 change, the result must be, not only that the 
 more elevated would be brought down, but the 
 more degraded would be elevated, mitil a common 
 medium level should have been reached by each. 
 The master may designedly and systematically 
 withhold from his slave the art of reading, and 
 all instruction tending to his enlightenment and 
 elevation ; but it is not within the power of that 
 master to prevent the slave from learning a 
 lesson for his improvement every time he looks 
 on, or listens to, a person more intelligent, more 
 civilized, or more a Christian, than himself This 
 
NEGRO IMPROVEMENT AND ITS RESULTS. 79 
 
 course of improvement must go on, on the part 
 of the blacks, until their masters, and those 
 •whites with whom they come in contact, in their 
 downward course, come to a level where the 
 two grades of civilization meet, and the negro 
 has no more of civilization, manhood, or Christi- 
 anity, to learn of his once superior master. In 
 proportion as the negro thus becomes elevated, 
 intelligent, and fit for freedom, the policy and 
 the practice that confine him down to servi- 
 tude become bereft of palliation, and stand 
 out in active and confessed hostility to the 
 principles of all free government. 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE ULTIMATE, POSITIVE, AND EFFICIENT, ACTION OF SLAVE- 
 HOLDING IN RADICALLY CONVERTING THE SENTIMENTS OF 
 THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE BACK FROM DEMOCRACY TO DES- 
 POTISM. 
 
 Serious and important occupation has a pow- 
 erful influence in moulding the sentiments of 
 one who is heartily occupied therein. The try- 
 ing labors and sacrifices of the Revolutionary 
 struggle, wdth the discussions which preceded 
 and followed them, acted strongly to generate 
 and confirm a love of freedom in the hearts 
 of those, on the American side, by whom these 
 toils and sacrifices were sustained. The j)e- 
 riod which we are now about to consider is 
 one in which such occupations and their in- 
 fluence have long since passed away. The 
 enervating, corrupting, influences of protract- 
 ed peace and unexampled affluence have suc- 
 ceeded to the struggles and hardships of Revo- 
 lutionary and colonial times. The pursuit of 
 personal aggrandizement has succeeded to an 
 absorbing interest in the nation's w^elfare. In 
 those States where slavery never extensively 
 
 80 
 
THE RISE AND VIRULENCE OF SLAVERY. 81 
 
 existed, and has been abolished, agriculture, 
 mechanics, and every industrial pursuit, are fol- 
 lowed with an earnestness and success unparal- 
 leled under monarchical government. 
 
 In those States where slavery still flourishes, 
 supine submissiveness to ignorance and poverty 
 and the domination of the few, seizes on the 
 many ; while the possession and management of 
 acres and of slaves, and the influence and emolu- 
 ments of public office, form the objects of suc- 
 cessful aspiration to the few, — the " master 
 race," as some of their public orators have the 
 modesty to call themselves. 
 
 The palliation of slavery, that grew out of 
 the unfitness of the negroes for freedom, has 
 largely passed away. The comparative in- 
 difference with which slave-owners formerly 
 regarded their right of property in the slave, 
 owing to their small pecuniary value, and to 
 the ugly incongruity between the master's 
 claims for freedom for himself, and for secure 
 bondage for his negro, has also passed away. 
 His African associations have implanted in the 
 mind of the master an opinion favorable to the 
 justice and propriety of his claim on the ser- 
 vices of his slave. The increased numbers of 
 his fellow-slave-holders, and the increased age 
 of the institution, confirm the same opinion^ and 
 
82 NATURAL HISTOHY OF SECESSION. 
 
 quiet feelings of uneasiness respecting the incon- 
 gruity of his claims. The enlarged bounds of 
 fertile slave territor}^ dispel apprehensions of 
 trouble from the impoverishment of the soil; 
 and the lucrativeness of cotton-raising insures 
 him large pecuniary returns, either for raising 
 cotton or for raising slaves. Now what a school 
 is this in which to learn democracy, and perfect 
 these preferences for popular freedom which are 
 not mature P^' At the same time and in the same 
 proportion in which negroes have become more 
 fitted to be free, and their labor has become 
 more valuable, arose the necessity for guarding 
 against insurrection, and for systematic legisla- 
 tion and police regulations, rendering this kind 
 of property secure. Laws had to be passed by 
 each State, prohibiting the instruction of slaves, 
 lest their learning should render them more de- 
 sirous of freedom, more competent to secure it, 
 and more accessible to the approaches of de- 
 
 * The term republic, though sometimes used as substantially s jnonymous 
 with democracy, may with propriety be applied to a republic of slave- 
 holders, or a leagu&d band of aristocrats. So far as the latter is its true 
 import, the Constitution of the United States, in its provision that the 
 government of each several State shall be republican, simply covers up 
 the seeds of its own destruction. So far as the import of the word is 
 synonjTnous Avith democracy, this provision of the general Constitution 
 has been violated every time a Slave State has been admitted to the Union. 
 Democracy and Despotism divide the universe of civil affairs between them. 
 Thei-e is and can be no middle ground that will not, of necessity, soon merge 
 itself in the one or the other. 
 
SLAVE INTERESTS CONSOLIDATE. 83 
 
 signing disturbers of the patriarchal system. 
 Also, laws by each State prohibiting emancipa- 
 tion within its bounds, and the ingress of free 
 negroes ; lest individual owners, who felt averse 
 to slave-trading, should free vicious negroes, to 
 save themselves the most unpleasant task of con- 
 trolling them, and the number and character of 
 the free colored population should thereby be- 
 come such as to make slaves uneasy, and en- 
 danger the public safety. Thus slave-holding 
 became more and more consolidated into a sysr 
 tem, and the individual owner became less and 
 less at liberty to pursue any course which was 
 not dictated by regard for the interests and 
 quiet of all slave-holders. 
 
 The effect of this consolidation — the imposed 
 necessity of acting together for the protection 
 of an imperilled interest — was not only a great 
 advance toward monarchy ; itself constitutes 
 a great essential element of monarchy. 
 
 It was the necessity of defending national ex- 
 istence amidst menacing or actually hostile na- 
 tions that first induced the prevalence of mon- 
 archy. Produce one great, all-absorbing interest 
 of a class, or section, even in a republic, and let 
 it be surrounded by sentiments and interests 
 adverse to its prosperity, and you have got a 
 consolidation of peculiar interests. You will 
 
84 NATURiX HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 soon have, on the part of their holders, a una- 
 nimity of views and a wilhng acquiescence in 
 anything which promises to subserve and render 
 those pecuhar and imperilled interests secure. 
 You have got seven-tenths of all that is requi- 
 site to a monarchy, and the other three-tenths 
 cannot, from the nature of things, be long want- 
 ing. It was this unanimity, resulting from neces- 
 sary consolidation on this peculiar interest, that 
 gave to some 60,000 Southern slave-holders a 
 perpetualh' preponderating influence in the af- 
 fairs of the general government, which neither 
 one nor all of the varying political interests, and 
 combinations of half as many millions of other 
 population have been able to countervail. 
 
 Combinations on an imperilled interest like 
 this, are necessarily fatal to any republic, not 
 itself entirely comprehended in the combina- 
 tion. 
 
 Had the stakes involved in the preservation 
 of slavery been of less pecuniary value, or had 
 the principles and practices of slavery been less 
 repugnant to everything around them, then 
 had the consolidation been less constraining, and 
 the results less decisive. Had the interests of 
 slave-holders remained unimportant as at the 
 time of the Revolution, then had they remained 
 as harmless. But 4;he unexpected and unex- 
 
THE WAR NECESSITATED. 85 
 
 ampled rise of the importance of slave-holders' 
 interests, taking place contemporaneously with 
 the spread and maturing of the principles and 
 forms of free government, developed the latent 
 antagonism of the two systems, and necessitated 
 the present war, which might have been calcu- 
 lated years ago, by any skilful and clear-minded 
 statesman, with as much certainty as the astrono- 
 mer calculates an eclipse. 
 
XV. 
 
 ARGUMENT DEFINED, AND FORCES POINTED OUT AS THEY 
 APPEAR IN HISTORY, WHICH FORCES HAVE FORMED AND 
 STIMULATED OUR SOUTHERN BRETHREN TO THEIR PRESENT 
 ONSLAUGHT ON ALL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Besides ©btaining a just apprehension of the 
 influence of slavery in general, to counteract the 
 progress of free government, we are here to 
 examine the influence in this direction of African 
 slavery as it exists in this country, and also as it 
 has existed during recent years, in contradistinc- 
 tion from the same as it existed at and before 
 the founding of our free institutions. The ques- 
 tion obtrudes itself for answer. Why has the insti- 
 tution which at, and prior to, the adoption of the 
 Constitution exerted little or no influence adverse 
 to the rise and establishment of civil freedom, 
 since exerted so powerful an influence as to con- 
 vert back again to principles of the darkest des- 
 potism the sons of sires who, amidst the acting 
 of the same slavery system, suffered and bled for 
 freedom? The answer is to be found in the 
 altered action of the system. At the same time 
 that slaves and their labor have risen enormously 
 
 86 
 
POLITICAL EFFECT OF SLAVERY. 87 
 
 in money value, and a stringent and powerful 
 police system has had to be everywhere put in 
 operation for the security of this peculiar species 
 of property, the slaves themselves, having ad- 
 vanced greatly in attaining the language, senti- 
 ments, intelligence, and civilization of their mas- 
 ters, feel more and more keenly the wrong that 
 is done them by the system, and react against it 
 with more pressing and perpetual elasticity. 
 
 The fact that no arguments are heard from 
 their lips against the policy of their enslavement, 
 that few fights are made by them to demonstrate 
 their unwillingn'ess to remain longer enslaved, 
 that only now and then a plot is discovered for 
 a general rising to free themselves, does not 
 prove that there is no strong and ceaseless pres- 
 sure on their part against the confines that cir- 
 cumscribe their freedom ; they rather prove the 
 success with which their masters have learned 
 the arts that despots use to keep their victims in 
 subjugation. It is not our object here to discuss 
 the right or wrong of slavery. That there is 
 such a distinction, and that it is important to be 
 attended to, we freely admit ; but that is not the 
 theme of these remarks. These pages are not 
 intended to contain an essay on morals or reli- 
 gion ; they profess to deal with politics purely ; 
 and with these only in reference to despotism 
 and democracy, and the relations or repulsions 
 
88 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 that necessarily exist between them. Of this 
 subject we treat, as it appUes to, and is illustrated 
 by, the past history and present condition of 
 affairs in the United States, — the home and seat 
 of the only permanent democratic government 
 the history of the world has yet presented. 
 Therefore, when we speak of the stringent legis- 
 lation and police arrangements that have been 
 gradually built up around the slaves to keep 
 them safe, at the same time and in the same pro- 
 portion in which the money-value of these slaves 
 has gradually and enormously increased ; and 
 while we speak of the gradually increasing fit- 
 ness of the slaves for freedom, and their conse- 
 quently increasing desire and demand for free- 
 dom, which takes place at the same time that the 
 provisions for keeping them securely in bondage 
 are tightened and strengthened, our object is not 
 to direct attention to the moral crime of slavery 
 at all, but purel}^ to present the fact of the per- 
 petually increasing intensity of the conflict 
 between slavery and freedom, between despot- 
 ism and democracy, — the development of the 
 latent and necessary conflict on the part of the 
 negroes to be free, and on the part of the mas- 
 ters to retain them in secure and profitable sub- 
 servience to their lust of power and of gain. 
 Our object in turning attention to the constantly 
 increasing Intensity of this conflict is not to show 
 
NEGROES TAUGHT DEMOCRACY. 89 
 
 the cruelty or the moral wrong of keeping the 
 negroes still in servitude, but to point out the 
 tremendous and necessary eflfect of the perpet- 
 ually intensifying strife to mature and perfect 
 those masters, and such as are acting with them, 
 in the spirit and the precepts, the principles and 
 practices, of despotism, — of exercising despotic 
 and dictatorial control over their fellow-men. 
 
 Among the smaller changes that have taken 
 place, which have contributed to make up the 
 whole great sum of altered circumstances which 
 give to slavery, as it recently existed, an hun- 
 dred-fold the power it once possessed to despotize 
 American democracy, is that mutual exchange 
 by which not only has the African imparted to 
 his American master much of his barbaric char- 
 acter, and especially his native leanings toward 
 the darkest form of despotism, but in return has 
 received not only gradual enlightenment, civil- 
 ization, and Christianity, but also a preference 
 and fitness for the institutions of free govern- 
 ment. The history of the freed slaves colonized 
 in Liberia demonstrates this. And the possess- 
 ing of this predisposition for free government, 
 which they could have acquired nowhere but in 
 this country, makes their bondage more grievous 
 to them, and their reaction against imposed 
 restraints more incessant and intense. 
 
 8* 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE ABOVE DEFINED ARGUMENT PRESENTED IN DETAIL — THE 
 MOULDING PRESSURE CONTINUALLY RESTING ON THOSE 
 WHO FEEL THEMSELVES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRESERVA- 
 TION OF QUIET IN THE SLAVE STATES — ITS EFFECT. 
 
 We now propose to examine more in detail the 
 practical workings of those principles, and that, 
 too, under the circumstances which we have 
 above stated and defined. 
 
 The negroes have now come to be three or 
 four millions. The price of a field-hand has 
 risen from its former range of from one to three 
 hundred dollars to cotton-planting value of from 
 ten to fifteen hundred dollars, and a ready cash 
 sale at that. What is the mode of operating to 
 render this amount of property secure and pro- 
 ductive ? 
 
 The whole power of the United States army 
 and navy is understood to stand pledged to sup- 
 press insurrection and to return fugitive slaves. 
 
 There is then some danger that large or small 
 portions of this valuable property shall make 
 use of its legs and run away. There is also 
 danger, — grave enough, in the incipient stage 
 
 00 
 
PRESSURE OF PERIL ON SLAVE-MASTERS. 91 
 
 in which the peril existed seventy-five years ago, 
 to deserve a constitutional provision, — that this 
 intelligent property, of which " its follies and 
 its crimes have stamped it man/' should take to 
 itself the weapons of vengeance and inflict im- 
 mense sufferings on those whom it supposes to 
 be the authors of its conscious wron2:s. 
 
 This danger is no less than the danger of 
 losing an aggregate of twenty-six hundred mil- 
 lions of dollars' worth of property, and of the 
 devastation of a greater or less portion of the 
 soil of the Southern States, with the slaughter of 
 its white inhabitants. These surely are grave 
 perils, and the weight of them is suflacient of 
 itself to make despots of as many men as are 
 left to feel that the responsibility of providing 
 against these perils rests upon themselves. 
 
 The strain and pressure of such a responsibility 
 is probably entirely beyond the comprehension of 
 one who has been born and educated in the con- 
 fiding quiet and equal privileges of democratic 
 civiKzation. Such an one has no experience in 
 his history in which to find a simile that would 
 parallel for an hour the strain of this life-Ion «• 
 responsibihty that rests more or less sensibly on 
 every intelligent and habitual dweller in a slave- 
 holding community, but more sensibly and im- 
 mediately on the slave-holder himself who has 
 
92 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 a wife and children, parents, brothers, sisters, and 
 friends, involved with him in the same more or 
 less imminent peril. One, from prodigality or 
 moral refinement, may divest himself of any 
 desire or esteem for the pecuniary value repre- 
 sented by property which statutes of the country 
 recognize and guarantee in slaves ; but the ter- 
 rible consequences of permitting or provoking 
 any extensive struggle on their part to free 
 themselves must appall the stoutest heart that is 
 not prepared to sport with wide-spread devasta- 
 tion and human suffering and slaughter. 
 
 With this standing peril ever hanging over 
 them, it may at first be supposed, that the South- 
 ern mind had become callous to its force ; but 
 history, and somewhat extended personal obser- 
 vation, have convinced the author that, from the 
 passion-kindling influence of the climate, from 
 the absence of other things to displace this from 
 the attention, or from other causes, the fear of 
 slave insurrection, instead of being deadened by 
 use, remains extremely vivid, if it does not grow 
 increasingly so, in the majority of Southern 
 minds. I knew the ladies of an extensive neigh- 
 borhood, in a Slave State, with scarcely any 
 exception, to pass a week of sleepless anxiety 
 and fear, because they heard a rumor that some 
 
FORM OF CHARACTER WROUGHT BY PERIL. 93 
 
 barges filled with negroes were seen to pass a 
 neiijrhborino; river. 
 
 Accustomed from infancy to revel in the 
 broadest liberty that ever was coupled with the 
 sweets of civilization, comparatively few men in 
 the Northern States are acquainted with any 
 object of fear, in heaven, earth, or hell, that is 
 capable of imposing on them the practical 
 restraint which the slave-holder, and those con- 
 nected with him, ordinarily feel, from the fear 
 of a slave insurrection/-'- It is an imposed re- 
 straint which they never question, never par- 
 ley with. Its dominion over them is absolute. 
 And one of the functions of this absolute alle- 
 giance is, never to allow its authority to be ques- 
 tioned by others, within their borders or with- 
 out them, so far as they have the power to 
 prevent. 
 
 His Creator — and it is rare to find a Southern 
 man who questions either his existence or his 
 claims — may or may not be obeyed. That is 
 a matter which every individual is perfectly free 
 to exercise his own preference u]3on. The au- 
 
 * The tens of thousands of lives, and the hunch-eds of millions of money, 
 ■which the existing Avar is yeai'ly extorting from the Northern people, has 
 roused in fev/- if any of the minds of the millions who remain at home, the 
 amount of serious earnestness and persistent devotion which instantly took 
 possession of the mind of each intelligent Southerner, the moment he was 
 called to contemplate a serious disturbance of the power-imposed quiet of 
 their slaves. 
 
94: NATUEAL fflSTOEY OF SECESSION. 
 
 thority of the country's laws and government, 
 every one is usually considered at liberty to 
 reo^ard or disreo-ard as he pleases. So also with 
 
 O ox 
 
 the claims of truth, justice, and humanity. But 
 any risk of raising a slave insurrection is not to 
 be incurred, come what will. 
 
 What is a republic, what is a democracy, 
 under such circumstances? What, but a con- 
 ventional equality of command in a community 
 of despots? 
 
 INventy-six senators, and three or four times 
 that number of representatives from the South- 
 ern States, assemble annually at the national 
 capitol, professedly to legislate for the benefit 
 of the common population of the whole country, 
 and under oath to support the common govern- 
 ment ; but, in reality, a leagued band, trained 
 and disciplined uuder recognized leaders, armed 
 with side-arms of the carnal sort, and with all 
 the panoply of rhetoric, logic, sophistry, parliar 
 mentary tactics, diplomatic guile, poUtical effron- 
 tery, and county-court tergiversation. But what 
 are they there to do ? One thing, — the same 
 that they have done from infancy, and will con- 
 tinue to do as long as breath is in them and 
 they have the power of voluntary motion, — the 
 thin'i which will be done effectuallv in those 
 legislative halls and elsewhere, wherever these 
 
SLAVE-HOLDERS AS GENERAL LEGISLATORS. 95 
 
 men are found, their own oaths, and the learn- 
 ing, the logic, the rights, and the numbers of 
 their opponents to the contrary notwithstanding, 
 viz. : see to it that the absolute and practically 
 unlimited despotic power of masters over their 
 slaves remains undisturbed, unapproached by 
 any unfriendly restriction, check, or limitation ; 
 see that no law is passed, and no act unrebuked, 
 unrevenged, is performed, that would in the 
 remotest manner encourage a slave to run away 
 from his master, or inspire in the negroes, as a 
 class, the faintest gleam of hope or expectation 
 that their oppressed condition is to be ameliorat- 
 ed. In other words, the one unvarying task of 
 those assembled legislators from the Southern 
 States — the thing which they will be perfectly 
 sure to see accomplished at all times and in all 
 places, and despite all difficulties and opposition 
 — is to provide that the dominion of that malign 
 divinity, the presiding genius of slave-holding, 
 the very soul and essence of the darkest, deep- 
 est, and most damning, form of despotism, before 
 whom they have bowed down and worshipped 
 all their lives, and (though less devoutly) their 
 fathers before them, remains unmolested, unin- 
 fringed npon. This worship they pay and this 
 service they perform, not more because they 
 love to than because they must. To escape the 
 
96 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 inexorable exigency of the position in which 
 they have been born, requires a breadth of com- 
 prehension, abihty, and benevolence, which prob- 
 ably it is not possible should be generated in 
 the walks of slave-holders. 
 
XYII. 
 
 IXTKXSrTY OF THE AXTAGOXISM BETWEEN THE PRINCIPLES 
 OF FREE GOVERNMENT AND THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH 
 SLAVES ARE GOVERNED — THE LATTER ANALYZED — THE 
 PRECEPT — THE PENALTY CHECKS ON THE LATTER. 
 
 Why have the upbuildings and outgrowths of 
 institutions of benevolence, philanthropy, reli- 
 gion, and mission a r}' zeal, which have preemi- 
 nently characterized, adorned, and blessed, our 
 common land, giving the powerful weight of 
 their testimony in favor of the beneficent influ- 
 ence of free government, been able to accom- 
 plish so little in mitigating the severe exactions 
 made upon the Southern slave, — in softening 
 the sharp iron of the despotism which has this 
 prone servitude for its base ? 
 
 The answer is found in the same facts that 
 account for the turning back of the wave of 
 free principles, which, sweeping from the North, 
 extinguished slavery in one-half of the original 
 States. 
 
 The opportunity to peaceably abolish slavery 
 from the Southern States presented itself at the 
 time of the adoption of the present form of our 
 
 9 97 
 
98 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 
 
 general government. But it was an opportu- 
 nity that soon passed, to return no more. The 
 latent antagonism that existed between the 
 principles of despotism and democracy became 
 rapidly developed by the constantly irritating 
 contact of the two, and it soon became impos- 
 sible to modify either, until the one should be 
 extinguished utterly by the armed and bloody 
 triumph of the other. As well might one go 
 on a mission of peace to the eternal abode of 
 devils and damned spirits, expecting to harmo- 
 nize their jarring strifes, and to produce an 
 enduring compromise between the conflicting 
 passions of those who there abide, as think 
 effectually to obviate or compromise the conflict 
 that has raged in this country for the last half- 
 century, for the most part with unbloody weap- 
 ons, but wliich has now assumed the more natu- 
 ral and effective form of fierce and bloody, not 
 to say exterminating, war. Any truce, or com- 
 promise, or compact, or division of territory, 
 that could be agreed upon, would of necessity 
 be only the inauguration of interminable, vexa- 
 tious, bloody, and disastrous, hostilities. 
 
 Look at the mode of operation by which mur- 
 murs are quieted, and aspirations after freedom 
 suppressed, by masters among their slaves. In 
 
PRECEPT AND PENALTY FOR SLAVES. 09 
 
 doing this, we may as well start with the prac- 
 tice at its origin, in Africa, where '• nine-tenths 
 of the population are slaves to the other tenth," * 
 where the lives of slaves are held at so cheap a 
 rate, that they are slaughtered by hundreds, 
 as a token of respect to a deceased monarch. 
 There, we need not be told, that physical suffer- 
 ings, unto permanent maiming, and the death 
 penalty, are inflicted without stint, wherever 
 and whenever the owner of a slave supposes he 
 has any occasion to inflict them. In the hands 
 of the slave-trader who brings them across the 
 ocean, or buys them to sell again after they ar- 
 rive, the same mode of government prevails, 
 mitigated by nothing but the increased pecuni- 
 ary value of the slave, and the corresponding 
 pecuniary loss, in case of crippling or killing 
 him, as he approaches the plantation where he 
 is to spend his life of labor. 
 
 When arrived on that plantation, and fixed in 
 his condition for life, and for the lives of his pos- 
 terity after him, the precept by which he is, and 
 is to be, governed is still the will and pleasure 
 of his owner, and the penalty of violating that 
 precept is physical suffering, restrained only by 
 the pecuniary estimation in which he is held, 
 
 * This statement is quoted verbally from Commodore Gregoiy, of the 
 U. S. Navy, who spent ten years in service on the African coast. 
 
100 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 the greater or less humanity of his master, and 
 perhaps a law of the State, prescribing some 
 punishment for killing him, provided the murder 
 is confessedly unprovoked, and can be proved 
 by the testimony of white witnesses. 
 
 Look at these three items, that alone tend to 
 mitigate the intensity of Africa's barbarous des- 
 potism. 
 
 The high pecuniary value at which the slave 
 is held by his master acts to guard that slave 
 from the extrem.e of inhuman punishment and 
 death. Does this avail anything to obviate the 
 extreme degradation of his servile condition, 
 or the despotic supremacy of his master over 
 him ? If it does, then let us make due allow- 
 ance. But though the degradation of the slave 
 whose master values him at a high price appears 
 not in every sense to be as low as that of one 
 whose life would be sacrificed for a trifle, yet 
 the negro, in his more valuable estate, is proba- 
 bly the more intelligent, feels this servitude 
 more, and, though his elevation changes the 
 field of its operation, it does not, probabl}^, mit- 
 igate the tyrannous intent and purpose of his 
 master in holding: him in bondaure. Indeed, the 
 intention of the master, in hold ins; the hio-h- 
 priced, intelligent negro in a bondage which 
 he strongly resists, is probably more tyran- 
 
ABSOLUTENESS OF SLAVE DESPOTISM. 101 
 
 nical than that which holds the low-priced 
 slave, who scarcely has the intelligence or the 
 manhood to desire to be free. And what we 
 are looking for, in this investigation, is not the 
 degradation or suffering of the slave, or any- 
 thing else, other than the despotic principle, and 
 purpose, and action, of the master ; and this, too, 
 only as the exercise of this despotic principle, or 
 purpose, on the part of the master, tends to 
 confirm itself/ and to make him radically a 
 despot. ' /-v ' •' ^ ^ • 
 
 The legal restriction in the Slave States, 
 against the master taking the life of his slave, 
 is just enough to constitute a legislative ac- 
 knowledgment that the negroes are human be- 
 ings, without practical force enough to afford 
 them any substantial protection, even of their 
 lives. The legal requirement in respect to tes- 
 timony is so easily evaded, and the assertion of 
 resistance, or assault, on the part of the negro, 
 is so easily maintained by the master, that con- 
 viction for the murder of a slave, if the murder 
 had been conducted with any prudent safeguard 
 against notoriety, would be impossible. But the 
 operation of pecuniary interest which the mas- 
 ter has in his slave constitutes quite an ample 
 
 protection in this regard. 
 
 ■9* 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE ABOVE ANALYSIS CONCLUDED — CHECKS ON SEVERE PEN- 
 ALTIES BENEVOLENCE OF THE MASTER THESE CHECKS 
 
 LIMITED AND REVERSED BY STATE NECESSITIES — RESULTS. 
 
 The enlightened benevolence of the Ameri- 
 can master — although this is a very uncertain 
 quantity, yet, in the aggregate, in comparison 
 with the murderous cruelty of the African mas- 
 ter, it is exceedingly great and precious — consti- 
 tutes the chief cause of mitigating the exercise 
 of that tyrannical authority which the American 
 slave-owner possesses ; thereby mitigating the 
 reactive effect which the exercise of that author- 
 ity would have, to annihilate the remnant of his 
 own free principles. The enjoyment of ease 
 and affluence tends to make one generous 
 toward others. The Africanization which the 
 master's mind has undergone, through the influ- 
 ence of negro educating and negro society, has 
 not entirely reversed this tendency. 
 
 If the principles of free government still re- 
 tain nny svv'ny in the master's mind, they will 
 join taeii miluence to that of a native or acquired 
 
 102 
 
MITIGATIONS OF SLAVE DESPOTISM — THEIR LIMIT. 103 
 
 benevolence, inducing that master to leave un- 
 used much of the despotic power over his slave, 
 with which the civil code of his State invests 
 him. Hence arose that softening-down of the 
 claims and pretensions of mastership which had 
 well-nigh yielded up the wdiole system of slavery, 
 at about the period of the adopti/)n of the 
 Federal Constitution. Hence, also, that lack of 
 sympathy w^ith the slave system, wdiich caused it 
 to be absolutely abhorred by thousands who 
 continued to practice it from the force of circum- 
 stances, which they lacked the skill and energy 
 to control. 
 
 But all of these mitiQ:atino; influences were 
 doomed to meet their limit, and their fmal defeat 
 and reversal, in the State necessity, as it may be 
 called, — the necessity of treating the negroes 
 in such a way as would secure the public welfare, 
 beyond a peradventure, against insurrectionary 
 disturbance. What this mode of treatment is, 
 it is not left wdiolly to individual judgment to 
 decide. Education, universal usage, and an 
 exacting public sentiment, determine that it 
 shall be such usage as will effectually keep down 
 all manifest aspirations after a better condition, 
 — that the art of reading and writing, and all 
 means of increased intelligence shall be, as far 
 as possible, inhibited, — that the personal property 
 
104 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 held by slaves shall be kept down as near as 
 possible to zero ; especially the possession of any- 
 thing that might be used as an offensive or de- 
 fensive weapon shall not be permitted; that 
 the orders of the master, any member of his 
 white family, or his overseer, shall be performed, 
 right or wrong, under penalty of the severest 
 chastisement. After all this has been exacted 
 and complied with, I know not that it is adding 
 anything, to say that the most obsequious defer- 
 ence is exacted of, and paid by, every negro, to 
 every wdiite person of the master-class when in 
 his presence. 
 
 The justice of the master's claim to every- 
 thing the negro is, or has, or can produce, is 
 never permitted for a moment to be questioned. 
 The negro has no rights, is to advance none, 
 to defend none. Food and clothing of some 
 sort, and attendance when sick, are secured to 
 him by the master's property interest in his 
 health and efficiency. Other than these, it is 
 deemed to be extremely imprudent to allow a 
 negro to claim as his any right or privilege 
 whatever. To do so would open the way for 
 negroes to make larger and larger claims, and 
 would certainly lead to some struggle on their 
 part to maintain and enforce such claims. The 
 only way to keep them quiet is not to allow 
 
MASTERS MUST PUNISH SLAVES. 105 
 
 them to claim as their right anything whatever, 
 or to possess anything but what their master 
 pleases graciously to allow. Here is the limit 
 that is set to the exercise of benevolence or free 
 principles on the part of 'the master among his 
 negroes. The exigencies of the public safety 
 forbid these bounds to be enlarged, and enforce 
 this prohibition by the peril of all the untold 
 loss and horrors of servile insurrection. 
 
 Look for a moment at the means by which 
 the slave-owner, be he benevolent or malevolent, 
 be he monarchist or republican, mud enforce 
 upon his negro this abnegation of all claims to 
 any personal right, — this implicit, unquestioning 
 obedience to his owner's will. Suppose a negro 
 slave to question or resist his master's right to 
 dispose of him as he pleases. It matters not 
 when, or where, or in what manner, this lack of 
 submissiveness is manifested. There is one law for 
 that refractory slave, and, like the laws of the 
 Medes and Persians, it changes not. Physical 
 suffering must be meted out till that rebellious 
 will is broken. The punishment may be admin- 
 istered by the owner in person, or by his deputy. 
 The master may or may not superintend and 
 prescribe the limit. The punishment must 
 emanate from the master's right, and is to vindi- 
 
106 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 cate and sustain his authority, and it is not 
 optional with that master whether to punish or 
 not. The first condition of owning a slave, 
 according to the African system Americanized, 
 the system universally practised in the Southern 
 States, is to enforce submission by corporal 
 punishment to any needed extent ; and every 
 negro and every intelligent white person in the 
 South knows this to be so. So that to own a 
 slave and not wdiip him, is as impossible as it is 
 to live in the body without breathing, except so 
 far as the slave anticipates the whipping, and 
 prevents it by sincere, unvarying, submissive 
 obedience. Other than this, there is no alterna- 
 tive, except to sell the slave, — a punishment 
 which he usually dreads next to death. 
 
 This whipping is not often done in public. It 
 is not usually done in the presence of the white 
 fimily, or where they will even hear the negro's 
 cries. The generally prevailing opinion among 
 masters is, that the less of it is done, the better; 
 and the more silently, the better. That every 
 expedient of successful government should be 
 resorted to in order to avoid it, both on account 
 of its unpleasantness, its brutifying effect on 
 the master, or those who act under him, and the 
 danger of damage to the slave. But, however 
 
MASTERS MUST PUNISH SLAVES. 107 
 
 obscurely concealed, however remotely post- 
 poned, there it is, known, calculated on, and 
 inevitable ; the slave that refuses to submit 
 implicitly to his master must be whipped till he 
 yields. 
 
XIX. 
 
 RESULTS OF ABOVE ANALYSIS RECAPITULATED AXD APPLIED. 
 
 We have, then, from an analysis of slavery, 
 this result : The slave is deprived of all rights, 
 has all aspirations after liberty suppressed, is 
 reduced to, and retained in, implicit subjection 
 to his master's will. He is placed in this position 
 by statute laws recognizing the claim of an 
 African captor, or purchaser, to the lifelong ser- 
 vices of his slave, and of that slave's descendants, 
 and also recognizing this claim, now termed a 
 right, as it stands transferred from an African to 
 an American owner. This law is enforced, and 
 the benefits of this right are exacted, by the 
 ever-present fact or fear of corporal suffering, 
 inflicted to an unlimited extent by the authority, 
 and according to the will, of the slave-owner. 
 Any mitigation of these conditions is accidental, 
 — is due to the kindness and the skill, the benev- 
 olent and freedom-loving spirit which the mas- 
 ter may happen to possess ; and is limited and 
 restrained by the imminent danger that public 
 disturbance and incalculable calamity will result 
 
 108 
 
SLAVE-HOLDING MAKES DESPOTS. 109 
 
 from any considerable relaxation, or failure to 
 enforce his claim, on the part of the master. 
 
 Now, and here, the very important question 
 arises. How long can a man occupy, exercise, and 
 enforce the claims of a master on his slaves, 
 without becoming himself imbued with the 
 spirit and principles of a despot, and without 
 having his attachment to the principles of free 
 government sadly undermined ? 
 
 Certainly, if that man has in his composition 
 the average natural amount of logic, he must 
 exercise the functions of master with extreme 
 reluctance, and must find his most cherished and 
 indulged associates remote from the servility of 
 slaves, or, before he is aware of it, the principles 
 of free government, as held by him, will have 
 become a mere inoperative, dreamlike theory, 
 however strongly he may suppose himself to be 
 attached to them ; and the whole tendency and 
 habit of his mind and character will have been 
 moulded to every lineament of a despot. 
 
 While the slave system was in its incipiency, 
 while the master held the unenlightened African 
 as much from motives of benevolence as of gain, 
 and cared little whether the worthless wretches 
 were retained or free, slave-holding could not 
 have had much power to mould the principles 
 and political habits of the master. But, as the 
 
 10 
 
110 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 established institutions of the country began to 
 exert a pressure on that master in favor of the 
 principles of free government, and to demand 
 from him a sincere and active support; as the 
 negro became more and more enlightened and 
 fit for freedom, and more and more desirous of 
 obtaining it, thus exerting a constantly increas- 
 ing pressure against the force that kept him 
 down in servitude ; and as, at the same time, the 
 high and advancing price of slave-labor induced 
 the slave-holder, from motives of pecuniary gain, 
 to grasp with new vigor, and exercise w^ith new 
 stringency, the power by which he held his slave 
 in bondage, — then it was that the power of the 
 practice of slave-holding became irresistible to 
 mould the governmental principles of the slave- 
 holder; then it was that the whole Southern 
 mind became so tempered with, and infected by, 
 the intoxicating sweets of despotic authority, 
 that nothing w^as w^anting bat the agitating pres- 
 ence of a bold and desperate leader, to precipitate 
 the infected mass into the solid form of a con- 
 crete despotism/^' And the present war has 
 
 * " I say to every man present, that there exists not on the face of the 
 earth to-day a deeper nor a darker despotism than now reigns over the 
 Southern people." — Speech of Gen. Corcoran on Boston Common, Aug. 29th, 
 1862. 
 
 " I had no idea that the whole people of a county could be so frightened 
 as to permit a few men like Walter Mitchell and Wm. B. Stone and their 
 confederates to ci^eate a reign of teiTor in their midst. But such was the 
 
HATRED TO FREEDOM FORCED ON THE FIGHT. Ill 
 
 followed as naturally and as necessarily as dark- 
 ness follows the setting!: of the natural sun. And 
 the present war must last, Avitli all its world- 
 rocking commotions and its local devastation, till 
 one or the other of the conflicting principles, 
 either despotism or democracy, with its fnial ad- 
 herents, no longer survives with power to carry 
 on the conllict. When the Southern leaders tell 
 us (and no Southern man, except their leaders, 
 ever tells us anything, except what has been put 
 into his mouth) that they have been forced into 
 this fight, they tell the truth. And the trueness 
 of the statement arises on this wise : From the 
 moulding force of slavery, or, to speak with more 
 defmiteness, from the moulding force of their 
 perilous mastership, acting in their education, 
 their characters have become stamped with every 
 lineament of despotism, and their interests, so 
 far as they are able to discern where they lie, 
 are identified with the perpetuity of that hoary 
 crime. Hence the presence of an antagonist so 
 inimical as a free, self-governing people, vital 
 with the spirit of their civil institutions, and 
 
 fact : the people -were so frightened, that it would have been impossible to 
 have raised fifty men in the whole county to fight the few rebel soldiers in 
 Port Tobacco:'— Private Letter from Charles Co., Md., Aug. 12th, 18G2. 
 
 " The Confederates once whipped in Virginia, and you will hear one pro- 
 longed and thundering shout for the downfall of this damnable government 
 from New Orleans to Fortress Monroe." — Private Letter from Charleston, 
 S. C, July 20th, 1862. 
 
112 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 shining with success, necessitates this war, and 
 will continue so to do till one or the other of the 
 hostile parties is converted or consumed. 
 
 This necessity for a state of war has arisen, 
 not from any change that has taken place in the 
 North ; not from anything the Northern people 
 have done ; but from the Southern leaders, who 
 act for the Southern people, having become re- 
 converted back from democracy to despotism, 
 and seduced to repudiate the principles and to 
 subvert the institutions of their fathers by the 
 increasing profitableness of holding slaves. 
 
XX. 
 
 PECTTLIAR QUALITIES CO^^FERRED ON THE MASTER OF SLAVES 
 BY HIS POSITION — PRACTICAL DISPLAY OF THESE QUAL- 
 ITIES. 
 
 Such being the educational power of master- 
 ship to transform the Democrat into a Despot, 
 it follows that before the free institutions of our 
 government can prevail again over its former 
 territorial limits, not only must that source of 
 the pernicious education become extinct, but 
 another generation of Southerners must be edu- 
 cated under different auspices. How effectually 
 the few years of the present war may avail to 
 displace the generation of its authors from mor- 
 tal life, from political and social power, and to 
 correct the vicious educating: of those who are 
 to succeed them m the leading places of South- 
 ern politics and society, is a question that time 
 alone can answer. It is not, as the London 
 "Times" affirms, that " the United States must do 
 as Britain did in 1783, or govern the South as 
 Russia governs Poland." The "Times," that vile, 
 subsidized tool of despots, knows, if it would 
 admit, that the United States occupy the same 
 
 10* 118 
 
114: NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 position now which they occupied in 1783, as 
 the representatives and champions of free gov- 
 ernment ; and now, as then, the antagonistic 
 arms of despotism must yield before them, if 
 the "Times" and its august compeers cannot 
 succeed in lying them into such a state of fear 
 and uncertainty as to give up the contest. 
 
 But we have not done with the practical de- 
 tail of slave-holding, as it acts to mould the char- 
 acter and habits of the master. 
 
 To say that it confers a habit of command, is 
 to describe but a part of that ingrained sense of 
 superiority, that perfect contour of lordliness, 
 which results from lifelons: surveillance over a 
 subject race, and which has in it much that com- 
 mands respect and exerts influence among men, 
 despite the absence of merit, of learning, and of 
 mental grasp, and the presence of much that is 
 mean, cruel, treacherous, dishonest, and unjust. 
 It acts instinctively and powerfully to place its 
 possessor above your criticism, above your in- 
 vestigation, and to command your reverend ac- 
 quiescence without consulting your judgment or 
 your will. It can never be attained by study or 
 assumed by direct effort. It can never be gen- 
 erated or preserved in a democratic state of 
 society. It must be conferred from infancy, 
 
 I 
 
MASTERING TALENT OF SLAVE-HOLDERS. 115 
 
 doubtless becomes more or less hereditary, and 
 acts with the spontaneous, instinctive ease, not 
 of a second nature, but of a first. It results 
 from lifelong habits of the successful exercise of 
 dictatorial control over men. It enables its pos- 
 sessor to take the first move, the vantage ground, 
 the choice of position, and contributes greatly 
 toward his success in all transactions with those 
 who have it not. This kind of superiority, when 
 possessed by only an individual or family, has 
 produced immense eflects in the Old World ; but 
 when it comes to be the common heritaii-c of an 
 indefinitely extended class, as in this country, 
 its full influence remains to be discovered. It 
 has inclined and enabled Southern leaders so to 
 husband the few political advantages they pos- 
 sessed, and so to turn their very weakness to 
 advantage, that tbey have not only put a perpet- 
 ual quietus upon all movements and tendencies 
 contrary to their own among their own seven 
 and three-fourths millions of poor white popula- 
 tion, but to exercise a controlling influence in 
 our national affairs, over Northern majorities and 
 a predominance of learning, talent, truth, justice, 
 and consistency. So that said Southern leaders 
 have had their way in everything desired but in 
 preventing the material progress and multiplying 
 numbers of the Free States ; and when they 
 
116 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 found that, by virtue of dead weight, the North 
 was becoming too vast for them to handle, they, 
 by virtue of the quahty we are considering, se- 
 lected their own time and method and circum- 
 stances for terminating their connection with it. 
 But, thanks to an overruling Providence, they 
 have let the matter of separation alone too long. 
 Although overreached, befooled, and betrayed, 
 and although we commenced this contest with 
 a national treasury robbed and bankrupted, ar- 
 senals rilled of their contents, an army and navy 
 demoralized and depressed, and their remnants 
 scattered to the ends of the earth ; though the 
 national administration, for the first time com- 
 posed practically of Northern men, without an 
 element of the hitherto all-controlling Southern 
 leadership to give it strength, cannot conceal its 
 weakness; and although, from the commence- 
 ment of the war to the time of this writing, Sep- 
 tember 12, 18G2, our commanders in the field 
 appear to have been, on the whole, extensively 
 outgeneralled and baffled by that same disdain- 
 ful assuming of the initiative on the part of their 
 antagonists, which has baffled our congressmen 
 for half a century, — yet we expect, and not 
 without good reason, that by mere dead weight, 
 superiority of numbers and resources, we shall 
 triumph in the end. 
 
SOUTHERN DICTATION. 117 
 
 It was this quality of Southern leadership, the 
 result of being born and educated masters, which 
 petulant Northern journalists, notwithstanding 
 the wonderful power which it exerts, and the 
 success of its applications, persist in denominat- 
 ing " superciliousness," and " insufferable inso- 
 lence," that inclined and enabled the South 
 Carolina legislature with impunity to mob the 
 agent (Judge Hoar) of Massachusetts sent to 
 prosecute a case in the United States court at 
 their capital, — that inclined and enabled Preston 
 S. Brooks with impunity to cudgel Senator 
 Sumner in his senatorial chair till a trifle more 
 of the same treatment would have terminated 
 his life, — that enabled Andrew Jackson to de- 
 molish the United States Bank, and virtually to 
 terminate the application of Federal appropria- 
 tions to purposes of internal improvement ; and, 
 under pretence of " conscientious scruples " and 
 '- constitutional objections," with others like him, 
 his compeers and successors, to do whatever they 
 deemed best adapted to cripple the strength and 
 impede the prosperity of the Northern States, — 
 to establish a compromise line, bounding slave 
 territory on the North, when they thought such 
 action for their advantage, and abolish it when 
 they saw fit, — to resort to the doctrine of pop- 
 ular sovereignty to abolish the Missouri Com- 
 
118 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 promisej thereby bringing Kansas into dispute, 
 between Free State and Pro-slavery parties, and 
 to resort to a military despotism to force slavery 
 into it as soon as it had become disputable, — 
 so perpetually to dictate the policy of the gen- 
 eral government as to inhibit all acknowledg- 
 ment of nationality at home or abroad, in Li- 
 beria, Hayti, or elsewhere, to any people of the 
 races from whom their slaves are taken, — so to 
 dictate at the North the sentiments with which 
 negroes shall be regarded, as to exclude them 
 from the common rights of citizens and from 
 military service, at the imminent risk of 
 losing all w^e have at stake in the present war, 
 in consequence of that exclusion. 
 
XXI. 
 
 OTHER TRAITS OF CHARACTER CONFERRED BY HIS POSITION 
 ON THE SLAVE-MASTER, FITTING HIM FOR WAR; AND 
 DISPLAYED BY HIS CLASS IN THE PRESENT CONTEST. 
 
 Aside from the quality mentioned ill the last 
 chapter as resulting from lifelong presiding over 
 a servile race, there are other qualities, or traits 
 of character, acquired thereby, and not often 
 derived from any otlier source. Among these 
 is a certain wakeful, watchful, reconnoitring 
 alertness, an instinctive, habitual quickness to 
 apprehend danger, and effectually to provide 
 against it, the result of being born and bred in a 
 state of perpetual war, where tremendous penal- 
 ties for remissness were continually pending. 
 
 What ! it will he asked by some, is the state of 
 the slave-holder a state of perpetual war ? The 
 answer to this inquiry is. Yes. And the only 
 qualification needed to explain the answer is, 
 that the " master race " is, in general, in a state 
 of complete triumphant success ; so that very 
 little fighting has to be done. The only reason 
 that there is not frequent and active fighting is, 
 that the negroes are effectually deprived of 
 
 119 
 
120 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 
 
 means and opportunities to fight with the re- 
 motest probability of success. That there is just 
 and sufficient cause for constant war, the negro 
 and his master ahke well know. It is the disci- 
 pline and practice of keeping his negroes thus 
 perpetually deprived of the means and oppor- 
 tunities of waging active war, that gives the 
 slave-holder the habit, and at length the power, 
 of examining, measuring, estimating, and com- 
 prehending every man that presents himself for 
 acquaintance, or for transactions with him : that 
 is, he measures, estimates, and comprehends him 
 so far as to arrive at an approximately certain 
 conclusion as to what course of action he is likely 
 to pursue, what benefits or mischiefs are likely 
 to accrue to himself (the slave-holder) and to 
 his cause therefrom, and how, and how far, it 
 becomes incumbent on him to make provision 
 against such mischiefs. 
 
 The slave-holder also understands and acts on 
 the importance of tampering with his enemy, to 
 bribe and disarm his hostile feeling, and thereby 
 lessen the danger and the frequency of resistful 
 encounters. Every time he corrects a servant 
 for misbehavior, he fights an engagement in 
 the general perpetual battle, by complete suc- 
 cess in which on the part of the master the 
 negro race are kept against their wills in im- 
 
SOUTHERN SELF-PRESERTATION. 121 
 
 plicit and profitable servitude. Another lesson, 
 eminently fitting one for active war, which the 
 master of slaves is compelled to learn, is to take 
 care of himself The war he is perpetually en- 
 gaged in carrying on is not a war with equals; 
 it is war with a servile race ; and in such a war 
 it would be disgracefully imprudent to allow 
 himself to be injured. Hence the purpose to 
 inflict a punishment, or to transfer by sale, or 
 anything that is likely to rouse the negro to 
 resistance, is instinctively kept an inscrutable 
 secret; the negro is eyed and calculated for 
 till it is seen that he is about to come into a po- 
 sition where he can be captured, handcufied, and 
 handled at pleasure, and without peril to the 
 master. 
 
 Hence the sly, secret, stealthy operations of 
 the Southern forces in the existing war, and 
 their persistent and perpetual refusal to fight, 
 except where overwhelming numbers, or advan- 
 tageous position, or some other advantage on 
 their side appears to them to place their success 
 beyond a question ; also their unparalleled and 
 inimitable indifference to what all other warriors 
 have esteemed to be the disgrace of fleeing be- 
 fore the face of an equal foe. Hence, too, their 
 torpedoes by land and sea, their bushwhacking, 
 their assassination of pickets, picking off officers 
 11 
 
122 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 in engagements, and the like, — proceedings 
 which have been criticised and complained of 
 by Northern men as " outrageons," " mean/' and 
 " treacherous," but which result necessarily from 
 the lifelong education every Southern master 
 has received. Hence, also, the noteworthy suc- 
 cess of the South in takhig prisoners. Though 
 whipped in three or four battles, where they are 
 victors in one, they take more than prisoners 
 enough to exchange for all they lose. 
 
 Efficiency of action is another trait that has 
 become confirmed, and, to a great extent, per- 
 fected, in the character of the slave-holders as a 
 class. It arises from the tremendous penalties 
 of failure in dealing with their negroes, which 
 penalties are continually hanging over them, and 
 from habits of complete success which have for 
 ages attended their labors for the subjugation of 
 the Africans. Extremely few experiments are 
 ever tried by this class of men. Hence their 
 notorious destitution of any spirit of invention, 
 and the exceeding slowness with which they 
 admit the most important and most demon- 
 strated improvements of the age. 
 
 This habit of decisive action, as displayed by 
 them in inaugurating and carrying on the pres- 
 ent war, has been remarked and wondered at, 
 ridiculed and doubted, by observers in and out 
 
SOUTHERN DECISIVENESS. 123 
 
 of authority in the North, and in Europe. It 
 was thought by some to augur something in 
 favor of the South in reference to the final re- 
 sult, and was regarded for a time by all as char- 
 acteristic of this particular contest. But it is a 
 characteristic habit of Southern leaders, a class 
 of men who, from educational causes above-men- 
 tioned, never accept of partial success unless it 
 be temporarily, and as a means of achieving 
 complete and final triumph in the end. 
 
 Language is feeble to portray that absolute 
 determinedness not only to succeed or perish, 
 but not to be defeated when one has perished, 
 which becomes habitual to the leading Southern 
 mind as a necessary result of a lifelong contem- 
 plation of the imminent and enormous perils of 
 failure in dealing with a body of three or four 
 millions of slaves, valuable and intelligent, and 
 daily increasing in value and intelligence, and in 
 disposition and in power to be free. The pres- 
 ent onslaught on the national existence, vast as 
 is the scale of its operations, presents but a fee- 
 ble expose, of the infernal force that has been 
 gendered and will be matured by a few gener- 
 ations more of a limited class of slave-holders 
 being permitted to bear the responsibilities and 
 ply the functions of their vocation in the bosom 
 of tliis otherwise democratic republic. If the 
 
124 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 Northern people or the national administration 
 choose to carry on war with these men as an 
 experiment, to see whether their character and 
 purpose will not change under the operation, 
 they can do so ; but it will be an experiment of 
 transcendent costliness, and the issue of that war 
 will be dictated by this unbending trait of 
 Southern character. With an utterly inexhaust- 
 ible fmid of patient mildness on the side of the 
 government, — a mildness that refuses to exter- 
 minate anything, even for the salvation of its 
 own confiding, imperilled, impoverished, tor- 
 mented and tortured dependents, — and on the 
 other side a relentless decisiveness as utterly un- 
 changing ; exhaustless resources on the part of 
 the former combatant can only prolong the War, 
 and postpone a catastrophe which those resources 
 cannot finally avert. 
 
XXII. 
 
 THE FALLACY OF SUPPOSING THAT DISTINXTIOXS OF COLOR CAN 
 CONSTITUTE ANY PP.RMANEXT LIMIT TO THE DESPOTIC EX- 
 ERCISE OF AUTHORITY OR GREED FOR POWER OX THE PART 
 OF SLAVE-MASTKRS. 
 
 One important point has been implied in the 
 previous pages, which has not been explained. 
 
 We have spoken of the despotic character ac- 
 quired by the master in dealing with his slaves, 
 as if the same would still attach to him in his 
 dealings with white people, — wc have spoken 
 of the peculiarities of the particular modes of 
 warfare by which he maintains his victorious su- 
 premacy over the negro race, as if these same pe- 
 culiarities would still characterize him in his war 
 against the free North in pursuit of the liberty 
 of holding other men in bondage. 
 
 Now the Southerners and their Northern 
 friends will strenuously protest against this mode 
 of reasoning. They will maintain most ear- 
 nestly that they never intended to treat gentle- 
 men, or white people, in anything like the w^ay 
 in which they are obliged to treat the blacks. 
 A few months ago, this kind of talk sounded 
 
 11* 12o 
 
126 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 well, and gained believing listeners ; and the 
 danger is, that a few months hence, being sauced 
 with a good deal of Southern blandishment, and 
 seasoned with a spice of concealed Northern trea- 
 son, it will again be urged on the Northern gov- 
 ernment and people with some success, namely, 
 that men have one character in their dealings 
 with black men, and another in their dealings 
 with white men, — that they may be the rank- 
 est despots in their dealings with negroes, and 
 the most sincere of democrats in all their rela- 
 tions to the whites. We shall, doubtless, be told 
 presently that it was altogether an oversight, re- 
 pented of and apologized for, that during the 
 heat of the contest their ideas became somewhat 
 mixed, and in language, in deeds, and in bitter 
 violence of feeling, " they unfortunately identi- 
 fied us with the despised negroes. And this too, 
 only so far as they supposed themselves to have 
 just cause to beUeve that we placed ourselves on 
 a level with the negroes, and were really em- 
 ployed in aiding them to secure their liberty by 
 a servile Avar." 
 
 Two considerations stand in the way of all 
 thl'^. First we are not dealing with the admitted 
 intentioDS of slave-holders, or of any other men. 
 TVe are contemplating their characters, the laws 
 that govern their actions, that have governed 
 
WHITE SKINS NO BAR TO DESPOTISM. 127 
 
 them heretofore, and will govern them hereafter, 
 whether the performers of those actions intelH- 
 gently design it or not ; and never more legiti- 
 mately than during the din of conflict, when 
 customary disguises and artificial restraints are 
 necessarily forgotten, and the roused individual 
 displays his true self with more sincere honesty 
 than it would have been possible for him to prac- 
 tise, had he not been thrown entirely off his 
 guard by the hre and strifes of war. These sin- 
 cere traits of character, these laws that have 
 governed and still must govern their undisguised 
 conduct, were displayed by guerrilla warfare, 
 masked batteries, assassination of pickets, poison- 
 ing springs, and selling poisoned provisions to 
 our soldiers, sequestration of the property of Un- 
 ion Southerners, persecution, imprisonment, and 
 hanging, of such Unionists, sinking infernal ma- 
 chines to blow up our ships on the water, and 
 planting torpedoes to mutilate and murder un- 
 suspecting men on land, plundering and disrob- 
 ing our dead on the battle-field, robbing the 
 wounded of their haversacks and leaving them 
 to die by starvation ; disinterring our dead to 
 get their skulls for drinking-cups and their bones 
 for relics, treating prisoners with wanton outrage 
 and cruelty, and shooting them down in cold 
 blood, — these, and a volume more of like trans- 
 
128 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 actions perpetrated by the Rebels in this War, 
 verify beyond dispute, that the distinction made 
 by slave-holders between white and black in the 
 putting forth of their democratic or despotic prin- 
 ciples and modes of action, is a purely fictitious 
 and fanciful distinction, and wherever it is ob- 
 served at all, it is so observed only for lack of 
 power to enforce the cruel dictates of their ty- 
 rannical principles and habits, and the desire of 
 their Africanized, barbarous hearts. 
 
 The truth is, — and this is the second objec- 
 tion we bring against the pretended reasoning 
 of the slave-holders and their friends, — that the 
 principles and habits of despotism are supreme 
 and all-moulding in their possessor. He cannot 
 rid himself of their all-controlling force. As well 
 might you plant a tree with all its roots above- 
 ground, and all its leafy boughs beneath the sod, 
 and expect it to flourish and bear fruit ; as well 
 might you take a child of the ordinary human 
 stock, in full health, and make him promise and 
 swear not to grow to exceed three feet three 
 inches in stature, and not to exceed fifty pounds 
 in weight, as expect a man who has been born 
 and bred to the exercise of despotic control over 
 men, to lay by the principles and practices of 
 despotism, and become an honest democratic 
 member of a democratic community. He may 
 
DESPOTS WILL DEAL DESPOTICALLY. 129 
 
 become such a member of such a community ; 
 but it will be only in submission to a force that 
 utterly precludes the possibility of his doing oth- 
 erwise. And the moment that compelling, co- 
 ercive force is relaxed, that moment, as a per- 
 fectly elastic physical body, released from the 
 force that had compressed it, springs again into 
 its full former form and dimensions, so the coer- 
 cively democratized despot will instinctively 
 spring again into the exercise of his former 
 despotic principles and habits, all the purposes 
 he may have formed, all the promises he may 
 have made, and all the oaths he may have 
 taken, to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 iSot only is it the law of the human mind, — 
 a law admitting of no exceptions, other than 
 such as art^ made by compulsive force, — that 
 despots will deal despotically ; but it is also such 
 a law that they will do so ultimately, to the full 
 extent of their ability, to the utmost limits of 
 the population over w^hom they are able to es- 
 tablish their control. And the idea that our 
 Southern despots, having three or four millions 
 of blacks under their unquestioned control, 
 would bound their exercise of and their greed 
 for power, by the line that limits the complex- 
 ion of the African skin, is one of the shallow- 
 
130 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 est fallacies with which a rational man ever un- 
 took to deceive himself. 
 
 Like the facility with which wealth is accu- 
 mulated, SO the ease of accumulating despotic 
 power increases in geometrical ratio to what is 
 already possessed. 
 
 Had the Southern tyrants had no supreme 
 control over millions of blacks, they could never 
 have subjugated the seven and three-fourths 
 millions of poor white population. Had they 
 not succeeded in establishing an absolute des- 
 potic control over these millions of non-slave- 
 holding whites in the Southern States, they would 
 not have been able to entail on the North these 
 years of bloody and exhausting war for the 
 enlargement and perpetuation of their despotic 
 sway. 
 
 When the framers of the Constitution guaran- 
 teed to slave-holders the perpetual, quiet pos- 
 session of their increasing numbers of African 
 slaves, the}^ put into the hands of that class of 
 men a weapon wherewith they could presently 
 put that Constitution, with all its beneficent 
 provisions, out of existence. When the rise of 
 the cotton-trade gave new vitality and pecuni- 
 ary power to slave-holders, it necessarily im- 
 parted to them the disposition and the power 
 to use that weapon. 
 
CONDITIONS OF PEACE. 131 
 
 If the present war does not deprive slave-hold- 
 ing of permanent vitality, so that it can never 
 take root and sprout into vigorous growth again, 
 then the present war will act on the causes 
 that produced it, only as a limited amount of 
 water acts on a conflagration which it suffices 
 only to deaden, while it does not quench. 
 
 The slave-holders and their apologizing friends 
 tell us that " the abolitionists are the cause of 
 the present war." Every man who refuses to 
 bow his neck in permanent subjection to the 
 Southern despots whom slavery has raised up, is 
 the cause of this war by said refusal. If the 
 whole Northern population had so bowed their 
 necks, then would there have been no war, and 
 on no other condition. On any other condition 
 than that perpetual and universal submission on 
 the part of the whole Northern population to 
 be ruled over by the masters of the Southern 
 slaves, the present war will rage, and must inev- 
 itably rage, in one form or another, and at longer 
 or shorter intervals, till either despotism or de- 
 mocracy is exterminated frem within our coun- 
 try's boundaries. 
 
 Whether the genus Despot can be preserved 
 and propagated by the subject class of the South- 
 ern despotism, is a question on which there need 
 
132 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 be no doubt or controversy. The change of 
 place from the subject to the dommant class in 
 a despotic community, is a natural and easy 
 change. And unless the blacks and whites of 
 the subject class in the Southern States are ele- 
 vated to the rank, and inspired with the princi- 
 ples of equals among equals in a democratic 
 community, as sure as that the dead carcass 
 breeds worms, so sure is it that the dominant 
 class will not long be wanting, and the despotic 
 form of Southern society will be preserved, with 
 more or less detriment and peril to the demo- 
 cratic North. And those Northern-born and 
 Northern-bred politicians who are laboring with 
 intense persistency, by opposing the emancipa- 
 tion war policy, to conserve the interests of 
 self-immolated slave-holders, are thereby doing 
 all that God has placed it in their power to 
 do, to forge and fasten on their own posterity, 
 and on all the freemen of the North, the same 
 inhuman despotism, which, at this hour is sub- 
 mitting to every Southern white man between 
 the ages of sixteen and forty-five (sixty in some 
 states), who is not the owner of twenty slaves, 
 the cool alternative of placing himself in the 
 front of a deadly fight for destroying the gov- 
 ernment of his father^, or among those who 
 
 I 
 
IMPORTANT ALTERNATIVES. 133 
 
 are being led out by scores, and shot down like 
 dogs, for not obeying their leaders * 
 
 * Cincinnati, Sept. 15, 1863. The Gazette has a Leavenworth despatch 
 which says : " Gen. Blunt at last accounts was at Fort Gibson, preparing 
 to start for Fort Scott. Refugees from the rebel conscription are coming 
 into Blunt's lines by hundreds. Their sufferings are represented as inde- 
 scribable. More than one hundred Union men have been shot and hung at 
 Fort Smith since the rebellion begun." The Nashville Union of the 6th 
 October, 18G3, says: "It is not known, we believe, that the privilege of 
 habeas corpus has been suspended altogether in the Confederacy, for over 
 twelve months. We have the highest judicial authority for stating this 
 fact, although we cannot give any name. The suspension was made by a 
 private order of Jeff. Davis to the leading judicial officers, and never has 
 been published. Probably not one man in fifty thousand in all Rebeldom is 
 aware that for over twelve months, the privilege of habeas corpus has not 
 existed in the South at all. Our authority on this point, we repeat, is 
 unquestionable." A volume might ba filled with similar accounts. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 RECAPITULATION" — THE SEVERAL WAYS IN WHICH SLAVERY 
 ACTS, TO RECONVERT MASTERS BACK FROM DEMOCRACY 
 TO DESPOTISM, AND TO CONFER ON THEM WARLIKE QUAL- 
 ITIES. 
 
 We have now considered in detail, to the ex- 
 tent proposed, the operation of slavery as it has 
 existed since the chano;e that was wroiidit in it 
 after the adoption of the Constitution ; namely, its 
 operation to convert back to despotism the sons 
 of sires who fought, bled, toiled, and sacrificed, 
 without remission and without reserve, to win 
 the independence of our common country, and 
 to establish within it the glorious fabric of free 
 government, an achievement which has brought 
 more of hope and joy and of substantial happi- 
 ness to the human family than any other event 
 that has occurred since the dawn of time, except 
 the advent of the Christ of God. 
 
 We have seen that slavery, in its modern 
 form, necessarily concentrates such an enormous 
 amount of imperilled interest, antagonistic to 
 everything that pertains to freedom, as would 
 overthrow a stronger government than ours, had 
 
 134 
 
RECAPITULATION. 135 
 
 not the potent cause of freedom rapidly and 
 gloriously accumulated to itself an amount of 
 population and resources that wellnigh out- 
 weighs the available resources of the remaining 
 portion of the world. We have seen that, in 
 addition to vast pecuniary interest, the loose 
 luxuriance of a semi-barbarous state of society, 
 the intoxicating sweets of despotic sway, and a 
 powerful practical predominance in all national 
 affairs, — all which to their possessors depend 
 on the maintenance of the slave system, — the 
 dreaded horrors of slave insurrection are per- 
 petually impending, to enforce on the " master 
 class " a unity of purpose, a harmony of action, 
 a subjugating of every voluntary power to the 
 one ruling necessity, which is, of itself, the high- 
 est, strongest, form of despotism. We have 
 seen that lifelong compliance with this enforced 
 necessity of despotic action must mould and 
 fashion the character of the slave-holder, whether 
 he will or not, with all the features of a despot. 
 We have seen that the habit of command, if 
 that term be used to cover the attendant pecu- 
 liarities of the habit it describes, together with 
 the advantages resulting to them from their 
 own enforced unity of action and concentration 
 of interest, has inclined and enabled a few thou- 
 sand slave-holders, not only to mould and man- 
 
136 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 age their own seven and three-fourths milHons 
 of non-slave-holdmg white population, like pot- 
 ters' clay, but, in the legislative, executive, and 
 judicial branches of our national government, 
 to do everything they could desire, except fa- 
 tally to suppress the rapid increase of numbers 
 and material prosperity at the North. 
 
 We have seen that, aside from the direct effect 
 of slave-holding to despotize the principles and 
 habits of the master, the influence of negro 
 associations from youth to hoary age, from gen- 
 eration to generation, must have a powerful 
 effect, in his comparative seclusion from other 
 society, to depress and barbarize the standard 
 of his civilization, — thus giving powerful collat- 
 eral aid to his natural lust for gain and lust for 
 despotic power ; also to disincline and unfi him 
 to return to the political preferences and affec- 
 tions of his fathers, and to do away wdth the 
 compunctions he might otherwise be supposed 
 to have, for using the despotic power he pos- 
 sessed in a barbarous way and for barbarous 
 purposes. 
 
 A state of war is perfectly normal to a des- 
 potism. It is the reverse of this to a democracy. 
 So much so, that even democratic material has 
 to be thrown into grades of subordinate and 
 
RECAPITULATION. 137 
 
 commander, and the whole placed under a despotic 
 head, before it can be called an army, or become 
 at all i^eliable for fighting purposes. We have seen 
 that a state of mastership over a subject race, as 
 the negro race is held in the Southern States 
 in recent years, is, and necessarily must be, a 
 state of war, and calls into constant and vigorous 
 exercise all those accomplishments of strategy, re- 
 connoissance, inscrutable reticence, and decisive 
 action, which are the highest attainments of the 
 warlike leader; while the act of corporal pun- 
 ishment, which must be perpetually pending, 
 and more or less frequently performed, serves to 
 brutalize the finer feelings, and divest the state 
 of actual war of much of the repugnance with 
 which it would necessarily present itself to other 
 classes of society. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 ANTAGONISM OF DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY OVERT AND TAN- 
 GIBLE — MILITARY ORGANIZATION AND ACTION PERFECTLY 
 NATURAL AND HEALTHFUL TO A DESPOTISM, BUT DIFFI- 
 CULT AND DESTRUCTIVE TO A DEMOCRACY. 
 
 It has been stated in the foregoing pages of 
 this work, that despotism and democracy, sla- 
 very and free government, are inimical to each 
 other, — that exterminating hostility must rage 
 between them till one or the other perishes, 
 wherever they coexist. 
 
 This is not a mere antagonism of abstract 
 principles. The antagonism of principle works 
 itself out in concrete form ; and the different 
 steps of its operation are not too secret to be 
 uncovered and explained. 
 
 In no respect is this overt antagonism more 
 apparent than in the military qualities whicli 
 despotism imparts, the military grades it im- 
 poses, the military strength it relies upon, and 
 the military spirit and habits which it produces ; 
 while the action of democracy is the reverse of 
 this in every particular. 
 
 In monarchical government, the whole reli- 
 
 186 
 
DEMOCRACY PACIFIC. I39 
 
 ance for securing immunity from an invasion of 
 national territory or rights is military strength, 
 which bids defiance to the power that threat^'ens 
 wrong. As soon as wrong is threatened, mili- 
 tary qualities are put in action to forestall the 
 execution of that threat; whereas, in the demo- 
 cratic community, the principle acted on is, that 
 if there is no tension, there will be no rupture ; 
 if there is no compression, there will be no ex- 
 plosion. Entirely occupied in developing their 
 own resources of peace, the people of a°demo- 
 crotic community naturally judge others by 
 themselves, and suppose that every civil com- 
 munity is so employed. They think little of 
 the need of defence, and have no motive to 
 assail. Peace is to them so much more profit- 
 able than war, they are slow to believe that 
 other nations regard their interest in a different 
 light. Indeed, it is no small source of their felt 
 security, that from their example of affluence, 
 and from the lucrativeness of their commerce, it 
 IS really more profitable for their neighbor to be 
 at peace than to be at war with them. The 
 very contagion of their open, tolerant, and un- 
 warlike feeling exerts no small influence to 
 keep other nations from aggression. From the 
 very constitution of society, organically des- 
 titute of a watchful head or leaders who feel 
 
140 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 themselves habitually responsible for the wel- 
 fare of the whole, it is almost impossible to 
 alarm a democratic community; and still more 
 difficult to obtain effective action, where action 
 depends on the spontaneously harmonious move- 
 ment of the headless and disintegrated mass. 
 And when the democratic people do move for 
 military effect, it is only by an abandoning of 
 their characteristic state and modes of action, 
 and adopting those of despotism, to such an ex- 
 tent as to incur some danger that they will not, 
 when war is over, readily return to democratic 
 form. And were the object fought for any other 
 than to repel an assault on their civil liberties, 
 the danger would be imminent, that free princi- 
 ples would be affected unfavorably by their 
 course of action. So that in addition to the 
 peril of being subjugated by military force, such 
 is the repugnance of a state of civil freedom to 
 a state of war that a democratic government is 
 in imminent peril of being worried out of exist- 
 ence as a democracy, by the perpetual menace 
 and irritation of a despotic institution within 
 its boundaries, or a despotic government located 
 on its borders. 
 
 Such a despotic government on its border, 
 having, as all neighboring governments have, or 
 suppose themselves to have, continually, some 
 
WAR DESTRUCTIVE TO DEMOCRACY. 141 
 
 causes of complaint against its neighbor, and 
 naturally and necessarily resorting to military 
 menace to obtain redress and secure future re- 
 spect, thereby forces on its democratic neighbor 
 the necessity of frequently abandoning her nat- 
 ural modes of action, of sensibly interrupting 
 the lucrative employments of her citizens, to 
 assume a warlike attitude and assume the grad- 
 ing and the drill, and take up the weapons, of 
 despotism to repel threatened assault. 
 
 So great is the peril from this source that 
 under the supervision of divine Intelligence, no 
 permanently democratic government came into 
 existence until a whole broad continent had 
 been prepared and set apart for its develop- 
 ment, with broad and effective ocean barriers 
 on every side between it and the nearest des- 
 potic power. And the practical success of ocean 
 steam navigation, which has brought the oppo- 
 site shores of these barrier waters so near to- 
 gether, was not permitted to take place until 
 the democratic power on this continent had 
 passed the perils of its infancy. If leading 
 Southerners or their allies and abettors, the 
 monarchists of Europe, are aiming, through the 
 unguardedness of the present national adminis- 
 tration, or the so-called Democratic party of the 
 North, to subvert and finally ruin the democratic 
 
142 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 institutions of this country, as they doubtless 
 very well understand, nothing else is necessary 
 to that result but the recognition of a Southern 
 government, founded on slavery as its capital 
 institution. 
 
XXV. 
 
 SAME GENERAL SUBJECT CONTINUED — THE TOOR WHITES OF 
 A SLAVE-HOLDING COMMUNITY EQUIVALENT TO A STAND- 
 ING ARMY, WHEN CONTRASTED WITH THE DESTITUTION OF 
 COMBATANTS WHICH MARKS A DEMOCRACY. 
 
 The overt antagonism of monarchy to free 
 government, bodied forth by the shive interest 
 in the South, against the active freedom of the 
 Northern portion of this country, is, perhaps, in 
 nothing more apparent than in the idleness it 
 induces in the great majority of the Southern 
 wjiites. This is done, in part, by rendering labor 
 disreputable, — throwing a stench of servility, an 
 air of degradation, about industrial pursuits, fol- 
 lowed for the honest earning of one's livelihood. 
 
 It is done, in part, by rendering labor unne- 
 cessary to the w^hites. The mild climate, with 
 scarcely any winter, reduces the list of absolutely 
 necessary things for one to live on, to a very 
 small number and amount. The abundance 
 with which these are produced, under a South- 
 ern sun, makes them easily attained. The great 
 profit of slave-labor leaves much to be disposed 
 of by the slave-holder gratuitously to friends 
 
 143 
 
144 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 and dependents, and semi-gratuitonsly to all who 
 need. The characteristic and habitually easy 
 handling, by the masters, of what their negroes 
 earn, serves to throw an odor of niggardliness on 
 the small earnings and savings of one who works 
 w^ith his own hands. The same result is still 
 farther promoted by the monopolizing of the 
 land, and of the production of the great stajoles 
 of trade by the wealthy slave-owner, leaving 
 very scanty resources for the white man to 
 spend his industry on, unless he goes with the 
 negroes into the field, for negro wages, which 
 almost none will do. 
 
 The result is, that the poor whites, who con- 
 stitute the immense majority of the whole South- 
 ern population, lie perpetually in unconfined 
 idleness, with nothing to lose, and little to 
 fear, from any change of circumstances ; ever 
 ready, at the shortest notice, to be constituted 
 into a military force, without pay or rations, 
 to be precipitated upon any offending or unof- 
 fending neighbor, at the option of their natural 
 leaders, the slave-holders ; thus constituting a 
 force but few removes from a standing army, 
 perpetually menacing those, who, being demo- 
 crats, must necessarily be hated by the despotic 
 slave-holders. 
 
 The full force of this standing menace is not 
 
SOLDIERS HARD TO RAISE IN A DEMOCRACY. 145 
 
 perceived until the peculiar character of the 
 communit}' against which it is directed is brought 
 to view. It is a community of preeminently 
 industrious, thriving, individuals. The pressure 
 of dictatorial authority, and its hampering institu- 
 tions, has long since been removed. With almost 
 the freedom of the savage state are combined the 
 refined enliglitenment, the upward aspirations, 
 and the susceptibility of being injured, peculiar 
 to the highest civilization. The humblest indi- 
 vidual in that community, excepting a few who 
 are a prey to rare vices or misfortunes, has the 
 prospect of easy competency, and an open road, 
 if he chooses to follow it, to positions of the 
 highest social eminence. The consequence is, 
 that there is hardly a class, however small, who 
 can be spared to take up arms, and meet the 
 standing menace of the South. Whoever does 
 this has, in most instances, to leave a suffering 
 family and a neglected business. Our own mer- 
 chant marine cannot be manned without draw- 
 ing largely on the aid of foreigners. Except a 
 few for officers, our native-born citizens can be 
 better employed. When the w^orst has come, 
 and an army must be raised to defend the North, 
 in the absence of despotic coercion to enforce 
 sacrifice, enormous outlays must be incurred in 
 w^ages, bounties, subsistence, and pensions, to fill 
 
 13 
 
146 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 the army ranks with men, who are accustomed 
 to every comfort, and to the enjoyment of more 
 or less accumulated and still accumulating wealth. 
 Aside from the enormous public expense, to 
 induce the enlistment of these men, and the 
 pecuniary sacrifice that many of them still make 
 by enlisting, they feel it to be a great sacrifice 
 to leave their quiet and happy homes, for the 
 perils and privations inseparable from a cam- 
 paign ; whereas, the Southern ranks, by a simple 
 authoritative decree, are filled with men who 
 have nothing to leave, and nothing to peril, but 
 the semi-enjoyment of a degraded, ignorant, and 
 poverty-stricken existence, by being drafted into 
 a Southern army, without pay, subsistence, or 
 clothing, to any considerable amount, beyond 
 what they can supply themselves with, or plun- 
 der from friends or foes/-' and all at the bid of 
 despots whose dictation they are almost " un- 
 gifted with any ability to resist," — The North, 
 
 * '* Many a Xorthera man, of the pickets especially, has been killed for 
 his clothes." — Army correspondent. 
 
 A correspondent of the Lowell Neics, who has lately escaped from Savan- 
 nah, tells the following story : — 
 
 " After the assault on Fort Wagner, v.-hen Colonel Shaw was killed, a 
 rebel soldier was showing his boots in Savannah, and bragging how he got 
 them. He said he attempted to take them oft' a Yankee soldier on that fatal 
 field, who, though wounded, remonstrated, saying there were dead ones 
 enough from whom he might take a pair. Then, with a fiendish exultation, 
 he went on to say how he thought he wouldn't rob the wounded, so, putting 
 his bayonet through the man's heart, he took the boots and came away. If 
 devils ever dance, that fellow should be counted in, boots and all." 
 
SLAVERY AND DEMOCRACY INCOMPATIBLE. 147 
 
 at the same time, not only having no competent 
 leaders, but, IVom the construction and habits of 
 its society, being ahnost incapable of producing 
 leaders competent to conduct its afiliirs, in a 
 state of war, to any satisfactory result. 
 
 Under these circumstances, aside from the in- 
 delible disgrace, enfeeblement, and humiliation, 
 of parting with a needed portion of our national 
 domain, to permit the establishment of a slave- 
 holding confederacy on the borders of this re- 
 public would be about as bald a suicide as a 
 nation of idiots could commit. 
 
 A perpetual series of alarms, which the lead- 
 ers of such a confederacy would instinctively 
 be raising, at no cost to themselves, and for mere 
 amusement, would, in a few years, worry the 
 Northern democratic government out of exist- 
 ence, by keeping it in a state of afflicted uncer- 
 tainty, more disastrous to its delicate and varied 
 industrial and commercial interests than actual 
 war. No sane man can pretend that treaties 
 with such a confederacy would avail any more 
 than did the official oaths of the traitor senators, 
 congressmen, and cabinet officers, who gendered 
 it 
 
XXVI. 
 
 VIEW OF THE ALTERED COXDITION OF AFFAIRS IN I860, COM- 
 PARED WITH 1789 — WAS THE PRESENT PRECIPITATION OF 
 
 HOSTILITIES NECESSARY? AS VIEWED BY NORTHERN MEN, 
 
 IT WAS NOT — AS VIEWED BY SOUTHERN MEN, IT WAS. 
 
 In the light of the foregoing reflections, we 
 are, perhaps, prepared to make some just esti- 
 mate of the real and immediate causes of the 
 existing war. In attempting to do so, we find 
 that natural history is encroaching more nearly 
 than before on the boundaries of history proper ; 
 and the natural causes which we have hitherto 
 been tracing in their action, irrespectively of 
 any human design or intelligent purpose, will 
 henceforth be bodying themselves forth in the 
 intelligent purpose and resolute action of the 
 prime movers of this nefarious Rebellion. 
 
 Slavery, as we now are called to look upon it, 
 has advanced from the state of unimportance 
 and of non-influence in which it did not interfere 
 with the declaration of our independence, or the 
 adoption of our national Constitution, in 1776- 
 '89, to a condition of all-moulding influence and 
 incalculable pecuniary importance, in 1860. It 
 
 148 
 
INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY IN i860. 149 
 
 has moulded Southern society into the grades 
 of despotism. It has reduced the mass of non- 
 slave-holding whites to a state of degraded igno- 
 rance and poverty, bereft of any capacity or 
 disposition to controvert the authority of any- 
 ])ody who may assume to dictate to them. It 
 has, by its necessary action, moulded the senti- 
 ments and habits of the master, to the purest, 
 fiercest form of despotism, reversing the demo- 
 cratic character and devotion of his illustrious 
 sires, and putting him under the pressure of 
 pecuniary and social influences adequate to dis- 
 pel all hesitancy as to maintaining his present 
 position. He has retained just enough of de- 
 mocracy to serve as a rule of harmonious action 
 between hiuiself and his fellow-despots, as they 
 serve together, with one heart and one mind, in 
 profound obedience to the dictates of their one 
 consolidated interest. The practice of holding 
 slaves has conferred on him almost all the qual- 
 ities of a military strategist and leader, in a 
 high degree ; has done much to divest him of 
 any aversion to a state of war, and he has be- 
 come conscious of his irresponsible sway over 
 the mass of poor whites in his own section. 
 
 The practice of slave-holding has also conferred 
 on the master the faculty of controlling, and its 
 stringent necessities have supplied him with an 
 
150 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 efficient motive to control the policy, and, to a 
 great extent, the action, in detail, of the general 
 government. 
 
 The question here presents itself, dem«nnding 
 to be answered, whether natural causes, at this 
 time, necessitated a precipitation of the armed 
 conflict. Had the antagonistic principle of des- 
 potism, as prevailing at the South, so far ex- 
 pressed itself in overt injury and annoyance as 
 to force the North into armed resistance ? Or 
 had the material and numerical progress of the 
 North rendered it unsafe for the South long:er to 
 count on her forbearance ? 
 
 Looking at the question from a Northern po- 
 sition, and with the mild, tolerant eye of a Dem- 
 ocrat, there was, at this time, no necessity of a 
 rupture. Innocently supposing others to be as 
 open and honest as themselves, fully occupied 
 by their several schemes of individual aggran- 
 dizement, the Northern politicians had never 
 extended their investigations so far as to discover 
 that there was working in the South a govern- 
 mental principle, potent, vital, and aggressive, 
 inimical to their spirit and practices of freedom. 
 That the Constitution bound them to non-inter- 
 ference with slavery in the States was univer- 
 sally admitted. And had the South been satisfied 
 with thisj and with the lenient exercise of their 
 
SOUTHERN LEADERS NEVER TRUST. 151 
 
 own predorainance in the general administration, 
 no class or number of alarmists could have roused 
 the North to acts of overt hostility. 
 
 But look at the same question from a South- 
 ern point of view, with the eye of a tyrant's 
 jealousy and suspicion, as he stands surrounded 
 hy the imminent and enormous perils of servile 
 insurrectionary disturbance, beneath the shadow 
 of a vast and growing governmental force, 
 imbued with the spirit of democracy, and neces- 
 sarily inimical to the despotic system which he 
 has wrapped about him till he could not rid him- 
 self of it if he would, and a different answer had 
 to be given. To wield the political influence, and 
 to conserve the interests of concentrated slavery, 
 devolved on men who never trusted in anything 
 which they could not control, never asked for 
 anything which they could not exact, never 
 connnended any course of action which they 
 could not compel. Their character was the ne- 
 cessary result of their education. Hardly any- 
 body, that had not been trained on the deck of 
 a pirate or of a slave-ship, could be expected to 
 comprehend their motives, or to predict their 
 course of action. 
 
XXVII. 
 
 LEADING SOUTHERNERS DETERMINE TO DIVIDE THE UNION — 
 THIRTY YEARS SPENT IN MATURING AND PREPARING TO EX- 
 ECUTE THE DETERMINATION — STEPS TAKEN TO THAT END. 
 
 Although, in the early history of the govern- 
 ment, the Southern or Slave States outweighed 
 the North in territorial extent and population, 
 yet it soon became apparent that the principles 
 of free government, as carried out at the North, 
 were operating to develop the resources of that 
 section to an unparalleled degree, and were secur- 
 ing to it almost the entire influx of foreign pop- 
 ulation. Its territorial expansion, which could 
 not be checked, could only be equalled for a 
 time by a forced expansion on the part of the 
 South. 
 
 This constantly augmenting preponderance 
 on the part of the North never escaped the no- 
 tice or due consideration of leading Southern- 
 ers. They were for thirty years counting on 
 the hour when their domination in the general 
 government would be hopelessly outweighed, 
 and the temporizing shifts to which they long 
 
 162 
 
EARLY PURPOSE TO DIVIDE THE UNION. 153 
 
 resorted to keep up their practical predomi- 
 nance could no longer be relied on. They had 
 taken these thirty years to deliberate on the 
 course they would pursue in the foreseen emer- 
 gency ; with characteristic reticence they had 
 concealed their conclusion, and taken all the 
 preparatory steps necessary to carry their pur- 
 pose into execution. The repugnance that ex- 
 isted between their own system and what they 
 were sometimes pleaded to call the " agrarian- 
 ism " '■'•'■ of the North, they had deeply pondered 
 and justly weighed. 
 
 The continued coexistence of the two antag- 
 onistic forces within the limits of one govern- 
 ment, they never were stupid enough to ex- 
 pect. 
 
 From the time that the profitable expansion 
 of the business of producing cotton became 
 an aduiitted fact, they had turned their backs 
 irrevocably on all projects looking toward eman- 
 cipation, or toward any considerable relaxation 
 of the rigor of the slave-system as then prac- 
 tised. 
 
 * The practical abandonment of those class distinctions without which 
 a monarchical form of society has no existence. And, as a real monarchist 
 never admits, never even conceived of, the existence of government with- 
 out sovereigns, one or more, " agrarianism " is a mild expression to de- 
 scribe the anarchy, the utter absence of all government, which he necessa- 
 rily supposes to exist where there is no governing class. 
 
154 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 Nothing remained to them but prospective 
 separation from the Federal Union* 
 
 Men of their antecedents and surroundings, 
 of their character, and in their circumstances, 
 could have come to no other conclusion. Noth- 
 ing remained contingent but the time and mode 
 of bringing the separation about. Thus the 
 minds of leading Southern men were educated 
 for a generation under the influence of the de- 
 liberate purpose to establi,#i a separate Southern 
 government. Nor was this the educating influ- 
 ence of a mere idle purpose. The revolution 
 that separated Texas from Mexico was a bold 
 and successful step, planned and executed by 
 Southern adventurers in aid of that design. 
 The subsequent admission of Texas to the Un- 
 ion, the consequent war with Mexico, and the 
 acquisition of New Mexico, California, and Ari- 
 zona, were all so many successive steps brought 
 about in obedience to the same design. 
 
 * Once out from under the national Constitution, with foui* or more mil- 
 lions of blacks in utter subjugation, and eight or more millions of whites 
 whom they can shoot and hang Avith impunity, with half the former na- 
 tional territory and coast whereon to raise armies and navies, with the ac- 
 knowledged right to make foreign alliances and treaties, without any nat- 
 ural boundary between their territory and the Northern States, these men 
 never doubted their governmental ability to keep the North so perpetually 
 in hot water, as effectually to check its material progress, and to teach its 
 money-earning, money-saving population, that not only black men but 
 white men "have no rights which" a slave-holding cotton lord "is bound 
 to respect." 
 
STEPS EARLY TAKEN TOWARD SEPARATION. 155 
 
 The incurring of enormous debts (perhaps 
 only constructively) by the State of Texas, to 
 certain of her citizens, and the subsequent as- 
 suming of these debts by the general govern- 
 ment, constituted, perhaps, one of the first of 
 a series of acts, designed to impoverish the 
 North, or the general government, preparatory 
 to the coming separation. 
 
 The writer of these pages was personally cog- 
 nizant of the fact, that eighteen years before 
 the civil disturbances in Kansas took place, un- 
 der the administration of President Pierce, it 
 was the plan of leading slave-holders to '^ bring 
 the question of the extension of slavery, to an 
 issue of arms on some territory external to the 
 jurisdiction of any State government." It was 
 presumed that Northern men would not fight, 
 and that slight demonstrations of prowess on 
 the part of Southerners would enable the latter 
 to have matters all their own w\ay. It was a 
 refinement on this original design, to have the 
 general government, in the hands of Southern 
 men, with such an automaton as Frank Pierce 
 in the executive chair, make armed demonstra- 
 tions in behalf of slave extension, with a view, 
 if possible, to betray the freedom-loving North 
 into acts of overt hostility against the Federal 
 government, and bring on a war against slavery, 
 
156 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 with the treasury, the authority, the army and 
 navy of the general government on the South- 
 ern side in the conflict. 
 
 The outrages committed against the Free- 
 State men and their property, hves, and famihes 
 in Kansas, were not accidental ; they were a 
 part of the regular plan, ordered and insisted 
 on from headquarters, in furtherance of the 
 above design. But with the hanging of John 
 Brown and his associates, this part of the pro- 
 gramme failed ; except so far as its prosecution 
 had availed to ferment animosity between the 
 Northern and Southern people ; to supply ma- 
 terial for misrepresenting the North in Southern 
 sections, and to supply the occasion for getting 
 up and exercising some martial spirit among 
 the people of Virginia.'^' 
 
 Kindred to these operations for bringing the 
 North into overt conflict with the general gov- 
 ernment, w^as the plan of packing the supreme 
 bench of the United States Court, with a view 
 to obtain decisions so outrageously violative of 
 the principles of free-government, as to weary 
 out the patience of the Northern people and 
 exasperate them beyond control. 
 
 * It was of very great importance to the success of their subsequent de- 
 signs, civil and military, that the Southern leaders should have this occa- 
 sion to bring their own abject underlings through the surprise and repug- 
 nance of a first taking-up of arms. 
 
ATTEMPTS TO IRRITATE THE NORTH. 157 
 
 This packing of the United States Court com- 
 menced as fkr back as the appointment of 
 Roger B. Taney to a seat upon its bench, as a 
 reward for his subserviency in removing the 
 treasury deposits from the United States Bank, 
 an act of doubtful legahty, which his predeces- 
 sor in the treasury department refused to do, 
 in obedience to General Jackson's imperious 
 and unreasonable mandate. 
 
 The framing of the Fugitive Slave Law, with 
 features of needless harshness, was also planned 
 with a view to irritate the North into acts of 
 violence against the general government. 
 
 12« 
 
XXYIII. 
 
 ORIGIK AND OBJECT OF THE PRO-SOUTHERN POLITICAL PARTY 
 UNDER JACKSON. 
 
 The annexing of territory to the South and 
 West, with a view to increase the territorial pre- 
 ponderance of the slave section, and favor the 
 multiplication of Slave States, the depletion 
 of the United States treasury, to add absolute 
 and comparative wealth to the South, the bring- 
 ing of the slavery controversy to an issue of 
 arms on the territory, the planned and perpe- 
 trated enormities on the Free-State settlers in 
 Kansas, and the needless harshness of the Fugitive 
 Slave Law, with other like efforts to irritate the 
 North into acts of overt hostility to the general 
 government, while that government was yet in 
 the hands of Southern leaders, and the packing 
 of the United States Court, were all measures 
 of secondary importance, compared with the 
 grand scheme of corrupting, dividing, and pre- 
 occupying the No^th, by means of the so-called 
 Democratic party. This qualified term is here 
 used to designate this important political frater- 
 
 158 
 
TWO EAKLY POLITICAL PARTIES. 159 
 
 nity, not as an expression of disrespect, but be- 
 cause their favorite self-applied titles, Democracy 
 and Democratic, cannot be here appropriated as 
 they have been wont to use them, without doing 
 irreparable violence to the vocabulary of history- 
 
 vSoon after the close of the Revolutionary War, 
 two great parties developed themselves among 
 the constituency and leading statesmen of the 
 Union. Difference of opinion and of preference, 
 respecting the degree to which governmental 
 power should be centralized in the general ad- 
 ministration, to the disparagement of State or- 
 ganizations, appears to have been the chief 
 ground of difference on which these party com- 
 binations first took their rise. With different 
 degrees of intensity in the cohesion with which 
 their several elements united, with some variety, 
 and even interchange of the names by which, 
 at different periods, these parties were severally 
 designated, and with more or less change, from 
 time to time, in the distinctive principles, or 
 political creeds, on which they claimed to found 
 the different courses of governmental action 
 which they severally advocated, these two great 
 political parties contirxued till the time of Jack- 
 son's administration. 
 
 This appears to have been, more than any 
 
160 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 other, the period of a commencing transition in 
 the condition of our national afiairs, — a com- 
 mencing transition from a state of comparative 
 feebleness and peril to a state of conscious and 
 defiant strength, — of commencing transition 
 from a state of debt-incumbered national poverty 
 and enforced economy to a state of conscious 
 pecuniary ease and affluence, which, perhaps 
 inevitably, begets looseness, extravagance, and 
 corrupt procedures. 
 
 The individual character of President Jackson 
 himself, also, had much to do with the impress 
 his eight years' administration left on the coun- 
 try in general, and on the political party which 
 sustained him in particular. Bold and energetic 
 in the extreme, by birth and education a South- 
 erner of the western type, proud of that frank- 
 ness and honesty which does much to gild and 
 give eclat even to the strongest vices, a soldier, 
 accustomed to camp habits and successful cam- 
 paigns, he never shrunk from the assumption of 
 any responsibility vvdiich he thought there was 
 occasion to exercise ; confessedly a stranger to 
 any higher virtues than unbounded devotion to 
 his friends, and an exterminating vindictiveness 
 toward those whom he viewed as enemies, per- 
 haps the most remarkable feature of his char- 
 acter was an unguarded susceptibility of being 
 
GEN. JACKSON AND HIS POLITICAL PARTY. 161 
 
 imposed upon by those who succeeded in main- 
 taining in his presence a friendly attitude. 
 
 His bold, frank, energetic, and decided char- 
 acter gave confidence and strength to his politi- 
 cal adherents, who never allowed themselves to 
 be embarrassed with cumbering creeds, or polit- 
 ical doctrines, that did not work well for the 
 time being ; his military renown proved to be 
 a profitable basis on which to erect political 
 reputation ; his gallant quashing of South Caro- 
 lina's insane and ill-timed attempt at nullifying 
 the acts of the general government, by an as- 
 sumption of supreme power on behalf of the 
 individual State, made him stand well at the 
 North, while his supreme rule of fiivoring his 
 friends, and disfavoring his opponents, led him 
 to prostitute the vast and growing patronage of 
 the general executive office to reward the servi- 
 ces of all who had contributed to his individual 
 or party success. 
 
 James Buchanan, whose aid had, perhaps, 
 availed to turn the doubtful presidential election 
 in Jackson's favor, and who, to accomplish this, 
 had perfidiously turned against his bosom friend 
 and former patron, the opposing candidate, was 
 unblushingly invited to reward himself Avith the 
 honors and emoluments of a choice embassy. 
 The present chief justice of the Supreme Court, 
 
162 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 as before remarked, was given this place as a 
 reward for services of doubtful legality, which 
 his more honorable predecessor in the secretary- 
 ship of the treasury would not sell himself to 
 perform. The ablest graduates of the naval 
 and military academies were compelled to resign, 
 or take rank under idle, worthless boys, and 
 used-up politicians, whose only claim on prefer- 
 ment Avas, that they or their friends had contrib- 
 uted to the success of the Jackson party. 
 
 The result was, a powerful political organiza- 
 tion, having for its ruling principle the acquisi- 
 tion and retaining of ofhce for the sake of its 
 patronage, and this patronage to be distributed 
 as the reward of party services. 
 
XXIX. 
 
 THE CHARACTERISTIC PRINCIPLES OF JACKSOX'S POLITICAL 
 PARTY. 
 
 The scantiness of the public revenue, and the 
 pressure of the pubhc debt, had till now enforced 
 a frugality that had kept the offices of the gen- 
 eral government eminently clear of" the herd of 
 cormorants, that, like carrion crows about a pu- 
 trid carcass, persist in cursing with their pestif- 
 erous presence the government wdiose abun- 
 dant resources are fitted to gratify their insa- 
 tiate and undiscriminating appetites. The conse- 
 quence was that ability and faithfulness to pub- 
 lic trust were the practical and recognized pass- 
 ports to not over-paying offices. But now, a 
 plethoric treasury, ample resources, a practi- 
 cally extinguished national debt, the vast and 
 increasing number of public functionaries, called 
 for by the rapidly-increasing area of settled ter- 
 ritory, all contributed to render the period of 
 Jackson's administration preeminently tempting 
 for the ingress of a plundering horde to the 
 multiplied, and still multiplying subordinate offi- 
 ces in the gift of the chief executive. 
 
 1^ 
 
164 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 To this peculiarity of the times, add the pe- 
 culiarity of President Jackson's personal charac- 
 ter as put forth in the aphorism which he un- 
 blushingly established as a ruling law in respect 
 to political contestants, — " To the victors belong 
 the spoils," — and we have only to attribute to 
 the community around him an ordinary amount 
 of corruptibility, in order to predicate of his po- 
 litical adherents, and of his and their successors, 
 qualifications for office and deportment in office, 
 exactly the reverse of w^hat characterized their 
 predecessors. 
 
 From this time forward, the grand aim and 
 study of every political man necessarily became, 
 first, the art of controlling voters ; and second, 
 the art of counteracting the efforts of rivals 
 similarly employed. 
 
 Perhaps the purgatorial fires of the present 
 war, and the enormous incumbrance of the re- 
 sulting war-debt, are the easiest, and the only 
 agencies capable of reversing the prevalent 
 prostitutions of political functions, that have 
 been induced under the late succession of so- 
 called Democratic administrations. 
 
 A galaxy of preeminently able statesmen, 
 who defended the national interests at that 
 time, coerced the administration into some de- 
 cent regard for appearances. This induced con- 
 cealment of those corruptions which would 
 
POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 165 
 
 Otherwise have shocked the moral sense of a 
 hitherto comparatively virtuous people ; ■^'^ and 
 It also led to the deeper and more thorou-h 
 plantmg of the principles to which the then 
 prevalent party owed its strength; so that a lon- 
 ger tmie was secured for the germinatino- of 
 those principles, and the people were gradually 
 and msensibly accustomed to practices of politi- 
 cal fraud from which they would otherwise have 
 strongly revolted. 
 
 Those statesmen were occupied in defendino- 
 the Constitution and the first principles of the 
 government, from assaults that came thick and 
 ast upon them, under" the august profession of 
 the policy of the administration ; while in fact 
 said a.ssaults were really a blind, to divert atten- 
 tion from what was really the policy of the ad- 
 ministration, namely, the prostituting of all the 
 powers of government to party purposes,— to ' 
 the emolument and immunity of that line of 
 succession which was to be filled with the most 
 active and least-principled individuals who should 
 rise to the surface in that polluted caldron, the 
 so-called Democratic organization. 
 
 .eTo^/oi^r^-::^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 one or both were firp nrn^f h„;i r i , "^""^^''^y^^ ^} nre. And as 
 
166 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 Had this principle been discerned and dem- 
 onstrated in the first place, and held up before 
 the public gaze till the last, to the exclusion of 
 all other issues, its disastrous operation might, 
 perhaps, to some extent, have been averted. 
 But the fatal error of the able men who de- 
 fended the Constitution and the interests of the 
 country, Avas, to join issue with their opponents 
 upon various political questions, and argue their 
 time, breath, and power, away on these, while 
 the real source of danger was almost undis- 
 cerned and unresisted ; and, as for the particular 
 political questions argued, the so-called Demo- 
 cratic leaders would adopt or abandon any and 
 all of them as best suited their one ruling aim. 
 Perhaps with the increasing resources and 
 necessarily increasing expenditures of the gov- 
 ernment, an air of lavish looseness would have 
 crept in, under an executive of the most frugal 
 principles. But to anticipate the coming change 
 from poverty to afiluence, to obtain the reins 
 of government at this particular juncture, and 
 so dispose of all the patronage at command, 
 both legitimate and factitious, as to lay the 
 foundations deep and broad for perpetuating 
 power in that particular party, by systematic 
 corruption, — this was the function of the Loco- 
 foco, or so-called Democratic, organization, and 
 displays its inimitable genius. 
 
XXX. 
 
 SOME OF THE MODES IN WHICH THESE PRINCIPLES OPERATED. 
 
 Under the administration of General Jackson, 
 during two successive terms of four years each, 
 followed immediately by that of Van Buren, the 
 Vice-president of his second term and the suc- 
 cessor of his choice, w^hose avo^ved ambition it 
 was to '^ follow in the footsteps of his illustrious 
 predecessor," the characteristic principle and pol- 
 icy of the party of wdiich these two men may 
 w ith propriety be said to have been the founders, 
 became confirmed and influential beyond the 
 reach of permanent and successful resistance. 
 Some of the details of its operation require to 
 be examined. 
 
 First : its eJBfects upon the political periodical 
 press were such as to command the devotion at 
 first of a large and influential number, and event- 
 ually, of a large majority, of the newspapers, 
 wdiich were almost the only source of political 
 information for the people, especially in the older 
 of the Northern States. This devotion was 
 evinced by such a. universal and persistent sup- 
 pression of whatever was damaging, such a mag- 
 
 167 
 
168 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 nificent presentation of whatever was favorable 
 to the party, such a warping and falsification of 
 current historj^, that a discriminating and disin- 
 terested foreigner, attached to one of the lega- 
 tions at Washington, on inquiring of one of 
 Van Buren's friends for the best journal of their 
 party, felt himself compelled to reject every- 
 thing that could be brought forward, as unfit to 
 be read by any fair-minded man. It was the 
 policy of the leaders of this party, to keep it as 
 isolated and distinct as possible. Its voters were, 
 as far as practicable, inspired with feelings of 
 animosity toward all poHtical opponents, and 
 with feelings of intolerance for any version of 
 facts, other than such as emanated from their 
 own party press. Under these circumstances, 
 the operation of such a party periodical litera- 
 ture could not be difficult to predict. It must 
 put an enormous despotic power into the hands 
 of those who, by controlling the patronage of 
 the general government, dictated the utterances 
 of that party press. It must have educated, 
 and it did educate, the common voters of that 
 party, unquestioningly and unwaveringly, to sub- 
 mit to whatever of dictation came to them 
 through their recognized party leaders. These 
 leaders they were induced to regard as the only 
 true and trusty patriots and statesmen, while all 
 
POLITICAL PERVERSIONS. 169 
 
 besides were fools and knaves. Their love of 
 
 COUNTRY WAS THUS TR.INSMUTED INTO LOVE OF PARTY, 
 
 and many of them were brought sincerely to 
 believe that the sum of all impending public 
 ^ calamities would inevitably follow the transfer 
 of the treasury keys to other than the hands of 
 their own party magnates. The editors of these 
 partisan journals were led to expect, and, for the 
 most part, were eventually made to experience, 
 that it was not unprofitable to serve their politi- 
 cal masters. 
 
 At the South, and in portions of the Western 
 States, where the common people were less edu- 
 cated, less was done by the press, and more by 
 popular orators. These were indoctrinated, and 
 toned by their chief-?, and m.ade in their sev- 
 eral localities to perform the functions else- 
 where assigned to a subsidized and unprinci- 
 pled press. 
 
 Second : in pursuance of the same general 
 party policy, and by the application of similar 
 instrumentalities, the foreign-born population 
 were taken hold on, and their political influence 
 secured to a cause about which they knew noth- 
 ing, but that its adherents flattered their preju- 
 dices, pandered to their vices, talked more loudly 
 in favor of licentious freedom, and dealt out to 
 them more of the dictation to which they had 
 
 15 
 
170 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 been accustomed in tlieir native monarchies, 
 than anybody else presumed to do. 
 
 Third : the terms Democracy and Democratic 
 were made, with some success, to play a magnifi- 
 cent part in covering up and denying the real 
 attitude and aims of the fraternity; while the 
 general plan was adopted of bringing into the 
 connection not only the foreign-born, but all the 
 loiver, less intelligent^ more vicious, hlind, and violent 
 portions of the luhole population, and of arraying them 
 in hostile prejudice against the more principled, intelli- 
 gent, and discreet, dubbing the latter as aristo- 
 crats. 
 
 The plan of appropriating the United States 
 revenues as a reward for party services operated 
 with such effect that the party often found itself 
 in such undisputed power as to be able to resort 
 to some obviously iniquitous and injurious dis- 
 plays of power, for the purpose of driving from 
 its ranks the more intelligent and conscientious 
 portion of the people, of bringing upon itself 
 such opposition as would serve as a pretext for 
 inspiring its own blind adherents Avith increased 
 degrees of party violence and hate, and thus 
 widening the difference, and aggravating the hos- 
 tility that prevailed between those who were 
 within and those who were without the bounda- 
 ries of this party organization. This made the 
 
PARTY ENGINEERING. 171 
 
 position of their own office-holding, office-seeking, 
 adherents more obviously distinct and desperate, 
 and liad the effect of obtaining from them more 
 desperate and persevering exertions to perforin 
 their assigned part of carrying the elections. 
 
 Fourth : applying improved modes of carrying 
 important elections became an important branch 
 of occupation for the ablest minds in the frater- 
 nity. Executive abilities of the highest order 
 were called into exercise in this department. The 
 subordination of parts was rendered as complete 
 almost as in a mihtary organization. Writing 
 and speaking abilities of the highest order were 
 employed and paid for. A fixed per centage 
 on their salaries was regularly exacted from 
 those who enjoyed the gift of salaried offices in 
 the services of the government ; contracts for 
 government supplies and services were so man- 
 aged as to yield immense sums for party pur- 
 poses, and when these sources of supply were 
 insufficient, magnificent defalcations were now 
 and then resorted to. 
 
 Such was the state of self-control and disci- 
 pline, throughout the party, that a sublime reti- 
 cence sometimes marked the incubation of their 
 most desperate and decisive operations. 
 
 The surveying of the whole field of contest, 
 and the husbanding of resources, so as to neglect 
 
172 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 all those parts where their own party was so 
 strong as to make success certain without effort, 
 and also those parts where the opposition was 
 so strong as to render effort hopeless, and centre 
 all available influences on those few fulcral 
 points where defeat would be fatal to the party 
 sustaining it, is one of the highest attainments 
 that had been advanced to, by this colossal com- 
 bination of perverted governmental powers, 
 prostituted to the perpetuation of power in a 
 corrupt political party organization. 
 
 It is in violent struggles to carry such limited 
 localities which exert a decisive influence on 
 extensive elections, that fraud, perjury, and cor- 
 rupt practices were more frequently resorted to. 
 
 At a certain time, not far from the close of 
 General Jackson's second official term, while the 
 administration party and their opponents were 
 very nearly balanced in the lower house, the 
 seat of a member from Pennsylvania fell vacant, 
 perhaps by death. An election was held to fill 
 that vacancy. It was of very great importance 
 to the administration party to carry that election. 
 The people of Pennsylvania, despite the falsifica- 
 tions of the party press and speakers, knew 
 themselves to have been damaged to the extent 
 of many millions of dollars by recent acts of the 
 executive, in depriving their iron works of the 
 
A SPECIMEN. 173 
 
 benefit of a protective tariff, and in destroying 
 the United States Bank, which iiad always been 
 in their chief city. Hence it was known that 
 the vote in the vacant district would be heavily 
 against the administration. 
 
 John B. Clark, at that time a carriage-maker 
 of Gettysburg, Pa., an active politician of the 
 administration party, — who afterwards removed 
 to southern Missouri, was there elected to Con- 
 gress for two or three successive terms, took a 
 prominent part in defeating the election of Sher- 
 man of Ohio to the speakership of the second 
 Congress of Buchanan's term, and was afterward 
 expelled from the House for being in arms 
 against the government at the battle of Boon- 
 ville, — took an active part in carrying the elec- 
 tion to fill the above-named vacancy in Pa., of 
 which, some years afterwards, he gave the pres- 
 ent writer the following account : " We imported 
 voters from Baltimore, New York, and Quebec ; 
 some of them we boarded on expense for weeks, 
 or perhaps months, before the election. Some 
 of the smartest of them voted four times in one 
 day, and perjured themselves every time, and 
 we paid them for it." Clark also went on to 
 describe the process by which the State elections 
 were systematically controlled by party leaders 
 
 of the same dye, and the expenses of the opera- 
 is* 
 
1T4 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 tion defrayed from the profits of a preconcerted 
 plan of colluding to plunder the public treasury. 
 
 A volume mio;ht be filled with authentic 
 accounts of similar transactions, (perhaps instead 
 of a volume I should have said a library,) but 
 this must suffice as a specimen/^ 
 
 While such transactions were being carried 
 on, the administration press was hurling such a 
 storm of abuse and vilification on their oppo- 
 nents as to lead disinterested persons to sup- 
 pose that whatever of the above and like his- 
 toric truth was uttered by those opponents was 
 so uttered under the excitement of irritated 
 feeling, and to repel assault. 
 
 * See Appendix E. 
 
XXXI. 
 
 RESULTS OF THE OPEKATION OF THE ABOVE-XAMED PRIN- 
 CIPLES. 
 
 The common masses of a political party, thus 
 combined and dealt with, must of necessity be 
 rapidly preparing to become the instrument of 
 anything its leaders see fit to employ it about; 
 whether the enterprise be the consummation of 
 some gigantic treason against the government, 
 or whether it be the more quiet and protracted 
 process of controlling the elections and appro- 
 priating the public revenues for the benefit of 
 their party leaders. But the effects which such 
 a party organization, so combined and controll- 
 ed, must produce, beyond the boundaries of its 
 own enclosure, deserve examination. 
 
 That portion of the community who least 
 appreciate the sacredness or worth of the elec- 
 tive franchise, together with those of more intel- 
 ligence who are least disposed to see that fran- 
 chise guarded and preserved, constitute the com- 
 bination, which, from its preeminent strength 
 and efficiency, as well as from its being the first 
 
 176 
 
176 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 of its kind, deserves to be designated the parti/. 
 Those who are outside the boundaries of this 
 party organization suddenly find themselves ex- 
 cluded from almost all voice and participation in 
 the affairs of government. The limits which 
 patriotism, self-respect, common justice, and fair 
 dealing have hitherto set to party violence and 
 usurpation have been spurned and disregarded 
 by their opponents. By means before unheard- 
 of and unsuspected, the casual majority of the 
 
 hour HAVE CHANGED THEIR TRANSIENT ASCENDENCY 
 INTO A PERMANENT USURPATION OF THE REINS OF 
 
 GOVERNMENT; and those who are left outside of 
 the usurping party have nothing left for them 
 to do but to pay taxes. Their only alternative 
 is, to organize and attempt to operate a rival 
 party. This they attempt to do. 
 
 But they are not equal to their teachers at 
 organizing. They have no such pliant mass to 
 act on, no taste or disposition to act the tyrant 
 and the demagogue over it if they had. Dec- 
 ades of peace and affluence have banished fear 
 and nursed presumption in the popular mind 
 respecting national security ; and patriotism has 
 almost died out for lack of exercise. The pub- 
 lic press and public speakers have been so far 
 suborned that it is next to impossible to make 
 any extensive impression on the public mind 
 
DISCOURAGEMENTS OF PATRIOTISM. 177 
 
 respecting the existing state of things or the 
 future prospect. No argument that can be 
 educed can counteract among the masses the 
 influence of interested leaders, bent on the at- 
 tainment of office by the exercise of party zeal- 
 Falsehood and vituperation are used by the 
 dominant party to the wildest extent, and with 
 the effect to create an impression of more or 
 less general extent that their opponents lie as hadlij 
 as they do themselves, and are as dishonest and cor- 
 rupt. This general impression that all political 
 men are corrupt, and that all their utterances, 
 being designed for party ends, are as likely to 
 be false as true, seems to cut off the last chan- 
 nel through which any effort can be directed to 
 retrieve the general demoralization and dcspotiz- 
 ing of the popular masses. The intelHgent and 
 patriotic seem doomed to sit down helpless, and 
 see the dreadful work go on, till the madness be- 
 comes so excessive as to produce a reaction and 
 correct itself Twice did the evil run to this ex- 
 tent, and twice did this corrective reaction take 
 place, and the dominant party in 1840 and in 
 1848 simply through the excess of its obviously 
 corrupt maladministration was defeated in its at- 
 tempts to elect its party candidate to the presi- 
 dency. And twice did a very singular interposi- 
 tion of divine Providence, or some assassinating 
 
178 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 instrument of human designing, cut suddenly 
 short the lives of the men who were elected to 
 the chief magistracy contrary to the wish and 
 purpose of the leaders of the otherwise invaria- 
 bly successful party. Thus leaving that party a 
 practically unbroken series of successes from the 
 inaugurating of General Jackson, in 1828, to 
 1860, when its leaders, assembled in convention 
 at Charleston for traitorous purposes, elected to 
 defeat themselves ; and, as a consequence, in the 
 following year Abraham Lincoln was called on 
 to do the best he could in an effort to gather up 
 and reunite the palsied and putrescent frag- 
 ments of a severed Union. 
 
 In the mean time, the portion of the people 
 who had been left out in the formation and con- 
 tinuance of the dominant party, seeing the 
 worse than uselessness of attempting to oper- 
 ate a rival party organization, abandoned the ef- 
 fort. The more able and discriminating of them 
 retired from concern in public affairs. The 
 more corruptible of them at last joined the 
 dominant party, or, in combination with such as 
 occasionally fell off from that party organiza- 
 tion, on principles more or less allied to those 
 of the old parent, formed the succession of nas- 
 cent, imperfect, and shortlived party organisms 
 which have successively borne the honor of be- 
 
NASCENT PARTY ORGANISMS. 179 
 
 ing the opposition, since the Whigs disbanded, 
 one of which cauijrht the crumblino; o-overnment 
 
 O CD O 
 
 and happened to have the national administra- 
 tion fall into its hands when, at the close of 
 Buchanan's term, the party that elected him, 
 true to its principles, mature in its tendencies, 
 with traitorous intent, achieved its suicide. 
 
XXXII. 
 
 THE PROSTRAIION RESULTING TO A PATRIOTIC MINORITY, 
 FROM THE USURPATION OF A DESPOTIC FEW, CONTROL- 
 LING A MAJORITY. 
 
 In case of hopeless and unendurable abuse of 
 power, under a monarchical government, armed 
 rebellion affords a natural, and at least tempora- 
 rily successful, method of redress. As long as 
 the monarchical form of government is contin- 
 ued, it can hardly be said to be a revolution for 
 a people inured to being dictated to, to change 
 one master for another. But in a democracy, 
 revolution, when once begun, tends strongly to 
 become chronic. Besides this, when the major- 
 ity of the voters can be irredeemably cajoled by 
 a succession of graceless villains, w hose vocation 
 it is to manage voters for their own and their 
 party's benefit, the last of human remedies ap- 
 pears to have been exhausted. With such a 
 cajoled or cajolable majority, a revolution — un- 
 less it be a revolution back to despotism — can 
 accomplish nothing, unless it be, if possible, a 
 nearer approach to anarchy, or a chronic condi- 
 tion of revolt and intestine war. 
 
 180 
 
SHRINKING FROM POLITICAL DUTY. 181 
 
 Under this condition of affairs, the prevalent 
 practical course with us has been, for men of 
 patriotism and ability to abandon politics and all 
 practical concern in governmental matters, and 
 to devote themselves to private business and 
 personal and family aggrandizement, in other 
 lines of action ; consoling themselves with the 
 reflection that the people rule, and have every- 
 thing their own way. 
 
 It may seem hard to say that more than this 
 is required of a democratic member of a demo- 
 cratic community. Yet the events of the cur- 
 rent crisis compel us to admit, and to act on the 
 admission, that much more* is required ; even 
 the temporary resigning of almost every per- 
 sonal right, and the submitting of ourselves to 
 military discipline, with the certainty of experi- 
 encing very great hardships, privations, and suf- 
 ferings, with the imminent risk of losing health, 
 limb, and life itself What is the conclusion? 
 This, namely, if the privilege of existence as a 
 democratic member of a democratic community 
 is liable to cost all this, in a crisis that imperils 
 the nation's life, it is reasonable, and no more 
 than reasonable, that, to avert the occurrence of 
 such a crisis, something more should be done 
 than merely to submit to the majority, and then, 
 besides this passive duty, turn one's entire atten- 
 
182 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 tion, concern^, and effort to the work of personal 
 and family aggrandizement. The efforts of de- 
 signing demagogues shoidd he counteracted tvith a 
 liberal jjortion of the jpersistencg ^ the zeal, the per- 
 sonal hazard and the cost, ivith ivhich, ivhen the crisis 
 arnves, ive are obliged to contend for national exist- 
 ence on the tented field, and in the battle's strife. 
 The inadequacy of public legislation, the mal- 
 administration of public officers, the deliberate 
 frauds and falsehoods of partisan politicians, 
 combinations to defeat the ends of justice and 
 the achieving of the public weal, should be un- 
 covered and explained by men who are known 
 to have higher ends in view than to fatten at 
 the public crib. 
 
 It were better that the code duello, with all 
 its evils, should prevail than that millions of 
 voters in our democratic government should be 
 fed by the half century together on nothing but 
 the political fiction and falsehood which design- 
 ing knaves, who are incapable of any higher 
 aim than to plunder the public treasury for per- 
 sonal and party benefit, see fit to deal out to 
 them, till another war like the present, with the 
 slaughter of its tens of thousands shall result. 
 
 Perhaps no other operating cause, but the 
 throes of expiring despotism, could have pro- 
 duced such a colossal and infuriate combination 
 
PENALTY OF NEGLECTED DUTY. 183 
 
 as is now struggling to overthrow democracy in 
 this country. But had those on ivhom it devolved 
 to sustain democracy in this coiintiyj for the past 
 quarter of a centiirjj^ Jjeen more persistent and in- 
 quiring, and less presuming^ imerile^ and supine^ the 
 disaster tchich the coiintrg is noiu suffering could never 
 have occurred. It may be true that no motive 
 cause but the throes of expiring despotism could 
 have induced the present assault on the life of 
 our nation ; but it is also true that without 
 the powerful collateral aid of a despotic and 
 traitorous party of Northern citizens- to assist 
 them, the Southern despots who are now threat- 
 ening our capitol and invading the Free States 
 with an army of a hundred thousand men, could 
 scarcely have survived the first year of their 
 onslaught. 
 
 One of the most extensively disastrous ef- 
 fects produced outside of its own limits, by the 
 party on whose chronicle we are dwelling, was 
 the obliterating of the public conscience and 
 the thorough spread of corrupt principles and 
 practices in respect to everything political; so 
 that material impres-sed with political honesty 
 can hardly be found, wherewith to constitute a 
 ruling majority, even when the despotized fra- 
 ternity which has ruled the country for the past 
 thirty years shall have been displaced. 
 
184- NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSIOiV. 
 
 How far the presumptuous supineness and pue- 
 rility of our Northern statesmen are legitimate 
 results of the rich and hitherto almost costless 
 immunities conferred by our system of free gov- 
 ernment, and to what extent they are justly at- 
 tributable to the governmentless mythologies 
 which obtain among us so extensively in the 
 religious w^orld, are questions that may be sug- 
 gested here, but which it lies not w^ithin the 
 assigned limits of these pages to discuss. 
 
 Vv'hen it comes to be the unmistakable testi- 
 mony of current history, that there is not force 
 enough in our national administration to punish 
 the most flagrant malfeasance in office, or the 
 most gigantic fiauds, it is the opinion of the 
 present writer that a little judicious blood-let- 
 ting, af er the munner of WiUiam Tell, would be 
 for the public health. And tbat wdien this or 
 other remedial action is deferred to the all-ab- 
 sorbing vocation of personal and fimily aggran- 
 dizement, there exists a festering plethora which 
 betokens disastrous sickness of the civil system. 
 It is a sign of unhealthiness in the system, when 
 the powerlessness of public justice can be calcu- 
 lated on only by the baldest villains. " It is " 
 sometimes " expedient that one man should die 
 for the people, that the whole nation perish 
 not." 
 
XXXIII. • 
 
 HOW THE JACKSON-BUCHANAN PARTY BECAME IDENTIFIED 
 WITH SECESSION. 
 
 Andrew Jackson was not a Secessionist ; Martin 
 Van Buren was not a Secessionist. How, then, 
 came it to pass that the party, of which these 
 men were the founders and fashioners, should 
 become a powerful and efficient instrument in 
 the hands of Jefferson Davis and his coadjutors 
 for destroying the United States government? 
 
 Jackson, Van Buren, their compeers and suc- 
 cessors of the same political school, down to 
 James Buchanan, did one thing ; namely, they 
 combined, kept up, and operated, a political party 
 on the following principles : among the mem- 
 bership, unqualified devotion to the party and 
 unquestioning obedience to its leaders, with un- 
 scrupulous and vindictive hostility to every one 
 who opposed them ; among the leaders, the 
 usurpation of the government, for the sake of 
 its honors and emoluments, to be appropriated, 
 first, to perpetuate the usurpation, and, second, 
 to aggrandize themselves individually. 
 
 Patriotism and justice, veracity and self-respect, 
 
 16» 185 
 
186 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 in short, every sentiment more elevated or sa- 
 cred than the honor jDroverbial among thieves, 
 was effectually replaced by a bhnd, unscrupulous 
 devotion to performing the dictates of party 
 leaders. Instead of fear in o; for the destruction 
 of their country, and instead of being purposed, 
 at all costs, to avert any detriment or disaster 
 that might threaten the precious civil institu- 
 tions which their fathers bequeathed, and to 
 which they ow^ed their unparalleled prosperity, 
 the damnable political demagogues who assem- 
 bled at the national capitol, under guise of exec- 
 utive administration and legislature, had brought 
 the popular masses of their party to a state of 
 mind in which they feared nothing but the defeat 
 of their party candidate, no matter who he 
 might be, and were perfectly purposed at every 
 cost to defend nothinr/ but the succession of mis- 
 creants, who should be designated in secret party 
 conclave to succeed each other, in wieldino* the 
 usurped governmental powers for party purposes, 
 and in disposing of the public treasure for per- 
 sonal aggrandizement, — a state of mind in which 
 they could see nothing offensive but the real or 
 imoginar}^ faults of political men who belonged 
 not to their party, nothing to be feared but the 
 exposure, breaking up, and reform of that deep 
 and dark and long-continued series of atrocities, 
 
FBUITS OF SO-CALLED DEMOCRACY. 187 
 
 into supporting and defending which themselves 
 had been betrayed. To avert these feared re- 
 sults, no sacrifice was too costly, no application 
 too assiduous. 
 
 James Buchanan and Isaac Toucey, two despi- 
 cable lickspittles of the perjured crew who ruled 
 over them, and used them and their official 
 power to initiate the present dreadfully disastrous 
 War, are but mature and ripe specimens of what 
 the principles and practices of their long domi- 
 nant party have tended, more or less effectually, 
 to make of every Northern man, who, for the last 
 thirty years, has consented to be counted in its 
 numbers. 
 
 The results, to the Union, of the official con- 
 duct of James Buchanan and Isaac Toucey, — 
 the deliberate giving up of the army and navy, 
 the forts and arsenals of the country, into the 
 hands of conspirators leagued to destroy the 
 government. — are nothing more nor less than 
 the results which the principles and practices of 
 their party have directly, and more or less effec- 
 tually, tended to produce, ever since that party 
 first received its characteristic impress from the 
 consecutive administrations of Andrew Jackson 
 and Martin Yan Buren. The truth of this re- 
 mark is amply attested by the pertinacity with 
 which — notwithstanding the defection of such 
 
188 NAtUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 men as Butler, and Corcoran, Busteed, D. Dick- 
 inson, Shepley of Maine, McClernand of Indiana, 
 and hundreds more of the ablest and most hon- 
 est that ever were caught in the meshes of a 
 colossal, corrupt, and traitorous party organiza- 
 tion — the major part of the masses of that 
 party, up to the fall elections of 1863, under 
 the lead of C. L. Yallandigham, Fernando Wood, 
 and Horatio Seymour, still adhere to the cause 
 of their old Southern leaders/-' 
 
 The Southern oligarchy under Jefferson Davis 
 conspired to overthrow the government, that 
 they might obtain a large fragment from its 
 ruins whereon to erect an empire sacred to des- 
 potism in general and to African slavery in par- 
 ticular, from whence to fulminate destruction on 
 all antagonists, to the boundaries of the conti- 
 nent, and to the end of time. 
 
 It will be seen that there is no very positive 
 contrariety between the aims of the two frater- 
 nities. Up to the time at which the Southern 
 conspiracy matured into armed treason, nothing 
 was necessary but for the conspiring party to 
 conceal their ulterior design, and the two frater- 
 nities were one in spirit and in action, straining 
 every nerve to beat down their common oppo- 
 nents. Up to this point, the only difference be- 
 
 * See Appendix F. 
 
CONFLUENCE OF COGNATE PARTIES. 189 
 
 tween the two affiliated parties was, that the 
 Southern wins: w^ould and the Northern wingr 
 would not prosecute their common vocation to 
 the point of armed rebellion. 
 
 But the same qualities which had given South- 
 ern men a ruling ascendency in the government 
 of the nation had, nearly or quite from its ori- 
 gin, given them a ruling ascendency in the Jack- 
 son-Buchanan party. This ascendenc}^ they had 
 used to impart to their subalterns and partisans, 
 particularly at the North, a party spirit of the 
 utmost virulence, and habits of party action to 
 the last degree violative of the dictates of honor, 
 honesty, justice, and patriotism. So that, up to 
 the time at wdiich these Southern leaders of the 
 party threw off all disguise and assumed the 
 attitude of armed rebellion, their Northern coad- 
 jutors. President Buchanan among the foremost 
 of them, wxre ready and earnest to engage in 
 anything, no matter how dishonorable, unjust, 
 mendacious, or treasonable, so long as it did not 
 expose their own necks to the halter, and they 
 could be shown some plausible reason to believe 
 that the proposed measure would result to the 
 benefit of their political party. Hence the dis- 
 persion of the United States army and navy, 
 the rifling of the arsenals and treasury, and 
 the almost utterly defenceless exposure of the 
 
190 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 Southern forts, mint, and shipyards, preparatory 
 to opening the present hostilities, which prepa- 
 ration James Buchanan assisted in accomplish- 
 ing, and his Northern adherents assented to, 
 for the benefit of their political party, and in 
 obedience to their political leaders. 
 
 At the time of the attempted execution of 
 the nullification project, this school of treason, 
 of which the present seceding body is the out- 
 growth, was confined to South Carolina. The 
 issue on which this project worked was the tariff. 
 The effort was to unite the South in resistance 
 to the government on the ground, as was pre- 
 tended, that the general government, under the 
 influence of Northern men, would tax Southern 
 imports for the sake of protecting Northern 
 manufactories. 
 
 Upon the suppression of this conspiracy, by 
 the prompt energy of President Jackson, it is 
 matter of history that the defeated leaders of 
 that scheme took counsel, and determined to 
 change the issue from the tariff to the slavery 
 question, assured that the whole South could be 
 united on this latter issue, and on nothing else. 
 The doctrine of State sovereignty, or the superi- 
 ority of State authority over the authority of the 
 general government, was from this time propa- 
 gated with the utmost industry, especially at the 
 
THE ISSUE RENDERED SECTIONAL. 191 
 
 South, for the poisoning of the popular mind, 
 and to prepare a foundation upon which, at the 
 proper time, the Secession edifice could be reared. 
 From this time, also, no doubt, it was that the 
 clique of traitors who remodelled their plans after 
 the failure of their South Carolina nullification, 
 saw the important benefit which would result to 
 them by having a general political party under 
 their control, selected the Jackson-Buchanan 
 party as best suited to answer their ends, gath- 
 ered themselves into it as honest bona fide mem- 
 bers, took it under their control, and began to 
 manage it for the accomplishment of their own 
 purposes. 
 
 When, after the death of President Taylor, 
 and the defeat of the Whigs in attempting to 
 elect his immediate successor, the Whig party 
 gave up its organization and became practically 
 extinct, these Southern leaders of the Jackson- 
 Buchanan party, by preventing either the re-for- 
 mation of the Whig or the successful organization 
 of any other opposition party in the Southern 
 States, achieved this important result ; namely, 
 that the opposition which was raised against them, 
 if it ever assumed a party form and organization, 
 must of necessity be a sectional party, confined 
 to the Northern States. This result they found 
 themselves able to accomplish by virtue of the 
 
192 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 despotic control they already possessed over the 
 non-slave-holding population of the Southern 
 States. 
 
 So remote were the Northern people from any- 
 thing like ostensible monarchy, that the dictation 
 of this clique of despots came to them like the 
 '^ Vox populi, vox Dei/' by which the Democrat is 
 always governed. And when they cried against 
 Abraham Lincoln and his supporters, " Black 
 Rej)ublican," " Abolitionist," the latter seemed to 
 shrink back and shudder, as if they had been 
 rebuked by a voice from heaven. Whereas, the 
 seven and three-fourths millions of non-slave- 
 holding whites in the South had scarcely more 
 to do with originating or reiterating this outcry, 
 or with inducing the sectionalized state of the 
 anti-despotic party, than had the black slaves 
 that served under the same masters. 
 
 % 
 
XXXIV. 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF THE PART PERFORMED BY THE JACK- 
 SON-BUCHANAN PARTY IN BRINGING ABOUT THE PRESENT 
 WAR. 
 
 On this branch of our general subject we re- 
 sume as follows: — The disposition and power 
 for despotic usurpation was produced and nour- 
 ished into strength in this Republic, by having 
 an abject mass of Africans consigned to perpet- 
 ual bondage by the laws and Constitution of the 
 country as commonly interpreted. 
 
 This disposition and power for despotic usur- 
 pation first manifested itself in the form of 
 overt treason, in South Carolina, during the ad- 
 ministration of President Jackson, in an attempt 
 to nullify the laws of Congress by authority of 
 the individual State. This attempted treason 
 against his government was promptly suppressed 
 by Jackson ; who also founded a political party, 
 which, without literally infracting the Constitu- 
 tion, usurped, and, with the exception of two 
 brief and partial interruptions, for thirty years, 
 held the United States government for its own 
 use and behoof; and this it succeeded in accom- 
 
 17 198 
 
194 XATUHAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION. 
 
 plishing by virtue of distributing the govern- 
 ment revenues as plunder to be divided out in 
 reward for party services. 
 
 This usurping party, though distributed 
 through the Northern as well as through the 
 Southern States, like the creneral government, 
 was under the practical and permanent control 
 of leading Southerners. At least they soon 
 placed themselves in such control. 
 
 As the natural tendencies to despotic usur- 
 pation developed in these leading Southerners, 
 and as the necessities of their situation pressed 
 them more and more, they formed the intelh- 
 gent design to break up the government, and 
 on a portion of its ruins found an empire for 
 themselves, free from the embarra.ssing presence 
 of a democratic people and democratic institu- 
 tions. Next to this in point of time came the 
 purpose of using the party which Jackson 
 founded, to demoralize and divide the North ; 
 at the same time extinguishing all organized op- 
 position in the Southern States. They did 
 much to conceal their real aim. by successfully 
 monopolizing to themselves and to their adher- 
 ents the political appellatives '•'Democrats'" and 
 '•' Democracy." They despotized and depraved 
 their own part v --in the North, bv accustoming 
 them to march under training file-leaders, as 
 
THE ADYEXT OF TEEASON. 195 
 
 near upon the verge of treason as they conld 
 go and not precipitate war. They demoralized 
 that portion of the Northern people whom they 
 could not control, by rendering political integ- 
 rity useless, and perfidious corruption practi- 
 cally unobjectionable. 
 
 When they had matured their arrangements 
 and completed preliminary operations in these 
 several directions, having also disposed of the 
 treasury, army, navy, arms, and mihtarj^ stores 
 of government to their satisfaction, they then 
 deliberately broke up their own political party, 
 thereby throwing the responsibilities of the dis- 
 mantled government into the green hands of an 
 ill-connected sectional minority, opened their 
 overwhelming batteries on Fort Sumter, and 
 advanced their legions by rail to beleaguer 
 Washington. 
 
 The elements of success had hardly been mis- 
 calculated on the part of the traitors. Their 
 sway over the Southern masses was absolute 
 and unconditional, while the whole North did 
 not contain a man in whom any considerable 
 portion of the people felt that they could con- 
 fide the conduct of public affairs in the crisis 
 that was forced on them; there was scarcely 
 known to be a military officer who could credi- 
 tably handle an army of ten thousand men; 
 
196 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 there was a natural certainty that the best of 
 such officers as should be called out by the 
 emergency would be sacrificed to the jealousy 
 of rival aspirants ; the habits and character of 
 the Northern people were as remote as possi- 
 ble from warlike pursuits ; the interruption of 
 their gainful industry would double to them the 
 calamities of every campaign, irrespective of 
 victory or defeat ; it would be a slow and diffi- ^ 
 cult process to inspire such a people with any- 
 thing like martial spirit or enthusiasm ; the 
 conspirators had a political party more or less 
 reliably attached to them interspersed through- 
 out the North, with powerful influence to men- 
 ace the administration and counteract its efforts, 
 and ready to act as spies on every square mile 
 of Northern territory, in every regiment of sol- 
 diers, in many important positions of civil and 
 military trust, in either house of Congress, in 
 every executive department, and not improba- 
 bly, in the very bed-chamber of the Chief Mag- 
 istrate ; '^ the noted honesty and mildness of 
 Mr. Lincoln would give the conspirators exten- 
 sive immunity in traitorous crime and violence, 
 and the powerful prestige that pertains to a 
 bold, decided, severe, unrelenting course of ac- 
 
 * No suspicion is here intended to be thrown on any member of Presi- 
 dent Lincohi's family. 
 
SLIGHT MISCALCULATION. 197 
 
 tion ; and last, but not least, the inexperience 
 of those into whose hands the government must 
 be intrusted would be a source of certain and 
 extensive feebleness. The only points in which 
 the conspirators appear to have miscalculated, 
 were two : the unreliabiHty of their own cor- 
 rupted partisans in the North, and the exhaust- 
 lessness of the recuperative energies of a truly 
 democratic people. 
 
 In respect to the former of these two points, 
 the work of converting back the masses of a 
 great political party from democracy to despot- 
 ism must have been very imperfectly perform- 
 ed, being undertaken and carried on in the 
 midst of the most democratic community on 
 earth. There were multitudes of men in the 
 ranks of that party who would tread the verge 
 of treason to secure a party victory, while im- 
 der the influence of heated party feeling, and 
 excited by the presence of active leaders inces- 
 santly laboring to deceive them, who would still 
 refuse to make the damning plunge across that 
 boundary, merely to save the necks of their ab- 
 sent masters. The very injury that had been 
 done to their better principles might naturally 
 enough be expected at length to react against 
 the villains by whom they had been instructed. 
 
 Respecting the recovering power of a true 
 
 17* 
 
198 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION. 
 
 democracy, the world has had but little experi- 
 ence, and the truth in this regard would of ne- 
 cessity be slow to reach the attention or secure 
 the belief of a crew of half barbarous despots 
 battling for the extinction of all democracy, 
 until such time as they shall be privileged to 
 read that important truth evinced in the fact of 
 their own helpless overthrow. 
 
XXXV. 
 
 THE ABOLITIONISTS. 
 
 No history of the causes that contributed to 
 bring about the existing calamitous intestine 
 war will be complete, which does not give a 
 somewhat prominent consideration to the char- 
 acter and influence of the Abolitionists, techni- 
 cally so called. By this term I would be under- 
 stood to describe a sect of political religionists 
 who have made themselves conspicuous in the 
 Northern States for the last thirty years, as the 
 special advocates and champions of freedom and 
 morality in their bearings on slavery in the 
 Southern States. 
 
 The leaders of this sect, and of necessity its 
 members to a great extent, are distinguished for 
 a virulent rejection of the great truths of re- 
 vealed religion, while yet they are the exceed- 
 ingly zealous advocates of an indefinite and 
 variable code of deistical morals, framed in part 
 according to suggestions drawn from the same 
 sacred Scriptures whose supreme authority they 
 vehemently despise. The object of their deisti- 
 cal worship is usually represented by themselves 
 
 109 
 
200 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 as shorn of every lineament of vindictive justice, 
 and endowed with imperturbable, illimitable, in- 
 discriminate benevolence toward the members 
 of the human family, irrespective of moral char- 
 acter, acts or aims. 
 
 Of course, in a religion like this, the holding 
 of one's fellow-man in involuntary servitude 
 would be the sin of sins. It would partake al- 
 most of the heinousness of beef-eating under the 
 mythology of ancient Egypt. And the obvious 
 infirmity of the deit}^ of this modern sect would 
 remain to be made up to a great extent by the 
 zeal and activity of his worshippers. 
 
 We have elsewhere observed that the highly 
 religious character of the early settlers of New 
 England appears still in form to characterize 
 their descendants, even when the latter have 
 abandoned entirely the foundations on which 
 their fathers reared the structure of their relig- 
 ious faith and practice. Among these, the Abo- 
 litionists hold a prominent place. 
 
 We have also elsewhere remarked, that after 
 the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and 
 the freeing of the slaves in the Northern States, 
 while, under the influence of the rising cotton 
 trade, political sentiment in the South was verg- 
 ing back upon despotism, the principles and 
 practices of free government, "for better for 
 
LIBERTY TO EXCESS. 201 
 
 worse," were having unobstructed course, and 
 were workintj; out their natural tendencies with- 
 out impediment among the people of the North- 
 ern States. 
 
 Probably it never occurred to the people of 
 these States that there was any such thing as 
 excess in loving political liberty. And the world 
 may well wonder that there has been so little ; 
 that Agrarianism, and Fourierism, and Commun- 
 ism, and their kindred degenerations of legiti- 
 mate popular liberty, have had so few followers, 
 and have produced among us so small results ; 
 that constitutional civil authority has been so 
 generally respected, so entirely preserved, that 
 it remained for the representatives and abettors 
 of despotism to do the first acts that tended in 
 any material extent to mar or undermine the 
 goodly governmental structure which our repub- 
 lican ancestors bequeathed to us. But the class 
 we are contemplating, deeming themselves happy 
 in finding so prominent an object as Southern 
 slavery, against which to vent their zeal, and a 
 sentiment so universal, so deep-rooted, so blame- 
 less and unquestionable, as our inherited love of 
 popular liberty, to which they could appeal for 
 support and cooperation, soon made themselves 
 the prominent leaders and champions of all 
 
202 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 who could be excited to pursue that liberty to 
 excess. 
 
 The professedly Christian denominations who 
 really denied the truth of the revealed Script- 
 ures had by this time become numerous and in- 
 fluential. These had no objection to the Aboli- 
 tionists on account of their infidelity ; while 
 very many members of evangelical churches felt 
 their love of freedom so outraged by the fact of 
 existing slavery and its attendant evils, that they 
 forgot for a time their obligations of supreme 
 allegiance to the authority of divine Revelation, 
 and, with more or less sincerity, affiliated with 
 those who derided a divinity who was not up to 
 the times on the subject of human rights, and 
 cursed alike the producers and the product of a 
 civil Constitution which bound them to respect 
 the rights of those who held their fellow-men in 
 bondage. 
 
 Could the real character of the Abolitionists, 
 and the real weight of their influence, have been 
 known and admitted North and South, their due 
 space in history would have been less than it 
 now is. But circumstances peculiar to either 
 section, and illy understood in the otiier, con- 
 spired to render their influence on the aflairs of 
 the country peculiarly infelicitous, and to some 
 extent conducive to the present War. 
 
liberty's championship usurped. 203 
 
 Men brought up in the license of heathenism 
 are kept quiet by its depressing ignorance, if not 
 by the fetters of its superstition. But when one 
 who has enjoyed the light and health-giving in- 
 fluence of revealed religion, and has been educa- 
 ted under more or less of its restraints, casts 
 loose from its authority ; as he begins to deal 
 familiarly with things that other people rever- 
 ence, and to spurn the boundaries which others 
 never pass, in the estimation of undiscrimina- 
 ting multitudes, the noisy extravagance of his 
 diction, and the unembarrassed celerity, the 
 drunken freedom, of his mental gait are almost 
 sure to be mistaken for superior intelligence, 
 eloquence, and strength. 
 
 Thus it came about that the Abolitionists, 
 who were really indeflitigable in their labors, 
 acquired a prominence before the public mind, 
 and engrossed a share of attention, entirely 
 disproportioned to either their political or moral 
 strength. 
 
 So early and so effectually did they succeed 
 in taking under their patronage the universal 
 love of popular liberty in all its bearings on the 
 enslaved, that it became practically impossible 
 for any one, however true in his support of his 
 country's Constitution, or however firm in his 
 belief of the truths of revealed religion, to say 
 
204 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 or do anything tending to limit or withstand 
 pro-slavery aggression without becoming more 
 or less identified with these infidel leaders in 
 the estimation of the observant but uncom- 
 mitted public, particularly at the South. 
 
XXXVI. 
 
 MISCniEYOUS DIVERSITY OF VIEWS AS HELD NORTH AND 
 SOUTH RESPECTING THE ABOLITIONISTS. 
 
 Among the first requisites of permanent pop- 
 ular liberty are popular self-restraint, implicit 
 submission to constituted authorities, a sacred 
 regard for the rights of the minority. In the 
 Northern States, where popular liberty obtains 
 in its greatest perfection, this, as well as every 
 other requisite of that liberty is, and has long 
 been, largely possessed. It was this popular 
 self-restraint, this sacred regard for the rights of 
 the minority, that secured immunity to the Abo- 
 litionists, while they ranted and blazed against 
 the God of revelation, and the Constitution, and 
 founders of the government. 
 
 At the South, where popular liberty never did 
 prevail to any great extent, this popular self- 
 restraint not only did not exist, but the very 
 conception of such a thing was wanting. If 
 any minority there offended against the senti- 
 ments and Welshes of the majority, or of their 
 political leaders, it was "mob them," "lynch 
 them," "call a meeting, appoint a vigilance 
 
 18 205 
 
206 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 committee/' "tar and feather them" "duck 
 them," "cowhide them/' "shoot them/' "hang 
 them/' — such was the verdict, and such the 
 execution, and not unfrequently the execution 
 came first. The Southern people knew of no 
 motive hut cowardice or pusillanimity that could 
 prompt to a different course. When they be- 
 came aware of the conduct of the Abolitionists 
 at the North, and also that they were not seri- 
 ously interfered with, they of course concluded 
 that the majority of the Northern people were 
 of the same way of thinking, or too cowardly 
 and pusillanimous to resist. If some of the 
 more intelhgent Southerners ascertained that 
 these views which they took of the people of 
 the North were not correct, they lacked both 
 the ability and disposition to disabuse the public 
 mind. 
 
 The Abolitionists were regarded at the North 
 as a set of harmless fanatics, who made a great 
 deal of noise, but exerted very little influence, 
 and produced no direct practical results, and 
 would ultimately sink of their own weight if let 
 alone. The divine declaration, " They that honor 
 me I will honor, and they that despise me shall 
 be lightly esteemed/' has seldom been more ob- 
 viously or more conspicuously fulfilled, than in 
 the history of this class of persons. 
 
THE AFRICAN COLOXIZATIOXISTS. 207 
 
 As much of the real anti-slavery sentiment of 
 the EevoUitionary period as survived in the South 
 was early embodied in the Colonization Society, 
 an association which' aimed at and accomplished 
 a great work for the negroes by withstanding 
 the African slave-trade, by supplying a channel 
 in which whatever of anti-slavery feeHng existed 
 in the South could exert itself, by demonstrating 
 the capabihty of the negro race for improve- 
 ment, civilization, and self-government, and by 
 affording the masters who were disposed to 
 emancipate their slaves an opportunity to do so 
 with the prospect of the negroes being benefit- 
 ed by their freedom. This society was among 
 the first recipients of the virulent antipathy of 
 the Al^olitionists. Henry Clay, the ablest states- 
 man of his age, a living martyr to his lack of 
 sympathy ,with pro-slavery politicians, and a 
 prominent champion of Colonization, was reject- 
 ed and defeated in the presidential canvass of 
 1844 by the Abolitionists of New York, who, by 
 their factious course, procured the election of 
 James K. Polk, the annexation of Texas, the 
 war with Mexico, and the addition of three other 
 of the spacious States from the northern portion 
 of that republic, to extend the area of slave ter- 
 ritory. By their feeble impractical ultraism, the 
 Abolitionists generated a powerful reactive influ- 
 
208 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 ence in favor of the pro-slavery loco-focos, the 
 only effective allies of Secession at the North. 
 Farther than this the history of their political 
 influence at the North appears to be a blank. 
 
 At the South, however, they were regarded 
 with more sincere concern and dread. They 
 were, to the Southern mind, the representatives 
 of all that Northern love of popular liberty 
 which was dangerous to slavery, and was fast 
 coming to be distasteful to the common senti- 
 ment as it verged back on despotism. They 
 were, more or less openly, the avowed enemies 
 of revealed religion and of the civil Constitution. 
 The mist that hung about the limits of their 
 numbers and their strength served to magnify 
 both indefinitely. It is true that they generally 
 assaulted slavery at a very respectful distance, 
 but no one could tell what they ^might not 
 accomplish through the mails and by secret 
 emissaries, toward exploding the magazine on 
 which the quiet of the Slave States is admitted 
 to repose. They had no respect for the right of 
 property in slaves ; and, from ignorance or mal- 
 ice, — to the imperilled Southerner it mattered 
 little which, — they had no fear of a servile insur- 
 rection being induced, nor any dread of the un- 
 told calamities which such an event would bring. 
 
 The South was full of persons who were not 
 
SOUTHERN VIEWS OF LIBERTY. 209 
 
 consciously to blame for the existence of slavery 
 among them. It was more than full of those 
 who denied the right of Northern fanatics, of 
 any class, more especially of infidels and anarch- 
 ists, to visit upon their heads the sins of their 
 fathers, or even their own sins, by bringing on 
 them wantonly the fact or the fear of servile 
 insurrection. They regarded the Federal Consti- 
 tution as guaranteeing to them the right of " life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," — even 
 the liberty of holding negroes as slaves, and 
 the pursuit of happiness in working them at 
 discretion, without interference from without 
 the limits of their own slave section; and with 
 any one who construed that great document 
 differently tliey could naturally have but short 
 parleying. The peculiar democratic virtue of 
 that self-restraint — that respect for the rights 
 of the minority which led the Northern people 
 to harbor and protect incendiaries while as- 
 saulting the peace of the South — was a virtue 
 of which they had no comprehension. Neither 
 were Southern minds ever able to compre- 
 hend the peculiar innocence, or excellence, of 
 that mode of logic by which slavery was 
 denounced as a " sin " against the deistical 
 morals of a class of men who revile the sacred 
 Scriptures and their divine Author. 
 
 18* 
 
210 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 The Abolitionists were, and necessarily must 
 have been, a source of extreme, incessant irrita- 
 tion to the people of the South, and enabled the 
 despotic pro-slavery leaders to accomplish what 
 they desired, in dividing the two sections from 
 each other, and in arraying the people of each 
 in hostility against the other. Without this irrita- 
 tion, the extreme bitterness which has been man- 
 ifested at the South, throughout the present con- 
 test, against the Northern people, never could 
 have been generated. Without the universal 
 obloquy which has been brought upon the cause 
 of negro freedom, by its most prominent advo- 
 cates. President Lincoln would never have been 
 able to keep his constituency quiet for a year and 
 eight months after the opening of the war be- 
 fore issuing his Proclamation of Emancipation. 
 
 It may not be inappropriate here to suggest 
 the inquiry, whether the peculiar tenets of 
 that no-government class, — of whom the Abo- 
 litionists form a conspicuous specimen, who 
 begin by abolishing future punishment, then 
 capital punishment, and proceed along down to 
 the practical abolition of all punishment, — have 
 not been the source of much of the extreme, 
 misplaced, and sickening leniency with which 
 the present national administration has been 
 wont to absolve culprits of every class and dye 
 
WHY CRIMINALS ARE NOT PUNISHED. 211 
 
 upon the guaranty of their mere idle promise 
 to do better ? — whether former administrations 
 have not been to some extent affected by the 
 same putrescent moral paralysis ? — and whether 
 the same is not a threatening source of national 
 decadence ? 
 
 To those who beheve in a moral government 
 of the universe, it may not be without interest 
 or profit to inquire, whether the present pro- 
 tracted and afllictive war has not been divinely 
 sent on the Northern States to check and turn 
 back the growth of this no-punishment, no-gov- 
 ernment deism, the offspring of protracted afflu- 
 ence and peace, which has already done much 
 to undermine the foundations of our nation's 
 moral strength. 
 
XXXVII. 
 
 THE DESPOTIC CLASS IN EUROPE IDENTIFIED WITH THE DES- 
 POTS OF AMERICA IN THE EXISTING ONSLAUGHT TO DE- 
 STROY DEMOCRACY. 
 
 The third and last great collateral topic that 
 enters into the plan of the present work, is the 
 part taken by monarchists abroad in bringing 
 about the Secession of the Southern States, and 
 sustaining the present intestine War. 
 
 As the time approached for the full forma- 
 tion of a popular government on this continent, 
 the monarchies of Europe grew sickly and dis- 
 turbed. It was as if a demand for increased 
 popular rights and liberties had been infused 
 into the popular masses by an unseen hand. In 
 England, this popular longing after liberty burst 
 forth in the days of Cromwell, and, after annull- 
 ing for a time the prerogatives of the monarch, 
 allowed their restoration, but circumscribed the 
 sphere of their action with a resistless hand. 
 From that time down to the recent revolution 
 in Ital}^, every nation has been more or less agi- 
 tated by the same upheaval of the masses, the 
 same irrepressible demand for enlarged popular 
 
 212 
 
PARTIES IN EUROPE. 213 
 
 rights and liberties. The result has been, that 
 parties have been produced, monarchist and lib- 
 eral, not with very definite boundaries, or witli 
 exact intelligent aims, but with strong, insatiate 
 longings for the preservation or modification of 
 the old monarchical system. The nobility, the 
 privileged classes, the very w^ealthy, and the 
 very poor, usually adhere to royalty ; while the 
 middle classes incline to popular liberty. The 
 conflict between these two parties comes to di- 
 rect intelligent collision only on sparse occa- 
 sions. For the most part, it goes on in a 
 dreamy, obscure manner, like the alternate 
 dominance of disease and health, life and death, 
 in the frame of a sufferer from severe disease. 
 The antagonism is there ; it is necessary, in- 
 evitable. The popular party has the irresolute, 
 undetermined, unconscious strength ; its antago- 
 nist has present possession of power, intelligent 
 fear, and iron organization. It has learned 
 much by experience in its protracted and 
 deepening conflict. It has greatly modified 
 its demands, its aims, and its modes of action. 
 vSo much so that it seems almost to have com- 
 bined within itself more or less of the con- 
 stituent elements of its antagonistic principle, 
 popular government. The reigns of Cromwell 
 and of the Napoleon dynasty appear to be 
 
214 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 of a mongrel class, — a peaceful commingling 
 of despotism and democracy. But all such 
 specimens are transient, and soon subside to 
 the one party or the other. 
 
 During the war of the American Revolution, 
 while the real nature of democratic govern- 
 ment, and its universal antagonism to monarchy, 
 were not understood, moved by her chronic an- 
 tipathy to England, France so far forgot herself 
 as to take sides with the revolted colonies, and 
 assist them to achieve their independence. This 
 proved to be the first step toward the establish- 
 ment of a system of democratic government, 
 which has reacted disastrously on the cause of 
 monarchy in the old Avorld. By this act, 
 France won the everlasting gratitude of the hu- 
 man family ; but she j)lanted in her own bosom 
 the seeds of that popular commotion that in- 
 gulfed her ancient dynasty. No monarchy 
 ever before had the opportunity, none since has 
 had the fatuity, to commit such a blunder as to 
 give willing aid to the natural enemy of all 
 monarchies. 
 
 During the period in which only natural 
 causes acted in converting the Southern people 
 back from democracy to despotism, Europe was 
 innocent of the chano-e. When natural causes 
 began to give place to intelligent design, it was 
 otherwise. 
 
COLLUSION AGAINST LIBERTY. 215 
 
 No sooner did the idea enter a traitor's brain 
 that something could be made by a severance 
 of the American Union, than the desire, the ex- 
 pectation, the assurance of foreign aid came in 
 to stnnuhite and confirm the traitorous intent. 
 Not that the traitorous crew of Calhoun or of 
 Davis understood, as we now understand, their 
 own lapse back from democracy to despotism, 
 or the necessary unanimity of all despotic hearts' 
 and hands, when their common interests are at 
 stake, or the cause of popular freedom is to be 
 assailed ; but there was a felt bond of sympa- 
 thetic union between the despot class in this 
 country and their kind abroad. 
 
 These expectations of foreign aid were even 
 greater than events have justified. Like the 
 knidred expectations which were placed on their 
 corrupted and enslaved political party in the 
 North, these also were too sanguine. Not that 
 the monarchical class in Europe were insincere 
 or unfaithful, but their own situation was too 
 delicate and critical ; they lacked the power to 
 do all that tht3ir hearts desired. The antagon- 
 ism of their freedom-loving class in their own 
 communities was too intense and threatenino- =:^ 
 
 o* 
 
 • H. G Moffiit, a working man, thu^ speaks to the aristocratic svmpathiz- 
 ers ...h the South in England, through the colutnns of the Daily n!^^ 
 
 with thTL Vk"^?""™'"' "'* *' "PP'"' '" *™>''"'<' '° ^J-mpathize 
 wtth the slaye-breeding aristocrats of the South, but we of humbler birth 
 
216 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 The American despots judged the people of 
 Europe too much by the abject millions of their 
 own poor white population. The contempt they 
 had so often expressed for the headless populace 
 in the Northern States they began to think de- 
 served, and they transferred the same opinion 
 to the common mass, the liberty-loving class, in 
 Europe. These slaveholding despots had never 
 experienced the power of an intelligent, freedom- 
 loving people, undisciplined and unguided by a 
 monarchical head; and they were left, in their 
 intoxicated pride of power, to presume that 
 without monarchical guidance and headship 
 there could be no formidable strength. They 
 trusted to their own ability, by cutting off the 
 supply of cotton, to produce wide-spread dis- 
 tress, and they trusted to the mendacity of 
 themselves, and of their European friends, to in- 
 terpret this distress to the public ear, as caused 
 
 have deeper ties that bind us to America, both political and social. When 
 we see the great number leaving our shores for that great comitry, and as 
 four out of six are relations of us common fellows, what will be our feel- 
 ings ? What of mine, having sisters and all that is very dear to me, if we 
 see our men-of-war bombai-ding New York City, knowing morally we have 
 been the cause? If we are not allowed to vote and make the government 
 here, we will not quietly allow the people's government to be destroyed 
 there. Working men are seldom heard in print upon this question; but let 
 not our gentry suppose there i^^ no sympathy for the North here. They will 
 make an awful mistake if they go to war Avith America. It may be popu- 
 lar with the rich, the snobs and city swells, but not with working men. 
 Let them remember the Lancashire men star\'ing first sooner than lift up a 
 finger against true liberty." — Boston Journal, September 24^, 1863. 
 
A WAY PREPARED. 217 
 
 by the belligerent movements of the United 
 States government, in case that government 
 presumed to move resistfully against the attempt 
 for its dismemberment. 
 
 They knew that there was, in foreign lands, a 
 strong antipathy toward this government ; they 
 had themselves, while carrying on the govern- 
 ment, experienced and taken pains to aggravate 
 this/" And the traitorous desire and purpose of 
 severing the States of the Union had no sooner 
 assumed an intelligent form, than fit and trusty 
 individuals of the monarchical class abroad be- 
 gan to be communicated with, consulted, and 
 confided in. 
 
 Not only were slave-holders at home and mon- 
 archists abroad united by a felt sympathy and 
 oneness of interest in their desire to assault and 
 ruin democracy wherever it presented itself, 
 but there was a kindred treason against the pop- 
 ular masses of their own communities, which in- 
 
 * Let it be remembered that, under the controlling influence of the same 
 traitorous heads that now control the Rebel Confederacy, the United States 
 goverament took a position of unfriendliness almost amounting to hostility 
 to England, v/hen the latter power was engaged, with France, in the war 
 against Russia in the Crimea; and also that, under the same controlling in- 
 fluence, the proposal to abolish privateering, generally adopted in Europe, 
 was rejected by the United States government. And there appears at least 
 strong probability, if not proof, that in those and many like instances, im- 
 friendliness to England on the part of our government was instigated by 
 those designing men on purpose to prepare England to pursue just such an 
 unfriendly covurse as she has pursued towards this government, in an 
 emergency like the present, which emergency was, by them, not unforeseen- 
 
218 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 fluenced them severally alike. The slave-holding 
 traitor had eng^ao:ed to beo-iiile and delude his 
 seven and three-fourths millions of non-slave- 
 holding white population into doing his fighting 
 for him, at their own expense and at the immi- 
 nent peril of their lives, and with the experi- 
 ence of all the disaster which unsuccessful war- 
 fare can inflict, and all, with no other prospect 
 or reward, in case of success, but to complete 
 and seal their own irreversible subjugation to 
 their successful masters ; while the European 
 monarchist engaged to defraud and cajole the 
 popular European masses into supporting him 
 in his costly war alliance w^ith the slave-holders, 
 for the extinguishment of the spirit and insti- 
 tutions of popular freedom on this continent. 
 
XXXVIII. 
 
 THE EXTENT AND EFFICIENCY OF EUROPEAN COOPERATION 
 WITH AMERICAN TREASON. 
 
 The natural sympathies, the interests, and 
 leanings of the American slave-holders and the 
 European monarchists heing thus identical, it 
 remains for history proper to present what 
 evidence may reach the light concerning the 
 time and manner, the terms and the extent, of 
 obligations into wliich the latter entered to 
 sustain the former in their efforts to break up 
 this government. 
 
 It is already matter of history, that, almost 
 upon receiving the first intelHgence that armed 
 traitors had assaulted the United States govern- 
 ment, with a promptness and unanimity that 
 demonstrate previous concert and collusion, the 
 leading powers of Europe vouchsafed belligerent 
 rights to the insurgents, thereby preparing the 
 way for full recognition of their assumed nation- 
 ality, menacing this government with that full 
 recognition, and advancing as far toward it as 
 they could and not incur a risk that amounts 
 almost to a certainty of involving themselves 
 
 219 
 
220 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 in overt war, for breaking down the United 
 States government, and for giving existence, 
 strength, and character to the perfidious germ 
 of a slave-holders' despotism. 
 
 While these governments were thus ingen- 
 iously approxhnatrng national alliance with the 
 Southern traitors, in England particularly, the 
 periodical press, as far as it could be controlled 
 by the governing class, was set at work with all 
 the infernal art and energy that money and 
 mendacious malice could infuse, to inculpate 
 and decry the government and people of this 
 country, and to extol and sanctify the perjured 
 crew who had undertaken to trample out this 
 beacon light of liberty, and to erect their off- 
 shoot of Africa's barbaric despotism in its place. 
 This course was adapted and designed to 
 discourage and weaken the loyal sentiment in 
 the Northern States, to intimidate and depress 
 the government, to embolden the northern allies 
 of the Rebels ; as far as possible to turn the 
 opinion of the civilized world against us, and 
 prepare the people of England and France to 
 sustain their governments in farther steps in 
 the direction they had started, if need should 
 be, even to open war. 
 
 In England, the people had to be immediately 
 appealed to and controlled, and the queen was 
 
EUROPE AIDING TREASON. 221 
 
 as one of them. Their inclination to the side 
 of freedom was strong, and their power to 
 thwart the monarchical party was indisputable. 
 
 In France, there was nothing to be feared 
 from the people, provided a general outbreak 
 and domestic revolution were effectualh' guarded 
 against ; and, by imperial dictation, the empire 
 was impoverished to send out and maintain an 
 army of observation on the borders of this 
 republic, ready to take advantage of the hrst 
 opportunity for interfering, under the pretence 
 of collecting a few milHons of dollars, in bogus 
 accounts, said to be due French subjects in 
 Mexico. 
 
 It is matter of history, that the monarchical 
 party in England succeeded so well as to be able 
 to appropriate and spend between one and two 
 millions sterling in equipping a fleet, and in 
 sending troops to Canada, for war with the 
 United States ; and to have precipitated that 
 war, had not our government, with more caution 
 than boldness, averted the impending collision 
 by releasing the captured emissaries of the 
 rebels. England's dependence on the Northern 
 States for grain to keep starvation from her 
 borders served also to defeat the hankering of 
 the monarchical party after war with the Unit- 
 ed States. 
 
222 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 It is matter of history, that, while the British 
 government confined itself to the line of a 
 menacing and semi-hostile neutrality, members 
 of the ruling class, in their individual capacity, 
 did all that wealth, energy, and industry could 
 do, with the connivance of the British govern- 
 ment, and with no little success, to destroy 
 American commerce on the seas, and, by run- 
 ning the blockade of Southern ports, to supply 
 the Rebels with all the war material they 
 needed. 
 
 In the early stages of the War, a curious 
 smile must have passed over the countenances 
 of these silent partners of the Eebel firm, on 
 reading Secretary Seward's official predictions 
 of the early closing of the War, founded as 
 those predictions were on the Southern destitu- 
 tion of arms and war material ; whereas they 
 had themselves taken effectual measures to have 
 this destitution supplied to satiety with the best 
 arms, ammunition, and material which modern 
 inventions, wealth, skill, and the workshops of 
 Europe could produce. 
 
 It appears to have been in the campaign of 
 our army in Mexico, during President Polk's 
 administration, that the authors of the present 
 rebellion, having effectually incorporated them- 
 selves with the Jackson-Buchanan party, sue- 
 
EUROPEAN POWERS RESTRAINED. 228 
 
 ceeded in appropriating that political organiza- 
 tion to their exclusive use. It was probably at 
 the Ostend Conference, held by our diplomats 
 in Europe during President Pierce's administra- 
 tion, that arrangements were perfected for in- 
 corporating the monarchists of Europe, as far as 
 possible, into the same combination. 
 
 Nothing but the blast of the breath of the 
 Almight}^, sent forth for his own purposes, and 
 for his people's sake, is rendering this Confed- 
 eration abortive. 
 
 The reigning powers of Europe (the Emperor 
 of Russia never was with them in their hostility 
 to this government) are not to be exactly iden- 
 tified with the monarchical class. The privi- 
 leges and responsibilities of power, and consid- 
 erations of state, served to modify the former, 
 and coerce them into a course of moderation 
 and hesitancy, with which the American traitors 
 had no sympathy at all, and their political allies 
 in Europe had scarcely more. 
 
 The concessions of our government, and the 
 demand for bread-stuffs from the Northern 
 States, deferred the consummation of active inter- 
 ference for our dismemberment, until at length 
 President Lincoln's adoption of the emancipa- 
 tion policy, tardy as it was, so stirred the love 
 of freedom in the minds of the European 
 
224 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 masses that such interference became impracti- 
 cable. 
 
 Thus the European allies of the traitor crew, 
 next to their corrupted partisan supporters in 
 the Northern States, failed them in their hour 
 of need. And beyond the irritation, intimidat- 
 ing, and partial and transient, though repeated 
 and frequent, embarrassment imposed on Presi- 
 dent Lincoln's government, and the protracting 
 of the war and renderino; it more exhaustino- to 
 the North, and more entirely ruinous to the 
 South, these allies have really contributed noth- 
 ing to the success of the treason they under- 
 took to aid. 
 
XXXIX. 
 
 ROME AND THE REBELLION. 
 
 The diabolical purposes of the European sup- 
 porters of Secession in this country have found 
 a frequent and characteristic exercise in sending 
 across the ocean, at stated and well-timed inter- 
 vals, a deluGce of rumors and fabricated state- 
 ments, complete and definite in circumstantial 
 detail, to the effect that France and England, 
 one or both, with, perhaps, other European pow- 
 ers, had determined, beyond reconsideration, to 
 enforce the separation called for by their admired 
 and loving partners in the South. Hardly any- 
 thino:, durino: the course of the war, has been 
 more trying to the nerves of patriotic men, both 
 in and out of official station, than these repeated 
 and perpetual electro-infernal appliances. Eea- 
 son and facts disproved their claims to truth or 
 sanity ; but, like some mysterious apparition, 
 that owes its disturbing power to its destitution 
 of substance, the possibility of a European com- 
 bination to crush out democracy on this conti- 
 nent would, ever and anon, present itself, vast, 
 
 225 
 
226 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 threatening, and obscure. Still farther to conjure 
 down this boding apparition, and reduce this 
 source of disturbing apprehension to its real 
 substance and legitimate proportions, may well 
 occupy the space of one or two intercurrent 
 chapters that did not enter into the original 
 purpose of this work. And these, while the 
 printer is busy on other portions of the work, 
 by the light of the New York riots, the success 
 of the French in Mexico, and the confessions of 
 a prominent Roman Catholic reviewer, we now 
 attempt to supplj^ 
 
 The monarchical party in Europe, their deep 
 and vital sympathy with Secession, their col- 
 lusion, counsel, and cooperation with its man- 
 agers, from its inception onward, we have be- 
 fore considered. But that the Roman Catholic 
 church, '- drunk Avith the blood of saints," and, 
 from the heights of power wdiich it once occu- 
 pied, long since gone down under the universal 
 execrations of all who were unblinded by its 
 imbruting contact, should come forth, at this 
 late day, and complicate itself with the con- 
 federate enemies of all civil freedom, was not, 
 till recently, supposed to be practicable. 
 
 It is true that the debauched Northern par- 
 tisans of the Southern despots have long been 
 noticeably prompt and earnest to conciliate and 
 
DESPOTIC ATTRACTIO.VS. 227 
 
 attach to themselves the foreign-born Romish 
 population. That the latter were numerous, 
 blmd, passionate, and undivided, and, hence 
 were eminently fitted to become stock in trade 
 for any unprincipled politician, was supposed to 
 be reason enough to explain the eagerness with 
 which they were sought. That the deep, dark 
 spirit of despotism in the presiding Southern 
 leaders of that party, drawn by the native sym- 
 pathy of fellow-despots, fellows in guilt, was 
 yearning forth toward the papacy, like the 
 a.scend.ng toward the de.scending cone of a yet 
 nnjomcd waterspout, was not suspected, until, 
 in the hour of their greatest need, the papacy 
 m Europe, the papacy in Mexico, and the grov- 
 elling hell of the papacy in New York, struck 
 simultaneously for the re.scue of the confederate 
 enemies of freedom. 
 
 Two hundred years ago, in Bedford jail, a 
 famous dreamer, whose dreams possess a definite- 
 ness and verity altogether surpassing the clear- 
 est vision of the most of waking observers, thus 
 described the papacy, under the figure of a 
 decrepit giant: "Though he be yet alive, he 
 IS, by reason of age, and also of the many 
 shrewd brushes that he met with in his youn<rer 
 days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints that 
 he can do Uttle more than sit in his cave's 
 
228 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and 
 biting his nails because he cannot come at 
 them." 
 
 A divinely-inspired writer, at a much earlier 
 date, uncovering the then historic future of the 
 world, presents the papacy in the form of " a 
 beast having seven heads and ten horns, the 
 body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the 
 mouth of a lion ; and receiving his power, his 
 seat, and great authority, from the dragon " that 
 represented civil despotism ; from which dragon, 
 also, the beast appears to have received the 
 healing of a " deadly wound." Now no fact in 
 modern history is more patent than that the 
 papacy and civil despotism have long been 
 leagued to support each other. So that it is not 
 to be expected that one of these should receive 
 a deadly wound, and the other would not writhe, 
 and strive, as far as in its power, to heal its 
 wounded partner. If Jeff! Davis k Co., the des- 
 perate and determined champions of new-born 
 despotism on this continent, after having ex- 
 hausted the applications of the most unscrupu- 
 lous military tyranny, to extort farther assistance 
 from the impoverished, denuded, and devastated 
 South, are being badly whipped, and on the point 
 of hopeless overthrow before the advancing 
 flushed, and stalwart armies of the North, noth- 
 
DESPOTIC SYMPATHY. 229 
 
 incT is more natural, liardlv anvthinor niore 
 necessary, than that the seven-headed ])east, the 
 deci-epit giant, should be in motion, to accom- 
 ph.sli Avhat is possible to be done for their 
 deliverance. 
 
 Hence we see that wily despot on the throne 
 of France, — who, in his Italian campaign, went 
 just far enough to receive the confidence of the 
 popular masses, far enough to gain the credit of 
 yielding to just so much of the pressure in favor 
 of popular freedom as it was past his power to 
 resist, far enouii;h to humble a dano-erous rival 
 and to reduce the papacy to a position in which 
 it must know and feel that the continuance of 
 its existence was an imperial gilt, — now in the 
 hour of greatest peril to the slave-holders' des- 
 potism, is found, by favor of the church of Home, 
 establishing a military despotism in the city of 
 Mexico, and pouring along our Southern borders 
 a naval and military force limited by nothing 
 But his own discretion. 
 
 Simultaneously with this, evidently in obedi- 
 ence to orders issued from the Confederate cap- 
 ital, through the traitor leaders of the despotic '•' 
 party in the Northern States, New York City, 
 for successive days and nights, was committed 
 to the tender mercies of a Roman Catholic mob, 
 
 * See Appendix B, at the close of the volume. 
 20 
 
230 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION. 
 
 describing wliichj an eminent literary writer* 
 "who walked among them, hour after hour, uses 
 the following language : " Tipsy women and 
 boys (of whom the crowd was more than half 
 comj)Osed) — the whole air and behavior of this 
 wicked and dirty plurality expressed an exulting 
 lawlessness and defiance — hives of sickness and 
 vice. It is wonderful to see, and difiicult to 
 believe, that so much misery and disease and 
 utter wTctchedness could be huddled together, 
 — lewd, but pale and sickly, young women, 
 scarcely decent in their ragged attire, were im- 
 pudent, and scattered everywhere in the crowd ; 
 numbers deformed, numbers made hideous by 
 self-neglect and infirmity; numbers paralytics; 
 drunkards, imbecile, or idiotic, forlorn in their 
 poverty-stricken abandonment of the world — 
 hideous, with hope and vanity all gone — the 
 female form and features made frightful by sin, 
 squalor, and debasement. There were no decent 
 Irish among them. Irish they all were, — every- 
 one of them, — but they were the dirty, half- 
 drunken, brutal rowdies. In ordinary life, such 
 fellows sneak about and hide from dayhght in 
 places where they can drink and debauch and 
 contrive wickedness ; but here, where this grand 
 fire made them feel like masters, and gave them 
 
 * N. P. Willis, of the Home Journal. 
 
EFFECTS OF ROMANISM. 231 
 
 impudence for the hour, they were pictures of 
 saucy beggars, half-drunken brutes, and robbers, 
 longing to put a clutch upon your throat, and 
 empty your pockets. One cf our daily papers 
 estimates this class of New York population at 
 twent}^ thousand." 
 
 Outside the confines of the grossest heathen- 
 ism, nothing but the debasing spiritual despotism 
 of the Romish church has power to produce the 
 subject for such a portraiture, — has power to 
 prepare and furnish the instrument for such a 
 desperate and dastardly assault on all that per- 
 tains to human well-being. It is the peculiar 
 province and ability of that " mother of harlots " 
 to reduce the worthiest races of the human fam- 
 ily to a condition of depravity and vice and 
 suffering wretchedness, and to endow them with 
 dispositions of fiendish wantonness, to which not 
 the savage state, the brute creation, nor hardly 
 slavery itself, affords a parallel. Of all who have 
 enjoyed the precious advantages of mature de- 
 mocracy, it is peculiar to the heart and habits of 
 the despotized and traitorous Northern partisans 
 of Southern despots, to order, and control, and 
 put into active operation, the instrument which 
 the papacy had provided for desolating the city of 
 New York at the particular juncture when Lee, 
 
232 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION. 
 
 the military leader of the Confederate hosts, was 
 invading Pennsylvania, Semmes, with his British 
 cruisers, was burning American commerce at the 
 mouths of Northern harbors, and the British 
 press and ministry, with the subtle Frenchman 
 joining in, were blowing their strongest, heartiest 
 blast in favor of recognizing as real the assumed 
 nationality and independence of the Confederate 
 slaveocracy. This was also the point of time at 
 which Napoleon III. first openly expressed him- 
 self possessed of the power and the will, by 
 papal aid, to erect Mexico into a permanent 
 despotism on our Southern border. 
 
 Read now a specimen of the stjde in which 
 the papal priests and periodicals pronounce in- 
 sidious curses on all that remains of civil free- 
 dom, and declare their admiration for the '^ gal- 
 lant and noble " despots of the South who are 
 forcing their poor white population on, to be 
 slaughtered by hecatombs, to render their own 
 and negro slavery perpetual. 
 
 Says the " Metropolitan Record " of July 18th : 
 "The Washington despotism has at length de- 
 termined on testing its power over the people 
 of the Northern States. The conscription has 
 commenced ! For the first time in the history 
 of this Republic, American freemen are to be 
 drafted like the veriest slaves of the most 
 crushing European despotism. 
 
ROMISH PATRIOTISM. 233 
 
 ^' Will the men of the North submit to this 
 monstrous attempt to fasten upon them a per- 
 manent military despotism ? Is it possible they 
 are ready to submit to the yoke ? We trust not. 
 
 " We have no hesitation in saying, that if the 
 people submit to be drafted, to carry out the 
 avowed polic}' of confiscation and emancipation, 
 that the last vestige of American freedom will 
 be swept away forever. We are heart and soul 
 opposed to the conscription. 
 
 '• We shall never, under any circumstances, 
 raise an arm against the South. We do not 
 seek to disguise our admiration for that gallant 
 and noble people, and sooner than see them 
 subjected to the aboHtion yoke, (!)=•' we would 
 prefer perpetual separation." 
 
 In evasion (or defiance) of the law of Con- 
 gress, punishing resistance to the draft, and of 
 the authorities on whom it devolves to execute 
 that law, such is the present uniform and con- 
 tinuous utterance, not of one organ only, but 
 of the class of Roman Catholic periodicals in 
 this country, of which the ordinary function is 
 to proclaim the dictates of inflillibility to sev- 
 eral millions of blind, unquestioning subordi- 
 
 *" Abolition yoke," — a solecism eminently fit to be uttered by the organ 
 of a power, of which John, the Revelator, said, that of old she trafiicked in 
 "wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and 
 souls of men." 
 
 20* 
 
234 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION. 
 
 nates, filling the place and enjoying the privi- 
 leges, and invested with the governing influence 
 of American freemen. 
 
 It may be recollected by many who will read 
 these pages, that a few years ago a thrill almost 
 of terror ran through the Roman Catholic com- 
 munities of Europe, on waking to a conscious- 
 ness of the fact that some one or two hundred 
 thousand of the unsuspecting and unsuspected 
 devotees of their religion were annually migrat- 
 ing to this country, of whom a large proportion 
 became gradually alienated, and eventually re- 
 nounced their allegiance to Eome's spiritual 
 despotism. 
 
 No one who is at all acquainted with the 
 character or history of the papacy would be 
 backward to believe that such a leak as this, 
 running out from her numbers and her strength, 
 would be sure to be effectually provided against. 
 Neither would it be matter of surprise to such 
 a one, that no flourish of trumpets was sounded 
 over that effectual provision, as is likely to be 
 the case in a democratic community when any- 
 thing of public importance is accomplished. 
 
 But after the lapse of quiet years, we now 
 have a glimpse of what has been undertaken to 
 check this out-go, and also of its success. In 
 addition to almost all possible appliances to 
 
ROMISH VERACITY. 235 
 
 retain among themselves the instruction of 
 their youth, to counteract the influence which 
 our free institutions naturally exert on them, 
 and to retain the membership of their commun- 
 ion in devout and blind and degraded depen- 
 dence on their appointed priests, an able corps 
 of priestly and editorial authorities have been 
 provided (native Americans, where such could 
 possibly be procured), upon the occurrence of 
 such a juncture in our nation's affairs as that 
 above described, so to put the authority, the 
 sanctity, and the powerful superstition of the 
 papal church in requisition as to insure from 
 the Roman Catholic millions of our Northern 
 population, an uncpudlfied acceptance, as simple 
 truth, of a diabohcal tissue of treason and false- 
 hood like that before quoted. 
 
 The individual, or conclave, who framed the 
 statements quoted, dictate to those Romish mil- 
 lions, to be received and acted on as true, that 
 the government of the United States as admin- 
 istered by President Lincoln is a " despotism," 
 because it is attempting to keep up its armies 
 by conscription. The ground, and the only 
 ground, for this malignant falsehood, is the des- 
 potic nature of the organization and measures, 
 without which military force does not and can- 
 not exist for any purpose whatsoever. It is not 
 
236 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 only that said government does not dissolve it- 
 self into non-existence at the first challenge of 
 armed and perjured traitors, but that, after 
 having exhausted the North by calling for, and 
 receiving, during the past twenty-eight months 
 of the war, a million and a half of men, of 
 whom perhaps one-half are lost to the service 
 by disease and casualties, and the rest are retir- 
 ing by the expiration of their terms of enlist- 
 ment ; and, after having exhausted the North 
 by an expenditure of money quite in propor- 
 tion to the number of men, now, at the com- 
 bined summons of the bloody despots of the 
 South, their despotized and traitorous partisans 
 of the North, the lying and pirate-nursing aris- 
 tocracy of Europe, and the crippled beast upon 
 the seven hills, the " Washington " government 
 does not perform voluntary suicide for the tech- 
 nical objection to its necessary course, that it is 
 despotic to draft! 
 
 Military organization is despotic in form to 
 the highest degree. It is highly despotic to put 
 one man under the absolute and almost uncon- 
 ditional authority of another, as is done in every 
 military company, and without doing which no 
 military command or power exists. It is des- 
 potic to say to citizens outside the army ranks, 
 you shall so restrict your indulgence in freedom 
 
THE '' WASHINGTON DESPOTISM." 237 
 
 of speech, and of the press, as not to convey 
 miHtary information to the enemy, nor create 
 insubordination in our army ranks, nor discour- 
 age enlistments, nor resist a draft, when ordered. 
 \et, all these features of despotism are inci- 
 dent to, and in-separable from, the hrst and sim- 
 plest exercise of military strength. Jefferson 
 Davis au<l his perjured fellows, C. L. ^'allandig- 
 ham, the prince of Ohio Copperheads, =^= the edi- 
 tors of the "Metroptditan Kecord " and ** Boston 
 Pilot," and the Roniisli ecclesiastics who dictate 
 what these editors shall, and what they shall not 
 say, all knew and understood this perfectly well 
 when they first couibined by military force to 
 attack the United States government. It was 
 an original part of their diabolical contrivance, 
 first, by making an armed assault, to force upon 
 the administration the inevituble and perfectly 
 foreseen necessity of resorting to this formally 
 despotic exercise of power to defend its veriest 
 existence ; and then, as soon as this exercise of 
 power was resorted to, through the agency of 
 these Copperhead and Romish operators in the 
 loyal States, to raise a perfect hallabaloo about 
 the '- despotism of the Washington government." 
 This is no fancy operation. It is a war measure 
 of the first importance. If, by this outcry 
 
 * See Appendix D. 
 
238 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECES-SION. 
 
 against the government, a majority of the vo- 
 ters can be deluded into disfavoring voluntary 
 enlistments, and into resisting a draft, then, 
 even at this late day, and after all our victories, 
 and our exhaustion, the national name and life 
 and hope expire by suicide in ignominious 
 chaos; and the leagued powers of Despotism 
 and Popery triumph by malignant guile. 
 
 During the self-same hour, in which military 
 power in the Southern Confederacy is forcing 
 every man within its reach, between the ages 
 of sixteen and forty-five, — or sixty, as some of 
 their edicts say, — to take up arms and lay down 
 their hves, if success should require, for the ex- 
 tinction of free government, this accredited 
 mouth-piece of the papacy exhorts his followers 
 to aid and succor the same cause, by not sub- 
 mitting to be drafted into the army which is 
 fighthig for the only democratic government on 
 earth; which drafting he amuses himself, and 
 attempts to deceive them, by calHng " a mon- 
 strous attempt to fasten upon them a permanent 
 military despotism." 
 
 In the same style of veracity he goes on not 
 only to call the confiscation of the property 
 and the freeing of the slaves of Rebel despots, 
 "the sweeping away of the last vestige of 
 American freedom," — but he also goes farther to 
 
PAPAL UNANIMITY. 239 
 
 say — what no one could doubt, unless it might 
 be those who were stupid enough to believe 
 what he had already stated — that '-he would 
 never, under any circumstances, raise an arm 
 aii-ainst the South." 
 
 o 
 
 He admires the "noble gallantry" of seven 
 and three-fourth millions of abject whites, driven 
 and slaughtered like sheep, by a few thousand 
 slave drivers, for their own purposes; and rather 
 than see the aims of these few cruel, bloody 
 despots defeated, he would '- prefer perpetual 
 separation," which is all they ask us at present 
 to grant. 
 
 While these more secular organs of the pa- 
 pacy are thus putting light for darkness, and 
 darkness for light, truth for filsehood, and false- 
 hood for truth, despotism for democracy, and de- 
 mocracy for despotism, with the sanction of 
 infallibility before the Catholic millions of our 
 Northern population, at the crisis of the strife, 
 the Pope himself and his highest American 
 prelate are with all earnestness addressing the 
 same class for the same end, but in less simple 
 terms. Their saintly lips do not say, with the 
 "Record," that they desire above all things, a 
 separation of the Union, assured, as they are, that 
 separation and destruction are in this connec- 
 tion perfectly synonymous terms. But they ex- 
 
240 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 hort to "peace," which, at this juncture in the 
 progress of the war, and in the ears of those 
 whom they address, they know perfectly well 
 means nothing else but resistance to the United 
 States government, and submission to whatever 
 despot traitors in arms see fit to demand. 
 
XL. 
 
 ROME AND THE REBELLION — FRANCE, AUSTRIA, AND ENG- 
 LAND AT A GAME IN MEXICO. 
 
 As, in speaking of Europe's complications with 
 the Confederate enemies of free government on 
 this continent, we fmd it needful to discriminate 
 between the democratic and the despotic classes 
 where despotism is still dominant, so in speaking 
 of the part which papists are taking in this war, 
 we need to distinguish those in whom the love 
 of civil freedom has more controlling force. than 
 papal dictation. These are in a position of per- 
 plexing trial. They need, and are worthy to 
 receive, a double portion of the sympathy and 
 cordial countenance of freedom's less embar- 
 rassed friends. 
 
 Whether they can make an extract of the 
 Roman Catholic church, which will bear any 
 traceable resemblance to the original, and will 
 yet be compatible with coexisting and cooperat- 
 ing civil democracy, and wdiich may be called 
 papacy Americanized, remains to be seen. The 
 probabilities are that the Roman Catholic church 
 is too deeply and durably identified with tempo- 
 
 21 241 
 
242 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 ral and spiritual despotism to retain a cognizable 
 lineament of its former self, in any adapted form, 
 that will be endurable to a sincere and intelli- 
 gent adherent of American democracy. 
 
 Roger B. Taney, though born and educated a 
 Eomanist, was an American in principle ; and 
 though for thirty years a cooperator with those 
 wdiose plots against democracy rij)ened at last 
 into overt treason, yet it was his friendsliip for 
 slave-holders, and not his love of the papacy, 
 that made him such. 
 
 Major General Wm. S. Rosecrans, though said 
 to have been led by a professedly Protestant 
 chaplain of West Point Academy into the papal 
 communion, has not yet been inoculated with 
 papal politics, or induced to debase the native 
 nobleness of his nature, or abandon the dictates 
 of his superior judgment for the behests of a 
 polluted and suborned ecclesiastical authority. 
 Would that we knew as much were true of his 
 younger brother, the bishop ! Each of these 
 represents large classes entitled to our kindest 
 sympathy, and many of them to our gratitude 
 and our confidence, in whose bosoms, with more 
 or less consciousness of wdiat is going on, the 
 war between Democracy and Despotism must 
 rage till either their American politics, or their 
 Romish religion, is given to the winds.'^ 
 
 * So« Appendix G. 
 
MEXICO AND SOUTH AMERICA. 243 
 
 But what of the French m Mexico? The 
 Gofl of heaven and the revelations of time 
 alone can inform us, save that the wearing 
 anguish of perpetual intestine strife appears 
 likely to mark the future, as it has absorbed the 
 past, of that unhappy country. The papacy, 
 and not slavery has there been and still is the 
 depository of despotic principles and purposes 
 The leading spirits of that hoary hierarchy have 
 ordained and ordered the forces on the side of 
 despotism, which have kept the portions of this 
 continent, south of the United States, in blood 
 and turmoil ever since their inhabitants attained 
 enough of freedom's hre to throw off the yoke 
 of Inquisitorial Spain. That those papal agen- 
 cies v/ill be less despotic, or less disturbing, now 
 that France and Austria have united their mate- 
 rial military and naval resources in their support, 
 is not to be expected. The forces on the side of 
 freedom in those latitudes have not been nour- 
 ished and guided, as in the North, by the accept- 
 ed light and strengthening influence of divine 
 Revelation, and hence are blind and feeble com- 
 pared with the Northern adherents of freedom's 
 cause. But that they will die out quietly under 
 the impact of the iron heel, after having sus- 
 tained themselves under every disadvantage for 
 near half a century, is hardly to be expected ; 
 
244 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 althousrli the blindinsz, debasins: contact of the 
 Romish religion is vastly more efficient to over- 
 come popular resistance, by its paralyzing, fes- 
 tering, infectious corruptions, than any monarchy 
 is to overcome such resistance by military force. 
 
 That the brace of first-class despots who have 
 now assumed by favor of the papacy to preside 
 over the destinies of Mexico should attempt to 
 amuse themselves and divert the attention of 
 their restive subjects by bringing on in that 
 neighborhood a first-class conflict upon the stand- 
 ing issue, — Despotism or Democracy, — is per- 
 haps entirely within the limits of probability. 
 
 That the ruling intellect in European politics 
 is really aiming to demolish the British power, 
 and, as preliminary to this, with Britain's coun- 
 tenance and Britain's aid, intends to reduce the 
 United States to a condition of feebleness which 
 will render the principal undertaking safe ; that 
 the continental powers are now being conciliated 
 and combined with that intent ; that, with the 
 same intent, secret emissaries are inducino; Eno;- 
 land, under an ignored queen and a suborned and 
 dotaged ministry, to launch, equip, and sustain 
 an endless succession of first-class war vessels, 
 under color of a Rebel flag and a mocking pre- 
 tence of neutralit}', to threaten the ports and 
 prey upon the commerce of the United States ; 
 
napoleon's designs. 245 
 
 that the hastily-assumed and equivocally-main- 
 tained neutrality of France and England was, 
 with the same intent, designed to allow this 
 country, as far as possible, to exhaust itself in 
 internal strife, preparatory to foreign assault, — 
 these are among the facts of current history 
 that appear to be fast passing from the stage of 
 occultation/^' What the hand of Death or Des- 
 tiny may do, meanwhile, to mar the perfect- 
 ness or still the activity of that master brain; 
 what the liberty-loving mass in its home em- 
 pire may do to derange the projects of foreign 
 war ; what the exasperated venom of the 
 Mexican races may yet essay and achieve to 
 free themselves a second time from a foreign 
 yoke and groundless usurpation, — these are ele- 
 ments which time alone can supply for a cal- 
 culation of fnial results. But that all which 
 
 * As well raiglit an artist attempt to fix the forai and color of each sum- 
 mer cloud, as a historian to note the designs of European rulers. After 
 Louis Napoleon took armed possession of the city of Mexico, and offered 
 the crown of a conquered empire to Maximilian, the x\rchduke of Austria, 
 with every prospect of its being accepted, but a few weeks elapsed before, 
 according to one of our best newspaper authorities, the Austrian Emperor 
 found himself able to combine a European alliance against Napoleon, and 
 the offered ci-o\vti was rejected ; leaving Mexico, like the elephant drawn in 
 a lottery, on Napoleon's hands, to be retained, or disposed of as best it 
 might. Thus brightening, somewhat, the obvious prospect that the Ameri- 
 can Union would yet survive, not because Europe's despots were less prin- 
 cipled against democracy, but because the scheme their late leading intel- 
 lect had concocted for giving effect to their common principles adverse to 
 democracy had been fniatrated by the virulence of their old home jeal- 
 
 21* 
 
246 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 the foregoing pages contain, respecting a des- 
 potism upon onr borders, will apply to the 
 offshoot of the French empire on a throne in 
 Mexico is undeniable ; although the boundary 
 between ourselves and Mexico is not so ut- 
 terly impalpable as the boundary must needs 
 be between different segments of the severed 
 Union ; and the question of returning fugi- 
 tive slaves would not be likely to be an open 
 ulcer all along that boundary in the case of a 
 despotism in Mexico, as it would be in the case 
 of a slave-holding despotism on the soil of the 
 former Union. 
 
XLI. 
 
 GENERAL RESUME. 
 
 We have now completed the detailed presen- 
 tation of the chief topics intended for the present 
 work. We here glance over them collectively. 
 
 The passing away of monarchy involves the 
 greatest change to which human society is liable. 
 The rise and establishing of popular government 
 is a dehcate and exceedingly critical occurrence, 
 peculiar to the present age of the world. It is 
 necessarily opposed by all that remains of the 
 dying energies of hoary, and hitherto unantago- 
 nized, coercive government. 
 
 Each of these species of civil society, in its 
 nature, tends to become universal, '■ — as a healthy 
 specimen of animal organization tends to the 
 attainment of its normal dimensions, — and con- 
 suming: conflict must occur on every border 
 where they come in contact. 
 
 This continent was reserved practically vacant 
 for the theatre whereon the new form of social 
 life — '-ix Church without a Bishop, and a State 
 without a King " — should take its rise. 
 
 This new form of social life is spontaneous in 
 
 24T 
 
248 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 its origin, continuance, and action. It is little 
 else than a negative, — the mere absence of 
 monarchy in a civilized community, with barely 
 latent, organic life enough to render that absence 
 perpetual. Its greatness, its importance, its prac- 
 tical effects, and the points " wherein its great 
 strength lieth," are, to the present time, but 
 very imperfectly understood. The unparalleled 
 growth and affluence of this nation are its novel 
 and peculiar product. The Constitution of these 
 United States is the first great, permanent ex- 
 pression of its new existence. 
 
 Defended by surrounding oceans, — which 
 steam and electricity, harnessed by the inventive 
 genius which its own generous nourishings de- 
 veloped, had not yet reduced to insignificance, — 
 it rose to maturity and strength before the fam- 
 ily of ancient monarchies became aware of its 
 dangerous antagonism; and, by the time they 
 began to take alarm, their subject millions had 
 become so permeated with the leaven of its 
 presence as to paralyze the arm with which 
 those monarchies would otherwise have struck 
 for its destruction. 
 
 But it is not the order of divine procedure 
 that anything designed for universal spread and 
 perpetual prevalence should rise and reign 
 wholly unresisted. Like the hardy oak, this 
 
WHERE SECESSION BEGUN. 249 
 
 new form of civil life needed a trying blast to 
 give it consistency and strength, to cause its 
 roots to strike down graspingly beneath the sur- 
 face soil, and to purge its texture from the ele- 
 ments of premature decay. 
 
 At an early day in the history of the planting 
 of civilized colonists on this continent, a few 
 ebon seeds of African social life — than which 
 earth has produced none more vicious — were 
 transported, and planted in the rich soil of the 
 watered garden of American freedom. Here 
 they nestled quietly till the first crisis of our 
 nation's birth and infant feebleness were passed ; 
 all the time multiplying luxuriantly and combin- 
 ing themselves with elements of power which 
 the old world could not have produced. The 
 sunshine and the showers of this most peaceful 
 and prolific clime gave them colossal proportions 
 and giant strength. Africa supplied the servile 
 mass, and, by its presence, ximerican freemen, 
 who would otherwise have scorned to exercise an 
 authority to which they would not themselves 
 submit, were turned into masters, tyrants, des- 
 pots. The strongest, most vital, most excellent 
 material which unfettered, bounteous America 
 could produce became quickened with the en- 
 venomed life of the darkest, vilest despotism 
 that ever cursed the most barren and remote 
 extremity of the Eastern continent. 
 
250 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 Democracy, which affords such unexampled 
 privileges to the individual, presents the lowest, 
 least organic form of civil life. It has neither 
 eyes nor ears nor any other sense by which to 
 take alarm, until it has long felt the pangs of 
 protracted injury. 
 
 The viperous despotism, called into existence 
 by the presence of that abject mass from Africa, 
 had already taken into its ravenous maw, digest- 
 ed, and incorporated into itself the whole poor 
 white population of the slave-holding States — 
 had broken their bones, charmed or magnetized, 
 and slabbered over, ready to devour, a vast polit- 
 ical party in the North, — part of whom, like the 
 poor whites in the South, prove to have been al- 
 ready digested and appropriated, — and its gory 
 fangs were already darted at the carotid artery 
 of our nation's life, before serious alarm was 
 taken, or any effort made in national self- 
 defence. 
 
XLII. 
 
 SKETCH OF ITV'ENTS INITIATING THE REVOLT. 
 
 In approaching some conclusions from the 
 preceding, — conclusions bearing on our future 
 civil duty as loyal citizens, — the connecting of 
 events with causes will not be avoided. 
 
 Where there are slaves, there must be mas- 
 ters. Where there are masters, there must, 
 presently, be despots. Wherever there is a des- 
 pot, there must be a great and growing sub- 
 mission to his dictation, or else there will he tvar, 
 one or the other, every time the experiment 
 is tried, " now, from henceforth, and forever- 
 more." 
 
 When, by the rapid influx of Northern popu- 
 lation into California, the Southern despots 
 found themselves baffled in their attempts to 
 add that State to their peculiar dominions, they 
 saw that the time was drawing near at w^hich 
 they must quietJy relinquish their usurped con- 
 trol of the general government, or break up the 
 Union. Quietly to relinquish usurped power, is 
 one thing that despots never do. Popular free- 
 
 261 
 
252 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 dom in the North was so absorbing the influx of 
 foreign immigration, and was proving itself so 
 prolific of all that constitutes the resources of a 
 nation's strength, that it became apparent no 
 time was to be lost. They were fast sinking 
 into a powerless minority. Judging others by 
 themselves, they knew of no reason why the 
 gross abuses of power which they and their po- 
 litical coadjutors had been practising toward 
 their opponents should not soon be practised 
 back on themselves in turn. 
 
 They repealed the Missouri Compromise, and 
 inaugurated the politico-military strife in Kansas, 
 with some hope of adding that State to their 
 relatively waning minority ; and with the inten- 
 tion of turning the strife into a general civil 
 war, in case of failure. They failed in both the 
 main and substitute design. The '^ Yankees " 
 were too shrewd to fight while the general gov- 
 ernment was yet in the hands of their antago- 
 nists. Nothing was left them but to strike for 
 separation, by all means, and at all hazards. 
 Their corrupted partisans at the North, acting 
 under the blasphemed name of Democracy/*^ 
 enabled them to retain usurped control of 
 the general government until its army and 
 navy had been rendered useless, its treasury 
 
 * S«« Appendix B. 
 
treason's crisis. 253 
 
 robbed and bankrupted, its arsenals rifled, and 
 all but two of its fortifications in the Southern 
 States clearly within their reach. The hour had 
 come for decisive action. On the peaceable sur- 
 render of these two forts hung the momentous 
 sequence of peace or war. Thus near had the 
 Southern despots come to the accomplishment 
 of the first great act in their programme, — sepa- 
 ration, without resorting to the arbitrament of 
 the sword. All this had been accomplished dur- 
 ing the administration of that prince of Loco- 
 focos, James Buchanan, who lay in the hands of 
 his Southern advisers as a pine-knot lies in the 
 maw of an alligaior, till everything but the least 
 digestible part of its woody fibre, has been ex- 
 tracted. James Buchanan, who had done every 
 other thing that the Southern despots had desired 
 of him, did not actually issue orders for Forts 
 Sumter and Pickens to surrender, and the trai- 
 tors, somewhat unexpectedly, found these two 
 places in the hands of men who did not see fit 
 to surrender them unordered, without having a 
 fight first. As Buchanan's administration drew 
 near its close, the traitors, — with whom it had 
 been the main business of his term to cooper- 
 ate, — having completed all that they could ex- 
 pect to accomplish covertly, having thrown off 
 disguise, confessed their perjury, (and, in " seced- 
 
254 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 ing," the several Southern States allowed their 
 real character and design to become appar- 
 ent,) judged it prudent, one by one, to resign 
 their offices, leave the capital, and go South ; 
 thus leaving the old knot — from which they 
 lacked the chemistry to make any farther ex- 
 tract, and which still represented the vital head 
 of the government — to fall into other hands. 
 And thus the nation was stayed up from falHng 
 to pieces through Buchanan's unfathomable inef- 
 ficiency, or treason, as the case may be. 
 
 Had Buchanan, like his immediate predeces- 
 sor, been subject to the influence of strong drink, 
 probably the traitors could have accomplished 
 all that they could have desired, in his name, 
 and by his presidential authority ; and the com- 
 manders of Forts Sumter and Pickens would 
 have received orders to evacuate. But when 
 Buchanan was placed in nomination as the presi- 
 dential candidate of the Loco-foco party, Fremont, 
 the opposing candidate, was so popular, and the 
 accumulated iniquities of the, party, under the 
 then existing administration, had become so 
 enormous, as to make the result of the election 
 extremely doubtful ; and, in order to secure the 
 vote of the great State of Pennsylvania, it be- 
 came necessary for the party to accept her fa- 
 vorite son as their candidate, although in this 
 
WHAT MOBS ARE FOR. 255 
 
 respect — his not being liable to be influenced 
 by strong drink — he Vvas not exactly the man 
 that was suited to the purpose for which the real 
 leaders of the party designed to make use of 
 him. They did not dare to restrain him of his 
 liberty, and carry him South with them, because 
 this course would have alienated his and their 
 political coadjutors of the Buchanan stripe in 
 the North. 
 
 One trait of the despot, peculiar to the Amer- 
 ican branch of that famil}^, is, that when he has 
 in hand an enterprise which he likes not to at- 
 tempt himself, by personal violence, he has a 
 way of raising a mob of the worthless and the 
 desperate, to carry out his plans for him. It 
 appears to be a part of their regular policy, by 
 the absence of schools, and the discouragement 
 of regular industrial avocations for whites, to 
 keep on hand a class of this kind of characters, 
 for such particular occasions. This mode of 
 action gives additional plausibility to their pre- 
 tence of being Democrats. Some of the most 
 important transactions in the process of seceding 
 the Southern States were carried through by 
 this mode of operating. 
 
 But twice in the interim between the presi- 
 dential terms of Jackson and Buchanan, has 
 
256 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 their party failed to elect its presidential candi- 
 date. And neither of these two only successful 
 candidates who opposed that party survived his 
 inauguration more than a few weeks or -months, 
 before. he fell in death, — a victim, as the people, 
 in their democratic simplicity supposed, of ordi- 
 nary disease. 
 
 Sure, one there was, who suspected foul play 
 in the first of these instances, and who never 
 doubted it in the second. And now, viewing 
 the cases of sudden demise, so opportune for 
 the party which was aided by them, in the light 
 of their immense importance to the plans which 
 have since been developed, and in the light of 
 the means which have since been resorted to by 
 their authors, to carry these plans into Execu- 
 tion, no Ciindid mind, competent to comprehend 
 the evidence in the case, can doubt but that the 
 deaths of those presidents in office were pro- 
 cured by a quiet mode of assassination. Presidents 
 Harrison and Taylor were the only two who 
 ever died in office, and were the only two who 
 succeeded in interrupting the reign of that party 
 dynasty, whose otherwise unbroken prevalence 
 for thirty years has matured in the scenes of 
 treason, desolation, and blood, that now crush 
 our afflicted land. 
 
 But aside from the connection in which the 
 
AMERICAN DESPOTISM. 257 
 
 attempt stands catalogued, it is matter of noto- 
 rious history that a band was leagued, and a 
 mob prepared, to waylay and dispose of the 
 present chief magistrate of the nation as he 
 approached the capitol for inauguration ; at the 
 same time beleaguering that city and cutting 
 off communication from the North, taking pos- 
 session of the city of Baltimore, and forcing the 
 State of Maryland out of the Union. 
 
 Despots of the American type are accustomed 
 to succeed in whatever they think it worth their 
 effort seriously to attempt. When they fail, it 
 is generally safe to conclude that no subtlety, 
 however acute, no watchfulness, however unre- 
 mitting, no code of morals, however lax, no ap- 
 plication, however assiduous, no exertion, how- 
 ever desperate, and no scheme, however diaboli- 
 cal, could have secured success. The fierceness 
 of the throes of dying despotism consume the 
 fountains of whatever is just or gentle in the 
 individual supporters of that doomed cause. 
 
 22* 
 
XLIII. 
 
 SEPARATION OF THE DESPOTIC FROM THE DEMOCRATIC ELE- 
 MENTS IX THE LONG-DOMINANT PARTY — CONDITIONS OF 
 PEACE. 
 
 By moving with celerity on an unusual line 
 of travel, the President elect arrived in Wash- 
 ington unassassinated, unseized. President Bu- 
 chanan, in the new hands into wdiich he had 
 fallen when the traitors let him drop, even fa- 
 vored the peaceful inauguration of his lawfully- 
 elected successor; and Mr. Lincoln was duly and 
 peaceably inaugurated at the usual time, though 
 in the presence of an efficient military guard. 
 
 Thus the shattered and almost exthiguished 
 remnant of the United States government passed 
 from the usurping grasp of the political party 
 which, headed and handled by a few slave-hold- 
 ing despots, had used that government for their 
 own selfish and sinister purposes, with little in- 
 terruption, for the last thirty years; and, during 
 the last eight of these years, with the scarcely 
 disguised intention of compassing its destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 This relinquishment of power was not at this 
 
 25fe 
 
PARTY SPLIT DESIGNED. 259 
 
 tinie necessary, but voluntary, at least on the 
 part of leaders of that long-dommant party. 
 They supposed they had effectually destroyed 
 the power, and were relinquishing only the shad- 
 ow of its form. They little doubted that their 
 party adherents in the North were so thoroughly 
 corrupted,* and that the Middle States would 
 find themselves so distracted, that they who laid 
 and launched the plot, with the extreme South 
 already under their undisputed despotism, could 
 dispose of the rest at pleasure ; at least, could 
 cast them off at will, and by the aid of their 
 friends, the despotic classes in Europe, could es- 
 tablish a concentrated government that would 
 defy reaction. 
 
 On the 23d of April, 1860, the Convention of 
 the long-dominant party met at Charleston, 
 South Carolina, to select a candidate to be voted 
 for by the party, as Mr. Buchanan's successor. 
 The leaders of that party, there assembled, con- 
 trolled the majority — almost the entire vote — of 
 every Southern State except a trifling defection 
 on the border, and they controlled enough of 
 the Northern States to make the election of 
 their candidate reasonably certain, had they 
 chosen to harmonize and act together as form- 
 erly. A few formal compliments, paid by the 
 
 * See Appendix C. 
 
26(1 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 Southern despots to prominent Northern parti- 
 sans, would have secured this harmony, and 
 another Frank Pierce or James Buchanan could 
 have been made president. But such was not 
 the result desired. One Frank Pierce, succeeded 
 by one James Buchanan, had accomplished all 
 that the Southern despots had for such men to 
 do, namely, to put the country in a state of 
 complete preparedness for dissolution. The des- 
 potic jDfinciples and tastes of the Southrons had 
 become matured. They could no longer endure 
 a fettering combination with even corrupt, ve- 
 nal, traitorous, or deceived Democracy.* If their 
 Northern friends would join them and arm for a 
 consuming conflict with the mother of repub- 
 lics, well and good. If they would go home, 
 and in the several wards and counties manfully 
 resist all efforts to arrest the movements about 
 to be entered on in the South, this service 
 would also be very acceptable. But the unnat- 
 ural and mutually-loathed union of despotism 
 and democracy that had prevailed ever since 
 
 * Robert Toombs publishes a letter in a Georgia paper, saying, — "I can 
 conceive of no extremity to which ray countiy could be reduced in which I 
 would for a single moment entertain any proposition for any union with the 
 North on any terms whatever. When all else is lost, I prefer to unite with 
 the thousands of our own countrymen who have found honorable deaths, if 
 not graves, on the battle-field." As Mr. Toombs is a favorite among the 
 peace men of the North, it might be well that they make a note of his sen- 
 timents. — Boston Journalf September 14<A» 1868. 
 
WHY THE PARTY WAS SPLIT. 261 
 
 the rise of the cotton-trade infused vitality and 
 strength into the shive system was now drawing 
 near its termination. The set time for launch- 
 ing a plot for its dissolution had arrived. The 
 old Jackson-Buchanan, or " loaves-and-fishes " par- 
 ty as it was termed by an early critic of its 
 course, had answered well its end ; but, like the 
 typical dispensation in religion, at the coming 
 of the great Antitype, was to pass away, or lin- 
 ger out an anomalous and effete existence, op- 
 posed alike to* the clear light and decisive action 
 of the two great political verities, which, like 
 Paganism and Christianity, were thenceforth to 
 divide the field between them, till the one or 
 the other became extinct. 
 
 The separation of the two great elements 
 must of necessity take place in the long-domi- 
 nant party, as well as in the government proper. 
 As the sundering of the party did not involve 
 the crime of perjury or treason, and would not 
 necessitate war, it was resolved to initiate the 
 grand separation in that party, and the Conven- 
 tion at Charleston was selected as the occasion 
 for doing it. The plan w^as, by preventing unity 
 of action, to necessitate a plurality of candi- 
 dates, a division of the party vote, and the con- 
 sequent success of the opposing candidate, who, 
 as the South were a unit in the hands of their 
 
262 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 leaders, must of necessity be a sectional candi- 
 date, elected by a combination of sectional par- 
 ties, — this sectional featm^e must perfect and 
 insure the Southern political unanimity, — then 
 make war on the successful candidate, whoever 
 he might be, before or after his inauguration, 
 as chance might offer. 
 
 The separation in the party, then and there, 
 took place according to the design and purpose 
 of the despot Southrons. They refused longer 
 to consult the interests or to conserve the wel- 
 fare of the party. In vain the Northern mem- 
 bers of the party offered a continuance of their 
 venal services. They were rejected. The sep- 
 aration was so natural, fit, and timely, — espe- 
 cially since the Secession of the States it has ap- 
 peared so, — that any effort to restore the party- 
 union has been as unnatural and monstrous as 
 would be the attempt to reverse the operation 
 of nature in animal propagation, and endeavor 
 to restore the breathing offspring to its former 
 union w^ith the parent from which it had been 
 separated. The union of slave-mastership and 
 the policy of the Jackson-Buchanan party pro- 
 duced Secession by a process that admits not of 
 being reversed. 
 
 If such be the case with the political party 
 that so long held the government in its custody 
 
CONDITION OF REUNION. 26S 
 
 that the two ahnost became one, what ground, it 
 will be asked, is there to hope that the union of 
 the States can ever be restored ? There is no 
 ground for such a hope, not the slightest, so 
 long as Despotism rules the South or any other 
 portion of the States. The first and only, the 
 indispensable and all-sufhcient, condition of a 
 restitution of the Union of the States in perpet- 
 ual harmony, is a revolution of the South from 
 despotism to democracy. All the fighting which 
 the present War has produced or may yet pro- 
 duce, that brings near this result, advances us 
 by legitimate progress toward the attainment 
 of permanent peace. All that fails of bringing 
 near this result, is gratuitous self inflicted chas- 
 tisement. It may make us more wise and mod- 
 est, but in no other way than this can it have 
 any special tendency to terminate the strife. 
 
XLIV. 
 
 CONDITIONS INDISPENSABLE TO PEACE, AND PROGRESS TO- 
 WARD THEIR ATTAINMENTS. 
 
 Among the popular masses at the South, the 
 absence of sagacity to perceive, and of courage 
 and promptitude to resist, the usurpations of a 
 miUtary despotism at the commencement of 
 their secession movement proves those masses 
 to be devoid of democratic principle, and radi- 
 cally conformed to the condition of the subject 
 masses of a despotism * Are their despotic lead- 
 ers so secure in the rear that they can be reach- 
 ed only by the military destruction of these 
 masses ? Are these masses so devoted to their 
 leaders that they will not consent to survive 
 them ? If either of these conditions obtain (and 
 they really are but one), then must the war go 
 on with unabated destructiveness till the South 
 is wellnigh consumed, and the North shall have 
 paid in full the meet penalty for having allowed 
 a despotic corrupting of the half of its own 
 home population, and for according the unction 
 
 * For a vivid and veracious description of the process of seceding, see 
 
 The Conspiracy Unveiled. Huimicutt. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott 
 
 & Co., 1863. 
 
 2M 
 
THE WAR NECESSARY. 265 
 
 of its tolerance and the shield of national pro- 
 tection to the deadly asp of Despotism, till its 
 own life's blood had well-nigh paid the forfeit in- 
 curred by its indolent credulity. 
 
 In view of the enormous cost and suffering 
 which this war is inflicting, North and South, it 
 may be asked whether prompt decisive action, 
 at its origin, could not have arrested and hung 
 its authors, and have left the Southern as well 
 as the Northern masses undecimated and the 
 homes of the former undevastated. Decisive 
 governmental action could probably have ar- 
 rested the leaders of revolt, and thereby have 
 prevented the progress of the present war; but 
 this would have been only a perilous postpone- 
 ment, — a damming up of a river that would 
 only have increased its strength and fury, as 
 long as the cause continued to act which made 
 despots of the leaders of this revolt. Though 
 the Southern people had been spared their pres- 
 ent sufferings, the same causes, continuing to 
 act, would soon produce and place at their head 
 a set of leaders more despotic and desperate 
 than those who are now consigning them to 
 wholesale immolation. 
 
 If a bloody or a bloodless revolution could 
 have been instituted in the South, that would 
 have brought the seven and three-fourths mil* 
 
 23 
 
266 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 lions of non-slave-holding white population in 
 successful conflict with the despot few, who now 
 govern that section with a rod of iron, the pres- 
 ent war would have been averted. But such 
 was the amount of power which slavery put 
 into the hands of the despot few, — such was 
 the disadvantage at which slavery placed the 
 seven and three-fourths millions of non-slave- 
 holding whites, — above all, such was the vassal 
 sympathy with the ruling few, into which these 
 non-slave-holding millions were brought by their 
 chronic fear and hate of slaves set free, that 
 nothing but a war which prostrates alike the 
 despot leader and his millions of abject whites 
 can ever clear the soil for the planting of a gen- 
 uine democracy. Nothing less than the suffer- 
 ing and humiliation which this war is inflicting 
 on the North could have brought its corrupted 
 majority to consent to the establishing of that 
 degree of political equalit^^ at the South which 
 is indispensable to the continued existence of 
 democratic, or, in common terms, republican 
 institutions on this continent. 
 
 The question here intrudes itself. Must ne- 
 
 . groes vote ? It is impossible to precalculate at 
 
 what time the elective franchise v/ill become of 
 
 any practical value to them ; or at what time it 
 
 will be best for us that they should exercise it. 
 
NEGRO ELEVATION. 2G7 
 
 Where there is no compression, there can be no 
 explosion. Where there is an arbitrary depriva- 
 tion of the practically valuable rights, which, by 
 the equal rule of democratic government, per- 
 tain to any class, then and there comes into ex- 
 istence a reacting, explosive force. This force, 
 perpetually conflicting with the original, arbi- 
 trary, deprivnig dictation, the two mutually irri- 
 tate and strengthen each other till an explosive 
 revolutionary outbreak is the result. 
 
 The premature conferring of elective fran- 
 chise on an abject race, as the negroes now are, 
 and must long be, would only reproduce and 
 multiply ten thousand fold the corrupting and 
 disastrous results of conferring that franchise 
 on the green, ignorant, and politically unprinci- 
 pled serfs that throng to us from the shores of 
 monarchical Europe. 
 
 The prospect of thereby weakening the mil- 
 itary strength of the Rebellion, together with 
 the pressing menace of European powers, which 
 could thereby be parried, appear to have induced 
 Mr. Lincoln to proclaim emancipation to the 
 greater part of the Southern slaves.* The dem- 
 onstrated impracticability of his schemes of de- 
 porting the freed negroes, the difficulty of sup- 
 plying his lack of troops, and the unhealthiness 
 
 * See Appendix A. 
 
268 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION. 
 
 of many of the locations where troops were 
 necessary to be used, seem to have induced the 
 tardy determination to arm the negroes. 
 
 Butj whatever may have been the motive 
 which induced the course of action, the first 
 efficient step taken toward preserving the gov- 
 ernment from the assault made on it from the 
 South was the abolishing of masters/^' brought 
 about by emancipating the slaves ; and the first 
 step taken toward preventing a recurrence of 
 
 * Though there mav be men and women in the ranks of those partisans 
 of treason Avho ai-e votmg against President Lincohi's administration, who 
 fire ignorant, and hence partially innocent, of the real aim of their party- 
 leaders, yet, beyond dispute, that aim is, singly and solely, by all possible 
 means, to pi-event the Emancipation Proclamation from taking effect. 
 Thereby redeeming the institution of slavery from the boiling, burning gulf 
 into which its Southern possessors had thrown it, restoring the Loco-foco or- 
 ganization, with all the Southern slave-holders gratefully owing their preser- 
 vation to their Northern friends. To accomplish this result, all the infernal 
 zeal that can be expended, all the falsification of facts and principles that 
 may be necessary, and the blood and treasure requisite for two or three 
 years' prolongation of the war, appear to be a moderate price, in the estima- 
 tion of these precious graduates of the political school in which they have 
 been educated. " To the victors belong the spoils.''^ 
 
 Reuben Stout, GOth Indiana Infantry, was shot on Johnson's Island for 
 desertion. He vv^as allowed to go home on furlough. In a confession, made 
 just before his death, he says : — 
 
 " After I had been there about two weeks, I Avas advised by several per- 
 sons not to go back to the ai-my; they said this was only an 'Abolition 
 war.' I was induced to go to a meeting of the so-called Knights of the 
 Golden Circle, and was made a member of that organization. The obliga- 
 tions of the order bound us to do all we could against the war, — to resist 
 the draft, if one should be made, and likewise to resist and oppose all confis- 
 cation or emancipation measures, in every possible way. We were pledged 
 to do all wo could to prevent another man or dollar going from the State fcxp 
 the fur'Jier prosecution of the war." 
 
 When a squad attempted to arrest him he killed one of the party 
 
EFFECT OF NEGRO ELEVATIO:CT. 269 
 
 the same assault was conferring manhood and 
 elevation of character on the blacks, by admit- 
 ting them into the army ranks, to fight for their 
 own independence. Failing of either of these 
 two necessary steps, the present war might have 
 continued to the end of time without producing 
 any decisive result in favor of the Union cause. 
 And now, if through their Northern confeder- 
 ates, the Secessionists can succeed in reversino- 
 either of these measures of President Lincoln's 
 administration, they have a fair prospect of be- 
 ing the ultimate winners, however the tide of 
 victory may turn in the field. 
 
 If the negroes prove to be so effectually freed, 
 and so far elevated above their former condition, 
 that no class of men can again make political 
 use of them as their former masters have hith- 
 erto done, doubtless the masses of the Southern 
 whites, freed from their former trammels, and 
 from the powerful presence of the slave-holding 
 class, will adequately educate themselves and 
 put on democracy spontaneously. Especially 
 may this result be expected, when free inter- 
 communication with the North shall have been 
 established. 
 
XLV. 
 
 THE STATE OF THE SOUTHERN MASSES — THE DEMONSTRATED 
 AIM OF THEIR LEADERS — INEVITABLE RESULTS OF SEP- 
 ARATION. 
 
 Let us now attempt to gather into focal 
 proximity the leading phenomena of Seces- 
 sion. 
 
 Apart from their blind and mad affection for 
 the condensed despotism which slavery presents, 
 and their cringing, suicidal, though unconscious, 
 servihty to the leading conservators of this des- 
 potism, the non-slave-hoiding millions of white 
 population in the South had no motive, and 
 could have had no inclination, to engage in the 
 present onslaught against the United States 
 government. 
 
 The victory now being contended for by the 
 Southern leaders is a victory over democratic 
 equality, democratic principles, and democratic 
 institutions, and is as much against the rights, 
 prosperity, and prospects of the masses of the 
 people at the South as at the North. And noth- 
 ing but the arts and coercive power peculiar 
 to successful despots ever placed those South- 
 
 270 
 
AIM OF SECESSION. 271 
 
 em masses in the ranks of the slave-holders' 
 army, or still retains them there. 
 
 Some light is thrown on the real nature and 
 aim of Secession — an aim and a nature which 
 must fashion its future, if it succeeds in prolono-- 
 ing its existence — by the fact that its authors, 
 and those in behalf of whom these authors act, 
 prior both to the inception and execution of 
 their nefarious plan, were in the secure posses- 
 sion of every right, privilege, and power which 
 democracy could either confer or permit, and 
 more. They possessed every right, privilege, and 
 power they or any other set of sane men in their 
 places could desire or ask, except the privilege 
 and power of making war and concluding peace 
 on their own sole, unadvised, unembarrassed 
 motion, and of adding to the millions of their 
 slaves at pleasure, by importation or conquest. 
 This evinces to a demoristration that the true 
 and real aim of the authors, the leaders, and the 
 champions of the Secession movement is no 
 other than to divide their despotism from its for- 
 mer incongruous, embarrassing copartnership 
 w^ith democracy, — to place it on a basis of its 
 own, free to pursue its own peculiar aims and 
 tendencies, by its own peculiar modes of action. 
 In doing this, they are sure that the iron or- 
 ganization, and the solitary, changeless head of 
 
272 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 despotism, will give them incalculable advantage 
 over the loose and changeable executive of a 
 democracy, in the interminable wars that must 
 necessarily follow the achievement of separation. 
 They are also sure that a despotism can always 
 surround itself with its native element, — a state 
 of war, — and that this is so adverse to its antago- 
 nist, that, as a democracy, though physically 
 unconquered, it must eventually perish wherever 
 this element permanently prevails. 
 
 Slavery is known and admitted to be the cor- 
 ner-stone of the new government to be reared 
 on the Southern fragment of the divided Union.* 
 
 The strong and growing determination of the 
 Northern Democrats, after the rupture of the 
 obligations that have hitherto bound them, never 
 again to become the ministers or the menials of 
 a despot in controlling his refractory slaves, is 
 perfectly known, and matter that may be pre- 
 calculated on. 
 
 The fact that Southern slaves will be constantly 
 fleeing to the North for protection and freedom 
 is also a matter in respect to which there is no 
 doubt or uncertainty, in case a slave-holding 
 government ever stands by itself on Southern 
 soil. 
 
 * See speech of Alexander H. Stephens (Vice-President of the Southern 
 Confederacy, as he is called). George Livermore's Historical Research. 
 A. Williams & Company. Boston: 1863. p. 4. 
 
DESIGNS ON THE NORTH. 273 
 
 We have, then, the inevitable conclusion, that 
 the men who are striving to establish this slave- 
 holding kingdom in the South depend for its 
 continuance on perpetual military success, sur- 
 veillance of the North, and such an extended ap- 
 plication of their present policy of '-retaliation " -^ 
 as will compel the ever unwilling democrats of 
 the Northern fragment of our former nation, to 
 guarantee the integrity of their slave system. 
 By how much this state of things will fail short 
 of the military subjugation of the North, it is 
 worth little time or trouble to calculate. An-d 
 how much is to be done by the Northern parti- 
 sans of the Southern despots, in bringing about 
 this state of compulsory vassalage, — in substi- 
 tuting the former voluntary cooperative Union, 
 
 * It is reported that the Rebels, in view of an immediate bombardment of 
 Charleston, have removed all the Union prisoners taken at ilorris Island 
 and Sumter to that city, and also that prisoners have been sent from Rich- 
 mond that they may be exposed to the danger of the bombardment. — 
 Journal. 
 
 Baltimore, Oct. 30. The American has a letter from a responsible 
 correspondent dated Annapolis, Md., 29th, -which says the flag of truce boat 
 New York arrived at the Naval School Wharf this morning from City Point, 
 with 180 paroled men; eight of the number died on the boat on its way 
 here. 
 
 They actually starved to death. Never, in the whole course of my life, 
 have I seen such a scene as there was presented. They were living skele- 
 tons. Every man of them had to be sent to the hospital, and the surgeon's 
 opinion is that more than one-third will die, being beyond the reach of 
 nourishment or medicine. I questioned several of them, and all state that 
 their condition has been brought on by the treatment they have received at 
 the hands of the Rebels. They have been kept without food, and exposed 
 a large part of the time without shelter of any kind. 
 
274 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 by a severed state, and a compelled rendering 
 of such subordinate help as is indispensable to 
 the preservation of their slave property, — is 
 also unimportant, and of no modifying influence 
 on the final result. The bitterness of final mili- 
 tary subjugation will be little alleviated by the 
 reflection that the Southern despots, who im- 
 posed it, could not have succeeded without the 
 aid of corrupted and traitorous partisans in our 
 midst.'^ 
 
 * There is something daraningly dishonest in the professions and the prac- 
 tices of those Northern men, of the Vallandigham, Wood, and Seymour 
 school,, who are unfriendly to the United States government as now admin- 
 istered, and yet refuse to put their necks directly under the yoke that Jeff. 
 Davis is imposing on the people of his realm. They are, obviously, aiming 
 to barter their countrymen, and their country, to that modern Nero, for 
 positions near the throne which he is wading through " blood to the horses' 
 bridles" to estabhsh. 
 
XLVI. 
 
 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS — THE CONTEMPLATED COST OF 
 THE REBELLION — THE AIM THIS COST WAS FITTED TO 
 SUBSERVE — RIGHT-MINDED MEN AT FAULT — THE NO- 
 PUNISHMENT CLASS — ABUSE OF THE TERM DEMOCRATIC — 
 DISJOINTING THE SOUTHERN MASSES FROM THEIR DES- 
 POTIC LEADERS. 
 
 Something more than appears at first view can 
 be learned respecting the true nature and aims 
 of Secession, by looking at the deliberate sacri- 
 fices by which its authors, from the first, pro- 
 posed to attain their ends. 
 
 When we look at the movement in the light 
 of these sacrifices, their extent, their deliberate- 
 ness, the unreserved freedom with which they 
 are offered, and the comparative insignificance 
 and doubtful worth of the proposed returns, — 
 it may almost be doubted wdiether the move- 
 ment had really any other motive than a dispo- 
 sition, on the part of its authors, to destroy 
 everything that they had the opportunity and 
 the power to reach and ruin. 
 
 The first great item in this bill of sacrifices is, 
 our nationality. It was held in common by North 
 and South. It had a history, radiant with the 
 
 276 
 
276 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 wisdom and prowess of our common patriot sires. 
 It had a prospective future, glowing with a gor- 
 geousness of promise almost beyond belief 
 Though young in years, and novel in the polit- 
 ical basis on which it rose, it had attained a 
 respectability and influence abroad which we 
 would have exchanged with no other nation. 
 It was unconquerable by any external force 
 that could be brought against it. An easy- 
 exercise of its military strength was sufficient to 
 defend and vindicate the rights of itself and of 
 its citizen, wherever threatened. The benefits 
 it conferred on its citizens at home were more 
 ample, rich, and costless than had ever before 
 been conferred by any human government. It 
 made our country the desired home and refuge 
 of the oppressed of every land. It was the 
 beacon-light of popular liberty to a tyrant-ridden 
 world. Add to these considerations the unutter- 
 able affection with which every virtuous patriot 
 cleaves to the institutions, as well as to the soil, 
 of his native land, and multiply the sum by the 
 tens of millions of its blessed and contented 
 population. All this is utterly and certainly 
 destroyed by the first act of the purposed sepa- 
 ration. Large fragments of the ruin may, or 
 may not, remain ; may, or may not, retain some 
 traces of the great original ; no one knows, 
 
PECUNIARY COST OF THE WAR. 277 
 
 and, of all others, no one appears to care less 
 than the Secessionist, how this may be. 
 
 To the destruction of our nationality add the 
 individual pecuniary sacrifice at which this War 
 has hitherto been, and is yet to be, carried on. 
 Nine hundred millions of dollars is the computed 
 war debt of the Union government at the end 
 of the first two years of war. Add to this the 
 millions that Iiave been raised by war-tax, the 
 many millions that have been voluntarily con- 
 tributed for hospital and other necessary war 
 expenses, the loss of income suffered by abstract- 
 ing an average of nearly a million and a half 
 of Nortlieru men from their customary indus- 
 trial avocations, arid a proportionate outlay for 
 the remainiug years of the War, of whatever 
 number they may be, and you have, approxi- 
 mately, the Xorthci-n half ul' the pecuniary sac- 
 rifice at which this fratricidal strife is carried on. 
 Instead of estimating the Southern portion of 
 the cost as nearly parallel, you might as well 
 consider that the Southern army is made up, to 
 a great extent, of men who were accustomed to 
 earn very little by their industry, before the 
 war begun, and are accustomed to receive 
 little or nothing of real value for their coerced 
 services in it, while it lasts. But to balance 
 this reduction of the expenses of the war to 
 
 24 
 
278 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 the Southern party, reflect that their section 
 has to sustain the havoc and devastation of both 
 armies present on their soil; that all commer- 
 cial intercourse with the outer world is absolutely 
 cut off, except what is carried on by blockade 
 running, — a process in which three ventures out 
 of four are captured, and the successful one has 
 to demand and receive a price that will pay for 
 the whole ; that industrial avocations and the 
 productions of the soil are reduced to the limits 
 of what will barely sustain life ; that their 
 slaves, whom they valued so highly as to stake 
 everything else on the chance of preserving 
 them in slavery, have already been, or must 
 soon be, emancipated to a man, and you will 
 perceive that there was more truth than poetry 
 in the statement of " Vice-President " Stephens 
 to the planters, that, '• in case they did not suc- 
 ceed in securing their independence, nothing 
 which they possessed would be worth anything." 
 In other words, it will be seen that the War, as 
 planned by its Southern authors, was designed, 
 if unsuccessful, to involve the blank annihilation 
 of the property value of everything possessed 
 by Rebel owners. 
 
 Two considerations modify the first view of 
 the incalculable pecuniary sacrifice so freely of- 
 fered up by the authors of Secession. First, they 
 
SOUTHERN DISESTEEM FOR PROPERTY. 279 
 
 put a very light estimate on all pecuniary con- 
 sicleratious. One efficient means, by which the 
 Southern mind has been excited to war upon 
 the North, has been the ridicule and contempt 
 thrown on the " Yankees " for their overween- 
 ing love of property. This contempt for pecun- 
 iary considerations in the Southern mind, arises 
 first, from the natural recklessness of one who, 
 from never having earned property, has little 
 appreciation of its w^orth ; second, from a bar- 
 baric indifference to that elevated civilization 
 of which property is the basis, — this trait hav- 
 ing been derived by the whites from their social 
 participation in the uncivilized character of the 
 bhicks ; third and hast, but not least, it is the 
 exhibition of that contempt for all other consid- 
 erations, which naturally occupies the mind de- 
 voted to the pursuit, exercise, and enjoyment of 
 despotic power. 
 
 In making, then, a just estimate of the incal- 
 culable pecuniary sacrifice at which the authors 
 of this Rebellion proposed to purchase their 
 triumph over our republican institutions, let us 
 make all due allowance for their peculiar dises- 
 teem for the pecuniary value of what all other 
 claimants for the rank of civilized people esteem 
 as highly valuable. 
 
 Second : A second consideration that modifies 
 
280 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 the first view of this incalculable pecuniary sac- 
 rifice, is the shade of uncertainty that rested on 
 the fact of its being finally, and wholly, exacted. 
 If Mr. Buchanan, as there was doubtless very 
 strong reason to expect he would do, had or- 
 dered the evacuation of Forts Sumter and Pick- 
 ens, if, as there was perhaps every possible 
 assurance would be the case, Mr. Buchanan's 
 party in the North had stood up boldly and 
 blindly for the destruction of the Union, and 
 the erection and immunity of a Southern Des- 
 potism, then the negro property would not all at 
 once have been lost, and perhaps much of the 
 present war expenses of the North and South 
 would have been for a time postponed/^- But 
 giving due weight to this perad venture, we have 
 still the absolute certainty that the original de- 
 sign and determination of the despot originators 
 of the revolt was, if they could not attain their 
 end at less expense, to sacrifice the whole. 
 This last qualifying consideration, and, per- 
 
 *Had the authors of this Rebellion succeeded in reducing the people of 
 the whole country to the condition of abject dependence in which the 
 Southei-n masses have found themselves, and had they succeeded in doing 
 this before the torpid democracy of the Northern States became alarmed, 
 and before blood had been shed, then, according to the logic of all past 
 time, whatever of disaster and suffering might have been incixiTcd in ren- 
 dering their usurped supremacy perpetual would have been chargeable, not 
 to the despots themselves, who should fight " to maintain necessary and 
 wholesome government," but to the " rebellious turbulence " of their subjects 
 who should fight to rid themselves of ' wholesome and necessary restraints.* 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF LIFE. 281 
 
 haps, to some extent, the one preceding it, ap- 
 ply also to the third great item in the bill of 
 sacrifices deliberately offered by the authors of 
 the present war, which is, the sacrifice of human 
 life which it involves. 
 
 The data are not at hand from which to esti- 
 mate the expense in human life at w^hich this 
 terrible War has been thus far prosecuted, much 
 less can we now calculate the bill of mortahty 
 which will be presented at its close. 
 
 The Union government has called for and 
 received for military and naval service a million 
 and a half of men, perhaps a few more or less, 
 but very nearly that number. During the two 
 years and two months of the War already pass- 
 ed, an average of about 800,000 men must have 
 been in the field. The Rebels, by their sweeping 
 conscriptions, without regard to past precedent 
 or future prospects of keeping their number 
 good, have kept up a force two-thirds as large 
 as the Union force, and for a part of the time 
 exceeding that proportion. Modern implements 
 of war have been destructive to life and limb 
 beyond a parallel. The fighting has been fre- 
 quent and severe, though often undecisive. The 
 larger number of our men has of course ex- 
 posed us to a heavier loss than the Rebels. A 
 lack of acclimation in the Southern fields which 
 
 24* 
 
282 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 they have occupied has acted against the health 
 and lives of our men. The improved and per- 
 fected sanitary regulations and appliances of the 
 Union army have been of immense effect in 
 saving our men. The necessary or needless 
 lack of these, on the Rebel side, has brought the 
 actual loss to the two about equal. Perhaps 
 our assaulting of their Mississippi fortifications 
 is turning the balance in their favor. The li- 
 censed slaughter of all Union men within the 
 reach of Rebel marauders adds an item to the 
 whole. From a quarter to half a million of the 
 most valuable lives, men in their early prime, 
 have doubtless already been destroyed in the 
 progress of this War. Multiply by this the dis- 
 tress and sorrow of a circle of loving hearts that 
 ached and bled for each. If figures, or words 
 can be found, adequate to express the footing of 
 these three items of this bill of the sacrifices, 
 then can we approximate the cost at which the 
 perjured leaders of this inhuman treason pro- 
 posed to purchase their exemption from all in- 
 cumbering contact with the mildest and most 
 humane and liberal form of civil society ever 
 realized. 
 
 What light does this computation of their 
 deliberate, intelligently preconcerted sacrifices 
 throw on the nature of their aim. The two of 
 
DEVASTATION THE CONTINGENT AIM. 283 
 
 necessity are consonant and accordant. What 
 is the aim that accords with such means of at- 
 taining it? What is the proposed diversity from 
 their former civil state that justifies the outlay 
 of this unutterable cost in arriving at it ? The 
 picture before us exhibits the infuriate spirit of 
 all relief barbarity, committing wholesale demo- 
 lition on the producers, and the products, of 
 modern civilization. It is the demon of ancient 
 Despotism, long driven from his throne, return- 
 ing, " with seven other spirits more wicked than 
 himself," to reduce the outgrowth of all modern 
 principles to that condition of narrowness and 
 poverty that suits a restoration of his reign. 
 The annihilating destruction of property, and 
 of national character, strength, and resources, 
 and the fiend-gloating oblation of life and love 
 and hope, are not so much the dreaded but ne- 
 cessary means of attaining a precious end that 
 compensates the cost, as they are themselves the 
 end, subordinate in ultimate importance, only, to 
 the restoration of a despotism designed and 
 fitted to perpetuate the desolation its advent 
 has induced. 
 
 The bill of inexpressible costs, deliberately 
 incurred b}^ those who laid and launched the 
 plot for the destruction of the United States 
 government, proves that the present war is no 
 
284 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 accident, the dictate of no mere caprice. Men 
 do not consign their own country, their own sec- 
 tion, and their own homes, to devastation, and 
 their own friends and neighbors and sons to 
 wholesale immolation, from mere caprice, un- 
 less their African associations have reduced 
 them to the level of Dahomians. The present 
 War is taking place under the action of the 
 deepest principles and the most abiding laws 
 that govern man's individual or associate action. 
 In case of Southern success, and the achieving 
 of Southern independence, the same law that 
 induced the present War and the transpiring sac- 
 rifice would prompt a continual repetition of 
 the war and sacrifice, till the last remnant of 
 the hated democratic government shall have 
 been eradicated from the continent. In case of 
 Rebel failure, under the action of the same abid- 
 ing law of inimical antipathy to all democratic 
 rule, as little almost as possible, besides bones 
 and ashes, is designed to be left, to grace the 
 triumph, or requite the outlay, of the friends of 
 civil freedom. 
 
 It is not more the cause of this country and 
 of this generation than it is the cause of all 
 nations and of all time, that is now being fought 
 out on American soil, between the friends and 
 the enemies of civil freedom; therefore this 
 
FATAL FASCINATIONS. 285 
 
 ignoring of all human ties, on the part of the 
 latter, this insatiate greed to ruin all that they 
 cannot permanently rule. 
 
 \¥e are told that some serpents have the abil- 
 ity to fascinate their prey. Few facts in natu- 
 ral life fail to exemplify some active principle in 
 the moral and social world. So we see this spir- 
 it of fiendish destructiveness, this unmitigated 
 antagonist, not only of democratic equality of 
 rights, but of all human happiness and prosper- 
 ity, fascinates into an insane fondness for itself, 
 first, and most naturally, the female portion of 
 its master-class ; second, and most fatally, the 
 poor white portion of its own Southern com- 
 munity, whom it has kept in permanent depri- 
 vation of everything but naked existence on the 
 cheapest rations ; third, last, and least excus- 
 ably, those political partisans at the North, 
 drunk from the orgies of former political tri- 
 umph and partisan excesses, beyond the possi- 
 bility of ever conceiving a purer desire, or a 
 nobler design, than to achieve the overthrow 
 of those whom they elect to treat as political 
 enemies, though patriotism and peace, prosper- 
 ity, national existence, and the star of hope, go 
 down in bloody chaos and eternal night at their 
 discomfiture. 
 
 It is the necessary infirmity of all democ- 
 
286 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 racy, that the most ignorant and incompetent, 
 the constitutionally selfish, incapacitated, ma- 
 lign, and perversely active, as well as the able, 
 devoted, and patriotic, must have an equal 
 chance of acting on the destinies of the civil 
 State. But that the former classes should com- 
 bine, with no other creed, doctrine, or political 
 principle than that of dividing the incomes and 
 patronage of civil employment among them- 
 selves, and to this end the electing at every cost 
 of the candidate of their own nominating, — this 
 is a misfortune, so far as history shows, pecul- 
 iar to the American Republic. 
 
 That, after thirty years of success and consol- 
 idation, this ruling combination, under the blind 
 and flituitous assumption that they are thereby 
 to perpetuate their power, should sell theui- 
 selves, and their hitherto ruling influence, to a 
 clique of the boldest despots, professing to aim 
 at nothing but the enslavement of subordin- 
 ates, and exultingly gloating at the repast, as 
 they clutch the vitals and drink the life-blood 
 of the nation, — this results from criminal delin- 
 quency on the part of better men than them- 
 selves, — a delinquency which they, who are 
 guilty of it, and their unoffending sons and 
 daughters are now atoning for in tears and 
 treasure, and are washing out with blood. 
 
CAUSES OF SECESSION. 287 
 
 Good and evil originate and abide together in 
 every human community. But that, among the 
 rich privileges which repubhcan government 
 confers upon its possessors is the privilege of 
 perpetually postponing with impunity all polit- 
 ical strife between the evil and the good, is a 
 fundamental error, and leads to the accumula- 
 tion of the arrearages of that unpleasant and 
 neglected duty, into an avalanche like that 
 which is pouring on the virtuous portion of the 
 nation at such an hour as this. 
 
 It is not transcendins; the leo-itimate bounda- 
 ries of political, historic inquest to note that no 
 small encouragement has been given to the 
 present onslaught on the government and life 
 of the nation, by those infidel diddlers who 
 have so industriously inoculated the Northern 
 mind with non-resistant and no-punishment sen- 
 timents that it was matter of military calcula- 
 tion that a certain portion of the Northern peo- 
 ple would "lie supinely" still, while despots 
 "bound them hand and foot," and cut the 
 throats of such as they did not see fit to con- 
 sign to active servitude. 
 
 The permitted self-appropriation of the terms 
 " Democracy," and " Democratic " by the pro- 
 slavery, pro-southern politicians of the North, 
 has exerted an immense influence with the un- 
 
288 NATUITAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 informed and the unreflecting at home and 
 abroad, in bringing the country to its present 
 imperilled and distressed condition. And every 
 man professing Union sentiments, who by his 
 practice still sanctions that appropriation of 
 those terms, to that extent becomes accessory 
 to the traitor's crime. 
 
 The artful orators and editors of the South 
 have, from the first, used only that form of 
 speech which ignores entirely the possible dis- 
 solving of the joints and bands by which their 
 subordinates are incorporated into one living, 
 acting organism, under its despotic head. North- 
 ern partisans of the despots, of course, adopt the 
 same rule of utterance, and the Union people, 
 and the government itself, have been too ready 
 to allow this form of expression respecting the 
 Southern people. Those despot leaders speak 
 of " subjugation or success as their only alter- 
 native," and say that " annihilation and subju- 
 gation mean the same thing." Their views 
 in this regard are doubtless correct, so far as 
 themselves individually and their own domi- 
 natin gr class are concerned. And their anni- 
 hilation is probably the first indispensable step 
 toward a restoration of peace. But that the 
 seven and three-fourths millions of Southern 
 white population, who occupy the place, and 
 
DEMOCRACY AT THE SOUTH. 289 
 
 participate in the spirit, only of the subject 
 masses of a grinding despotism would con- 
 sign themselves to annihilation rather than 
 become reformed into a community of equal 
 rights, — a sincere democracy, — is an unde- 
 monstrated proposition which no one believes 
 to be true, not even those who never speak 
 as if its falsity were possible. The absence, 
 root and branch, of the whole system of ne- 
 gro slavery, and the annihilation of the des- 
 potic master-class from among them, will work 
 wonders in preparing the way for. vast, radi- 
 cal, rapid, and enduring changes in the polit- 
 ical faith and practice of the masses of white 
 population at the South. 
 
 25 
 
XLVII. 
 
 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS — THE DEMOCRAT AND DESPOT DI- 
 VERSE — GRADES OF DESPOTISM — DEVELOPMENTS OF — 
 DEMOCRACY SPONTANEOUS IN ITS SPREAD IF IT DEVEL- 
 OPS IN THE SOUTH, ITS TRIUMPH UNIVERSAL. — CONTRAST 
 OF ADMINISTRATIONS — DELINQUENCY OF THE OLD WHIG 
 STATESMEN FINAL SUCCESS. 
 
 We now glance back, prepared to estimate 
 more perfectly than at any previous point the 
 true value of what will have been found to be a 
 leading doctrine in what this book contains ; 
 namely, that the despot and the democrat are 
 two distinct kinds of being in the civil world, as 
 irreconcilably and unconvertibly different as it 
 is possible to make those who possessed origi- 
 nally the same natural physical and mental con- 
 stitution. In other words, as stated at first, the 
 change from despotism to democracy, or the 
 reverse, is the greatest secular change to which 
 the human constitution is liable, Avhether the 
 individual or the community be the subject on 
 which the change is considered to have passed. 
 So that the democrat and the despot, the friend 
 and advocate of democracy on the one hand, 
 and the friend and advocate of despotism on 
 the other hand, are as inconvertibly different, as 
 
 290 
 
CLASS DIVERSITIES. 291 
 
 irreconcilably antagonistic to each other, in the 
 civil world, as it is possible for two individuals 
 to become, each of whom started with the same 
 conformation of body and of mind. 
 
 We use the qualifying term secular, in speak- 
 ing of this difference, this change, in order to 
 distinguish it from the change of character 
 which separates between the individual who 
 does, and the individual who does not, volunta- 
 rily submit himself to the moral government of 
 God. 
 
 We would hero, without discussing its merits, 
 suggest the inquiry, whether there is not, in this 
 age and section of the world, a marked dispar- 
 ity between the friends of democracy and the 
 friends of despotism, in respect to the propor- 
 tion which each class contains of those who be- 
 lieve in, and aim sincerely to obey, the revealed 
 Scriptures. 
 
 We would still bear in mind that the despotic 
 class are of two grades, — the governing and the 
 governed ; the ambitious and selfish and po- 
 tent few, and the foiled and defeated and cir- 
 cumvented, but still undemocratic, many. 
 
 We would here reflect on what needs no ex- 
 tended discussion, such is its obviousness, — that 
 
292 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 any considerable aspiration after office, power, 
 or perhaps after permanently accumulated 
 wealth/^ is essentially a despotic exercise, radi- 
 cally inimical to democracy, inimical to that 
 consenting equality of privilege which is the 
 soul and essence of democracy — and consti- 
 tutes the nascent struggle by which the radical- 
 ly despotic member of the abject grade in a des- 
 potism breaks the shell of his chrysalis, to come 
 forth a fall-fledged, breeding specimen of the 
 ruling class, as inconvertibly fixed in despotic 
 principles as devils are in sin. 
 
 Here, evidently, is one of the greatest perils 
 of a maturely democratic State, namely, in the 
 natural ambition of the individual to possess 
 himself of a fragment from the crumbling pre- 
 rogative of despotic power, especially as the 
 vigilant, restless, persevering, and persistent en- 
 terprise which this ambition produces, stands 
 out in uncompensated contrast, and destructive 
 antagonism, against the modest, unambitious 
 self-restraint which characterizes, and constitutes 
 the leading element in, true democracy. 
 
 Thus in the ordinary routine of electing civil 
 officers in a democratic State, the most despoti- 
 cally inclined come to the surface naturally, and 
 
 * That " cursed love of gold," which the Father of our Counlry foresaw, 
 would be a chief source of peril to the permanency of our government. 
 
OFFICE-SEEKERS DESPOTIC. 293 
 
 those employed in the activity peculiar to the 
 nascent despot are almost the only ones that 
 stand any chance of being elected. Thus the 
 indiscriminated and the indiscriminating attach- 
 ment to principles of popular freedom and dem- 
 ocratic equality, on the one hand, becomes pitted 
 against the restless energy of the individual 
 despot, on the other hand ; and hence arises an 
 element of strife, if not the leading element of 
 strife, in the greater number of our popular 
 elections, unless it be when two candidates who 
 are both more aspiring than democratic get to 
 contending with each other over the coveted 
 preferment. And every succeeding success of 
 candidates thus procuring themselves to be elect- 
 ed leaves their kind and class encouraged and 
 strengthened, and leaves the indiscriminating 
 lovers of popular liberty, over whom they tri- 
 umph, more cowed and abject. Thus the demo- 
 cratic community, under the modern self electing 
 agency of office-seekers, yearly approximates 
 more and more nearly to the constitution of a 
 despotic state of society, which is characterized 
 by a division into the ruling few and the abject 
 many. 
 
 I find myself sometimes instinctively calling 
 for some coercive force wherewith to extend the 
 
 25* 
 
294 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 principles of democratic freedom. But such an 
 idea is absurd. It is but a lingering remnant 
 of despotic life enlisting itself in favor of a 
 changed and, to it, an unnatural aim. Democratic 
 principles, the love and practice of popular free- 
 dom, are of their own essential nature, necessarily 
 self-propagating, purely spontaneous in their 
 spread. To curb and curtail the usurping pow- 
 er of despots, to afford to popular masses time 
 and space and facilities for self-education and 
 elevation, and to set before them present ex- 
 amples of an imperative demand for, and a self- 
 restrained contentment with, democratic equality 
 of civil position and privilege, appears to be all 
 that can be done for propagating principles of 
 democracy beyond the sphere in which an indi- 
 vidual or a people is alone responsible.* 
 
 This kind of protection and encouragement 
 may be given to the subordinate classes in the 
 Seceded States, in the absence of slavery, and 
 if a rising spirit of democracy and self-improve- 
 ment appears and develops itself, as, aided by 
 something of immigration, doubtless will be the 
 case, then this continent is secure and sacred 
 to democracy. Otherwise, and especially if sla- 
 
 * All the democratic principles or practices propagated by dictation, are 
 only such as are received by the abject class in a despotic state of society 
 over which that dictating power presides. 
 
TREASON IN LEGISLATION. 295 
 
 very is permanently replanted, the seeds and 
 source of civil despotism remain, consuming 
 conflict is inevitable, and the pining anguish of 
 intestine strife, or fratricidal war, is perpetuated 
 and must prevail, till the sickened nationality 
 rots away. For if these seeds and this source 
 of despotism survive their present low and im- 
 perilled predicament, there is little hope that 
 they will ever become extinct ; and as for the 
 spirit of freedom which is inimical to all despot- 
 ism, there is no reason to believe that it will die 
 out from this its Ileaven-prepared birth-place 
 and home, until it shall have died out elsewhere 
 from oflf Jehovah's footstool. 
 
 As the war progresses, and, more especially 
 since the military power of the " Confederacy " 
 begins to show^ exhaustion, and Southern Union- 
 ists begin to "speak out, and tell what they 
 know, as R. S. Donnell, of the " Raleigh State 
 Journal," has recently [August 20th, 1863] done, 
 it becomes undeniable" as a matter of history, 
 that the plan to divide the Union was formed 
 by leading Southerners many years ago, and 
 that many measures of government and legisla- 
 tion, like the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
 mise^ the framing of the Fugitive Slave Law, — 
 
296 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 even back to the building of the forts that guard 
 the Southern ports, — and especially leading 
 measures adopted by the ruling political party, 
 and the final rupture of that party at its con- 
 vention at Charleston, were steps taken with di- 
 rect reference to the intended separation, and 
 with the design to make that separation easy 
 and certain.-^'- As matter of history, independent 
 of any argument this work elsewhere contains, 
 I now desire to refer to this admitted fact, and 
 to make it the basis of the following argument. 
 To form a plan of operations so momentous 
 and so vast, to impress the disposition and pur- 
 pose of its execution on an extensive and ruling 
 class of men, in many and diverse States, to 
 transmit the plan and purpose from generation 
 to generation, as these Southern leaders have 
 done ; to interlock their damnable treason in 
 disguise with the most important acts of the 
 government and of the people of the nation 
 through a course of tens of years, to say noth- 
 ing of the herculean strength and almost su- 
 perhuman activity which these leaders have 
 developed and displayed since the War began, 
 — and this, too, with only the passive support of 
 popular masses whose every real interest was in 
 point blank hostility to the course their leaders 
 
 * See Mason's Letter to Davis, — Appendix C. 
 
TALENTS PECULIAR TO DESPOTS AND VILLAINS. 297 
 
 induced them to pursue, — demonstrates these 
 Southern leaders of the Rebellion to possess exec- 
 utive talents and governing abilities which never 
 have been, or can be, either produced or perpet- 
 uated in individual democrats, or in a democratic 
 community. 
 
 The confiding quiet of a democratic state of 
 society, while it aflbrds the amplest scope for 
 self-elevation by the arts of peace and useful 
 industry, affords neither cause nor opportunity for 
 developing talents parallel to those which the 
 Southern leaders have displayed.^'-' 
 
 The absence of these talents, and the absence 
 of the aims and avocations which constitute their 
 pecndiar exercise, — the absence of a fiery ambi- 
 tion that would consume every endeared thing 
 but its naked self, would immolate its country- 
 men, and leave its native land a blackened waste, 
 in the pursuit of despotic power, — this is the 
 great deficiency in '* Yankee " constitution and 
 character, which renders the democratic popu- 
 lation of the North so insufferably offensive in 
 modern times to tlie nostrils of Southern men. 
 But thanks be to God, there are more than seven 
 
 * The nearest approach that is made to this will probably be in the case of 
 some stray villain who makes it his business to prey upon the possessions 
 and rights of others, and defy the law. In this line of action, extraordinary 
 abilities are sometimes developed; after the manner of the Kansas Quantrell, 
 and the guerrilla, John Morgan. 
 
298 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 and a half millions of Southern men who are in- 
 capable of appreciating, or even perceiving, this 
 ofFensiveness, — men to whom a taste of demo- 
 cratic equality of rights and privileges, and an 
 introduction to the arts of peace and industry 
 as they have become developed in the truly 
 democratic North, in the absence of slaves and 
 their despot masters, and of fear of servile in- 
 surrection, will be as life from the dead/^ 
 
 If the present War succeeds in emancipating 
 these millions of Southern whites from the grind- 
 ing despotism under which they have been 
 crushed from generation to generation, till they 
 had become so conformed to their impoverished 
 and depressed condition as to be hopelessly un- 
 conscious of their wrongs, it will have added 
 another brilliant wreath to the diadem of Lib- 
 erty, — will have given that turn to the tide of 
 victory which must render her dominion on 
 this continent perpetual and supreme. 
 
 The exhaustless resources and massive pop- 
 ular strength which gather spontaneously to 
 democracy must be relied on, in the yet un- 
 ended conflict between the two, to counterpoise 
 
 * Tyrants hate democrats, their subjects never, except so far as they have 
 been trained like apes to imitate the very sentiments and sensations of their 
 keepers. 
 
FORECAST, NOT ARMS, THE ARBITER. 299 
 
 the talent for command peculiar to the cham- 
 pions of despotism. 
 
 A moiety of the peculiar ability that, in the 
 space of a few weeks, successfully commanded 
 the millions of Southern whites, who supposed 
 themselves to be democratic members of a dem- 
 ocratic community, into the subordinate ranks 
 of a consolidated despotism of the most bloody 
 and inhuman kind, had that moiety been pos- 
 sessed on the other side, would have frustrated 
 the current treason in somewhat the style in 
 Avhich its prelude, nullification, was brought to 
 nought. 
 
 The issue, in the existing War, is between 
 Despotism and its supporters on the one hand, 
 and Democracy and its adherents on the other 
 hand. These two bellifsrerents have each the 
 seat of its power and the body of its forces, 
 mainly, but not entirely, the former at the 
 South, the latter at the North. Each belligerent 
 has some friends on the territory controlled by 
 its antagonist ; and the one that, by the aid of 
 its absent friends, succeeds in raising an impor- 
 tant diversion (producing a permanent revolt) 
 on the soil and among the adherents of its an- 
 tagonist, must be the final winner. The same 
 was true before the strife at arms commenced, 
 is true while that strife lasts, and will continue 
 to be true when that strife is over. 
 
300 NATURAL mSTOEY OF SECESSION. 
 
 Each belligerent has its forces mainly on the 
 section of this country which it controls, but 
 Europe, Africa, and Asia, heaven, earth, and hell, 
 are all interested and taking active part in the 
 conflict. Every month the contest approaches, 
 and the combatants divide, more and more obvi- 
 ously near upon the line that separates between 
 righteousness and iniquity. 
 
 The successful artifice by which John Morgan, 
 after such a course as he had run, succeeded in 
 surrendering himself, unhurt, a prisoner of war 
 in the interior of Ohio, the inhuman plan, and 
 still more inhuman execution of that plan, by 
 which Davis rids his dominions of those who are 
 unfriendly to him, putting them in the van of 
 the hottest fig-hts, and hano-ino: as traitors all 
 who object to being thus disposed of, the style 
 in which Generals Baker, Lander, McCook, and 
 others of whom Davis was afraid, have been put 
 out of the way, the African style in which 
 Lawrence, Kansas, was treated, -^ — these in con- 
 trast with the guilelessness that is ever permit- 
 ting the success of such artifices as that of 
 Morgan and the rest, together with the self- 
 restraint that leaves Davis's dominions so long 
 and so extensively uninterfered w^ith, give the 
 
 * The Richmond Examiner jnsti&es the Lawrence massacre as a " gallant 
 and perfectly fair blow at the enemy." — Boston paper. 
 
CONTRAST OF ADMINISTRATIONS. ' 301 
 
 characteristic lineaments of the two bellio:er- 
 ents.* 
 
 The idea of destroying Davis's government in 
 the estimation and confidence of the Southern 
 people appears never to have entered into Presi- 
 dent Lincoln's plan of operation. Perhaps it 
 would have availed nothing if it had. Even if 
 it had entered into that plan, and had been 
 availing, the despotic organism over which 
 Davis presides, like polyps of certain species, 
 when beheaded, would spontaneously supply its 
 deficiency, and live on. But the idea of destroy- 
 ing the present administration in the esteem 
 and confidence of the Northern people, and the 
 (to them at least) apparent feasibility of the 
 project, have doubtless presented a prominent 
 object of aspiration and effort, and a prominent 
 source of hope and encouragement to the Rebel 
 leaders. 
 
 According to the light we now possess, had 
 the present administration shown itself to any 
 considerable extent more feeble and hesitating 
 than it did, the loyal masses of its supporters 
 would have become so doubting and disheart- 
 ened, and the Northern friends of treason would 
 have become so bold and active, that Secession 
 would have had an early triumph ; or the War 
 
 * See Appendix D. 
 26 
 
302 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 would have been protracted to a point at which 
 reunion would not have appeared worth con- 
 ten din 2; for. 
 
 On the other hand^ had the present adminis- 
 tration^ at an early period of the struggle, rung 
 out a clear analysis of the situation, and a 
 decided policy, after the manner of Gen. Rose- 
 crans' letter to the Ohio legislature; had it 
 adopted and pursued a military course, obvi- 
 ously, inexorably, with ever-deepening stress, 
 and by the use of all availing means, bent on 
 the achieving of its proper aims, instead of coun- 
 termanding the orders of Fremont, Hunter, and 
 Burnside, and catering to the semi-secessionists 
 of the Border States till the exhaustion and 
 havoc of eighteen months of war, apparently 
 spent in demonstrating the mildness of the 
 government, had quenched the fervor of united 
 patriotism which was kindled, by the first attack 
 on Fort Sumter, — thus leaving the stagnant 
 and discouraged feelings and opinions of the 
 people to be tampered with by such demagogues 
 as C. L. Yallandigham, D. W. Voorhees, Fer- 
 nando Wood and the Toucey Seymours, — might 
 not this administration have so led the Northern 
 people, instead of waiting to be led by them, 
 as to have diminished the blood-and-treasure ex- 
 penses of the War by one or two years' expen- 
 
DELINQUENCY OF STATESMEN. 303 
 
 ditiires? This is a question for later days to 
 answer. And the right and final answer, it may 
 be, will not be given before another century 
 has shed its light on the points in which a vir- 
 tuous monarch and an equally virtuous chief 
 magistrate of a democratic people agree to difler. 
 
 Something of the same light, perhaps, also, 
 should l)e allowed to fall on the incpiiry, whether 
 the statesmen of the old Whig school, in their 
 unrc'l.ixcd aiid uudyiug antagonism to the pro- 
 gressive corruption and traitorous depravity of 
 their opponents, instead of allowing themselves 
 to l)e finally discomfited and laying themselves 
 down in ([uiet gi"avrs. eitlier beneath or above 
 the sod, should not. one and all, have left their 
 homes at Bladensburg, if need required it, sooner 
 tlijui have left the envenomed progeny of Cal- 
 houn and his political party thus to immerse 
 the nation in its self-shed blood, and thus to 
 precipitate a [)eril to the cause of Liberty more 
 to be dreaded than the sacrifice by w^hich the 
 threatening disaster is being turned away. 
 
 But the delinquency of these statesmen, and 
 the resulting sacrifice and peril, are putting a 
 purer and more grateful song in the lips of those 
 who, wuth something of the fliitli of ancient Mi- 
 riam, are disposed to praise their people's Great 
 Deliverer. 
 
304 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION. 
 
 When this dreadful War shall have ended, — 
 when this conspiracy of home-born traitors shall 
 have been effectually put down, and this con- 
 federation of foreign despots, potentates, and 
 powers, shall have been defeated, — then will 
 there go up one general shout of joy, — joy 
 more heartfelt, more wide-extended and endur- 
 ing, than human hearts ever before experienced, 
 or human tono:ues ever uttered before. " Ethi- 
 opia shall stretch out her hands unto God," and 
 the emancipated millions of our Southern white 
 population will soon send back the sound. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 A. (Page 2G7.) 
 The fcjllowing extract from a letter addressed, March 25th, 
 18G2, to a Senator who had moved in the Senate of the United 
 States the compen-sated emancipation of slaves in the District 
 of Columhia, presents one feature of the process of emancipa- 
 tion : — 
 
 Sir: — A proposition to emancipate the slaves of the unse- 
 ceded States, with a compensation to masters, being prominently 
 before Congress, having had extended acquaintance amono^ 
 Southern men, and some experience in the management of 
 slaves, and having been for the six years last past a voter in 
 your State, I ask leave to lay Ijefore you briefly a few reflec- 
 tions on this subject. 
 
 I believe it to be admitted as true, among those whose experi- 
 ence best entitles them to know, that slave-labor is unprofitable, 
 except where employed in the pnxlucing of some one great 
 staple commodity readily marketable for cash. 
 
 Since the introduction of tobacco-culture into the new States 
 of the West, slave-holding in the northernmost of the Slave 
 States has been decidedly unprofitable ; and must have been 
 abandoned, had it not been for the profit derived by selling oflf 
 the increase of the slave population to the Cotton States. 
 
 Now, the present War either will, or will not, destroy the 
 slave-market in the far South. If that market is destroyed, slave 
 property in the other States thereupon becomes, with few and 
 seeming exceptions, utterly and notoriously worthless ; and any 
 proposal to pay masters out of the United States treasury for 
 26* 305 
 
306 APPENDIX. 
 
 relinquishing their claim on it, is little else than fraudulent. If, 
 on the other hand, slavery in the Cotton States is not destroyed, 
 then slaves in the Border States have still a pecuniary value ; 
 and by proposing to compensate masters for releasing them, gov- 
 ernment simply enters the market as a competitor, to keep up 
 the price. ........ 
 
 All that is vital to our national existence and prosperity, is 
 involved in the prompt and utter extinction of slavery in the 
 cotton latitudes. 
 
 B. (Page 252.) 
 
 The following article on political nomenclature, was pubhshed 
 in the " Portland Press," of July, 1863 : — 
 
 A more damning falsehood never was palmed off on a pack of 
 fools, than that the pro-southern, pro-slavery politicians of the North 
 are not the radical and necessary enemies of all democracy. 
 
 No two things in nature are more irreconcilable, invariably 
 and eternally antagonistic, than despotism and democracy. One 
 or the other must perish, wherever they come in contact. 
 
 Slavery is the darkest, densest form of despotism. 
 
 The Southern Confederacy, founded on slavery, begotten of 
 slavery, living for, aiming at, tendmg toward, and ending in, 
 nothing else but slavery, already presents the world, in this third 
 year of its nascent existence, with the fiercest and most unmit- 
 igated form of despotism that there is this side of Dahomey. 
 Its European abettors, with Louis Napoleon at the head and the 
 " London Times," at the tail, are the dregs of Europe's effete des- 
 potic class. But these Northern sympathizers with, and aiders 
 of, the precious combination, forsooth we are told are "Demo- 
 crats " ! 
 
 Now the mere sound of the words democrat and democratic 
 sways the opinion of large masses of European minds, controls 
 the poHtical faith and action of the principal portion of our im- 
 
 I 
 
APPENDIX. 307 
 
 migrants and of immense multitudes of our home-bom voters ; 
 and as long as Union men, democratic supporters of a demo- 
 cratic government, allow and aid the bald and brazen advocates 
 of everything that pertains to despotism to adorn themselves 
 and delude their dupes with the purloined and self-appropriated 
 title, " Domocrats," so long wHl conclusive reasoning on political 
 subjects before the public mind be impracticable ; out of the re- 
 sulting fog and confusion, designing demagogues will have an 
 easy task to make the worst appear the better argument ; if our 
 armies arc victorious in tlio field, waveiing multitudes will join 
 ihe side of victory, without any apprehension of the nature or 
 importance of the principles that win ; and wliile the war contin- 
 ues, liundreds of thousands of honest and right-minded men like 
 Butler and Corcoran will have to fight and toil and suffer for 
 years, ])cforc they will begin to see that Jeff. Davis and his 
 comrades are not entirely innocent, wliile they call themselves 
 " Demrxjrats" and Abraham Lincoln a "despot," — and all this 
 because our political writers and speakei-s and thinkers lack the 
 grace and courage to call things by their right names. 
 
 Abndiam Lincoln is a democrat. His administration is a 
 democratic admiuLstration. The only opposite of democratic is 
 despotic. Jeffjrson Davis is a despot. His administration is 
 a (li'S[K)tism. The men who support and favor it are in favor of 
 despotism. When they shall have done with the United States, 
 if they do not get used up before that time, the United States 
 will be a despotism, and all — as many as dwell within its boun- 
 daries — who are not in favor of despotic government will be 
 compelled to keep their mouths shut, or do worse. T. S. Gr. 
 
 C. (Page 259.) 
 
 The following is a letter from Frank Pierce to Jeff. Davis, 
 wliicli was originally published in Concord about a week ago. 
 
308 APPENDIX. 
 
 As its authenticity has not been disputed, we may safely con- 
 clude that it is genuine. 
 
 CLARE^^)ON Hotel, Jannary 6, 1860. 
 
 My Dear Friend : — I wrote you an unsatisfactory note a 
 day or two since. I have just had a pleasant inten'iew with Mr. 
 Shepley, whose courage and fidelity are equal to his learning 
 and talents. He says he would rather fight the battle with you 
 as the standard bearer in 18G0 than under the auspices of any 
 other leader. The feeling and judgment of Mr. S. in this relar 
 tion is, I am confident, rapidly gaining ground in New England. 
 Our people are looking for the " Coming Man," one who is 
 raised by all the elements of his character alwve the atmosphere 
 ordinarily breathed by politicians, — a man really fitted for this 
 emergency by his ability, courage, broad statesmanship and 
 patriotism. 
 
 Colonel Seymour (Thomas II.) aiTivod here thi» morning and 
 expressed his views in this relation in almost the identical lan- 
 guage used by Mr. Shepley. It is true that in the present state 
 of things at Washington and throughout the countiy, no man 
 can predict what changes two or tlu-ee months may bring forth. 
 Let me suggest that in the morning debates of Congress, full 
 justice seems to me not to have been done to the Democracy 
 of the North. I do not believe that our friends at the South 
 have any just idea of the state of feeling hurrying at this mo 
 ment to the pitch of intense exasperation iDetween those who re- 
 spect their political obligations, and those who have apparently 
 no impelling power but that which fanatical passion on the sub- 
 ject of domestic slavery imparts. 
 
 Without discussing the question of right, — of abstract power 
 to secede — I have never believed that actual disruption of the 
 Union can occur without blood ; and if, through the madness of 
 Northern Abolitionists, that dire calamity must come, the fight- 
 
APPEXDIX. 309 
 
 xng triH not br along ^fasnn and Dixon s line merely . It 
 
 WILL HE WmilN OIR OWN BORDERS, IN OIR OWN STREETS, 
 DLTWEEN THE TWO rLASSE«^ OP CITIZENS TO WHOM I HAVE RE- 
 
 FERREP. Tltnsr iclio defy law and scout constitutional obliga- 
 'ons will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find oc- 
 " fpATioN ENornii AT HOME. Notliin^^ but the state of Mrs. 
 I'icrro*H health wouM indiioo me to leave the country now, al- 
 thojigli it U fjuitc likely that my prrsoncc at home would be of 
 little Hor^ico. I have trio<l to impress upon our people, espe- 
 cial ly in New IIam|whirc ami Connecticut, wlnTe the only olec- 
 tioHH arc to take pbco the comincj spring, that while our I'nion 
 iinM.fings are all in tho right tlirectinn ami well enough for the 
 I p ■ ijt, they will not bo worth the paper upon which their reso- 
 lutions ore written, unles.s we can overthnnv ptlitical alx)Iitionism 
 at the polb, anil repeal the unconstitutional ami obnoxious laws 
 which, in tlio cau.sc of ** Personal Lilwrty," have been placed 
 on our statute l>i»«>ks. I j^hall look with deep interest and not 
 without li.iH- f .r :i .].( l.li'd changi* in this relation. 
 
 Ever and truly your friend, 
 
 rn ANKLTX PIKRCE. 
 Hon. Jeff. Pwh, Wx^^hington, I>. <'. 
 
 It wa.^ su<h a.^.MininctM ;ix thofsc given in the above letter that 
 mboldened tho Kclx?l leaders to war upon tho government, and 
 tliere is a sin^ilar harmony l)etween the a.'s'^crlions of Pierce 
 \s-ith reganl to tho course of events at the North and tho views 
 ■f tljc Rebel newspapers at tho South Ijefore the bombardment 
 f Tort Sumter. It will be recollected tliat tiicy, too, predicted 
 ivil war and bread riots at tho North, showing that the assuran- 
 ■s of Northern traitors had Iwen credulously swallowed. — Bos- 
 ton Journal : Supplement, September 2b, 18G3. 
 
 The following from the " Boston Journal " of October 19th and 
 -<)th, 18G3, presents a glimpse of the true attitude and charac- 
 ter long possessed and maintained by this " Dear Friend " 
 
310 APPENDIX. 
 
 to whom Mr. Pierce was then and appears yet to be so *' ever 
 and truly " attached. 
 
 More of Jeff. Davis's Intercepted Correspondence. — The 
 following is a copy of a letter from Mason to JefF. Davis, and 
 was found among the intercepted correspondence of the latter. 
 
 Selma, near Winchester, Va., | 
 September 30, 1856. i 
 
 My Dear Sir: — I have a letter from Wise, of the 27th, 
 full of spirit. He says the governments of North and South 
 Carolinas and Louisiana have already agreed to the rendezvous 
 at Raleigh, and others will. (This in your most private ear.) 
 He says further that he had officially requested you to exchange 
 with Virginia on fair terms of differences, percussion for flint 
 muskets. Don't know the usage or power of department in 
 such cases, but if it can be done soon by liberal constructions I 
 hope you will accede. Was there not at the last session an appro- 
 priation for converting flint into percussion arms ? If so, would 
 it not furnish good reason for extending such facilities to the 
 States ? Virginia probably has more arms than the other South- 
 ern States, and would divide in case of need. In a letter yes- 
 terday to a committee in South Carolina, I gave it as my judg- 
 ment, in the event of Fremont's election, the South should not 
 pause, but proceed at once to immediate, absolute, and eternal 
 separation. So I am a candidate for the first halter. Wise says 
 his accounts from Philadelphia are cheering for old Buck in 
 Pennsylvania. I hope they be not delusive. Vale et salude. 
 
 Mason's Letter. — This letter is one of the most valuable 
 yet drawn from the treasure-house of the captured Jeff. Davis 
 correspondence. It incontestably establishes, what has been ex- 
 tensively impressed upon the public mind, that the Southern 
 leaders were prepared to ante-date the RebelHon four years, in 
 case Fremont had been elected. They were resolved in 1856 to 
 break up the Union the moment they could not hold its chief 
 
APPENDIX. 311 
 
 oflBces. The John Brown movement and other pretexts are thus 
 proved to be utterly devoid of any foundation. The letter also 
 shows that Floyd's thievmg exploit with the public arms was not 
 original with him, but had been hit upon four years earlier by 
 Henry A. Wise, and commended by Mason to Jeff. Davis, 
 Thus started and patronized, it was not likely to be forgotten 
 whenever the time should come for putting it into execution. 
 
 D. (Page 301.) 
 
 The " New York Express " says there is not one word of truth 
 in the statement about confessions, etc., and gives the following 
 account of this victim to Rebel vengeance : — 
 
 Mr. Spencer Kellogg Brown, whose case is here mentioned, 
 was the son of 0. C. Brown of Jefferson county, New York. 
 He enlisted in the army under General Lyon in 1861, and re- 
 mained in active sen'ico until he was taken prisoner off Port 
 Hudson, August 14th, 18G2. He had been in the service of 
 the government under Admiral Foote, and was on board the 
 gunljoat Essex, Commodore Porter, when that vessel committed 
 such a havoc upon the Bebel ram, the Arkansas. He was cap- 
 tured as a prisoner of war while destroying a Rebel ferry-boat 
 near Port Hudson, August 14th, and while under protection of 
 a boat's crew of forty men, through whose cowardice, it is al- 
 leged, he was taken and made prisoner. There was an unnatu- 
 ral hatred felt toward all on board the Essex, and young Kel- 
 logg Brown was treated with such great indignity that Commo- 
 dore Porter held five Rebel officers as hostages for his good treat- 
 ment and release. On the solemn assurances of Ex-Governor 
 Wickliffe of Louisiana that Brown should be treated as a pris- 
 oner of war, these five men were set free and have been ex- 
 changed, while a gallant officer is hung on the unfounded charge 
 of being a spy. For over a year he has been kept as a 
 
312 APPENDIX. 
 
 prisoner at Castle Thunder, in Richmond, and to-day his father, 
 now in this city on business, hears through the Richmond pa- 
 pers, that his son was executed on Friday last. 
 
 What adds to this outrage and calamity, is the assurance of 
 General Halleck, given as late as Monday last to the father of 
 the murdered man, that his son should be protected, as there was 
 no ground for his execution, and it was therefore impossible. 
 Notice was given at once by a flag of truce that retaliation 
 would follow such an act of brutahty ; but the assurance came 
 too late, as the officer was executed on Friday last, three days 
 before the interview. 
 
 E. 
 
 The following extracts of news, current while this volume is in 
 press, verify the old proverb, " It is hard to teach old dogs new 
 tricks;" also that other proverb of sacred origin, "Can the 
 Ethiopian change his skin? etc." 
 
 A special despatch to the " Chicago Tribune," dated at Indi- 
 anapolis, Indiana, October 9th, says, — 
 
 " The Provost Marshal at R-ichmond, Indiana, aiTcsted nine- 
 teen persons this morning, all armed with revolvers, en route 
 for Dayton, to vote for Vallandigham. After their arrest, two 
 of the party confessed the facts and stated that many more were 
 expected to follow. They came to Richmond by diflferent routes, 
 and each had in his possesssion a rough map showing the differ- 
 ent raih'oads leading through Indiana, to Dayton, Ohio. The 
 leader of the party first gave his name as John Brown, but af- 
 terward said it was Webster Cassel, and that they all hailed 
 from Chicago, Ilhnois." 
 
 The " Cincinnati Gazette " has a special despatch from Chicago 
 which says, — 
 
 " The friends of Brough must be on the lookout for imported 
 
APPENDIX. 313 
 
 votes. It is believed that a wide-spread scheme to colonize thou- 
 sands of Copperheads from this State into Ohio is being carried 
 out. The unlawful and nefarious work is being done under the 
 auspices and management of the K. Gr. C.'s. The Copperhead 
 organs of Cliicago and Springfield advise Democrats to visit 
 Ohio to see that Yallandigham has fair play. The nature of the 
 visit and sort of fair play meant, your readers can guess. Many 
 of those colonists from hereabout will strike for Cincinnati, 
 where tliey expect to hide from sight and swear in their votes. 
 The penalties for perjury or fear of detection will not restrain 
 them from attemping to vote. Each is a repeater, and will vote 
 early and oft<?n, but every town under Copperhead control will 
 receive its share." 
 
 The " Philadelphia Bulletin," in conunenting upon the result 
 of the election, says, — 
 
 *' Tlie canvass for governor in Pennsylvania was one of the 
 most spirited ever known. The Copperhead managers resorted 
 to eveiy trick, every deception, and every falsehood to carry the 
 State for Woodward. Ho himself abandoned his former ex- 
 pressed opinions in order that he might obtain votes, and on the 
 day before the election, Gen. McClellan, in a weak moment, was 
 persuaded to abandon his very proper reserve and write a letter 
 in favor of Woodward, which, it was hoped, would influence many 
 votes. Colonizing was attempted on a stupendous scale, and 
 even soldiers of the Ptebel army were brought into Pennsylvania, 
 placed on the assessors' rolls, and their taxes paid by Demo- 
 cratic politicians, in order to make a majority against Curtin. 
 These, and all then- other desperate expedients, have failed miser- 
 ably. Andrew Gr. Curtin has been reelected, and we believe 
 that the legislature of the State will show a handsome Union 
 majority." 
 
 If any one can show sufficient cause why a law should not 
 be, first made, and then executed, defining as treason, and pun- 
 ishing with the death-penalty, every wilful corrupting of the civil 
 
314 APPENDIX. 
 
 ballot, every counterfeiting of the national currency, and every 
 wilful fraud on the national treasury, by making his reasons 
 known, such person will relieve a somewhat prevalent and pain- 
 ful sense of deficiency in our national government. 
 
 The proposition proposed to be supported by what is appended 
 here, is, that the great majority of the masses of the Jackson- 
 Buchanan party had been so acted on, by the principles and 
 practices of that party, tending to deprave and despotize them, 
 that up to the fall elections of 1863 they still adhered to the 
 C^use of Davis and their former chiefs. The following, from 
 the " Boston Journal " of October 16th, demonstrates the real, 
 which was the scarcely disguised, character of a man, of whose 
 perjury and treason those masses previously had all the evi- 
 dence of which the nature of the case admitted, and for whom 
 they still cast their votes for governor in Ohio to the extent of 
 150,000. 
 
 We append a letter from Vallandigham which was recently 
 captured in Tennessee among the baggage and private papers of 
 the rebel officer to whom it was addressed. It was the most 
 striking proof yet adduced of the treason of the man who has 
 been so emphatically repudiated by the people of Ohio, although 
 it is in perfect keeping with his whole course since the outbreak 
 of the Eebellion. We can say that Ohio has made a decided and 
 happy escape from being turned over into the hands of a traitor. 
 
 Dear Colonel: — Your kind note and invitation of yester- 
 day was this morning handed me by your brother-in-law who will 
 hand you this in return. It v/ould give me much pleasui'e to 
 visit you and your command before leaving the Confederacy, but 
 it is now impossible to do so, as I have made arrangements to 
 start this a. m. with the earUest train for Wilmington. 
 
APPENDIX. 315 
 
 You surmise correctly, when you say that tou believe me 
 
 TO BE THE FRIEND OF THE SoUTH IN HER STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 FREEDOM. iMy feehngs have been publicly expressed in my own 
 country, in that quotation from Lord Chatham — '' My Lords, 
 you cannot conquer ximerica.^' There is not a di'op of Puritan 
 l)]ood in my vems. I hate, despise and defy the ty- 
 rannical government which lias sent me among you, for my 
 opinion's sake, and shall never give it my support in its 
 crusade upon your institutions. But you are mistaken 
 wlien you say there are but few such in the United States, 
 North. Thousands are there who would speak out but for 
 the mihtary despotism that strangles them. 
 
 Although the contest has been, and will contmuc to be, a 
 bloody one, you have but to persevere and the victofjt 
 WILL SURELY BE YOURS. You MUST STRIKE HOME ! The de- 
 fensive policy lengthens the contest. The shortest road to peace 
 is the boldest one. You can have your own terms by gain- 
 ing THE BATTLE ON YOUR ENEMY's SOIL. 
 
 Accept my kind regard for yoiu: personal welfare, and sm- 
 cere thanks for yoiu- kind ^vishes in my behalf, and hoping and 
 
 praying for THE ULTIMATE CAUSE IN WHICH YOU ARE FIGHT- 
 ING, believe me as ever your friend, 
 
 C. L. YALLANDIGHAM. 
 
 Col. D. D. Inshall, 8th Ala. Yols. 
 
 A few weeks earlier, upwards of 50,000 of the same masses 
 in Mame gave their votes for a gubernatorial candidate that stood 
 pledged to cooperate with Yallandigham in canying out his prin- 
 ciples and pohcy ; and on the same day of the election in Ohio, 
 240,865 of the same depraved and despotized masses, out of a 
 whole voting population of 515,003 in Pennsylvania, put forth 
 their utmost effort to elect for that State a governor of the same 
 principles and amis with Yallandigham. 
 
 Reverses to the national arms, or the desperate exertions of 
 
316 APPENDIX. 
 
 their old leaders, were and still are, liable from the old stock of 
 that party to raise those numbers to ruling majorities in either 
 and each of the above-named States, as they did last year in 
 New York and Indiana. 
 
 Thus near had Democracy in America, and the last hope of a 
 tyrant-ridden world, been brought to extinction, by the operation 
 of the principles and practices of the above-named political par- 
 ty, acting on the masses of the population that had been directly 
 and fully under their influence. 
 
 In the light of recent developments, we will here glance at 
 another source of peril to the same cause that arose from a some- 
 what different quarter. The following, from the " Portland Cou 
 rier " of October 22d, 1863, is a fit and rehable commentary on 
 the letter that succeeds : — 
 
 Eveiybody who reads the " Boston Journal, " knows that Bur. 
 Icigh, who writes the New York and Saratoga gossip for that pa- 
 per, has always been partial to General McClellan, and has writ- 
 ten many sentences in his favor. The late letter of General 
 McClellan, however, has wrought a change, and Burleigh speaks 
 of it as follows : — 
 
 The pohtical letter of Gen. McClellan, intending to aid in the 
 defeat of Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, has been read with 
 profound sorrow by thousands of his friends. When it was an- 
 nounced that such a letter had been written by him, few believed 
 it. His long silence under the heavy'charges preferred against 
 him by the Congressional Committee — his patient waiting under 
 what many supposed were wi'ongs inflicted upon hi-m — his man- 
 ly submission to the decree which condemned him to semi-dis- 
 gi-ace — the belief that in due time he would vindicate himself 
 — gave him a strong hold on the public sympathy. His silence 
 when his military ability and honor were assailed, and the* 
 promptness with which he defends his political opinions are not 
 the least remarkable things in this letter. But the character of 
 
APPENDIX. 317 
 
 the letter itself has probably done the work for Gen. McOlellan, 
 It justifies what his enemies have long charged upon him in his 
 method of conducting the war. He comes, uncalled for, a vol- 
 unteer witness in Court to aid his enemies, and to enable them to 
 do what, without his efforts, they could never have done. He 
 shows that his heart was never in the war ; that he intended to 
 carry on a defensive, and not an offensive war ; that he would 
 defend the capital and all the soil held by the loyal North, beat 
 back the Rebels, in every attempt to advance out of the seceding 
 States, to hold tliem in check till the Northern elections should 
 change the admiiii.stration, and so secure peace by compromise, 
 and not by the sword. The letter justifies the President in the 
 removal of McClellan from the command of the army. All tes- 
 timony concedes that McClellan was a great favorite with the 
 President. ^Mnle his headquarters were in Washington the 
 President saw him every day, and passed most of his evenings 
 with him. He generally called him " Greorgie," and was tender- 
 ly attached to him. To give him up cost him a long and painfal 
 struggle. It was not until he was thoroughly convinced that 
 the policy of Gen. IMcClellan, which he would not change, was 
 irreconcilable with the preservation of our national life, that he 
 gave the order for his removal. Such a letter as this of 
 McClellan would have killed Junius. 
 
 OR.VNGE, New Jersey, Oct. 12th, 1863. 
 Hon. Charles J. Bidble. 
 
 Dear Sir :— My attention has been called to an article in the 
 "Philadelphia Press," asserting that I had written to the manag- 
 ers of the Democratic meetmg at Allentown, disapproving of the 
 objects of the meetmg, and that if I voted and spoke, it would 
 be m favor of Governor Curtin. 
 
 I am informed that similar assertions have been made through- 
 out the State. It has been my earnest endeavor heretofore to 
 avoid participation in party pohtics, and I had determined to ad- 
 
 27* 
 
318 APPENDIX. 
 
 here to this course ; but it is obvious that I cannot long maintain 
 silence under such misrepresentations. I therefore request you to 
 deny that I have written any such letter, or entertained any such 
 views as those attributed to me in the " Philadelphia Press." 
 
 I desire to state clearly and distinctly that having some few 
 days ago had a full conversation with Judge Woodward, I find 
 that our views agree, and I regard his election as Governor of 
 Pennsylvania called for by the interest of the nation. 
 
 I understand Judge Woodward to be in favor of the prosecu- 
 tion of the war with all the means at the command of the loyal 
 States, until the military power of the Kebellion is destroyed. 
 
 I understand him to be of the opinion that while war is waged 
 with all possible decision and energy, the policy directing it 
 should be in consonance with the principles of humanity and civ- 
 ilization, working no injury to private rights and property not de- 
 manded by mihtary necessity and recognized by military law 
 among civilized nations. And finally, 
 
 I understand him to agree with me in the opinion that the 
 sole gi'eat objects of the war are the restoration of the Union of 
 the nation, the preservation of the Constitution and the suprem- 
 acy of the laws of the countiy. 
 
 BeHeving that our opinions entirely agree . upon these points, 
 I would, were it in my power, give to Judge Woodward my 
 voice and my vote. 
 
 I am, very respectfully, yours, 
 
 George B. McClellan. 
 
 Three historic characters here present themselves. Judge 
 Woodward, Gen. McClellan, and President Lincoln. 
 
 Judge Woodward, but for his insignificance, might with pro- 
 priety be termed James Buchanan No. 2, and appears justly to 
 merit all the increase of odium that attaches to the character that 
 term describes at the present, in comparison with a former day. 
 There appears to have been scarcely anything, short of the overt 
 
APPENDIX. 31^ 
 
 act of treason wMch would have condemned him to the gallows, 
 which he has not done, in the fore-front of the Rebel sympathiz- 
 ers, to aid the traitor's cause. Of what he had said and done in 
 this du'ection, he had swallowed, contradicted, and undone noth- 
 ing, more than would have been swallowed, contradicted, and un- 
 done by any man of his political school, to gain the votes of men 
 less traitorous than himself. 
 
 All this was perfectly known to McClellan. It was known to 
 him that the positions occupied by Woodward and Vallandigham, 
 and the measures resorted to to sustain these positions at the same 
 time in the several States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, were sub- 
 stantially parallel.* And yet McClellan could not restrain him- 
 self from coming out at the last decisive hour, in a carefully 
 worded but desperate eiBToi-t to throw Pennsylvania and the Un- 
 ion back into the hands of such men as Judge Woodward,! 
 James Buchanan, Isaac Toucey, John B. Floyd, Franklin 
 Pierce, Jefferson Davis, and to subject Pennsylvania and the 
 Union again to the operation of the political principles,' which 
 these names represent. 
 
 From July 27th, 1861, to November 9th, 1862, George B. 
 McClellan commanded the army of the Potomac, and, during 
 several months of this time, the armies of the United States. 
 When first called to that position of unparalleled importance and 
 
 * See Appendix D. 
 - t Judge Woodward, the opposition candidate for Governor of Pennsylva- 
 nia, has been convicted, on the strongest authority, of having publicly de- 
 clared in the spring of 1861 that if these States are to be separated he hoped 
 Pennsylvania would go with the South, which was then about to take 
 arms to break down the government. 
 
 Mr. George W. Hart of Philadelphia, always a Democrat hitherto, says 
 in a letter that he travelled three days with Judge Woodward, the Demo- 
 cratic candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, and heard him say often 
 that this " was an unconstitutional war and an abolition war, and that he 
 had no interest whatever in the result, let this result be what it might; that 
 it v/as a contest in which the North could gain neither credit nor honor, and 
 this he believed would be the verdict of history." — Boston Journal, Sept, 
 26 and Oct. Zd, 1863. 
 
320 APPENDIX. 
 
 responsibility, he was hailed with a universal welcome. The 
 talents he displayed in organizing a vast army, and in inspiring 
 his men with hope and confidence, commanded universal admha- 
 tion. The loyal millions breathed freer at his advent, introduced 
 and endorsed as he was by the retiring veteran of peerless re- 
 nown, who had preceded him. The friends of Free-government 
 throughout the world were glad that their cause had fallen into so 
 able hands. 
 
 Had the sun stood still, and all human events and actions sus- 
 pended progress, at the point at which General McClellan ma- 
 tured the recruiting and organizing of his army, then might his 
 name have remained illustrious, — at least, with some dawning 
 beams about it. But on no other condition could he be spared 
 the necessity of acting out, on a transcendently important and 
 conspicuous arena, the principles of his heart. 
 
 What was the record ? Delay in advancing to Manassas — 
 defeated by Fabian tactics — delay at Yorktown — 80,000 men 
 consumed by the heat of summer in the malarious swamps of the 
 Chickahominy, and in the overwhelming assaults which his de- 
 lays obtained for him — Pope and his army immolated at the sec- 
 ond battle of Bull Run, through the obstinate tardiness, or wilful 
 refusal of McClellan and his crony commanders, to forward the 
 needed succor as commanded. Next came the terrible day of 
 Antietam, on which McClellan refrained from firing a shot, more 
 than was indispensable to prevent Baltimore, Philadelphia, and 
 Washington from falhng immediately into the enemy's hands. 
 
 What does all this mean? — the astonished, bewildered, dis- 
 heartened and stricken loyalists in this country, and the friends 
 of Hberal government throughout the world, have been asking; 
 and never, till George B. McClellan signed and sent that letter, 
 to turn if possible the Pennsylvania election in favor of the Rebel 
 sympathizers,"* has hght enough been accumulated to enable any 
 
 * Philadelphia, Nov. 11. Judges Lourie, "Woodward and Thompson of 
 the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in session at Pittsburg, being a majori- 
 
APPENDIX. 321 
 
 one who was at liberty to do so, reliably to interpret tliis page of 
 appalling histoiy. 
 
 ty of the Court, gave a decision on Monday relative to certain drafted men, 
 in effect declaring the conscription act unconstitutional. 
 
 The Riots in the Coal Districts. — A special con-espondent of the 
 Philadelphia Press writes from Mauch Chunk, Pa., on the 7th instant, as 
 follows : 
 
 " Several accounts appeared during the last few days in Philadelphia and 
 New York papers of the ' riots ' in this region, and the murder of Mr. G. K. 
 Smith, one of our best and most valuable citizens. The accounts given are, 
 as far as they go, substantially con'cct. The murders committed, however, 
 are not ' riots,' but the work of assassins, extensively organized throughout 
 the coal region ; and the leading Copperheads are the chief instigators. 
 
 " The murderers arc all Irish, organized under the namcof Buckshots' for 
 the avowed purpose of resisting the draft. They number probably several 
 thousand in the mines of Beaver Meadow, Colerain, Jeanesville, Hazleton, 
 Audenried, Yorktowm, Frenchtown, Spring Mountain and Mount Pleasant, 
 They are all armed either with shot-guns, rifles, muskets, or revolvers. The 
 most notorious Copperheads of our place counselled them to arm themselves 
 'to defend their liberties,' and to ' resist the tyranny of the Lincoln despot- 
 ism.' The beasts, duped by these demagogues, declare their determination to 
 drive out of the mines every one avIio is not of their own stripe ; and a number 
 of Welslimen, Englishmen, Protestant Irish, Germans, and Americans have 
 been waylaid and murdered by them during the last two or three months. 
 About two months ago, one of these Buckshots was arrested near Beaver 
 ^leadow, and lodged in our jail, on a charge of assault and battery with in- 
 tent to kill. On the following night, over one hundred Buckshots marched 
 into town well armed, arriving here about one o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, surrounded the jail, and rescued the prisoner. No effort was made by 
 the civil authorities to aiTCst the offenders, although the grand jury, last 
 month, presented the names of a number of persons who participated in the 
 outrage. The district attorney, being of the most malignant stamp of Cop- 
 perheads, refused, and continues to refuse, any steps calculated to bring 
 the?e villains to justice. The high sheriff of the county, it is believed, 
 would prefer doing his duty; but he being in the Copperhead boat cannot do 
 so. He has made no effort to raise a posse comiiatus for the arrest of these 
 or any other outlaws in our county. Even one of the associate judges of 
 our court, and leading officer of one of the most prosperous and respectable 
 local corporations, it is said, discountenanced any effort to an-est ' Buck- 
 shots,' simply because they (the Democracy) ' need their votes, and must not 
 offend them.' 
 
 " Thus encouraged by our local authorities, these outlaws frequently de- 
 clared their determination to not only kill every officer who would undertake 
 
322 APPENDIX. 
 
 In the war of the American Revolution, Great Britain failed 
 to sul)due the revolted colonies for lack of military commanders 
 who heartily undertook the task assigned them. The policy of 
 McClellan and of the poUtical school to which he lent himself 
 appears to have been, to defeat the efforts of the present ad- 
 mmistration through the operation of a similar cause, to keep the 
 losses, exhaustion, and bloodshed of the present war about equal- 
 ly divided between the two contending sections, call it a drawn 
 game, and submit the questions at issue back to the operation 
 of the same causes that first brought them under the ai'bitration 
 of the sword ! In other words, that poUcy was, so to conduct 
 the existing war, that its cost, its sufferings, and its slaughtered 
 thousands, should just avail as a judicious blood-letting to re- 
 duce the Southern leaders to the position they occupied before 
 they bolted from their fellow partisans at the Charleston Conven- 
 tion, and thus enable the old political party to revalidate its old 
 usurpation, and handle its old opponents with all the greater ease 
 by as much as they had been impoverished and decimated in 
 the war ! ! 
 
 Let him, if such an one there be, who is competent to the 
 task, do justice to the events, and fitly chai'acterize the actors 
 presented on this page of history ! 
 
 K General George B. McClellan failed to fulfil the expecta- 
 tions entertained of him as Commander-in-Chief of the Union 
 forces, or as Commander of the magnificent army of the Poto- 
 mac, those expectations appear to have been disappointed, not 
 because he lacked the power, but because he lacked the will, 
 that was requisite for their fulfilment. The reticence with which 
 he suppressed his real sentiments and aims, and the success- 
 ful address with which he kept the administration at his chariot- 
 to enforce the draft, but also to put out of the way every one suspected of 
 sympathy with the government. They openly declax-e now their determi- 
 nation to secure entire control of all the mines, and to stop the shipment of 
 coal, and thus deprive the navy of this indispensable article." — Boston Jow- 
 nal, Nov. 12th, 1863. 
 
APPENDIX. 323 
 
 wheel, while he carried those sentiments into effect, and advanced 
 those aims towards their final achievement, on so vast a scale, in- 
 doctrinating his generals and attaching to himself the rank and 
 file of his army, prove General McClellan to be well endowed 
 with executive ability to accomplish anything that he has the 
 moral elevation to attempt. 
 
 The peril that arose, to the cause of popular government in 
 general and to the United States in particular, from the course 
 of General McClellan while in command of United States forces, 
 may be traced to its primal source in the causes that had despo- 
 tized the masses of the Jackson-Buchanan party. He is an emi- 
 nent individual specimen of what elsewhere appears in depraved 
 masses. But it is another source of peril displayed in this 
 connection, to which we here glance briefly. 
 
 Wliatever was wanting in tenderness was made up in strength, 
 in the compsition of that man who could see more than one 
 hundred tliousand of liis fellow-citizens consumed before his face 
 in fifteen months l)y disease and casualties, from the ranks under 
 his command, — to say notliing of the nearly equal waste that oc- 
 curred simultaneously just across the line in his front, — and per- 
 sist in regarding the whole as an ordinary, and perhaps-to-be-re- 
 peatcd sacrifice to the Moloch of his poHtical party ; and, at the 
 end put forth liis earnest effort to prevent the disaster from avail- 
 ing for any higher end. Far less extensive views than General 
 McClellan had, of the disaster and sorrow brought upon their 
 countrymen ])y the nefarious origmators of this war, had availed 
 to turn the judgments and the hearts of tens of thousands of Mc- 
 Clellan \s fellow-partisans who went uito the war as honest and as 
 earnest in their allegiance to his political party as himself. But 
 out of it all McClellan came with an obdurate few, unable to see 
 any object to be accomplished by the incomputable costs, higher 
 or holier than the restoration of the policy of Pierce, Buchanan, 
 and Toucey with its attendant benefits, to "the interest of 
 the nation" — unable to aspire to any higher or holier political 
 
324 APPENDIX. 
 
 vocation than, with men like these, to grind in the prison- 
 house of that foul sect, with a view to keeping in subjection 
 under them all those of their remaining fellow-citizens who aspire 
 to the attainment of a political destiny less ignominious than 
 their own. " Join our poHtical party, and follow the leaders or 
 be left out in the cold " — " to the victors belong the spoils " — 
 is the language with which they prepare to greet us, the moment 
 that any kmd or amount of political fraud or villany enables 
 them to elect the candidate of their nominating. 
 
 That the inaugural address of President Lincoln seemed defi- 
 cient in boldness, was attributed at the time to a sagacious, but 
 not the less decided, prudence. That no prompt, decisive steps 
 were taken to aiTCst the progress of insurgent fortifications 
 around Charleston, and to reinforce Fort Sumter, sickened the 
 loyal heart. That seventeen months of the war, with their slaugh- 
 ter and their cost, went by without the administration having 
 adopted any principle or pohcy that appeared adequate to secure 
 a beneficial result, or even to end the fight, appalled the thought- 
 ful friends of popular government in this country and in Europe. 
 It was presumed that the diplomatic member of President Lin- 
 coln's Cabinet, with undue influence was inducing his chief to 
 found his plans and expectations, not so much on the rock of 
 any particular civil truths or principles, as on the fathomless 
 abyss of diplomacy. That President Lincoln, during much of this 
 time was spending his evenings in the fascinating company of a 
 man, who, after passing through the war-experience of that com- 
 manding general, would put his name to such a letter as was ad- 
 dressed to Chai-les J. Biddle on the eve of the late Pennsylva- 
 nia election, was a calamity, a tremendous peril, — a verging 
 of the car of Liberty along the brink of chaos, — wliich free- 
 dom's friends at the time were spared the miseiy of contem- 
 plating. Now that we see it in the light of accomplished facts, 
 it reminds one of Marshal Grouchy on the eve of Waterloo, in 
 conference with the emissaiy of the Allies. To subject him- 
 
APPENDIX. 325 
 
 self and his country's cause to the effect of such a perilous 
 temptation displayed President Lincoln's sad trait. To extricate 
 himself and his cause from the impending ruin, almost unharmed 
 — to rebound into the Hne of cleai', decisive, necessary, and glori- 
 ously successful policy which his former fascinator is now strag- 
 gling to resist, displays President Lincoln's redeeming excellence 
 in its tardy but ultunate ascendency, — displays perhaps the 
 "grace of God that was given unto him" in answer to the 
 prayers of God's imperilled, believing people. 
 
 G. 
 
 In a letter to the General Assembly of Ohio, acknowledging 
 the receipt of a resolution of thanks from that body to the Army 
 of the Cumberland and its officers, Gen. Rosecrans employs the 
 following emphatic language : — 
 
 " This is indeed a war for the maintenance of the Constitution 
 and the laws — nay, for national existence against those who 
 have despised our honest friendship, deceived our just hopes, and 
 driven us to defend our country and our homes. By foul and 
 wilful slanders on our motives and intentions, persistently repeat- 
 ed, they have arrayed against us our own fellow-citizens, bound 
 to us by the triple ties of consanguinity, geographical position, 
 and commercial interest. 
 
 " Let no man among us be base enough to forget this, or fool 
 enough to trust an oligarchy of traitors to their friends, to civil 
 liberty, and human freedom. Voluntary exiles from home and 
 friends, for the defence and safety of all, we long for the time 
 when gentle peace shall again spread her wings over our land ; 
 but we know no such blessing is possible while the unjust and 
 arbitrary power of the Rebel leaders confronts and threatens us, 
 Crafty as the fox, crael as the tiger, they cried * No coercion,' 
 while preparmg to strike us. Bully-like they proposed to fight 
 us because they said they could whip five to one ; and now, 
 
 28 
 
326 APPENDIX. 
 
 when driven back, they whine out * no invasion,' and promise us 
 of the West permission to navigate the Mississippi, if we will be 
 ' good boys,' and do as they bid us. 
 
 " Whenever they have the power, they drive before them into 
 their ranks the Southern people, and they would also drive us. 
 Trust them not. Were they able, they would invade and destroy 
 us without mercy. Absolutely assured of these things, I am 
 amazed that any one could think of ' peace on any terms.' He 
 who entertains the sentiment is fit only to be a slave ; he who 
 utters it at this tune is, moreover, a traitor to his country, who 
 deserves the scorn and contempt of all honorable men. AVhen 
 the power of the unscrupulous Rebel leaders is removed, and the 
 people are free to consider and act for their own interests, which 
 are common with ours under this government, there will be no 
 great difficulty in fraternization." — Boston Journal, Feb. \Qth, 
 1863 
 
 Of the above extract from Gen. Rosecrans's letter it may be 
 said that an equal amount of sagacious statesmanship and patri- 
 otic faithfulness has not been expressed in the same space, — 
 has not been compressed into any one document, — (it may al- 
 most be said) has not been expressed in all the documents and 
 speeches which the present war has brought out. It presents 
 Gen. Rosecrans himself, simply, unsubverted, unsopliisticated, 
 an American Democrat in the true and proper meaning of the 
 term. 
 
 The following, translated from the " Courrier des Mats Uhis,^^ 
 which professes to have obtained it from a Cincinnati correspon- 
 dent, represents Gen. Rosecrans in the shape to which he would 
 be reduced, and in the attitude and light in which he would be 
 placed by his spiritual advisers, the emissaries of the " decrepit 
 giant " who, as seen from Bedford jail two hundred years ago, 
 was "biting his nails" for lack of power to commit the 
 devastation he desired ; provided said emissaries succeed to 
 their minds in accomplishing the mission on which they have 
 been sent. 
 
APPENDIX. 327 
 
 *' Persons who are on intimate terms with Gen. Rosecrans de- 
 clare that he is greatly discouraged about the war. This is not 
 becaune he considers the Southern armies invincible, but because 
 he believes that the seceded States can never be brought back by 
 the rigorous policy which the government has adopted. He has 
 never taken any part in the proceedings of Andrew Johnson, the 
 military governor of Tennessee, who has succeeded in converting 
 to Secession all people who had any hopes of the Union. Him- 
 self perfectly disinterested, he looks with disgust upon the 
 shameful traffic which is going on under the mask of patriotism. 
 When he looks around him, he sees men moved by all sorts of 
 motives, more or less decent, except honor and the love of coun- 
 try. Some are fighting from ambition, others from avarice ; to 
 the latter the conquest of country means only pillage and cheap 
 cotton ; the former are jealous of their superiors and their 
 equals, and are delighted with any reverse which may overtake 
 
 them. 
 
 " Profoundly honest and rehgious, Rosecrans regards these 
 spectacles with bitter aversion. His religious feelings have grown 
 upon him in proportion to the excesses and intrigues which he is 
 impotent to prevent; and, in mystical hopes of another world, he 
 seeks relief from the corruptions of the present. He no longer 
 fifrhts with any ardor, but simply from a sense of duty, consider- 
 ing each victory a useless waste of blood. He has no confi- 
 dence in his successes, considering that they are followed by the 
 swoop of birds of prey whose rapacity makes hopeless the pacifi- 
 cation of the country. .... All these details come to me from 
 a person very dear to Rosecrans, to whom the General wrote that 
 he saw in the defeat of Chickamauga the finger of God."— ^os- 
 ton Journal, Oct. 21ih, 1863. 
 
328 APPENDIX. 
 
 TO THE BAFFLED DESPOTS OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 Ye are going down whence ye rose at fii*st, 
 From the face of the Land your lust has cursed ; 
 From the hght of your hope, and your lied-for crown, 
 In darkness and blood ye are going down. 
 
 Ye chose you a corner whereon to rear 
 
 The throne of your power, a realm of fear ; 
 
 Ye swore to rule with a despot's rod 
 
 O'er the Land, the People, and the Saints of God. 
 
 The sable sons of a heathen race 
 Long bowed to your mandates with abject grace ; 
 And your slaveless kindred, bereft of dower, 
 Have quailed and bled 'neath your crushing power, 
 
 Till the voice of their blood, from the wreaking sod, 
 Has entered the ears of an incensed God, 
 And beneath the blight of his buraing frown, 
 To the despot's doom ye are going down. 
 
 *' Hell from beneath is moved for thee,* 
 The despot dead thy coming greet, — 
 
 * Art thou also become weak as we ? ' 
 
 The defunct kings of the nations shriek. 
 
 " In glory each in his house they he, 
 
 But thou, cast out, art keenly scanned, 
 And trampled down by each passer-by, 
 Because tJiou hast destroyed thj land. 
 
 " The whole earth is at rest once more. 
 
 The trees and the fields rejoice 'gainst thee." 
 And wide and deep as Ocean's roar, 
 
 Goes up the song of slaves set free. ' « 
 
 The despots slain mid Freedom's Home, 
 
 The boldest, bloodiest of their kind, 
 AVe trust may be the last that come. 
 
 Their shackles on our limbs to bind. 
 
 January 16, 1864. 
 
I